ScotlandThe Nineteenth Century—Darwin’s Century—was The Age of Evolution. The Twenty-First Century may turn out to be The Age of Devolution. Take the Scots—you can have them! Once the model of British industriousness, their aging population now enjoys among Europe’s highest dependency rates, keeping their standard of living afloat with subsidies from the hated South which they blackmail with secession threats. The land of Robert the Bruce, of Sir Walter Scott, of Sean Connery—and, by overseas extension—of Mel Gibson (of “Braveheart” fame), their Independence Movement is led by a compact, glib, smirking little man, without Hitler mustache, who looks like a Scot version of our Joe McCarthy. No longer called “The Jews of Europe,” Scots—both Highlanders and Lowlanders—share an enthusiasm for the low road of Israel-bashing. If you can’t better the Jews’ proverbial prosperity, enviously bash their heads in! Chasing endless North Sea Oil, they may within a generation or two have mortgaged their posterity’s future on a mirage that’s the equivalent of salmon fishing in Yemen. The old Soviet Union’s breakup was long overdue. The timing of the British Homeland’s splintering would be unnecessary and inauspicious. Before voting for it, the Scots should look themselves in the mirror. After voting for it, they may be too ashamed to look their children and grandchildren in the face. Will they indeed make themselves into the paradigmatic future-and-folly of the twenty-first century, with Texans following somewhere down the road with a better excuses and prospects?