You may be surprised to learn that the
Soviet Union had a constitution and that North Korea still does. Now,
while I think that many people in Scotland are socialists in denial I
am not suggesting that an independent Scotland will turn into a
hard-core totalitarian nightmare, so let's take another example of a
constitution. How about in the US?
Ah the much argued about US
constitution. We know it's been broken several times but who was
first? It depends on who you ask, but a number of people will tell
you it was George Washington himself although the debate rages to
this day. Which brings us to our first problem with constitutions –
they are open to interpretation. No matter what you write or how you
word it people will interpret parts of any constitution differently.
An example right now is the fight in the US over gun control. These
disputes rarely get solved to satisfaction and it ends up being a
judge (employed by the state) who interprets the thing in the end.
Since we're talking about law we find ourselves at the next problem
with written constitutions.
In 1870 the philosopher Lysander
Spooner's classic work “No Treason – The Constitution of No
Authority” was published. A trained lawyer himself Spooner showed
how the US constitution applies to virtually no-one, chiefly because
for it to be a legal contract among the people then all the people
would actually have to sign it and this would be true for a Scottish
constitution also. Because if we have not all signed it then you
cannot claim it is a document of the Scottish people it is a document
written and signed by a minority which they then impose over the
majority of the people and by agreeing with that then you agree that
a small minority of people have the right to rule over the majority.
You see Scotland is just some imaginary lines drawn on a map, the
Scottish nation is the people themselves. As Spooner himself says
“two men have no more natural right to exercise any kind of
authority over one, than one has to exercise the same authority over
two. A man's natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and
any infringement of them is equally a crime, whether committed by one
man, or by millions; whether committed by one man, calling himself a
robber, (or by any other name indicating his true character,) or by
millions, calling themselves a government.”
A
hilarious aspect of “Scotland’s
Future: from the Referendum to Independence and a Written
Constitution” which is the basic draft of a Scottish constitution
is their mention of the US founding fathers. The SNP would do well to
study those men and realise that they did not bow to the British
monarchy when the going got tough as the SNP have. I knew many SNP
members in my younger days and they were viscously anti-monarchy but
now it's a different story altogether. You can measure people by how
they stick to their moral and philosophical principles (don't be
surprised if after independence the Scottish government bow down to
their NATO masters and break their promise to get the nukes out of
Scotland).
This is really the
sticking point for me. I respect people who reason from first
principles and stick to them. I have seen people on the left and the
right who are in favour of an independent Scotland throw their
principles aside to get what they want in the short term and this
never works, it only ends in disastrous compromise and weak
middle-of-the-road thinking. We can turn to that old socialist
Aneurin Bevan here (the one thing we agree on) when he said “We
know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They
get run down.”
Sure, people will
say “Oh, you have to do things this way to get people on board.”
Compromising principles is never the answer to anything and I am
proudly against the state and I will not put that aside for
short-term political gain. You can write all the constitutions you
want, but I challenge you to prove that your constitution applies to
me.
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