New Nanos poll is out asking people how comfortable they are with a Tory government and if they want an election. First, kind of a loaded question n’est-ce pas? I know I’m pretty uncomfortable with the idea of a Liberal government lead by a foreign citizen, but no one considers that an issue.

Anyhow, the assholes label comes from this part of the survey: “Oppose an Election (N=490) : Elections are expensive/cost a lot of money 24% “

24% of people oppose an election because it’s ‘too expensive’. Christ, 24% of people need a swat on the head. These are probably the same people who don’t want Canada to have an army. I was reading about them in a Steyn article in the Standard the other day.

It’s upsetting for a lot of reasons - one of which is the way that so many people could think ahistorically. This comes from an informed prejudice - I think that many of these people are saying to themselves that as we are an enlightened modern people and this is the 21st century we ought to have moved beyond all the divisiveness of the past. Fight wars? Heavens no!, How crude, how [shudder] ‘American’! Have an election, now? Why can’t the parties just get along? Why all the partisanship? Why the disagreement? Why can’t they work together in the best interests of all Canadians? This is ahistorical because these identical views were held about 1600 years ago, back when the western Roman Empire was crumbling to dust.

Why did Rome fall apart?  Looking at the broad consensus you’ll see that three changes brought it about:

1. The barbarization/germanization of the empire: allowing the metropolis to be influenced and changed by the underdeveloped, uncivilized periphery.

2. The loss of “civic virtue” and the decline in public participation:  as an example Keegan cites the increasing use of Barbarian mercenaries to fill the ranks of the army - the same army that held the Barbarians back on the northern frontier.  People were too busy leading lives of decadent excess to realize that survival is always an issue, that (to paraphrase Orwell), the only reason they can sleep soundly is that there are rough men willing to commit acts of violence on their behalf.

3. Christianization - not the brute Christianity of the middle ages, but the effete love thy neighbour, all dogs go to heaven namby pamby religion of the early years.

For the first point, read ‘the Islamification of Europe’ and the intergovernmental institutions; for the second, look at the 24% data, Steyn’s article on support for the military; for the third, just look at the pointless self-destructive non-productive cultism engendered by Kyoto and the Goreacle’s ‘moral’ lessons or look at the dominant belief in post-modernism in the academy.

I think the numbers I started this with are symbolic of the decline we are in.  The left is what prevents us from doing something reasonable about the situation.  They’ll leave it until the moment after the last moment, when only the most drastic steps are effective.  Most of the left that is - there are still some of the old-fashioned human rights leftists around - and they’ve finally come to Canada.  Exhibit 1: Canadian Euston Manifesto supporters.

Back to work for me.