Free Scotland!

Via Red

Scotland votes on independence from the United Kingdom tomorrow. I’ll be rooting very hard for a yes vote.

The primary reason I strongly support Scottish independence is because it will serve as a beautiful illustration of how civilized unions respond when a geographic territory votes to secede. During all the debate leading up to the vote, no one has suggested that England should or will invade Scotland to keep them in the United Kingdom. A military invasion is, in fact, unthinkable.

Hmmm… How are all the neo”cons,” Straussians, Jaffaites, American nationalists, Declarationists (there is much overlap among these) and assorted other Lincoln idolaters going to explain this away? The clear demonstration that territorial secession can happen without bloodshed will serve as a stark reminder to modern day Unionists that our own bloody clash didn’t have to be that way.

Some may think this a petty and spiteful reason to support Scottish independence, but as a long time veteran of the intra-conservative internet Lincoln wars, I relish the opportunity to give the other side a great big “Uh! In ya face!”

But beyond my possible spitefulness, there are good reasons for conservatives to support ethnic independence movements, Scotland and beyond. Smaller ethnically based states represent a more authentic basis for shared governance vs. the modern nation state which is supposedly organized around some proposition or largely imagined bond, such as the largely imagined bond that says Sunnis, Shiites, Chaldeans, Kurds, etc. all belong together in some figment on a map called Iraq.

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