September 2014 – Warden's Keep

The Scottish Referendum: As Scotland Goes, So Goes the US?

Tomorrow Scotland will hold a referendum to decide if they will remain part of the United Kingdom or if they will sue for independence and become their own sovereign nation once more. I really have no comment one way or the other on this ^[1] — my ancestors were forced out of Scotland back in the late 1700s after the Battle of Culloden so my descent from them is fairly remote. I wish them and all the people of the island nothing but the best and I hope that, regardless of tomorrow’s decision, the US, UK, and Scotland will always be friends and allies.

That said, talk of Scotland possibly going independent after over three hundred years of being united with England and Wales has set some people to thinking that it might spur a secessionist movement in the United States and to speculate as to whether or not we’d fight to preserve the union as we did back in the Civil War. That’s the point I want to address here because it’s important and because I have no real desire to live through another Civil War so I’d like to do whatever I can to nip this in the bud before it blossoms to bear poisonous fruit.

The UK and the US have been allies since the end of the War of 1812. We’ve been friends since the beginning of the twentieth century. But we are very different countries for all that we speak the same language, have some cultural traits in common, and even have a shared history. The UK is, and has been since the fall of Rome, a kingdom. It arose and evolved from a tribal nation-state where allegiance was owed to a chieftain and then to an overlord (dux bellorum) to having nobility (a remnant of the tribe/clan system) who rule with a monarch above them (the overlord). Though the modern UK is very egalitarian, there are still structures in its societies that are reliant on the old caste system. One of those things is that the monarch has no equal. The monarch does not share sovereignty. The monarch is the monarch of England and of Wales and of North Ireland and of Scotland. All four countries are her subjects and are governed, chiefly, by her Parliament. Local affairs are governed by local authority but all authority derives from the monarch.

The United States, on the other hand, has no caste system. We do have socio-economic classes but you can fall or rise without the government having any say in the matter. And, being rich isn’t a prerequisite to becoming a Senator (though it does help a lot, especially since we changed the Senate from its original mission). You don’t have to be born to a certain family to hold power. You don’t have to attend certain schools to govern. No matter what the Ivy League elitists and the chattering classes who think that they should rule believe — in the United States, your birth has very little say over your destiny — legally and politically speaking.

The States, in turn, are not subject to the federal government. The States are fifty different laboratories of democracy and republicanism who can do whatever they want (that isn’t forbidden them by the Constitution) without having to ask Congress, the President, or anyone other than the citizens of that state for permission. Some states have no income tax. Some states have no sales tax. Some states allow people to drive at sixteen. Some states allow first cousins to marry. Some states allow gay marriage. Some states make it easy to carry a concealed weapon. Ideally, under the Constitution, each state can do whatever it wants so long as it agrees to recognize the rights of the other states to do as they please and so long as it does not assume powers for itself that belong properly to the federal government ^[2]. Our Constitution clearly outlines the process by which a territory can become a state. We have procedures in place to expand our governance to include new regions, peoples, and territories if they choose to become part of us. New states have the same status as every other state. They are equal to all of the other states. None is subject to another.

In the UK, on the other hand, Scotland, England, Wales, and North Ireland are not equals in government. Scotland can’t say if a treaty should be signed or not. Wales can’t demand that Parliament leave it alone and let it do things in a Welsh manner. North Ireland can’t set its own tax rates. Everything in the UK goes through the Parliament in London. It has the final say over all policies across the UK. The four constituent countries aren’t laboratories of democracy where each can tinker with things, do their own thing, and not be beholden to the others. No, Wales, North Ireland, and Scotland are conquered nations who have been brought into the fold of the United Kingdom.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, these days. After all, the English are hardly going around oppressing the Scots, the Welsh, or the Irish. The Welsh, Irish, and Scots do get to vote for representation in Parliament and, through that, they do have some say in national policy. Some might argue that the Scots are, if anything, over-represented in Parliament but, again, that’s not my concern here.

