Alex Salmond, Scotland’s first minister,writes in the Washington Post that his country “once was independent and aspires to that status again.” I regret that a major part of his argument with the Post’s editorial board is whether Scotland would remain involved in global military intervention. You’d think the opportunity to extricate your country from quagmires like Iraq would be a great benefit to the Scots. But Salmond denies that an independent Scotland would mind its own business and live in peace.
Still, independence for any country ought to appeal to Americans, especially to those of us with Scottish roots. Some scholars argue that the Act of Union in 1707 made the Scots part of a larger and more advanced nation and opened the way to the Scottish Enlightenment of David Hume, Adam Smith, and other scholars. And perhaps those modern ideas and the connection with England made possible the achievements of the inventor James Watt, the architect Robert Adam, the road builder John MacAdam, the bridge builder Thomas Telford and later Scots such as Alexander Graham Bell and Andrew Carnegie.
Read more at http://www.cato.org/blog/scottish-independence
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