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Originally Posted by Deffeh
Im not sure 300 years ago's politics hold much relevance over Scotland's foreign policy in 2007, so thats a dead line of argument.
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It holds a relevance if you want scotland 'absolved' or 'condemned' by what happened in the last 300 years, if scotland's empire building had suceeded its history would be as tainted as that of britain. The scots, and the english formed an empire and did all those things of which you are not proud through britain. Since they all actively took part in what occured it seems fairly pointless to hold up an 'ideal' of those nations and say somehow the nations weren't to blame.
To put it another way, if scotland leaves the union and becomes 'fully integated' in the EU (whatever that means) and in doing so influences the EU to 'commit wrongs' it would be fairly nonsensical for scottish nationalists to then turn around and say it wasn't scotlands fault. Be independant if you wish, but the history of britain is scotlands history, with scotlands participation. I don't turn away from that history but rather accept it and learn from it, trying to absolve scotland by distancing it from what it helped do is shallow patriotism.
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Im also not getting into a ridiculous argument about semantics about the word 'small'. Obviously, as you well realise, im hinting about the lack of accountability in politics and democracy, and making a reasonable claim that smaller bureaucracy results in less corruption and better representation
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Defining what you mean by small is quite important mang, if open border policies of an integrated scotland in the EU allowed, say 30 million immigrants into scotland the 'relative distance' from your political system (however you're measuring that) would be increased.
You aren't implementing any new ideas for making politics more accountable.