As my wife, who is about a Scottish as it gets, reminded me recently, we Americans are all for independence and cant imagine anyone being against it. I must admit to secretly hoping the Scots vote for it while leaving it to the Scots better judgment; they live there, I don’t. But her observation that those favoring independence sound a lot like the Obama supporters of 2008 gave me pause. “Hope” is a good thing to have. “Change” is inevitable. But neither hope nor change is a policy statement and as we have seen, one man’s interpretation of what those things mean is not shared by all. In the end you need to know how to govern and despite having two years to figure it out it appears that many Scots are only now considering the nitty-gritty aspects of self-government and are fearful and hesitant to embrace them. Perhaps that this is the first bloodless battle for independence in 300 years has something to do with it. This is as much a battle for economic freedom and self-guided destiny as anything, no war is being fought with Briton over this as has been the case over nearly 1,000 years, and yet the Scots are closer to independence now then they have ever been during those times of passionate and deadly struggle. Despite the widely accepted belief there is an ethos of Scott’s hatred of British rule, today it’s odd in that freedom is at hand and they may pass it by. In today’s world, freedom is not felt with the same passion that caused a man to fight to the death for it and take his chances as a freeman rather than suffer a slave under foreign rule. Today most slaves in America, Scotland and elsewhere in the civilized world are economic slaves of their own choosing while blissfully unaware of the consequences of the choices they have made. We have dumbed down our definition of freedom and narrowed it to mean just the ability to do what we want when we want to and accepted government entitlements and regulations with various strings attached sacrificing our freedoms for our comfort and illusions of safety. Many strings make a rope. Like a frog in a warming pot we are unaware of the gradual erosion until we are cooked. So whatever happens today will be unsatisfactory to half of Scotland. Deep division and polarization is not exclusive to the United States, it is a political cancer throughout the world that paralyzes progress towards the utopia we all want but few are willing to sacrifice for. I can only hope that my own country votes for independence and freedom in November.
Posted on: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 13:07:19 +0000
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