The Scottish Enlightenment will die on April 1st 2024, precisely 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 power, an Act which can criminalise speech and opinion deemed ‘hateful’ even when spoken within the privateness of your individual residence.
On January eighth 1697, Thomas Aikenhead, a 20 year-old pupil, was marched the 2 miles from the Outdated Tolbooth Jail on the Excessive Road to a windswept sandy hillock simply to the west of the causeway that crossed the marshes between Edinburgh and the port city of Leith, often called Gallow Lee. Surrounded by the pious prayers of the clergymen of the Kirk (the Church of Scotland), Thomas was hanged by the neck till he was useless.
What was Thomas – a assassin? A rapist? Was he certainly one of Edinburgh’s infamous ‘Resurrection Males’? No. Younger 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 tradition. He was reported, arrested and tried: “The jury discovered Aikenhead responsible of cursing and railing in opposition to God, denying the incarnation and the Trinity and scoffing on the Scriptures.”
Thomas Aikenhead was the final particular person to be hanged for Blasphemy in Britain. As such he grew to become a martyr and inspiration. The hanging of a younger man for the crime of getting a rant in a pub late at night time grew to become 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 concepts that was the Scottish Enlightenment. Concepts that will change the world perpetually.
… I’m really appalled that the legacy of Aikenhead and the Scottish Enlightenment…has been trashed by the Scottish Parliament and the Yousaf Authorities. From April 1st 2024, saying the unsuitable factor at your individual dinner desk, not to mention in a drunken pub rant like younger Thomas did, will as soon as once more land you in important hassle with the legislation, 327 years, eight months and 24 days after Thomas died.
Mr. Yousaf, his ministers and people who drafted and can implement this legislation would do properly to recollect how historical past judged those that hanged Thomas Aikenhead on that bleak winter morning on the street to Leith. In doing so they need to recall that this gross act of overreach and tyranny was the excessive tide of the facility of the Kirk, energy which was swept apart by the forces unleashed when the folks stated ‘sufficient’.
An vital piece from “C.J. Strachan”. Learn and flow into the entire thing.
