I am glad to hear the Liberals across the way are perking up their ears.
I have been reading a lot about ancient history recently. History does not really care about whether one is right or left. It does not really care about whether one is capitalist or Marxist. It really only cares about whether or not there is success or productivity and whether or not something has survived and thrived. That is all it really cares about.
I have been reading Edward Gibbon's The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire . I have been reading Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History and Will and Ariel Durant's The Story of Civilization . I would like to tell a story about Rome.
Edward Gibbon talks about the time before Augustus and Octavius. In that capacity one of the things that afflicted Rome was excessive spending. It did not have sound finances. The society was no longer frugal. It also suffered from its young men being unwilling to bear arms to be trained in the art of war and to defend the Roman empire. It also suffered from a large degree of extortion, moral decay, corruption and a general disregard for religion. Therefore, it also had a low birth rate.
Augustus came along and he said that he was going to change some of those things. One of the things he did was he cut taxes. For every single child that a person had, the person's taxes would be reduced by 20%. Someone who had five children would pay no tax at all. He also made sure the Romans had sound financing and frugality. He made sure they had a strong military.
Another thing he did is very important, and it touches not only on this bill but also many others that we will be dealing with in the next little while and some we have been dealing with over the past while. He governed with moral authority. He sought a society with strong faith. He removed those people who were unworthy administrators.
This is what I want to focus on in light of Bill C-48 and some of the other bills we are going to be dealing with. If we do not have a society that largely believes in a very concrete set of right and wrong, most often provided by religion, then the only thing that actually rules is the covenant of the sword. The only people who police the difference between right and wrong in that capacity are either the military or whatever police function there is in that state.
The great problem that arises with that is that the police and the military are largely a reflection of the society they serve. If we get to a circumstance where the society is becoming more and more accepting of moral decay, extortion, corruption and various things, then we cannot be surprised if the military, the police and the people who are there to administer the law themselves become corrupt and caught up in it. Then it is merely as Hobbes would have said that life is nasty, brutish and short because one is ruled by those people who have the right of might and the sword. It is the survival of the fittest in the most base way.
De Tocqueville also talks about this in his writings on early America. Sadly, one of the things that pains me across the way, one of the things that Augustus would have never stood for as a Roman emperor, is if there had been corruption on the level and scale that we have had brought forth by the Gomery inquiry, he would have done his utmost to rout it out. Because of the moral authority that he brought to that position, his rule of 50 years was extended by another 300 because people tried to largely leave unchanged many of the things he put in place. Had he not been around, the Roman empire would have been a blip of only 150 years rather than the pax Romana of 800.
One of my great frustrations when I look across the way is that I see a Prime Minister and to a large part a party that is complicit with regard to this form of extortion and corruption, this scandal, whether it is involving the sponsorship money or if it is the unity fund or various things, and it portends very badly for the future of this country and where we are all going.
Let us talk about some of the solutions then--