As the
ceremonial yakker, I urged new grads to work for the common good.
June is the month of
the summer solstice and America’s biggest blizzard.
I don’t mean a weather
event blowing in from the Arctic, but a merciless storm of words blowing from
the mouths of commencement speakers at high school and college graduations.
This year, I was one
of the blowhards, speechifying before some 260 graduates of my old high school
in Denison, Texas. While it was an honor to be chosen as their ceremonial
yakker, it was also truly humbling.
Commencement
pontificators are expected to offer some sage advice to guide the grads, and I
was all out of sage. So, I resorted to three admonitions I once learned from a
West Texas cowboy:
- Never squat with your spurs on.
- Always drink upstream from the herd.
- Speak the truth — but ride a fast horse.
I used “idiot” in the
same way that ancient Greeks originally meant it. Idiotes were
not people with low-watt brains, but individuals who cared only about
themselves, refusing to participate in public efforts to benefit the larger
community — the common good. The Greeks, I told the students, considered such
people selfish, contemptible, and stupid. And so should we.
The encouraging news
is that this crop of graduates from Denison High nodded in agreement. After
all, they’ve seen that idiots are running things in Washington and on Wall
Street. And this generation of youngsters seems to be hungry for less
selfishness and more togetherness as our society’s guiding ethic.
So commence, I said —
and make it happen!
OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is
a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. He's also editor of the
populist newsletter, The Hightower
Lowdown. OtherWords.org