Suppose they had a war and Scotland didn’t come?

This week Scotland decides its fate and thinking runs thus: The current climate of devolution can spread as Thomas Jefferson might have envisioned it, as enlightenment spread to the world in 1776, or otherwise, as the plague spread in the 14th century. It is a good time for this and in my opinion it is nature’s way to want to be free from an overlord with a dominating and inhibiting psychological overview; in the Scots’ case, that of the English. They desire to begin again, anew.

{mosads}But Scotland should have left England behind long ago, possibly centuries ago, and now it is stuck. The current secession movement is the tail following the dog of the American Tea Party and the tail is not wagging because the dog is dead. And there is this about revolution: Revolution is the crossing of a river. If you do not succeed, you will drown in the river. Good to know because Scotland’s independence leader Alex Salmond says, according to the Associated Press, that “Scotland wants to remain in the United Nations, the European Union and NATO, and he anticipates little difficulty in keeping those seats.” They want to cross the river but are afraid of water.

Independence might have a dissident effect for others with devolutionary hopes and Tolstoyan visions of a pure and original state. But then Scotland offers to loan its fate, life force and destiny to other American post-World War II global pseudo-state models and positions; as a member of the abstract EU, UN and NATO. “Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.” Only bigger.

I proposed in 2007 that northern New Hampshire, where I live, form a 51st state with a new state constitution to clarify issues in a new century and millennium, long past the World War II era and in our case up here, post-Civil War because we in New England (like the South) then fell submissive to New York dominance. It became a kind of Tea Party model and caught on for a while:

“After we ditched the Massachusetts people in the south [who live on the southern border of New Hampshire for tax breaks and work in Massachusetts] we might for example specify in our new state Constitution that before the U.S. President can send New Hampshire men and women to war against China, Russia, all of Islam and the other of its now so many enemies (I added these up using the CIA Factbook and it comes to at least 2.5 billion people against the 301 million in the U.S.; but then we have Blackwater), she would need permission from the New Hampshire Governor.” — Free Market News Network, Oct. 14, 2007

This was roughly what it meant here briefly, then, among us rural Tea Party rubes to be a “free state” under the then almost-popular anthem of “Every state a free state.” Have the Scots thought this through? I think not. But now it is too late.

Quigley is a prize-winning writer who has worked more than 35 years as a book and magazine editor, political commentator and reviewer. For 20 years he has been an amateur farmer, raising Tunis sheep and organic vegetables. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife and four children. Contact him at quigley1985@gmail.com.