The US isn’t going to face another secession crisis if Scotland goes free because the US isn’t the UK. Sure, sure, plenty of people have run their mouths over the past twenty years talking about “we should secede if X happens or if Q is elected.” That’s bullshit (sorry, Mom). I’m sure that the chattering classes and the elites would love to break away from the benighted and ignorant backwoods flyover states but those people would very quickly realize that they need those redneck gun-toters to, you know, actually do shit for them that they don’t want to dirty their soft, well-manicured hands doing. And, the super conservative Bible thumpers might want to break away from the immoral and godless heathens in the big cities but they would very quickly learn that they need those people’s creativity to keep their own culture going.

And, even if a state seceded, the rest of the United States would fight to end the rebellion. Guys, we settled this already. It cost us over half a million good men on both sides. Once you’re in, you’re in. That’s it. There is no leaving the union because you don’t like the direction things are going or because someone you hate is the President or because a court case wasn’t decided the way you think it should have been. Congress, the President, the Supreme Court — none of them have the authority to ignore a rebellion and none of them have the authority to permit a state to leave the union. Any of them who tried would probably find themselves hanging from the nearest handy tree.

The US won’t break up strictly because we’re used to being disunited. We’re used to having very different cultures, people, languages, and religions living close to each other. In the US, if you’re not happy with the people around you, you can pack up and move somewhere with people better suited to you. And, moving won’t mean giving up anything. You’ll have the same rights and powers over the national government in any state you move to.

We won’t break up because none of us were forced, kicking and screaming, into a union. No, not even the rebellious Southern states who were Reconstructed back in weren’t forced to join in the first place. Aside from the Civil War, the people of one state have never fought the people of another state and forced them into subjugation. Sure, we’ll grouse about things not being the way we want them to be — especially now that the federal government seems to think that the fifty states should be subject to it instead of the other way around — but we’re not going to break apart. We need each other too much and, besides…

…you’d have to be insane to want to fight our Armed Forces on your front lawn.

— G.K.

^[1]I find it unspeakably rude to voice an opinion on the private issues of a foreign nation. It’s a bit like getting in the middle of a friend’s divorce — it just shouldn’t be done. The most I will say is that I hope that, regardless of the outcome, the Scots people, the English people, the Welsh people, and the Irish people will always be friends to the people of the United States and that our countries will always be allies. Any non-Brit who says more than that is being, in my opinion, rude and uncouth and should be ignored or called out for it even if that person is the President of the United States. The business of the Scottish referendum for independence is none of our concern and we shouldn’t attempt to influence it one way or another unless the Scots suddenly start enslaving non-Scots or launching nukes at us or an ally or something like that.

^[2]Yes, this is the idealized bit. I realize this isn’t how it plays out in reality but that’s because we Americans have let the federal government assume too much power since the days of FDR.

There have been so many good posts about GamerGate and NotYourShield that have covered just about every aspect of the scandal from the social ranking (geeks and nerds who survive to adulthood rarely give two craps what the in-crowd thinks or says about them) to pointing out how the rabid so-called “social justice warriors” have ruined so much of the entertainment industry already and more. But there are two aspects that I feel have been overlooked: the first — journalism is not some noble, ethical profession filled with intelligent and educated people who want to report the truth to the world. The second is that gaming is the last form of art to stand up and shine a mirror in everyone’s face instead of just the current cultural boogie-man’s.

The first point could, frankly, take ages to cover. Suffice it to say: L. Rhodes is wrong because gaming journalists are no different than other journalists who have covered up scandals (such as Walter Duranty covering up and excusing Stalin’s massacres), sold their souls to keep access (such as Eason Jason and CNN covering up Saddam Hussein’s horrors or journalists not reporting on Hamas using hospitals to launch attacks), proven themselves to be completely, willfully, callously, and unfixably ignorant about reality (crack open any article on science and tell me it’s written by someone who has an honest-to-God clue of how to read statistics), and acted unethically, calling in favors of all kinds (such as David Gregory getting his good buddy the DC prosecutor not to haul him off to prison for breaking the same law that has caused veterans and honest travelers to spend time in the lock-up for not knowing DC’s rather insane laws on guns, magazines, clips, and bullets). If someone is a journalist, that’s not something to be proud of. It means that they weren’t skillful, honorable, or intelligent enough to get a better job — such as being the pianist in a whore house. To be a journalist is to be without honor, ethics, and intelligence.

As a matter of fact, the only thing lower than a journalist that isn’t a politician would be a social justice warrior.

