Scotland's Referendum: The Unicorn's Heart Yearns For Unity

That the United Kingdom's government has permitted and, indeed, legitimized a referendum on Scottish independence constitutes an abject surrender to cheap, crass nationalism.  Which is not to say, of course, that lending such legitimacy to the referendum was the wrong move on the part of Westminster, for influence is a child born as much to favor as to triumph.  And yet one can't help but note that retaining influence is a mere consolation prize when general and virtuous obedience once preserved such prodigious power in Westminster to be mistaken for a glimmer of sovereignty not thought to even be subject to such trivialities as provincial masquerades votes.

The disunion of the unicorn and the lion appears to be coming to pass.  One of the very last appendages of what was once the core of the British Empire is being torn apart by the discord of disobedience.

It's true, of course, that the British Empire in certain ways spread such absurdities as democracy, natural rights, and government by consent to the world.  But the British Empire was an Empire.  It was at least by form a purportedly unitary, unified, and centralized power that ruled by royal decree.  For much of its life the British Empire, for all its philosophical flaws, ruled by presumed sovereignty.

Westminster has walked a long and tortuous path from commanding a most glorious Empire to conducting public relations for a middling, regional power averting European sideshow status by the coattails of American hegemony.  Indeed, the discord born of time's passing has long since stripped the British Empire of her many overseas territories to which she had beneficently transmitted so many of those habits, forms, and prejudices she had cultivated for centuries and, through her stern hand afforded by her Royal providence, elevated her hosts culturally, technologically, and economically with such alacrity and to such prodigious heights that one can even today map with impressive accuracy where around the globe her imperial finger touched by simply charting where the lights of industrial civilization shine into the bleak, empty darkness of outer space.

That the tide of history has now at this late moment swept ashore to the very island of Great Britain is made plain by this true fact noted by all the talking heads: regardless of which way Scotland votes, the makeup of power in the United Kingdom is changed by this referendum.  Well, "not the actual referendum" the astute reader points out - and he is right (and still tender to this most conceited prophet of revelation) since it's the groundswell of public sentiment, this writer notes with melancholy, that modifies the constitutions of powers of nations.

And though this writer is well aware that this Scottish referendum, like all mortal rebellions against His providence, is in a certain sense inevitable, foreseen, and ultimately unavoidable in one form or another, he nonetheless is rather wistful and perhaps a bit grim thinking about it.

For every tortured fallacy of the modern age, though, there is a suitably retrograde retort - in which the tender reader, no matter how despondent, may take heart by way of a kind of aesthetic vengeance.

Demonstrating Progressives' backwards understanding of everything, it has generally been said that Scots voting their head will vote "nay" and Scots voting their heart will vote "aye".

This most arrogant savant implores the Scots to listen to their hearts, really ponder deeply and deliberate upon the inherent beauty of the unified essence by which all that is is - and to therefore vote no.

G-d save the Queen.