Is Scotland Big Enough To Go it Alone?

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Ludwig von Mises Institute: Is Scotland Big Enough To Go it Alone?

Mises Daily: Friday, September 12, 2014 by Peter St. Onge

Back when Quebec was weighing secession from Canada, I was a lowly American undergrad living in Montreal. It was an exciting time, since in America we have our railroads torn up and population starved when we secede. Now that Scotland is going through the motions, I figured I’d stir the pot, economically.

 

The question in 1995 was whether Quebec should secede from the Canadian Confederation. Passions were high; one secessionist leader unwisely argued that a "Yes" win would lock voters into secession like "lobsters thrown into boiling water." Fueling the drum-beat were federalist of impending economic, political, and currency chaos. At the end, the vote was incredibly close: 49.4 percent voting for secession, 50.6 percent voting no.

 

As Scotland goes to the polls to decide on its own separation from the United Kingdom, the tone of the campaign is, again, high on passion and, again, secessionists are inching toward the magical 50 percent line. But don’t uncork the single malt quite yet: as of today (September 2, 2014), bookies in London still put the odds at 4-to-1 against the non-binding referendum. But it remains a real possibility. [Check the latest odds here.]

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'Braveheart' They Will Never Take Our Freedom

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBXBtORI7pE

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Interesting how this one move could cause the dominos to fall across Europe. Would O have the guts to go to war with Texas if it decided it was time to stop sending tax dollars out of state?

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Scottish Independence

Posted on

 

13 September 2014

by eehines

 

The view of a poor, dumb colonial.

 

Suppose the Scottish referendum next week goes in favor of independence. What would be next for Scotland?

 

Among the complexities of separation is the matter of pensions provided by employers. Most such pensions are not fully funded; although, most such pension providers have apparently viable plans for curing the shortfall, over some number of years. However, the EU (and we’ll assume Scotland succeeds in joining the EU for this bit) requires all pension funds with members in two or more countries to be fully paid up. Moreover, funds that are not have only two years to get fully paid up. There are quite a number of large-ish UK companies, employing thousands each, whose pension funds have members in both countries, and whose pension funds are on one of those “some number of years to fund” plans. http://aplebessite.com/2014/09/13/scottish-independence/

[Valin]

A Royal Mess

The ineptitude of Britain’s politicians have them scrambling to stop Scottish independence with only a week to go. But Britain’s inability to handle Scotland should raise flags in Brussels and Washington as well.

Walter Russell Mead

September 12, 2014

 

David Cameron is panicking. Devoting more attention to the Scottish referendum in the last, frantic week than he has in the last year, the Prime Minister, along with Deputy PM Nick Clegg and Labour leader Ed Miliband, finally seems to have grasped the stakes. As the understated Brits of yore might put it, to sit on your hands while your country breaks up looks almost like carelessness; that the British establishment ignored the danger until a shock poll this weekend showed a majority of Scots voters supporting secession is a stunner. Not since Neville Chamberlain handed half of Europe to Hitler on a silver platter has the British political class seemed so blind or out of touch.

 

Unfortunately, the Brits aren’t alone. In Brussels, across Europe, in London, in New York and in Washington DC, Western political elites are failing to grapple with what Henry Kissinger is right to call a fundamental crisis of the existing world order.

 

From the start, the Westminster establishment’s approach to the Scottish referendum indicated a basic lack of seriousness about the potential for a “Yes” vote. Neither Parliament nor Prime Minister Cameron contested the Scottish Nationalist demand to let only current residents of Scotland vote on the question. A significant percentage of people born in Scotland, who would qualify for Scottish passports if the country became independent, who love Scotland and identify themselves as proud Scots live and work in other parts of the UK. Yet they understand one of the core benefits of the Union; Scots have the full freedom to live and work all over the UK as fellow citizens. Their experience is part of what it means to be Scottish today, and it is wrong to deprive them of a fair say in the future of both the homeland and the Union that they love.

 

(Snip)

 

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that neither the cabinet nor the political class as a whole really thought this matter through. Such carelessness about something so important gives credibility to charges from growing anti-establishment parties—UKIP and the SNP alike—that the Westminster political class has turned into a modern day version of the Charles Dickens character Mrs. Jellyby. Her own kids were poorly dressed, emotionally neglected and poorly fed, but she was too busy circulating petitions about shocking conditions in far-away Borio-boola Gha to take any notice. Mrs. Jellyby’s children wanted to get out from under her roof at the first opportunity; one can understand if some Scots don’t want to be ruled by universal philanthropists who overthrow third world dictators without thinking it through (Qaddafi) and fly to far off conferences to fight global warming but can’t be bothered with an existential threat to their own country.

 

(Snip)

 

 

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Is Scotland A Symptom?

Posted on | September 15, 2014 | 3 Comments

by Smitty

 

Pravda on the Hudson notes:

 

From Catalonia to Kurdistan to Quebec, nationalist and separatist movements in Europe and beyond are watching the Scottish independence referendum closely — sometimes more so than Britons themselves, who seem to have only just woken up to the possibility that Scotland might vote next Thursday to bring to an end a 307-year union. A curious collection of left and right, rich and poor, marginal and mainstream, these movements are united in the hope that their shared ambition for more self-determination will get a lift from an independent Scotland.

 

I think they get near the bone with the note:

 

http://theothermccain.com/2014/09/15/is-scotland-a-symtom/

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Scotland’s Independence And Thatcher’s Revenge

SEPTEMBER 16, 2014 By Leslie Loftis

A few days ago a friend sent me a photo of some pro-union bumper stickers spotted on the cars of Chelsea. “Proud to be Scottish — Delighted to be united,” the text read. Would that simultaneously chipper and bland slogan inspire me to vote “no” on Scottish independence? No, but not only because of the insipid PR effort.

