Scotland is a nation where the two largest parties are socialists, the Labour Party, and left-wing Progressives a la Elizabeth Warren, the Scottish National Party.
And while the word "National," as in Nationalism, might have you worried, the first person elected to the Scottish Parliament who wasn't white and Christian was a man named Bashir Ahmad. He died in 2009, and is deeply missed by both the Asian Scots community, and the independence movement.
It's very sad that he isn't alive today to witness the referendum.
He was a member of the Scottish National Party. He took his oath of office in both English, and Urdu. There's also Humza Yousuf, who was elected when he was 26.
The SNP is not just a non-racist party. They are actively anti-racist and have acted to guarantee within their party and within their government a place for the ethnic minorities of Scotland.
There is Racism in Scotland that is active and alive. The most common racial discrimination in Scotland is Anti-Irish racism. People are often asked what school they went to, what neighborhood they grew up in, in the context of questions about employment. If your school had "Saint" in its name, or if you grew up in a Catholic neighborhood, you're less likely to get a job.
This is a huge problem in Glasgow especially, and is the root cause of much of that city's violence.
Yes, things are getting better there, but they are not better yet, and it will be a long time before they are fixed.
It should be noted that the racist, Orange-Order types in Scotland who despise Irish Catholics oppose the SNP, and support the Union.
The SNP has actually gotten in trouble with cultural groups concerned about the Gaidhlig language because it's not really their concern. They support Gaidhlig schools, and do care about the language, but they have engaged in a kind of Gaidhlig Hippy punching. Government officials told groups concerned about the promotion of the Gaidhlig language that more people in modern Scotland speak Farsi than Gaidhlig.
As someone who is myself concerned about the Gaidhlig language, let me say that I have never met someone who speaks Gaidhlig who has had any concerns about how Farsi is spoken by so many Scots. The concern is that Gaidhlig is spoken by so few.
But questions of Language, though I believe they are important, are minor compared with the other problems that Scotland faces.
It should be noted that the Labour party too, has members of all ethnic groups, religions and cultures.
Both of these two major parties are anti-racist.
And there are other parties. The Socialist Labour Party, the Green Party, and others who are equally anti-racist and who are part of the Scottish Independence campaign. The leader of the Green party, Patrick Harvie, is openly bisexual. He and his Green Yes campaign are one of the reasons for the flip in the polls. The other reasons are Women for Independence, the Labour Yes campaign where Labour Party members are campaigning for independence, and finally the Radical Independence Campaign, who are trying to activate those most in poverty, and get them to the polls on election day.
This is not about ethnicity and culture, and Braveheart.
And that's difficult for Americans to understand, because when we think of nationalism, we think of "The South shall Rise Again." We are not exposed, in this country to left wing, social democratic, civic nationalism.
It doesn't exist here, with minor exceptions, like the Cascadian Independence Movement.
And it should.
Because Civic Nationalism declares that schools should not be educating wheels and cogs to fit into an economic system, they should be educating curious, well rounded, intelligent citizens, fit to help lead a democratic nation.
Civic Nationalism declares that the business of a country is not business, the business of a country is guaranteeing social justice, civil discourse, and yes, a strong economy. It supports business, but not to the extent that business harms the very people whose lives economic activity are intended to enrich.
Civic Nationalism declares that the nation is sovereign, and through the nation, citizens are sovereign over corporations. It does not declare the government to be a service provider to corporations who are legally people.
And it is this civic nationalism that is seen as a method to end the extreme problems faced by Scotland.
It should be noted that Scotland is the only nation in western Europe that still has a system of serfdom. It's called "Tenant Farming." 60% of Scotland's land is owned by a handful of people: the Lairds. The Clan Chiefs.
They are paid rent by farmers. If the farmers speak out against the raising of rents, they are thrown off of the land by the Laird, they lose their home, their farm, their livelihood, and are essentially exiled to the poverty wracked slums of the central belt. The urban slums of central Scotland contain the poorest parts of western Europe.
Every attempt made to right these, and many other wrongs, have been stopped in their tracks by London.
That handful of wealthy people have a lot of friends down in London, and have an army of lawyers, who have been able to keep an oppressive and brutal system alive, one that is not fit to exist in the modern world.
And that, my friends, is why the media is losing its mind.
Scotland is one of the only countries in the world with the bizarre combination of unused, fertile farmland, and extreme poverty.
And that land, by the way, shouldn't even legally be in the hands of the lairds in the first place.
Under the old clan system, the land was held in common by the people. That land should belong to the very people who are fighting for their basic survival in the slums.
That is why JK Rowling is donating money to the Better Together campaign: she owns an estate in Scotland, and is afraid of losing acreage of unused leisure-land to economic activity and farming designed to pull a million people out of poverty.
There's a Scottish saying: No matter how you vote, you get the government.
For the first time in 300 years, the Scottish people have the right to vote on something that can't be overridden by Westminster.
They have the right to vote, and have their votes actually matter.
As Deborah Orr wrote, the people of Scotland have been intoxicated by democracy.
And they'll vote yes. Because now that they know what it feels like to have a choice that actually matters, they'll never want to go back to a system where their choices don't matter at all.