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R.I.P. The Scottish Enlightenment 1697-2024

by C.J. Strachan
20 March 2024 7:00 AM

The Scottish Enlightenment will die on April 1st 2024, exactly 327 years, eight months and 24 days after the incident that provoked it. For on April 1st the Hate Crime and Public Order Act (Scotland) 2021 comes into force, an Act which will criminalise speech and opinion deemed ‘hateful’ even if spoken in the privacy of your own home.

On January 8th 1697, Thomas Aikenhead, a 20 year-old student, was marched the two miles from the Old Tolbooth Prison on the High Street to a windswept sandy hillock just to the west of the causeway that crossed the marshes between Edinburgh and the port town of Leith, known as Gallow Lee. Surrounded by the pious prayers of the clergymen of the Kirk (the Church of Scotland), Thomas was hanged by the neck until he was dead.

What was Thomas – a murderer? A rapist? Was he one of Edinburgh’s notorious ‘Resurrection Men’? No. Young Thomas’s crime was that in an Edinburgh tavern on Christmas Eve 1696, he had a drink and went on a rant offending the Church and its stranglehold on Scottish culture. He was reported, arrested and tried: “The jury found Aikenhead guilty of cursing and railing against God, denying the incarnation and the Trinity and scoffing at the Scriptures.”

Thomas Aikenhead was the last person to be hanged for Blasphemy in Britain. As such he became a martyr and inspiration. The hanging of a young man for the crime of having a rant in a pub late at night became seen as an act of tyranny and oppression so heinous it was the spark that turned a barren minor nation on the north west fringe of Europe into the blazing furnace of ideas that was the Scottish Enlightenment. Ideas that would change the world forever.

The execution appalled Scottish Society at the time and was both the high tide of the theocratic tyranny of 17th Century Kirk and its tombstone. With Aikenhead’s execution died all moral authority of those who would control the speech, conscience and opinions of others.

Scottish intellectuals queued up to condemn the act and their voice of outrage coalesced into arguably the most important and internationally influential Enlightenment of all.

The great 19th Century historian Lord Macaulay famously wrote of the incident:

The preachers who were the poor boy’s murderers crowded round him at the gallows, and… insulted heaven with prayers more blasphemous than anything he had uttered.

The exact spot where Thomas died has long been built over. The Leith causeway became modern Leith Walk, the marshes were drained and the city expanded to the sea. General consensus has the spot somewhere in the vicinity of Shrub Place about halfway down the walk.

On the morning of his execution he wrote to his friends the following words:

It is a principle innate and co-natural to every man to have an insatiable inclination to the truth, and to seek for it as for hid treasure.

As a Scot who grew up in the 1970s in the drawing rooms of Edinburgh’s New Town, the architectural manifestation of the Scottish Enlightenment, I am truly appalled that the legacy of Aikenhead and the Scottish Enlightenment – a historical event far more relevant to the modern world than the War of Independence of the early 14th century that so enthrals the SNP and its activists, an event which put Scotland on the map of the world and one of which the nation can be rightly proud – has been trashed by the Scottish Parliament and the Yousaf Government. From April 1st 2024, saying the wrong thing at your own dinner table, let alone in a drunken pub rant like young Thomas did, will once again land you in significant trouble with the law, 327 years, eight months and 24 days after Thomas died.

Mr. Yousaf, his ministers and those who drafted and will enforce this law would do well to remember how history judged those who hanged Thomas Aikenhead on that bleak winter morning on the road to Leith. In doing so they should recall that this gross act of overreach and tyranny was the high tide of the power of the Kirk, power which was swept aside by the forces unleashed when the people said ‘enough’.

C.J. Strachan is the pseudonym of a concerned Scot.

Tags: AuthoritarianismBlasphemyCancel CultureCensorshipFree SpeechHate CrimeHate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) ActHate speechScotlandWoke Gobbledegook

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35 Comments
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Aleajactaest
Aleajactaest
3 years ago

Talking of Whitless….

Kinda gone quiet…….

In a non-extradition country…..?

Last edited 3 years ago by Aleajactaest
9
0
DodosArentDead
DodosArentDead
3 years ago

Walk (off) the plank(s)

FKhDIN1UUAEJ_kb.jpg
14
0
Susan
Susan
3 years ago

Gilbert and Sullivan it ain’t. The clever and the catchy are things of the past. Sigh.
Kudos for trying, though.

5
0
Arum
Arum
3 years ago
Reply to  Susan

“In matters psychological and messaging subliminal I am the very model of the Covid Marshal General” (exit Covid Marshal General stage left, followed by chorus of nurses and skateboarding policemen)

12
0
Boomer Bloke
Boomer Bloke
3 years ago
Reply to  Arum

Where’s The Lord High Executioner when you need one, after a Trial by Jury of course.

