The Bottom Line

There was a lot of discussion between myself and Jeremy, the new editor-in-chief of The Bottom Line, about the inevitable demise of the Left Side/Right Side columns. I know there will be some people out there who will think our decision was a bad one, made most likely so that the paper could take a more liberal stance. This is to be expected; The Bottom Line has taken lots of flak for being a "liberal" newspaper, though this critique of a college newspaper is not a surprising one. The plain truth of the matter is that the Left Side/Right Side columns were largely a result of our efforts to combat the misbegotten reputation that we are a "liberal" publication. As such, both articles, however they may have balanced things, were farces.

I am happy to set aside the Left Side. Ironically, it had become a sort of prison for me, a place in which I could not express how I felt about the critical issues we were to allegedly debate.

In the Left Side article I found myself not so much debating the issue as reading from an ideological script composed of the Republican and Democratic Party lines. This is not dialogue or even an exchange of ideas. It is a hollow political act which is perpetuated across the country as a vulgar attempt to prove there is still political diversity in American politics.

What I have found is that when we boil the issues down the Left Side and the Right Side are the Same Side.

Sure, I wanted to talk about South America and I did. But from the Democratic position on South America is to blame the Republicans for favoring big businesses in their exploitation of South American resources. Under the "Left Side" flag I could not point out that Democratic Presidents Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton have all forwarded and approved violent insurrections of South American sovereignty sometimes labeling such endeavors "peacekeeping" but more often simply "counterinsurgency."

In short I did not feel like I was being honest and when you're in the writer's position, able to use words to affect a response in your readers, being dishonest with yourself is the first step toward being dishonest with your audience. So, when given my choice, I chose the more honest route. No more left side. No more sides except the side that most clearly reflects the truth.

Words have the incredible power to bring forth truth. In one sense, a word is nothing; no more than a sound. Without understanding words are just noises to be heard, some pleasant or caustic like any other sound. But humans are gifted with understanding and so words take on a whole new dimension to those who share their meanings. Words become symbolic of our experiences.

Ideological language, that particular rhetoric that is wed to one unalterable worldview, is a language that speaks not to the way things are, but to the way a group thinks things ought to be. It is a language of theory, of ideas arranged on paper so as to appear most pleasing.

It does not speak from experiences. Instead, ideologies offer a blind guess at what experience might be if only circumstances were different. The problem is that circumstances are not different; they are just what they are.

I for one am glad to be done with the political ideologies of the left side.

The question then, is what am I to do with this new found freedom? Given this space how do I fill it?

Well how do any of us fill the spaces we occupy? We start with what we know.

As an American, I know American culture. I spend everyday in American society. Television programs, books, magazines, newspapers, and Frostburg's curriculum all supply me with an endless stream of cultural thought and popular politics. My question and my concern is where does it all come from? Who are our Gods and Masters? The search for our cultural source will be the topic of this column.

All of us are born into a situation we have no control over and grow up amid a culture already established by those long dead or dying. The nature of the individual's place in society and how a person is to make that place their own is a concern for all of us. The answers to these questions affect our private and social lives, the environment we live in, the course our future will take, and, strangely, the past that bore us to this moment.

If possible, I will take this all in with a healthy attitude of skepticism and leave no consideration untouched. Left Side, Right Side, they're all the Same Side and for choosing so blindly are all on the Wrong Side. Those dichotomies are arbitrary and set forth by those who wish to see their own worldview, their own ideology, become and remain the status quo. These distinctions are made by men who would be masters, by masters who would make themselves God.

I am a free man writing for a free people. For this column, there are No Gods and No Masters.

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