Bathroom grafitti proves to act as political forums
Dear Editor,
There are many excellent restroom facilities on the campus of Georgia College & State University. Such fine places, which do come in handy, can afford a keen observer the opportunity to view a veritable smorgasbord of only the very best graffiti that can possibly be produced by liberal arts students. Indeed, in the restrooms one can hardly miss the various profanities, perverted advertisements, obscene caricatures, creative yet crude limericks, and, ah yes, the occasional stall-by-stall political debates. I had occasion the other day to observe in a certain stall the following, scrawled on the wall with probably a convenient black Sharpie: “Bush=worst President ever.” Just below it was the response, written with a similar pen of convenience: “Bush=God.” In the sanctuary of a public restroom, in such a setting of relatively quiet repose, one cannot even there find a middle or alternate position articulated.
Now, hats off to our talented restroom poets; you defile our restroom walls with vulgarities, yet somehow, you still manage to entertain and amuse the student body and convey your spur of the moment messages to a very, very captive audience. And to The Colonnade: bravo for providing some balance to Mr. Shreve. Mr. Pitts’ articles so far have been an excellent counter to Mr. Shreve. However, after considering the general approach towards political thought taken by most of our regular debaters in this paper, I cannot shake from my mind an analogy based on those restroom scribblings. Most of us assume that only two legitimate perspectives can exist; and we either embrace one idea or the other to the extreme, or we cynically choose the supposed lesser of two equally deficient options.
There are a few lessons we would all do well to learn: classical liberalism does not necessarily equate with welfare-state socialism; likewise, authentic conservative thought is not analogous to neo-conservatism in many important respects, especially in the realm of foreign entanglements. And despite what is propagated in the “neutral” media, there remains something in the American persona that craves from our leaders a kind of boldness that defies the mold, that is edgy, that is risky, brutally honest, and unashamedly nationalistic. Can we honestly say that President Bush, despite the best efforts of others to portray him as a latter-day frontiersman, truly fits that description? With spending out of control, the situation in Iraq looking more and more like a spectacular albatross around our collective necks, and the deplorable circumstances along our southern border, it makes sense for me, as a Conservative, to yell at the top of my lungs that the Emperor has no clothes.
Modern American political nomenclature misses a larger picture-the picture of a nation poised to taste the fruits of rapid decline just as mighty Rome once did. Shouting “damn the liberals” or “damn the conservatives” alters nothing in this tale. Debating whether Bush is horrible or “god” is an exercise in futility; we should instead be asking ourselves whether it is even remotely possible at this point for our constitutional republic to survive another two centuries, and whether or not the federal government can again be made to recognize any meaningful limits on its exercise of power. It is time for our generation to take the great debates of our times out of the metaphorical restrooms where they presently abide, and begin viewing them for the small part in the larger epic story they are-the tale of the rise and fall of nations.
Benjamin Faulkner
Political Science
Junior
Posted by Colonnade Archives
on Apr 14 2006. Filed under Opinion.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0.
You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
