It’s straightforward, if not easy, to deal with barbarians outside the gate. External enemies are easy to deal with – after all, they’re not us.

It is much more challenging, however, if the barbarians are inside of the gate, as now we’re vulnerable and don’t have a wall to protect us.

The most challenging, however, is when we’ve decided to think of our enemies as beneath us by calling them barbarians, and in fact, we’re actually the ones doing barbaric things.