Writing words

After nearly two years of occupying this post, slightly neglecting my course work in the process, I can’t exactly remember why I began writing in the first place. Nor can I be exactly sure that I’ve enjoyed it very much. But despite sharing Henry David Thoreau’s skepticism of those who sit down to write without having first stood up to live, I feel remiss for not writing, as if some bubble is on the verge of bursting were it not to find regular vent at my pen. \nStill, writing is a serious endeavor for me, not merely “an outlet.” I have sought to fashion every column as if it were my last (which some doubtlessly and devoutly hoped had been something more than a figurative impulse). To say that I’m interested in making my political writing into an art, then, would be an understatement. I don’t know if all this makes me sound arrogant or selfish, but those are tags I’ve learned to live with, and happily so.\nOccasionally, I have been approached about my editorial activity, and a curious minority of these people could be described as members of any proud fan club. I am quite accustomed to being in the minority, and a certain nonchalance that always came naturally to me has paid handsome dividends. I have cultivated a very thick skin and a rather broad back in the course of writing, and defending, what at times has been, shall we say, a controversial column. \nAs for my thrill at the smell of cordite, it is a character trait (or disorder, depending on your opinion of me) that I must say I gave fair warning of by writing under the nom de plume “Fighting Words.” Those who have kept up with me were, I suspect, well-aware of what they were getting into, as people like to say. \nIn light of prevailing attitudes on campus, popularity was probably always out of reach for someone of my stripe. And given my hostility toward holders of prevailing opinion, I never expected to be thanked. What matters, anyway, is the argument, not the number of people behind it. There’s not strength, but only safety, in numbers. I’ve always liked Milton Friedman’s formulation that one man plus a correct opinion outvotes a majority. \nSo the experience of writing has been a salutary one for me, and I will forever value precision in language and those who generate light (as well as a little heat) in argument. Soon enough, I will have to content myself as a repressed journalist, writing as a hobby more than a vocation. And if “it is better to be making the news than taking it,” as Winston Churchill long ago insisted was the case, then that is just as well.\nBut being in this miniature intellectual arena has been good (and necessary) fun for me. As a result, I’ve developed some measure of appreciation for what the eminent historian Robert Conquest has suggestively called “a United Front against bullshit.” Any takers?