In the UK, it is basically ridiculous to ask what Conservatives think about Scottish Independence. For a long time, moves for devolution and ultimately independence have been cast almost solely in terms of assuring the electoral dominance of left-wing parties: the slogan boils down to - Vote for Independence And Scotland Will Never Be Ruled By Tories Again.
Nonetheless, ending the Union is of much broader historical import than the electoral politics of the moment; and its effects may well be lauded by some conservatives as promising. Hence it is fascinating to look at the different views on the subject of two of the UK's best philosophers: John Haldane and Roger Scruton.
The contrast between these two is striking, and not only in terms of philosophical allegiances. Scruton is English, Haldane is Scottish; Scruton is Anglican, Haldane is Catholic. And yet Scruton is in favor of Independence and Haldane, writing last week in First Things, against.
Scruton's argument is that only independence will allow Scotland (and England, for that matter) to mature into its own real nation, and at the same time, stymie the cultural and economic cannibalism of the UK, wherein the South in general and London in particular devours the young of the whole nation, creaming it for its most promising, returning the rest to live in poverty. He draws an analogy between the richer countries in the EU and the poorer Eastern European nations. The best of the young Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, and others, flock to London and other capitals, draining their homelands of the people perhaps best suited to contribute not just economically but culturally.
Haldane, by contrast, argues that the creation of an independent state now ma well produce the first radically secular European nation, committed from the very fabric of its founding ideology to hostility towards its Christian roots. England and most of the other members of the EU, though long secular in practice, have been restrained by their historic ties to Christianity. A newly-independent Scotland may well produce something (Haldane does not go this far) like the French Revolutionary State, a State committed in its founding to the eradication of Christianity, primarily on the grounds of its sexual morality.
Who's right? Whose view is longer?
That depends, of course, on what sort of future we are looking at. Scotland's independence could be a catalyst for a radical sanation of European Christianity, the first domino to fall in a chain reaction that ends not only with disestablishment, but the de facto criminalization of Christianity. Or else Scotland's independence could be a catalyst for a gradual undoing of the monolithic nation states of Western Europe, a reduction of European politics back to a human scale, which itself would offer a much stronger framework in which minorities (like practicing Christians) could thrive.
As federal power in the US becomes yet more of a threat to Christian practice, these questions are urgent for America as well, and I can't help but think that greater devolution and smaller political units could be more protective and hospitable to conservative and Christian interests.
As for Europe, I would take the long view. The nations of Europe have survived much, and will survive more still. The history of European Christianity is a wild record of zeniths and nadirs, and the current troubles too will pass. In this perspective, the independence of Scotland assumes an importance far beyond current political exigencies, but instead could represent one small step in undoing the early modern political settlement of European states.
But there is no question that it is a risk; it is a question, as Haldane and Scruton show, on which good men can disagree.
