As readers may know, Scotland is the land of my birth and early upbringing, and I have been back a number of times to the auld sod. The brogue is still somewhat natural to me, deep down, along with the memories of dreekit weather and salty sea air – regardless of where you are in Scotland, you’re no far from the shore. I celebrate Rabbie Burns’ each year (yes, as well as Saint Andrew – I’m still Catholic!) with poetry and song. O Flower of Scotland still evokes warm feelings in my soul, but Scotland the Brave is now Scotland mostly in the grave: On a demographic death spiral, with birth rates effectively near-zero; and what’s left of the Faith now flatlining, five centuries after the apostate Knox’s depredations. Drug use, pornography, sexual malfeasance, unemployment, apathy…It’s as depressing as a Presbyterian sermon circa 1599.
Another nail in the coffin for my native land is the soon-to-be-hated ‘hate-speech law’, which was just enacted on – of all days – April 1st (the same as our carbon tax here in Canada). The law, if one were to deem it so, is a vaguely-worded piece of legal porridge, by which someone can be charged by ‘Police Scotland’ for anything the constabulary deem ‘criminal’. As mentioned in a previous post, J.K. Rowling has already been reported any number of times by various anonymous aggrieved parties, and she has simply replied ‘come and get me’. So far, no charges have been laid – perhaps because she’s as rich as the king, even more famous, and the optics and blowback would be a wee bit too much, at least for now. But woe is you if you’re just one of the hoi polloi.
Speaking of ‘Police Scotland’, I gather that they are effectively a branch of the government, violating the rule of law, wherein each power should be “balanced by other powers and by other spheres of responsibility which keep it within proper bounds”, so that “the law is sovereign and not the arbitrary will of men”. This implies that the executive branch – the police – be independent of the legislative and the judicial branches. As we drift ever-more quickly towards a centralized totalitarianism, these distinctions get blurred, and eventually collapse, and some anonymous force rules us all.
‘Police Scotland’, as per this review of this draconian, petty law, aims to target especially “young, white, working-class males”. As the ‘Police’ state puts it:
We know that young men aged 18-30 are most likely to commit hate crime, particularly those from socially excluded communities who are heavily influenced by their peers. They may have deep-rooted feelings of being socially and economically disadvantaged, combined with ideas about white-male entitlement.
The poor lads – what’s left of actual Scotsmen – are already guilty, without being charged. Keep in mind that a ‘hate crime’ is whatever the Police deem it to be. Is not ‘crime’ is already against the law? But ‘Police Scotland’ don’t have much time for actual violations of the law, claiming they’re too busy to investigate thefts and the like ‘for which there are no witnesses’. But who’s witnessing to these ‘hate crimes’?
To paraphrase Josef Pieper, control of speech is control of behaviour is control of the people, who end up enslaved to an ideology, and one that is decidedly anti-Christian.
We Christians may soon be called to be witnesses – which is to say, martyrs – not to crime, or hate, but to the Truth.
Be of good cheer and stout heart, for He is with us to the end. And the auld Scotland? Can the descendants of those who died on Culloden’s field, rise, and be the nation again?