By the time Rome fell, only those who still benefited from the politically-enabled system of plunder still had the will to defend their country. To everyone else, the idea of Rome was dead. Now consider Canada in 2025. When Chandra Arya tried to run for the Liberal Party leadership (before the party booted him for unexplained reasons), we mocked him for failing to recognize the importance of language to the Quebecois. But revisit his observation for a moment (see link below) because it contains another deeper truth: "it's not the language that matters, it's what is it that they [the federal govt] delivers to them." While language and culture are central to what it means to be Quebecois, Chandra Arya's statement is actually a shockingly candid observation about what Canada has come to represent to a very large number of people. In short, post-national Canada has reduced itself to a system that delivers goodies and opportunities. It doesn't inspire -- it redistributes. It doesn't defend our rights equally -- it treats our rights as conditional privileges, to be granted or withdrawn on a whim. It doesn't create an equal playing field -- it insulates many from free market competition and divvies out protectionism as a strategic method of buying voter loyalty from special interest groups. It no longer offers its citizens an open door to opportunities achievable through hard work -- today those doors are jealously guarded and require endless permission slips, even as the opportunities behind those doors are suffocated with endless regulation, and require jumping though endless hoops before the real work can even begin. It doesn't empower us to build and innovate -- it turns us all against one another as we grovel at the feet of our govt in a never-ending competition over the spoils of taxation, regulatory privileges, and subsidized economic opportunities. It doesn't uphold the law -- it enables corruption and theft on a colossal scale, right in our faces, while pretending that they don't exist. In short, govt in 🇨🇦 today is little more than France's 17th century Sun King divvying out privileges to his preferred loyalists as they competed for his favors at the Palace of Versailles. But it wasn't always this way in Canada, which is why there's such a dramatic generational split when it comes to support for the idea of the 51st state. Support is highest among the younger generations (according to Ipsos, 43% of Canadians aged 18-34 support becoming the 51st state). They sense what Canada has become and see clearly that a lifetime of hard work may no longer even net them ownership of their own homes. Canada has broken its intergenerational social contract with them, and they are choosing accordingly. But for many older Canadians, Canada was once a place where they could build something for their families purely as a consequence of their own initiative and hard work -- in other words, it represented an idea about freedom. Different from the USA, but freedom nonetheless. And so, our flag meant something because living beneath it meant that a man could spend most of his life building a life for his family with barely any interaction with any govt agent. Not anymore. While Canada was deeply flawed in those days too with many episodes of blatant predatory govt behaviour, Canada nevertheless was a place where many hardworking citizens were able to make something with their own sweat and blood without having to grovel at the feet of an endless line of bureaucrats and politicians to make their lives happen. Furthermore, the leadership classes weren't going out of their way to place petty obstacles in their citizens' way while openly plundering them at every turn to use that plunder to buy themselves a coalition of loyal supporters. But today that is very much the case as Canada transforms itself into little more than a stereotypical banana republic that plunders some to buy the loyalty of others. Many of those who thrived in those earlier eras simply do not see that the Canada they continue to hold in their hearts has long since morphed into something entirely different, and that we've long since passed the point where we can simply "vote for the other guy" to get back to what it once was. Canada was frequently predatory in those earlier eras too, but it wasn't always this openly and obscenely predatory. Individual regions, like Quebec, Alberta, Newfoundland, and many indigenous peoples did fall prey to disastrous govt-led social engineering efforts during our country's history, and many of those citizens went through hell at their govt's hands. (if you have a moment, read up on the dirty tricks the govt used to forcibly "found" the town of Grise Fiord in 1953 to establish Canada's claim over the high arctic as an example of Canada's habit of using its citizens as pawns for its own self-serving purposes). But it wasn't everyone all at once, from coast to coast to coast. The humiliation and hardships suffered by some were often largely hidden from the view of everyone else. Which is why the "idea of Canada" and pride for its flag endured. But once you begin to grovel for the privilege of a successful life, even if you succeed you still know in your soul that you have merely become a serf in someone else' golden bird cage. That is the dividing line between the idea of freedom versus being bound by a govt yoke. That's the deal killer that rotted out the idea that once served as the soul of our nation. And so, especially among the older generations, the memory of the "idea of Canadian freedom" still holds strong because at one point in their life Canada truly did represent that freedom to many in that generation. Compounding the factors fueling support for the 51st state is that those who have been steamrolled, whether via regulation, via Covid tyranny, via equalization, and so on, all feel a deep sense of betrayal. For us, we once believed in the idea of Canada and had pride in our flag, our anthem, our country, and the sense of liberty that we thought these things represented. But today that feeling has been replaced by a sense of betrayal that cuts to the bone, not only because our political classes have openly betrayed that idea, but especially because so many of our fellow citizens not only went along with the tyranny and the plunder but even actively cheered it on and even showered us with tribal hatred when we tried to protest. Today we know what the involuntary citizens of Grise Fiord must have felt in their hearts. Today we know that we are not one national family -- family doesn't do that to one another. We now know that the Canadian dream that's being "delivered" is first "acquired" at someone else's expense. That goes against every ounce of the idea that we once thought Canada represented. Quite frankly, if a nation is a kind of larger family, we feel betrayed by that family and don't feel safe within that national family anymore. It feels more like we are living in an "eye-for-an-eye", "everyone for themselves" kind of system that is permanently re-writing the rules for the benefit of its privileged loyalists. It feels a bit like living amongst an atomized mass of rabid hyenas, all snarling and competing for their master to throw them a bone. Chandra Arya put words to the idea of what Canada has become, not because he wanted to fix it, but because he was offering himself to serve as a more benevolent gold-giver at the heart of that system in order to try to "deliver" what people want. He effectively said the quiet part out loud. He wasn't ashamed of it. I did not sense ill will. It's just that, for those who have bought into the post-national socialist vision of Canada that began in the 1970s under Trudeau Sr. and peaked under Trudeau Jr. today, "delivering" is truly all that Canada is about. He is not alone in that belief. Far too many see Canada in the same way. This is what a country becomes when it loses its soul and merely becomes a postal address. We have become a redistributionist (a.k.a. socialist) system in which everyone is permanently caught up in the great game of petitioning the "king" for privileges. The Palace of Versailles 2.0. That, at its core, is the betrayal of the idea that Canada once represented. And the fact that so many other Canadians are okay with this redistributionist post-national Canada is perhaps the greatest betrayal of all. As the emperors of yesteryear once learned to their detriment as invading barbarians were massing outside the gates, there comes a point when those inside are willing to welcome the barbarians as liberators to save them from the plunderers inside. It takes a lot more than improving GDP numbers to revive the idea of Rome in the human heart once a nation has turned to plundering its fellow citizens. To inspire the heart, a nation must first prove itself to be a family worthy of defending. 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