 

The whole referendum on Scotland’s independence inspires a bit of cognitive dissonance for this former Texpatriate in London. I feel I’m supposed to support the idea of a unified United Kingdom as an exit by Scotland promises much economic upheaval, but I’m more American Conservative than American Republican, the latter of which tends to prioritize economics and is more aligned with UK Tories who are practically begging Scotland to stay. I intuitively understand the Scottish desire to be ruled by the Scots, and that was before I saw their much better PR campaign.

http://youtu.be/LJL0z5O67_M

http://thefederalist.com/2014/09/16/scotlands-independence-and-thatchers-revenge/

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x

Scotland Carries the Global Flag of Secession

PATRICK J. BUCHANAN

Independence movements are gaining traction across the globe. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/buchanan/scotland-carries-the-global-flag-of-secession/

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Interesting how this one move could cause the dominos to fall across Europe. Would O have the guts to go to war with Texas if it decided it was time to stop sending tax dollars out of state?

What Would Braveheart Do?

 

By Pat Buchanan - September 16, 2014

No matter how the vote turns out on Thursday in Scotland, either for independence or continued union with Britain, the disintegration of the Old Continent appears almost inevitable.

 

Already the British government has conceded that, even if the Scots vote for union, Edinburgh will receive greater powers to rule itself.

 

Cheering for the breakup of the U.K. are Catalans and Basques, Bretons and Corsicans, Tyroleans, Venetians, Flemish, all dreaming of nations of their own carved out of Spain, France, Italy and Belgium.

 

Europe's secessionists have waxed ever stronger since the last decade of the 20th century when the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia splintered into 22 nations and Czechoslovakia broke in two.

 

Abkhazians and Ossetians then broke from Georgia as Transnistria fought free of Moldova. Chechnya went to war twice to escape from Russia. Secessionists now battle Russia in Ingushetsia and Dagestan.

 

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/09/16/what_would_braveheart_do_123986.html

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Scottish independence: women voters could save the Union Exclusive: Poll of 1,150 Scots shows the No campaign's lead has narrowed from six points to four with one day of campaigning left before voting begins in Scottish independence referendum

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scottish-independence/11100248/Scottish-independence-women-voters-could-save-the-Union.html

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Is the UK a “Nation by Consent”?

 

Mises Daily: Thursday, September 18, 2014 by Murray N. Rothbard

From the Editors:

 

Today Scotland votes on a referendum concerning political independence from the United Kingdom.

Nations By Consent: Decomposing the Nation-Sate

by Murray N. Rothbard

Libertarians tend to focus on two important units of analysis: the individual and the state. And yet, one of the most dramatic and significant events of our time has been the re-emergence — with a bang — in the last five years of a third and much-neglected aspect of the real world, the “nation.” When the “nation” has been thought of at all, it usually comes attached to the state, as in the common word, “the nation-state,” but this concept takes a particular development of recent centuries and elaborates it into a universal maxim. In the last five years, however, we have seen, as a corollary of the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe, a vivid and startlingly swift decomposition of the centralized State or alleged nation-State into its constituent nationalities. The genuine nation, or nationality, has made a dramatic reappearance on the world stage.

I. The Re-Emergence of the Nation

The “nation,” of course, is not the same thing as the state, a difference that earlier libertarians and classical liberals such as Ludwig von Mises and Albert Jay Nock understood full well. Contemporary libertarians often assume, mistakenly, that individuals are bound to each other only by the nexus of market exchange. They forget that everyone is necessarily born into a family, a language, and a culture. Every person is born into one or several overlapping communities, usually including an ethnic group, with specific values, cultures, religious beliefs, and traditions. He is generally born into a “country.” He is always born into a specific historical context of time and place, meaning neighborhood and land area.

http://mises.org/daily/6886/Is-the-UK-a-Nation-by-Consent

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Jeff Deist Talks Scottish Secession and the EU with Andy Duncan

Mises Daily: Wednesday, September 03, 2014 by Andy Duncan and Jeff Deist

Jeff Deist and Andy Duncan discuss the rise of UKIP in England, and whether it represents a real populist anti-state uprising or just rightist politics. Andy skewers the strutting political class in London, and the charade of voting Labour or Conservative based on minute policy differences.

 

They also discuss the upcoming Scottish independence vote, and whether the land that gave us Robert the Bruce and David Hume has succumbed completely to socialism. Could an independent Scotland become the Singapore of the North, or just another Eurozone basket case?

 

http://mises.org/daily/6867/Jeff-Deist-Talks-Scottish-Secession-and-the-EU-with-Andy-Duncan

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The Scottish Question and Catholic Answer Social democracy is the only thing that prevents the breakup of Britain.

By DAVID LINDSAY • September 17, 2014

If anyone had told us, only a month ago, that the Scottish independence referendum on September 18 was going to turn out as close as it looks like it might, nobody would have believed it. The saga is somewhere between an over-the-top satire and a very bad, but in its own mind entirely serious, drama.

 

The referendum is too close to call. Normal parliamentary procedures have been suspended to allow all three party leaders at Westminster—Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats, and Labour Party leader Ed Milliband—to head north to campaign. There is talk of canceling next May’s General Election if there is a Yes vote for secession, with no elections to Parliament until everything is signed, sealed, and delivered.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-scottish-question-and-catholic-answer/

[Geee]

They have made 16 YOs eligible to vote in this election. I saw them interviewing some on the street this morning. They were so knowledgeable. Made me think of the interviews we have seen the last few years of the students on our college campuses. We should be embarrassed as a country.

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