Yesterday Scotland voted on the question of whether it would remain in the United Kingdom or secede to become an independent nation. Today the results showed that the "No" vote -- no on separating -- carried by a margin of approximately 55% No to 45% yes. Historic, yes this vote was. But I am writing because of the mystery surrounding how personally I took it.
It was personal in a way that I cannot fully explain. I was pleased with the outcome. I wished for Scotland to remain in the union. But why?
I have Scottish heritage, but I also have English and Irish and French. I am an American citizen, and so I had no say in the matter regardless. I do not have living relatives who live in Scotland or England or Northern Ireland and therefore who would be directly affected. So why was I so anxious leading up to the vote? And why was I so pleased when I woke this morning early and read before 5 am that Scotland had voted to remain in the union?
I have reflected on my emotional investment for some time, at least in the weeks leading up to yesterday's vote. The key question was why.
I have long appreciated the Scottish contribution to much of enduring influence. There is, in no certain order, the valuable legacy of Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, and Adam Smith to moral philosophy. There is Smith's broader contribution to global economics. There is Thomas Reid's common sense realism, which affected so much of certain strands of western epistemology and even Christianity (particularly among Presbyterianism on both sides of the Atlantic). There is golf. There are tartans. There is the brogue. There is Sean Connery. There are the picturesque Highlands, poets like Robert Burns, haggis, and contemporary philosophers like Alasdair MacIntyre. And there is, of course, single malt Scotch, smokey, peaty pleasure in a wee dram -- or more than just a wee dram.
But this appreciation, maybe even nostalgia, could equally tend toward favoring Scottish independence. Why then did I favor union?
It is hard to say. I agree with Alan Greenspan that a vote for independence would have "surprisingly negative economic consequences." The unknown -- unknown challenges, unknown blowback -- is a greater risk than the certainty of sovereignty. Symbolically, at a time when Europe is struggling to preserve its own political/military experiment which is the European Union (and let us not forget that the EU is ultimately an economic union designed to prevent military conflict among countries where there has been so much of it through the centuries), it would have been antithetical to the rhetoric coming out of Brussels to preserve union if a member country, Great Britain, experienced a secession. (Yes, Britain is not part of the monetary union, but it is part of the political union.)
So maybe it is loving the idea of Scotland and its distinctiveness but also wanting the best for Scotland and believing that independence would have brought hardship beyond the naive aspirations of certain older generations (mostly in Glasgow) and the excitable youth. Maybe there is some desire to see Britain Great, and realizing that England and Scotland would likely be less if they were not connected beyond sharing a land mass. David Cameron had a fair point, namely, that parties in power will come and go, but a vote to separate would be irreversible at this point. And hasty actions of great consequence, especially when they involve such far-reaching effects as reconstructing (or doing it from scratch) a national security apparatus, choosing and implementing a currency, and looking beyond the potential immediate boon that North Sea oil assets would provide. What happens generations from now?
Maybe it is realizing the something great would be lost if there were Scottish independence that made me want to preserve that greatness by preserving the union.
It remains difficult to say. And maybe it will always be inexplicable. In any event, tonight I raise my wee dram to 300 more years of united greatness for Britain.