1
0
John Dee
John Dee
3 years ago
Reply to  Susan

You beat me to it, but that is a very high bar to set. Incomparably gifted duo.

1
0
Lockdown Sceptic
Lockdown Sceptic
3 years ago

Fauci Knew About Virus Lab Origin From Secret Teleconference, Pushed Alternate Narrative: Jeff Carlson and Hans Mahncke   
https://www.theepochtimes.com/fauci-knew-about-virus-lab-origin-from-secret-teleconference-pushed-alternate-narrative-jeff-carlson-and-hans-mahncke_4249218.html?utm_source=uschinanoe&utm_campaign=uschina-2022-02-02&utm_medium=email&est=B%2B7Krl8CwGvgArOLWzPzbZ82A%2FUJXdUK6mReoLH00Mu3x7FUTTO%2BQrX7VcOQSg7TGSIK
By Katabella Roberts

We need far more people at all our events here  
 if we want the tyranny to end for good 

Thursday 3rd February 5pm 
Silent lighted walk behind one simple sign
“No More Lockdown” 
Bring torches, candles and other lights  
Meet Corner of High Street & Pound Lane 
Marlow SL7 1NF

Stand in the Park Sundays 10am  make friends, ignore the madness & keep sane 
Wokingham Howard Palmer Gardens Cockpit Path car park Sturges Rd RG40 2HD  
Henley Mills Meadows (at the bandstand) Henley-on-Thames RG9 1DS

Telegram Group 
http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell

Last edited 3 years ago by Lockdown Sceptic
7
0
Lockdown Sceptic
Lockdown Sceptic
3 years ago

Was the COVID Lab Leak Covered Up to Avoid a War?

This latest evidence suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 did indeed originate from the Wuhan lab raises other interesting questions, such as why Fauci and Collins immediately suppressed the theory. Did they fear then-president Trump might use the evidence to start a war with China?
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2022/02/03/genocidal-ramifications-covid-conspiracy.aspx?ui=1fb065e0c4152b58bd4ed94cf29c7cbfad40307fb723460ddabacd55f3c58b0c&sd=20210518&cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art1HL&cid=20220203_HL2&mid=DM1098263&rid=1397237558
The Genocidal Ramifications of the Criminal COVID Conspiracy
Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola

We need far more people at all our events here  
 if we want the tyranny to end for good 

Thursday 3rd February 5pm 
Silent lighted walk behind one simple sign
“No More Lockdown” 
Bring torches, candles and other lights  
Meet Corner of High Street & Pound Lane 
Marlow SL7 1NF

Stand in the Park Sundays 10am  make friends, ignore the madness & keep sane 
Wokingham Howard Palmer Gardens Cockpit Path car park Sturges Rd RG40 2HD  
Henley Mills Meadows (at the bandstand) Henley-on-Thames RG9 1DS

Telegram Group 
http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell

5
0
cloud6
cloud6
3 years ago

Really !!!

Nicola Sturgeon takes a saw to classroom doors in ‘crackpot’ DIY effort to stop Covid in schools (telegraph.co.uk)

Further proof that the lunatics are running the asylum.

3
0
HelenaHancart
HelenaHancart
3 years ago
Reply to  cloud6

Why not just take the doors off. Be cheaper.

3
0
John Dee
John Dee
3 years ago
Reply to  HelenaHancart

With Westminster footing the bill, why would Krankie care?

2
0
Milo
Milo
3 years ago
Reply to  cloud6

This was on GB News last night – 2000 doors to be sawed – is the aim now to freeze kids to death in the classroom if they can’t jab them

Seriously????

Last time I was in Glasgow the biting wind would have shorn a body in two. This is nothing short of child cruelty. Where is Save the Children?

0
0
Teddy Edward
Teddy Edward
3 years ago

No remotely humourous non of it is.Lets call the Holohoax part Deux on Ice and have released in time for Xmas day just after Billy Smarts circus and the Lizards speech.

1
0
watersider
watersider
3 years ago
Reply to  Teddy Edward

Well Will you started it – so here is an alternative offering from north of Hadrian’s Wall.

BA BA

Resist defy do not comply
With the new world order,
They demand your soul complete control
With no regard for border;
Hung out to dry you must comply
With being marked and jabbed and muzzled,
If you object to this project
You leave your masters puzzled.

Rules for thee but not for me
Says Soros Gates and Schwab,
You’ll own nothing and be happy
With the green new dealing blob;
Build back better made you a debtor
As fiat pennies fall from heaven,
Watch the old succumb to cold
As he clock ticks past eleven.

Stay at home is a palindrome
For the bought and paid for media,
You will not find an enquiring mind
Without a case of anaphia;
The poor old sheep are all asleep
As the wolves disguised as shepherds,
Herd them into shearing sheds
Where the unjabbed are now lepers.

0
0

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