There Are Many Considerations For Scottish Independence... And There Is Something Truly Exhilarating

[WillyT]

About An Entire Country Voting On It's Very Existence, And Future.

Hell... I've read about voter turnout from 88% to 94%...

Wish Democrats here could do the same.

[Spider Jerusalem]

1. Turnout was significantly lower at the last general election (between 50-60%).

And at the last election for the Scottish parliament, in 2011, it was 41%.

[WillyT]

2. And That's Part Of My Point...

When the game seems rigged... why bother ?

[SickOfTheOnePct]

3. So, if Scotland breaks off...

...Prince Philip will the Duke of where? Since Edinburgh would no longer be part of the UK.

[WillyT]

5. Oh... I'm Sure They'd Give Him A Nice Slice Of England.

[Spider Jerusalem]

8. The Queen will still be queen of Scotland. The vote isn't to become a republic.

[Ken Burch]

28. He'd still have held the title.

Those titles don't go away, even when the duchy in question no longer exists. Or rven when nobody ever lived their, such as in the lands of well-known ex-Canadian ex-convict Conrad Black, the deposed Lord Black of Crossharbour. Crossharbour, for those who don't know, is a suburban railway station near London.

Besides, it's not as if Our Phil(who was still considered a prince of Greece even after the Greeks overthrew their monarch for collaborating with the Third Reich)actually had title to the city.

[Scootaloo]

4. The Scottish people have been given something worth going to vote over

Wish Democrats here could say the same.

[WillyT]

6. BINGO !!!

[joshcryer]

10. That's certainly the meme the right wing wants.

As the only way they win is suppressing or depressing the vote.

Colorado shows what state funded GOTV efforts do when, you know, activists get off their assess.

[JI7]

13. one tried to compare it to occupy, Tories could claim Scotland chose them now

and their case would actually fit more than the ones trying to make comparisons to the US. but it would still be wrong.

[maced666]

7. turning out to vote no it appears.

The people have spoken.

[pscot]

9. By 60 to 40 in early returns

[Ken Burch]

11. That is true. hope the win for the "No"doesn't demoralize people too much.

Looks like fear beat hope. Nothing good comes when that happens.

[WillyT]

12. Fear Beats Hope Here Too...

[Ken Burch]

14. Yeah...we all know that. n/t.

[maced666]

15. well, not the way others see it.

Maybe your revolution vision is just that. Yours. No need to accuse those voting no of being fearful. They wanted to vote no obviously.

[Ken Burch]

18. This isn't about "my revolution vision". Nothing here ever has been.

And neither of us can say for sure what THEY wanted.

[MineralMan]

16. That's making a pretty broad assumption.

Democratic elections are what they are. People decide how they vote. Their reasons vary, but they make a decision. Often, when asked to vote for major changes, they decide against voting for that. It's not necessarily fear that motivates that vote. But it does represent a decision. Whether that decision is right or wrong is not the question. In a democratic election, the votes count, not the emotions.

[Ken Burch]

21. All very smug, all very simple.

And people also often vote against what they really want because they've been convinced, through endless propaganda, that the retribution they will face for defying the will of the powerful is going to be too much to bear.

Obviously elections are elections and people make a decision, but neither of those things, in and of itself, means anything.

[MineralMan]

24. What elections mean is that people are elected and

Measures are passed. They mean a great deal. That is why campaign activism is so important. Elections set the course of the future.

GOTV 2014 and Beyond!

[Ken Burch]

27. Obviously I agree with GOTV and all the rest.

I was talking about how dismissive that statement was regarding what just occurred in Scotland.

Totally different subject that the question of the fall elections here.

[MineralMan]

29. Dismissive? Not at all. There was an election in Scotland,

and over 84% of eligible voters showed up to vote. That's remarkable. They decided to remain part of the UK by a smallish majority. What's dismissive is the assumption that the vote was made by stupid, uninformed people. I wouldn't think so. This has been broadly discussed in Scotland and people made up their minds about it and voted.

You call the No votes something based on fear. I'm not at all certain that's true. The bottom line is that many people in Scotland do not wish to be separated from the UK, and they voted for that option.

What's different here is that far less than half of people who are eligible to vote will vote in the November election. That means that the outcomes of that election will not actually represent a majority of people. Here, elections never actually represent the majority. They only represent those who show up and vote. That's why GOTV is so crucial in every election in the US.

In Scotland, they had no trouble getting people to turn out. It was an important election and the people voted. Did they vote correctly? That's not within my ability to judge. They voted and their decision was to stay in the UK. Not my election. Not my issue. It's theirs, and they made their own decision. Nothing dismissive about that at all.

[Ken Burch]

30. I didn't say stupid or uninformed-I said scared. Difference there.

The turnout was amazing.

[MineralMan]

31. I know what you said. I said that I'm not all that sure

that people voted No out of fear. Concern, perhaps, about the viability of an independent Scotland. That's a valid thing to consider in such a major change. Others, perhaps, simply like the association between England and Scotland. Not everyone hates England in Scotland, of course.

But, frankly, I wouldn't try to characterize the No voters. I'm not in Scotland. I didn't even know about the election until recently. I assume, though, that Scots did know about it for a long time. Whatever their reasons, a majority there voted against independence from the UK. There was a simple election measure. The advocates of independence lost.

You may think it was fear, but I don't have your insights into the Scottish voting public, perhaps. I don't follow politics in the UK very much at all. There are much more interesting political issues elsewhere in the world. Elections are funny things. They often don't go the way some people want them to go. Here in the US, we have one house of Congress that has a Republican majority. Despite that, many Democratic voters don't even bother to go to the polls. Go figure.

[randome]

17. Or maybe the will of the Scottish people won out?

[hr][font color="blue"][center]If you don't give yourself the same benefit of a doubt you'd give anyone else, you're cheating someone.[/center][/font][hr]

[Donald Ian Rankin]

19. I'm afraid I think your rhetoric is very silly.

"Let's jump off a cliff, and hope we develop wings before we hit the ground".

What happened was that the majority of the Scottish people decided - probably, but not certainly, correctly, in my view - that they would be better off if Scotland remained part of the UK than if it didn't.

[Ken Burch]

20. So they're stuck in the UK and now stuck with Thatcherism as well.

And stuck with the Bomb and the slow death of the NHS and globalization and neoliberalism and the lot.

How is it better that they no longer have any chance of creating much of an alternative?

Labour is still pretty much Blairite, so voting for them doesn't really change anything, and the LibDems have now become simply the moderate wing of the Tories.

Yes, Donald, there were practical questions, but this was a chance to strike a blow against the ugliness.

I hope it sort of works out for them, but it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the Scots will be, once again, "bought and sold for English gold".

[WillyT]

26. Oh... I'm A Very Silly Person... Granted...

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

22. I really didn't have an opinion one way or another

....I think the real great story was that turnout, and the what seems to be the relatively peaceful acceptance of the results.

[Ken Burch]

23. Scotland doesn't really a tradition of the "physical force party"(as the Irish do)

Probably the worst that might have happened was a few fistfights.

[rug]

25. There were cheers in Charleston in 1860.

In some quarters.