The 'No' vote in Scotland was a yes for common sense

So, dear reader, was the Scottish vote rejecting total independence from the United Kingdom a disaster or a relief?  I harbor no doubts whatsoever that it's the latter.
What you need to know, before any other argument you care to put forth, is that a "yes" vote would have given power to a mega-socialist, Putin-admiring, anti-American bully. His name is Alex Salmond, who was the First Minister for Scotland—until, to give him a gentleman's credit, he resigned following the No campaign's victory.
Scotland has its own cabinet and its own government. It won devolved powers via referendum in 1997, along with Wales and Northern Ireland, courtesy of Tony Blair's Labour government. Current Prime Minister David Cameron has said that, in the wake of the independence referendum, more powers, including tax decisions, will be handed to Scotland.
The United Kingdom isn't broken. It works fine as it is. Think of the separate countries of Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England as separate states. But they are all part of the larger whole known as Great Britain. In this day and age, does it make sense to break up a major Western power? That's what the success of a "yes" vote would have done.
I am not an apologist for past British Empire wrongs, especially with regard to Northern Ireland. But Northern Ireland is part of Great Britain now; there can be no going back. You cannot force British families living there, whose ancestry in that area goes back centuries, to be paid in euros when they're happy with the pound. You cannot force them into the Irish health care system when they're satisfied with the NHS.
Salmond's far-Left style does appeal to Celtic peoples for who-knows-what reasons. Scotland is no different than Wales—or the IRA—in embracing radical politics. (They make great conservatives when they emigrate to America, though, especially the Irish.) Perhaps if they stopped painting themselves as victims of an imperialist state, the revolutionary politics they embrace would melt away.
An independent Scotland, led by Alex Salmond, would have been antagonistic toward America. Salmond's government let Pan Am Flight 103 bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi be free to return to Libya in August 2009, citing his terminal illness as an excuse. He lived for three years after being set free.
Salmond praises Putin as a great leader and refuses to apologize for this admiration for the Russian president. The Putin government was not only disappointed but furious that the No campaign succeeded. Salmond would have removed all nuclear missiles in Scotland, an end-game possibility that had the Russians salivating.  Now that Scotland has voted to remain part of the U.K., the missiles will remain.
I'm fairly certain that if the Yes campaign had won, Alex Salmond would have soon patched up differences with Barack Obama, who encouraged a No vote. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, and Obama judged this one correctly. How long, though, would it have taken until Salmond and the Dear Leader coöperated and collaborated on ways to completely screw the American people and their way of life? Believe me, these two would have seen eye-to-eye in no time.
An independent Scotland would have re-joined the EU as a separate nation and, once accepted, signed the Schengen agreement which allows for open borders between all European nations that are part of it. The UK is not a signatory to this agreement.  Therefore, England would have had to build a fence all along its border with Scotland to prevent all the swarthy ruffians that Salmond would have welcomed with open arms from leaking into its territory. As if the UK doesn't currently have enough problems with immigration.
Futhermore, they let 16- and 17-year-olds vote. That was an obvious move to try to fluff up a victory in favor of independence. Letting under-18s vote, uninformed, misinformed and ill-informed as they usually are, was a cynical way of propping up the Yes campaign. They knew only too well that people that young could be manipulated into embracing independence because they would not think about the deeper issues.
For my American readers, don't be fooled into thinking that just because America broke away from Great Britain that any attempt by another entity to do so is reason to blindly embrace it. It is not. You need to research the people behind such an attempt, their political persuasion, the cynicism with which they are operating their campaign and whether or not it will benefit the U.S. if their secession is successful.  It also helps if you know whether or not the independence campaign is being spearheaded by a tin-pot dictator à la Alex Salmond.
I suggest that the British Government wait 20 or 30 years and then allow another independence referendum in Scotland. This time, let the Scottish government give its people a solid plan for independence instead of operating it like Obamacare, in the style of "just vote for it now, and we'll figure out the details later".  See if the young 'uns who voted "yes" now still feel the same then.  And hold the campaign like most normal countries do and allow only 18s-and-over to vote. At least then we can say the campaign was truly fair and the people of Scotland knew what they were voting for.
The nightdragon congratulates the people of Scotland for seeing through the manipulations and desperate shenanigans of the Yes campaign and voting by a majority of 55.3 percent against it.