This week’s “Return to Rationality” is written in verse. Brandon Bartlett is a philosophy junior and Mustang News columnist. The views expressed in this column do not reflect the viewpoints and editorial coverage of Mustang News.
My pride grows weary, it’s time to confess
confess the need for both the Right and the Left.
For we may live together, or die when cleft
die at the splitting of the Right from the Left.
My sin is simple, ubiquitous, trite:
in my own wisdom I tend to delight
thinking myself always in the right
How eager I am to cast first stones.
I find in myself a monster to fear,
a “Will to Dogma” to which I adhere,
never thinking truth lay beyond my sphere
That is how ignorance is grown
But tell me, how can I doubt myself?
Why should I deny what seems to be true?
My self-assigned labels boxing me in,
closing my eyes when rhetoric turns thin,
with vicious loyalty defending my kin
What beliefs am I allowed?
What should I think about taxes, rights, drones?
Or that strange orange man who sits on the throne?
It is hard to have opinions when left alone
And so I hide within the crowd.
Cowardly, damnably cowardly, I hide within the crowd.
But even my pride knows I am still ignorant
and of my faults I am often indifferent
to vanity becomes my commitment
I refuse to say “I don’t know.”
But who can correct my apparent lack?
Flush out the holes and fill in the cracks?
Give me, when necessary, a swift whack.
I must go and seek my foe.
The postmodernist, the commie, the leftie,
I entreat you to teach me.
I know myself little, but I know this:
I am prone to become a blind Sophist
So please, teach me.
Teach me about the backs that my ancestors broke,
Teach me of the native cultures they choked,
Teach me of the dead who never spoke,
Extend me patience once again
You know so much of things I do not read
such as the modern effects of slavery
the crimes motivated by wealth and greed
And allow me to call you friend.
Oh friend, do not stray far from me,
for I need you more than you could know.
I dreamed of a world called Raven’s Crest
where there was true talk between the Right and Left.
Where each could speak his or her peace of mind
lending further peace to a future time.
Justice balanced with mercy and grace,
the harms of their hands everyone did face,
For prudence, temperance and tolerance were the keys,
the keys to the greatest of all cities.
But when I awoke I was much distressed
distressed at the split of the Right from the Left.
And so my pride became weary, and now it’s time to confess,
that we’ll die at the splitting of the Right from the Left.