The Battalion • Page 5
Monday • July 17, 1995
;ct
vith
3X
VP) — One c:
3S in Texas
ng baseba!:
?d to play for
>ox.
Houston re
? that And;
iout pitcher
High Schooi.
ssional base
the 15th plav
;d in the Jut:
pounder saic
port, immed:
on'a Rookie
earn in For.
year last sea
; 10-0 withj
:ruck out 12!
ings.
loice to spar
t easy.
•d decision ii
but (Bostoa
the money
so I told ther
d Yount, wr
ass the terr
(ways wante:
■ and get nr
rause tha::
a been taug:
•e’s this o;
y profession
l I've had sin?
So it was rea.
ally I think
‘cision.”
g a routki
Tiing his cor
d he’ll thro;
Park bullpe:
in Boston
nsas City.
is all
tory
nally defeat-
of Texas af-
since 1965.
lave scored
i against
iter, they
d off the Ag
me since
for a share
rown, but
a bowl
iven’t been
n more than
ave spoiled
ms’ bowl
period,
i will still
battles
I ay lor and
2. The tradi-
’em Horns,
ission with
r’s ... well,
, have any
ow the Ag-
but it won’t
and SMU al-
i and A&M^
owl games."
tow? Get up
ainst San
nay finish
ings in the
s if you beat
! better?
ng live
& $
iotas?
►N
_
FOR
»
>AY.
\PPLV.
Success requires belief and self-determination
David
Taylor
B ack when I was still a
confused adolescent — just
prior to being a confused
adult — I constantly wondered
why I couldn’t be more athletic,
more popular, better looking ...
stop me when this list starts to
sound familiar.
It never made sense to me
that some people had “it”
(whatever “it” was at any particular time) and I
Columnist
we will be are two things that are com
pletely up to us.
In 1776, Thomas Jefferson gave
King George III of Great Britain the
reasons for an independent United
States of America.
Of the ideals found in the Declara
tion of Independence, a God-given
right for the “pursuit of happiness”
was by far the most revolutionary.
Since then, this “pursuit of happiness” has
been interpreted by many to mean, “Cool, I get to
didn t.
Somewhere along the line, I made one of those
discoveries that I always knew, but never quite
realized.
Apparently, “live” is an active verb.
I live, you live, he lives, she lives, ya’ll live (I love
Texas), we live, they live. Yep, an active verb.
Ok, what did my rudimentary English skills
have to do with my ability to get a date? Well, not
much. I still haven’t spent many nights diagram
ing sentences by candlelight.
But I did make the startling discovery that my
life is up to me.
I guess the rest of the world already knew
that, but it was news to me. I realized no one was
going to make me a better basketball player,
more confident or anything else for that matter.
The point remains that what we are and what
do whatever I want.”
What Jefferson really meant is that we have
an innate ability to choose what we can become.
In the words of P. J. OTtouke, “Freedom is not
empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs
have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be em
powered. An entitlement is what people on welfare
get, and how free are they? It’s not an endlessly ex
panding list of rights — the ‘right’ to education, the
‘right’ to health care, the ‘right’ to food and housing.
That’s not freedom, that’s dependency. Those aren’t
rights, those acre the rations of slavery — hay and a
barn for human cattle.”
Unfortunately, we usually are our own biggest
obstacles.
After my freshman year, I spent a couple years
playing missionary in the Philippines. The Fil
ipinos had an explanation for everything that
went wrong in their country. They would almost
always say, “Mahirap ang buhay dito.”
I know that doesn’t mean much to you, so I
will go ahead and translate. It means, “Life is
hard here.”
And it was. I spent half my time in the Philip
pines trying to understand why God found it neces
sary to create cockroaches the size of the state I left.
To make things more interesting, there were
only two seasons: hot n’ rainy and hot n’ dry —
those are the technical terms. And the over
whelming and omnipresent poverty was some
thing I had never even imagined.
Too many people spend their
lives making excuses as to why
they "just can't do it right now."
However, of all the obstacles for the Filipinos,
“Mahirap ang buhay dito” was by far the most in
sidious. No matter how hard you work, you can’t
help people who don’t believe in themselves.
