Robert Burns Speaks to America

The humanitarian Scottish values that made America great in the first place

This Friday, January 25, is the 266th birthday of Robert Burns, Scotland’s national bard. His work embodies the Scottish humanitarian values of caring for and respecting each other and nature, and of regarding us all as created equal.

These values gave birth to the United States after the American Revolution. They came from Scottish and other European philosophy and long historical experience of tyrants, revolutions, and human rights.

Today I am relaunching my website, Robert Burns Speaks to America. It was first put together in January 2017 and has been revived and updated for January 2025. Trump and his proxies tout making America “great again.” This website, featuring 12 great musicians, shares some of the Scottish values that helped make America great in the first place. I hope you explore and enjoy.

The era of Robert Burns, in the late 1700s, was the height of the Scottish Enlightenment. It was the time when everyone who wanted the best education got it in Scotland. A time when the geniuses and innovators of the time would gather in an Edinburgh pub over claret wine, or in clubs or already ancient universities, and read their latest papers to each other — a living testament to the power of what we now call the liberal arts, where an open mind draws inspiration from interdisciplinary discoveries.

In fact, it was from 18th-century Scotland that top American universities, starting with Princeton, imported college presidents who instituted liberal arts as a key element of top-quality education. It wasn’t until the late 19th century that these universities added a German element to educational requirements: the college major, based on the German idea of using education to train people for specific roles in society.

For a fascinating look at key Scots of that period and how much they’ve done for our world, I recommend Arthur Herman’s well-written book, How the Scots Invented the Modern World. Here’s a short list of some of those late 18th-century Scots active at the same time as Robert Burns and the founding of the United States — philosopher David Hume (who followed John Locke and heavily influenced philosophy, science and theology), Adam Smith (father of capitalism), the geologist James Sutton (proved that geological processes took millions of years, not 6000!), James Watt (invented the steam engine, with its huge impact on society and industry), James Maxwell (developed the theory of electromagnetism), Joseph Black (discovered carbon dioxide, magnesium, specific and latent heat), Thomas Telford (changed civil engineering with his innovative bridge and road designs), William Cullen (taught medicine and developed chemical benefits for doctors, farmers, naturalists, and industry), Adam Ferguson (father of modern sociology), James Burnett/Monboddo (developed theories on linguistics and the concept that societies evolve, a precursor to Darwin — Burns wrote a poem on the death of Monboddo’s daughter Elizabeth), Thomas Reid (proponent of influential common-sense Scottish realism), Dugald Stewart (first professor of political economy), and Robert Adam (creator of an important style of architecture).

The humanism, egalitarianism, rationalism, reality-based explorations of fact, and interdisciplinary curiosity that drove the innovation of the Scottish Enlightenment have benefitted us all. Add to these qualities a bit of passion, keen observation, and an impeccable ear for good traditional melodies, and you have the work of Robert Burns, still Scotland’s national poet and songwriter after all these years. For more about his life and work, you might like to read a few of my earlier posts about him, for example our visit to his home at Ellisland, or about the 12 CD collection, the Complete Songs of Robert Burns, or one of the chapters about Burns’s way of working, from my book MusicScapes of Scotland.

Today, our country inaugurates Donald Trump, who in many ways represents the opposite of Scottish values, even though his immigrant mother grew up in Scotland, on the Isle of Lewis. Karine Polwart made a song about this, which you can hear (and see lyrics for) in Robert Burns Speaks to America. She wrote the song as if from the point of view of the 3-billion-year-old rocks of the Isle of Lewis, who have seen power come and go. It’s named after the clan motto of Trump’s mother: “I Burn But I Am Not Consumed.” This was performed at the opening of Celtic Connections Festival 2017, the day before Trump’s first inauguration.

You can also enjoy works by a dozen other great musicians, with comments by many of them specifically for the site. Watch a video of Sheena Wellington singing Robert Burns’s “A Man’s A Man” at the reopening of the Scottish Parliament, powerfully expressing the notion that we are all created equal and will some day live in peace together. Or enjoy music by Alasdair Fraser, Tony Cuffe, Tony McManus, Alan Reid, Cilla Fisher, Rod Paterson, Mairi Campbell and David Francis, Hamish Moore, Bruce MacGregor, and Eric Bogle.

My favorite line from the movie Pirates of the Caribbean is when Barbarossa, the pirate captain, says to Elizabeth, “You better start believing in ghost stories, miss, because you’re in one!” And the moonlight suddenly reveals the skeletons of the pirate crew as they fight with the British.

Today, that line might be, “You better start reading Bible stories, folks, because we’re in one.” Our people seem to have elected a modern-day Pharaoh, who, along with his followers, see him as a god. Somewhere out there may be our Moses.