Social justice warriors are modern day Thomas Bowdlers. They are the kind of people who will deface the Sistine Chapel because it offends them. They would rip apart the Pieta because it’s offensive. They have a lot in common with the Taliban and that ilk in that they will destroy something priceless and precious, something that can never be rebuilt, repaired, or replaced, with the same mindless self-righteous zealotry that saw the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan. These are the same kind of people who have destroyed (in order) academia, the arts, the news media, the broadcast industry, the publishing and literary industry, the school system, the movie and television studios, and the music industry.^[1] Not satisfied with that, they’re going after the last hold-outs to their Puritanical tyranny — indie writers, comic books, and video games.

Social justice warriors cannot stand the thought that someone out there, somewhere, might not be in sync with their groupthink. Some of us out here might honestly believe in marriage equality, a truly colorblind society, legal equality of the sexes (even when it might not work in women’s favor), and still have absolutely no problem with a world where Playboy, World of Warcraft, the Mona Lisa, Shakespeare, Larry Correia, Sarah Hoyt, Robert Heinlein, and A Canticle for Leibowitz exist. Some of us even enjoy almost all of those things while still contentedly working alongside a gay FTM black man, having a lesbian sister, a Southern Baptist mother and a Roman Catholic father, and going to an Eastern Orthodox church every Sunday.

I’m not delusional enough to think that my books are high art. They aren’t. They are pretty good reads with interesting characters and a fun plot. They’re not going to be assigned as homework in two hundred years. But, they do sell fairly well considering that I am my own marketing department. I’ve heard plenty of good comments and constructive criticism. I doubt that many of our current games will be remembered in a century and I can guarantee that almost none of our movies or television shows will be remembered because there’s little that is actually memorable about them aside from a handful of shows that ignore social justice warriors and focus on telling a good yarn (Doctor Who, The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones).

The long and short of it is that we can’t let these Bowlderites destroy the last vestige of art, storytelling, and original thinking in our culture. We probably won’t let that happen at any rate because we’re geeks and nerds. We’re the people who built the Internet so that it treats censorship as damage and routes around it. We’re the people who invented TOR. We’re the guys and gals who made Amazon popular. We’re the ones who have dragged civilization and culture kicking and screaming into the Digital Age. And, by and large, we’re not sexist. We’re not bigoted. We couldn’t care less what people do in their bedrooms (so long as it’s consensual), whether or not they go to church, or anything like that. Gamers, geeks, and nerds are probably the most open, inclusive, welcoming, and tolerant groups in existence. We’re not going to let the Ministry of Truth wannabes tell us what kind of books we can or cannot read anymore than we let the Roman Catholic church tell us the same. We’re not going to let these groupthink weenies tell us what kind of games we can or cannot play anymore than we let Congress tell us that. We’re not going to let a bunch of pretentious fakes tell us anything — especially when any one of us (on average) knows a hell of a lot more about history, law, tech, art, literature, grammar, and debating than any of those dopes.

So, let’s quit letting them push us around. They’ve cowed the popular crowds and the in-groups by threatening to call them names and spread nasty rumors about them if they don’t cave in to peer pressure and wear the right jeans and shirts, use the right words, make fun of the right people, and go to the right parties. Fuck that, mates. We’re the ones who got made fun of, who don’t get to go to those parties and we’re all past the point of caring about that kind of petty crap. We’re going to keep on keeping on and if the SJWs don’t like it…well, we’ll treat them the way we treat Jack Thompson whenever he starts running his mouth. And, if they don’t get the picture after learning that we know that they’re a big joke…we’re the ones who built the Internet, guys. We can always reprogram the damned thing to keep them locked away from us the same way we keep our toddlers from playing with our gadgets.

Who knows? Maybe locking them off in a kiddie corral where they can’t hurt themselves or anyone else would be for the best. Maybe once we show that these morons have absolutely no clue what they’re talking about, the rest of the culture will start to wonder just why they were so willing to throw themselves and their priceless pieces of art off a bridge just because a bunch of SJWs told them to.

— G.K.

^[1]Exactly how they’ve managed to destroy all of these things will be the subject of future entries. This one is already clocking in at almost 1.5k words and if I get into this, we could be here until Christmas.