It was right at the moment when the pre-revolutionary colonists
and the British Empire came to a diplomatic impasse and the only
option left was a bloody civil war that I realized, in my
chain-smoke-and-red-wine-driven pre-final all-night marathon
cramming session, that I’m graduating after this.
Finally.
In the build-up to the revolution, while both sides asserted
their right in principle to sovereignty, neither was willing to
take that final logical step toward the inevitable conclusion
““ are you going to bark all day, little doggy, or are you
going to bite?
There was no middle ground. A side had to be taken.
It was a struggle for power between power elites, but fought by
the powerless hired by those elites to do their fighting for them.
It was also about the willpower to back up publicly professed
principles with action.
On the precipice of graduation, I feel like I’m looking
down the barrel of the same gun.
The Founding Fathers, while really a bunch of privileged elitist
lawyers and merchants, adopted the language of natural equality to
justify their revolt against tyranny and enshrined it into the
preamble of the Declaration of Independence. This eventually
painted them (or more accurately, this country) into a corner of
actually living up to those principles when, centuries later, their
barking came back to bite them in the ass.
After four years of liberal education that sparked the fire of
righteous indignation that fuels my columns, I’m now at the
same crossroads. In college, we get to bark loudly about social
injustices, but after graduation, many of us take all our youthful
idealism and cash it in, or sell it out, for a cushy, soulless
position offering job security.
For those who aren’t columnists, you enjoy the privilege
of not having incriminating written documentation of your publicly
professed moral outrage, which can come back to bite you in the ass
in the event you should happen to sell out. But, as our Founding
Fathers did with the Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution, I do.
And while they had the privilege of dying before being exposed
by time as a bunch of hypocrites, I don’t. I’m about to
graduate. The eve of revolution looms like a guillotine over my
conscience, and it’s time to choose sides. Job security or
principles: What will it be, young Lukacs?
Hey, I’m not knocking security. It was the security and
protection Britain offered the colonies that delayed the inevitable
decision to revolt, but it was security at the price of limited
freedom (sound familiar?).
I do not ignore the fact that economic interest motivated the
push for independence (which is, of course, not so different from
our motivations for independence). Britain was trying to muscle in
on the patriots’ livelihood: taxation without compensation,
dog.
That’s Michael Corleone-style extortion ““ pay us for
protection or we’ll kick your ass. After all, it’s a
jungle out there and, like that sage of gangster capitalism 50
Cent’s first album wisely proclaimed, “Get rich or die
trying,” yo.
And while gangster capitalism, imperial extortion and smuggling
are time-honored free-market American traditions, I can’t
help but fight the hypocrisy.
I’ve decided to go whole-hog on the principles thing.
Why is it OK to impose morality on gambling, illegal drugs and
prostitution, but not other free-market enterprises like health
care, prescription drugs and the entire grotesque orgy of upper and
upper-middle class naked greed, the stock market?
I’m going Thomas Paine-style. He died a penniless,
idealistic fool who contributed greatly to the American and French
Revolutions, the two historic earth-shattering events that
eventually came to shape a more humane world order. He challenged
the divine right of kings. I want to challenge the divine right of
corporations.
There’s a certain poetic irony in the fact that he titled
his defining call to arms against tyranny in 1775 “Common
Sense.” Here’s some common sense in 2005 ““ unless
you’re an elite, you still don’t have
representation.
I know not what hellish, cobwebbed bat cave awaits me, but I
intend to die in it with a peaceful conscience.
I’m not going to sell out my principles to make a bunch of
rich guys even richer.
The promise of the revolution is yet to be fulfilled.
Lukacs is a third-year history student. E-mail him at
olukacs@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to
viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.