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Something Is Rotten in Scotland

Scotland: Western Civilization’s Poster Child for Politically Correct Rot
© Josh First
August 30, 2011

Western Civilization is crumbling from within, rotting from decades of increasingly demanding sentimentalism that pushes out laws based on equal justice before the law, and replaces them with laws based on redistribution of wealth and the rewarding of purported victims, whose sole claim to victim status is that some people feel badly for them. Of all possible places, the remote, scenic, and otherwise pretty much unimportant Scotland is the ugly poster child for this rot.

Political correctness has long been antagonistic towards America’s essential institutions, core beliefs, and justice system. It has made increasing headway here, but its roots run deep in Europe, where it has removed former greatness and replaced it with enforced apathy. Recall that England was nearly destroyed by Nazi Germany because English pacifism ran so deep. Pacifism is a core element of political correctness. Pained by World War I, “The War to End All Wars,” the English were blinded by a messianic belief that all wars were wrong, and that evil must be appeased, instead of confronted. By the 1930s, England had emasculated its Imperial self beyond recognition right when Hitler’s un-emasculated and newly imperialistic Germans nearly stormed its gates.

Decades later, pacifist England rejected the lesson of World War II, and Her Majesty’s subjects in its furthest occupied territories, including Scotland, casually absorbed Britain’s forced gentility. As one of those people opposed to the forced notion of a “United Kingdom,” as the English blithely claim to be, it’s always been difficult for me to admit that England truly influenced its once-great and long independent neighbors, including Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. Based on their best qualities, they should be above it.

All three nations have long histories of unique cultures and languages, inspired and fierce warriors, and proud identities. All three nations represent the high-water mark and stone wall rejection of Roman conquest, with London ironically the site of Rome’s regional capital, a kind of Quisling-English monument. England’s long, cruel tyranny over the three nations, still alive with the English occupation of Northern Ireland, eroded to bare nubbins those great characteristics of yore. One must now admit that enforced imperial unity has caused these three nations to learn the very worst that England has to offer. One nation stands above the rest in its willingness to prove it: Scotland. Sadly, “Make the world England” worked in Scotland.

True it is that peat-flavored whisky, bright Tartan cloth, Nessie, wool sweaters, and ubiquitous sheep upon scenic vales distinguish Scotland. And Scotland still provides mirth in Irish pubs enthralled by players of the Uilleann pipes, who gave the bagpipes to the Scots, who never got the joke. But fast forward six hundred and seventy five years after the Battle of Bannockburn, and Scotland became the location of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, where Pan Am flight 103 was remotely blown up in flight by Libyan Mohamed al-Megrahi, who was subsequently convicted and imprisoned in Scotland. Lockerbie is the place in Scotland where most of the bombed plane’s parts and 270 people fell to earth. It should be hallowed ground, an inspiring symbol.

Although 270 innocents were killed, in 2009 Scotland released Megrahi from a Scottish prison cell on “humanitarian grounds.” All levels of the Scots government participated in the decision to release Megrahi, who was subsequently received and feted as a hero in Libya. Megrahi remains quite alive today, and Scottish politicians remain defiant about their decision.

Despite evidence that Megrahi’s release was a decision based on falsified medical advice and appears calculated to gain favor with Libya and access for British Petroleum to Libya’s oil and gas fields, Scottish officials refuse to admit that it was un-just to release a mass-murderer from prison because he did not feel well. They were, after all, appealing to the highest of politically correct causes, “humanitarianism.”

Humanitarianism is the sentimental basis for much of the politically correct thinking now permeating western nations. It is responsible for the false notions of fairness that result in injustices like Megrahi’s release, the calls to dismantle America’s borders, the blocking and then banning of the death penalty, and the release of recidivist violent criminals from U.S. jails. Under humanitarianism, the rule of law is being up-ended.

On August 20th, 2011, Susan Cohen, mother of 20-year-old Lockerbie victim Theo, was quoted in The Scotsman News as saying “The Scottish legal system is an absolute joke. In the US, we would not be able to have one man come out with the foolish line of ‘compassionate release’ and then let him go. I want there to be more trials over this – I hope there will be – but I wouldn’t trust them to be held in Scotland after what has happened. This is going to go down in history as a terrible black mark against Scotland. You are given your new-found freedom, and these are the kinds of decisions that are made.”

CNN reported that Frank Duggan, president of the Victims of Pan Am 103 support group, wrote an email to CNN on August 29th, 2011, that “blasted the report that al Megrahi was near death, saying he didn’t believe it or that the convicted felon merited any reprieve.” ‘His family is trying to make a sympathetic character out of an unrepentant, murderous monster,’ Duggan wrote.

Said English politician Iain Gray, “The sight of Megrahi last month acting as a cheerleader for a dictator indicted for war crimes [Moamar Gadafi] turned the stomach.” And yet, the Scots remain defiant. They believe that their decision making is unassailable, because they were making nice. Under it all simmers the other politically correct notion that all Muslims are automatically victims in western nations, and despite being a murderer, Megrahi is a member of that untouchable victim group. Free he must be.

Scotland’s official behavior is important because, as a former bastion of the Protestant ethic that gave us western civilization and the foundation of American democracy, what happens in Scotland indicates what might be happening elsewhere in the broader body politic of western civilization. If rotten politics are happening there, then rotten politics might be happening here. Official injustices carried out in Scotland can form the foundation for un-just decisions in America. Former U.S. senator Arlen Specter quoted Scottish law when he acquitted impeached president Bill Clinton during his trial in the Senate, so it’s not that far away.

Megrahi’s release is a painful example of how western civilization is under assault, from deep within. Greatness once infused Scotland, a greatness that created the two-handed Claymore sword, once swung by tough men defending their liberty and culture. That greatness has been frittered away, lost in its misty isles and replaced by misty thinking. If Scotland’s decision to release Megrahi is not repudiated, then the politically correct assault advances on western culture and institutions, and justice retreats.