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  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
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Saturday, October 26, 2002
23:24 - Ach-bar

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Just watching tonight's "History of Britain" episode on the History channel over burgers... it was the one that centered around Bonny Prince Charlie, the Jacobites, and the end of the Scottish warrior tradition at the hands of the British army in the mid-18th century.

It was the usual battles-and-dates-and-all-that-rot for most of the sequence. But the final few minutes were extremely eye-opening. After the Prince was exiled, the British government went about destroying Scottish nationalist culture. They forbade Scots from wearing tartans and clan colors, and from creating nationalistic art (such as portraits of the Prince-- an example of which, created after the ban, was painted in such a way that it was unrecognizable as art unless you viewed it reflected in a candlestick-- ingenious). Scottish warriors were given the opportunity to enlist in the British army and fight for the Empire.

And how did the Scots react to this heavy-handed and stifling treatment? Why, by changing the world, that's how. The Scottish warriors underwent a sudden change-- and transformed themselves into great academics and revolutionary thinkers. We got David Hume's philosophy. We got William Adam's architecture, which helped usher in the dignified austerity of classical forms. And we got Adam Smith's invisible hand-- a distinctly non-spiritual idea that uplifted personal accomplishment and innovation above the "romantic self-destruction" that Scotland had been indulging until their tartans were stripped from them. It's to this revolution that we owe everything we have in the modern world, from a government in which church is separated from state to an economic system where genius, like that of the post-warrior-culture Scotland, is rewarded.

It wasn't much of a stretch, but I couldn't help but consider these lessons as an example of what might become of the Muslim world in the aftermath of a firm and heavy takedown of Islamic fundamentalist nationalism. If Muslims long for the age when they led the world in innovation and genius, maybe they've got an opportunity coming up.

I know this is just another iteration of the "It worked in Japan" theory as propounded by Den Beste, among others; but it seemed just too clear an example to skip, and one that I don't think I've seen cited in among the invocation of Japan and Germany as examples of post-destruction-by-America success stories.

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© Brian Tiemann