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Some old traditions should bite the dust. This is one of them: The British Royal Mail has lost its centuries-old monopoly on mail delivery.
The Post Office's 350-year-old monopoly on carrying letters ended yesterday with its competitors now able to collect, sort and deliver post for the first time since the reign of Charles II.
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So far, I've avoided the liberal media bias angle, but this is too obvious to let pass. Headline on Globe and Mail story: "Big, bad Tories could blow NDP house down: poll".
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"It's the demography, stupid", as the headline on Mark Steyn's article in the January 2006 issue of The New Criterion has it. For many years now, fertility rates in most Western democracies have been below replacement level. The chickens (or should that be vultures?) are coming home to roost, and it's much too late to stop them.
[T]he United States [is] hovering just at replacement rate with 2.07 births per woman. Ireland is 1.87, New Zealand 1.79, Australia 1.76. But Canada’s fertility rate is down to 1.5, well below replacement rate; Germany and Austria are at 1.3, the brink of the death spiral; Russia and Italy are at 1.2; Spain 1.1, about half replacement rate. That’s to say, Spain’s population is halving every generation. By 2050, Italy’s population will have fallen by 22 percent, Bulgaria’s by 36 percent, Estonia’s by 52 percent.
. . .
As fertility shrivels, societies get older—and Japan and much of Europe are set to get older than any functioning societies have ever been.
Mr Steyn argues that, although there is armed conflict with Islamists in many parts of the world, that's merely the presenting symptom of the deeper problem: the West's loss of confidence in its own civilisation, seen most starkly in prolonged–seemingly determined–failure to procreate enough to ensure survival.
As a famous Arnold Toynbee quote puts it: "Civilizations die from suicide, not murder"—as can be seen throughout much of "the western world" right now. The progressive agenda—lavish social welfare, abortion, secularism, multiculturalism—is collectively the real suicide bomb.. . .So the jihadists are for the most part doing no more than giving us a prod in the rear as we sleepwalk to the cliff.
Here's more information on the dire demographic outlooks in Canada and Germany.
UPDATE: The article posted at The New Criterion has gone behind a subscriber wall. Fortunately, it has been re-printed in full at OpinionJournal.com, where it is available for free.
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The collect for today, the Circumcision of Christ, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:
Almighty God, who madest thy blessed Son to be circumcised, and obedient to the law for man; Grant us the true Circumcision of the Spirit; that, our hearts, and all our members, being mortified from all worldly and carnal lusts, we may in all things obey thy blessed will; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: Romans 4:8-14
The Gospel: St Luke 2:15-21
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