Friday, June 10, 2011

Word-Games Obfuscating Britain Losing a Region: Too Many Bagpipes

Following the Scottish National Party’s victory in the Scottish region's elections in the United Kingdom) the question of whether the E.U. state of Britain would or should be partitioned received a lot of press. Plenty of word-games were in the mix. “Scottish National Party” alone is problematic, as Scotland has not been recognized as a country, nation or a nation-state since the beginning of the eighteenth century because Scotland is in the UK and is thus not an independent political unit. If a specific cultural identity alone were sufficient to connote national, then the word would be applicable at virtually any scale of territory from a town on up. Even Britain, being a semi-sovereign state in the E.U., is only a country (and nation) if Virginia and California are so as well, as they are also semi-sovereign states in a union and thus not independent political units. 


The full essay is at "Word Games."