Many of the Filipinos simply wouldn’t try be
cause they had already decided they couldn’t do a
thing about their situations.
I’m not saying you can jump off a bridge if you
just believe you will survive. But too many people
spend their whole lives making excuses as to why
they “just can’t do it right now.”
Or even worse, “I’m just not good at it.”
Someone once told me, “It doesn’t matter
whether you think you can or you think you can’t *
... because you’re right.”
In other words, believing in your own failure is i
halfway to ensuring it.
There always will be a reason to not try some- •
thing, and there will always be someone better at -
what you may want to try. But if we use these as ;
excuses, we will never do a darn thing.
The Chinese have an ancient curse: may all
your wishes come true.
In simpler terms, be careful what you wish for ’•
because it might just happen.
We can make ourselves into whatever we want, !
but when all is said and done, we may not like our- ;
selves any more than we did in the first place.
There is always a price to pay for our deci
sions.
O’Rouke also observed, “There is only one basin
human right, the right to do as you damn well
please. And with it comes the only basic human
duty, the duty to take the consequences.”
David Taylor is a senior management major
'Beaten path eludes modern day Kerouacs
P por Jack Ker-
ouac. The
embodiment
of the term “adven
turer.” The man
whose 1957 novel
On the Road de
fined the “beat”
generation and
proclaimed its ex
istence to the bulk of main
stream America.
What would this veritable
wanderer be doing if he were
alive today? If he were able to
quest for the meaning of life as he
and his friends hurtled back and
forth across the great expanses of
the American interstate?
I have the feeling he might
not do much more than occasion
ally leave the couch to go to the
refrigerator to get another beer.
In On the Road, Kerouac
wrote that he “could hear a new
call and see a new horizon,” and
that “somewhere along the line I
knew there’d be girls, visions,
everything.”
He was motivated to travel by
his desire to see something nev
er before seen. He felt that some
meaning could be captured if
only he could dig feverishly
enough through the unknown
and ever-expanding horizons of
the world around him.
But today, those horizons ap
parently have become about as
broad as they are going to get.
Kerouac might
soon discover that
there would be no
place he could go
to see anything
new. And that he
would not have
any reasons to
ever leave his
house in the first
place. Newness is fast becoming
passe, as well as obsolete.
Our shrinking world is being
brought closer together by the
growth of the two big T’s. Tech
nology and tourism.
With the era of the Internet
and CNN upon us, society is
evolving into a mass of anony
mous spectators who can inter
act with each other while conve
niently never having to leave
their houses.
We can learn about major
world news events while and af
ter they happen.
The tragedies and heroics of
the world are brought right into
our living room, and played out
for us in 3-D, digitalized color
and surround-sound.
We can then turn to our com
puters, and, once again without
having to get up from the La-Z
Boy, hold conversations with
dozens of people from all over
the world.
It’s almost like we were alive.
And if technology did not pro
vide us with so many incentives
to stay home, where would we go
if we were to leave the house
and set out adventuring?
What place left still has the
mystique of being undiscovered
with the promise of adventure
laying in wait?
America, and the rest of the
world, is becoming more and
more the same, no matter where
one is. Drive into any town —
there’s the McDonald’s right
next to the Taco Bell and across
the street from the Wendy’s and
the Long John Silver’s.
With the advent of franchis
ing and larger corporations,
standardized quality and conve
nience are replacing the variety
that small businesses possess.
Mom and Pop shut down their
hardware store five years ago.
See, it used to be there where Ul
tra-Mega Wal-Mart is now. And
the town’s five movie theaters all
gave way to the 1000-screened
Cineplex last year.
Towns have become an as
sortment of the same 50 fran
chises with their locations sim
ply shuffled geographically. Per
haps Kerouac could find relief
from the monotony of the mun
dane by retreating to the wild.
He could travel to the Grand
Canyon, to Yellowstone National
Park, and there he would find ...
other people. People with Big
Macs in one hand and their cam
era in the other, snapping away
at the sunset while their three
whining children frolic in the en
dangered plant life.
The national parks in our
country are once again suffering
from an overload of tourists this
summer. The understaffed, un
derfunded park services have
their hands full simply dealing
with those tourists who become
injured. Guaranteeing the tran
quility of what were once consid
ered vacation spots has become
almost impossible.
