Or How Statism Leads to Obsession with Meaningless Local Control
Some places disappoint when you actually get to them . . . 221B Baker Street was Sherlock Holmes fictional address and all the Victorian charm you believe you will find there is equally mythic. There is no Baker Street if by that you mean the place where the game is afoot and Mrs. Hudson waits to serve you tea. Doyle’s illusionary Baker Street is better than the real place.
Scotland is not one of those illusions of the heart, being a staggeringly beautiful place that has been accurately described by some of the world’s greatest writers. You know it when you see it, but because it is real, it is always surprising. It reminds the visitor that God’s reality combined with the authentic development of any group of humans created in His image is better than any human words. Scotland is more beautiful than her literature . . . the chapel of Saint Margaret of Scotland, the Isle of Skye which in the summer is the most stunning place I have ever been, or Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh rising up green and grey on a rainy day cannot be reduced to a description even if one has the gifts of Robert Burns.
Perhaps the Scots are naturally modest, but they do not exaggerate one bit when they describe their land. What Robert Burns wrote is real, better than what even his massive talents could describe, and you can find no place more authentic to a man’s work than Sir Walter Scott’s actual home. Anyone can walk the long grassy yard down to the River Tweed from Scott’s house and know it, because it is the place he has always known from his heart’s image of Scotland.
The Kings of Scotland well understand one vital truth: a good government connects humans to their past, their native land, and the best epic calling of that folk. You can feel the weight of Scot pride and glory when you go to Stirling.
We build buildings that say something about who we are and to create a connection to our best dreams. Historic dreams of Saint Andrew and Wallace create brave hearts indeed and not just on film, but in stone.
A visit to Edinburgh confirms all of this. The city has aged well and if it was ever the Auld Reekie of the stories from the stink of pollution . . . the best of the city has long ago won out. It has a stunning castle, interesting streets, and is alive. Work is done in Edinburgh and the British experiment which fused the English, Welsh, Irish, and Scots into one nation did wonders for Auld Reekie. The best of the past was preserved and the English majority to the South blended in some notable contributions to making the city great.
However, the long shadow of secularism sits over Scotland. The passion of John Knox and the sanctity of Saint Mungo are not politically correct in a Scotland where more and more decisions are not made by Scots or by the government of the Queen in a United Kingdom sanctified by hundreds of years of Scot contributions and blood to a great Britain, but an unelected, unresponsive European Union.
When the European Union can destroy the historic fishing fleets of Scotland and allow land locked Southern European states fishing rights it denies an island nation, then something must be done to distract a proud people from the tyranny of the spread sheet tyrants. There is nothing authentic about the EU . . . there is no European people . . . no European poetry, music, or language. There is an English language and a Gaelic tongue. There is Robert Burns and James of Scotland. There is the legend of the King over the Water and Bonnie Prince Charlie his son, but there is no passion, blood, or glory in the generic structures of a European Union which would replace the Union Jack and the cross of Saint Andrew with a flag designed to offend nobody and which can defend nothing.
What one does have is a growing class of people without any attachment to customs, culture, religion, or history of their own who are attempting to create out of nothing more than their own pop culture wisdom a place where they can rule. These men without homelands recognize that they are unloved and essentially unwanted. They can only distract folk from their grabs for power by pretending to devolve it.
And so one finds in the last fifty years a growing exploitation of legitimate Scot pride in their past and in their nationhood to rend the Union and break up the United Kingdom. Some small power is devolved to local people groups and they are given the right to elect local bureaucrats who can move and second and regulate within narrow confines. By breaking up the nation states and returning the British to a kind of tribalism the European Unionists and their allies can destroy the chief obstacle to their growing sterilization of Europe.
So the Scots have been given a “parliament.” It has little power, but is allowed to talk a great deal. Whenever possible it is encouraged to do the regulating and stifling of non-secular, politically incorrect Scotland so that the shadow of Brussels cannot be blamed. Set up a committee and the type of man who likes to sit on committees will show up . . . and Scotland is no exception.
Nothing demonstrates the futile, ugly nature of this game more than the new parliament building itself.
Read the description of the building as drawn from the governments own web site:
Scotland’s new Parliament sits at the foot of Edinburgh’s famous Royal Mile in front of the spectacular Holyrood Park and Salisbury Crags. Constructed from a mixture of steel, oak, and granite, the complex building has been hailed as one of the most innovative designs in Britain today.
Drawing inspiration from the surrounding landscape, the flower paintings by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the upturned boats on the seashore, Enric Miralles, one of the world’s premier architects, developed a design that he said was a building “growing out of the land”.
The building is certainly complex, growing out of the land as a tumor grows out of a sick man’s chest, disfiguring it.
When you walk down the rule mile it sits between a Castle and a palace. . . looking like a refugee from Southern California.
It is so complex that no tour guide in my experience has a clue what it means, how it relates to the surroundings, or where to take a group to see it in all of its complex glory. The building is complex the way every mess is complex . . . and the use of the term is always a sure tip off that nobody understands a thing that they are too intimidated to simply despise. It is also innovative in the sense that the moment it was done it looked dated.
“Yes,” you can hear a future Scot sigh, “in the nineteenth century Scottish innovation was ship building and engineering that was the wonder of the world. In the late twentieth century, our innovation was reduced to melding flower paintings with upturned boats in complex buildings that looked not unlike American housing projects since the EU would not let us build or use real boats anymore.”
Secularism combined with Statism produces sterile, inauthentic tyranny. It exploits regional differences to disunify peoples so that the nationless can govern . . . giving the form of liberty without the substance. Certain Basques are falling for it in Spain just as now there are rumblings of “local government” in York!
Of course none of this means less government control over lives with more local control . . . just more government! Patriots and sensible folk who favor local control of their own lives fall for this at times. It is, after all, historically delicious and glorious that the Stone of Destiny is back in Scotland, but it would be better if political power were returned to a United Kingdom capable (as it has shown for hundreds of years) of protecting tiny Scotland (just five millions in this great world) from European tyrants.
Americans should beware the secular left beginning in our own nation to exploit regional differences in a manner that sounds like “federalism” but is actually disguising a hatred of our national government and a desire to turn over power to a global entity. Leftists in the United States more and more decry patriotism and describe it in our schools only by evil abuses (which are real) of this virtue, but one can be sure given what anyone can see for themselves in Scotland, that the fall of the nation state here will not lead to liberty, but a global state. They will disguise the movement of all power to this central government (a European Union writ large) with parliaments for Native Americans, rights for groups of all sorts to meet and make motions, more and more levels of government all of which owe their creation to the new entity and governing class.
This has not happened yet, but the European warning is before us. Americans should beware regionalism, a group or identity politics that would divide our nation with the false promise of freedom.