People have reproduced to the
point where you really can’t go
that far before bumping into an
other one. There can be no es
cape into the solitude of the self,
for there is very little solitude
left these days.
In a society where inter-global
communication is instantaneous,
and docile herds of tourists de
scend by busload to every for-
merly-remote spot on the planet,
not much is left for the Jack Ker
ouacs of the world.
They can either contribute to
the earth’s encroaching bland
ness, or they can travel further
out there, to whatever places are
left where people don’t all wear
Mickey Mouse ears and eat
Whoppers three times a day.
I like to think Kerouac would
hitch a ride and choose the latter.
Chris Stidvent is a senior
philosophy major
TTn tl Battalion
Established in 1893
Editorials appearing in The Battalion reflect the views
of the editorials board. They do not necessarily reflect
the opinions of other Battalion staff members, the
Texas A&M student body, regents, administration,
faculty or staff. Columns, guest columns, cartoons
and letters express the opinions of the authors.
Contact the opinion editor for information on
submitting guest columns.
Editorials Board
Jay Robbins
Editor in Chief
Rob Clark
Managing Editor
Sterling Hayman
Opinion Editor
Kyle Littlefield
Assistant Opinion Editor
Political Play
Gingrich should focus on solving
the drug problem, not his image.
House Speaker Newt Gin
grich recently declared at a
meeting of the Republican Na
tional Committee that the
United States should “stop
playing games” with the issue
of illegal drugs.
The fact is that Gingrich
should stop playing
games with the Amer
ican voting public.
Gingrich said at
the annual Republi
can meeting that Con
gress should either
pass legislation that
would legalize drugs
or adopt penalties se
vere enough to solve
the problem entirely.
The statement is an
obvious example of po-
Gingrich
litical rhetoric aimed at landing
Gingrich’s name in the paper.
Perhaps if Gingrich truly
felt strongly about winning
the war on drugs, he would
have fervently supported the
legislation passed last year
by the Democratic Congress,
which attempted to do exact
ly what the House speaker
proposes — solve the drug
problem.
The 1994 crime law in
creased penalties for drug
traffickers and offenders,
strengthened the nation’s po
lice forces and established
new programs aimed at get
ting “at risk” children off the
street and involved in posi
tive activities.
And Gingrich was at the
forefront of Republicans whose
goal was to defeat the Democ
rat’s bill.
But since then, times have
changed.
The Republicans
now are in power, and
the time is right —
election time — to say
all the right things.
Newt Gingrich now
seems to be taking ad
vantage of his position
in the media spotlight
to project a sparkling
image of himself.
Drug legalization is
not really an issue.
Regardless of
whether it is a good idea, the
idea that drugs should be ille
gal is ingrained in an American
public and Congress would nev
er pass such legislation.
Interestingly, Gingrich’s
statement did not come on
the floor of the House where
new legislation could be intro
duced, but at a Republican
party function with a heavy
media contingent in atten
dance.
The issue boils down to
politicians wasting the time
and money of the voters by
concentrating on their image
rather than concentrating on
getting things done.
The Battalion
Editorial Staff
Jay Robbins, editor in Chief
Rob Clark, Managing Editor
Sterling Hayman, Opinion Editor
GreTCHFN PERRENOT, City Editor
JODY Holley, Night News Editor
Stacy Stanton, night news Editor
Michael Landauer, aggielife editor
Nick Georgandis, Sports Editor
Stew Milne, photo Editor
Staff Members
City Desk - Assistant Editor: Eleanor Colvin; Re
porters: Katherine Arnold, Javier Hinojosa,
Jill Saunders, Michael Simmons, Wes. Swift
& Tara Wilkinson
Aggielife Desk - Assistant Editor: Amy Collier Fea
ture Writers: Elizabeth Garrett, Amy Collier
& Libe Goad; Columnist: Amy Uptmor
Sportswriters - David Winder and Lee Wright
Opinion Desk - Assistant Editor: Kyle Littlefield;
Columnists; Elizabeth Preston, Frank Stan
ford & David Taylor; Contributing Colum
nists: Justin Barnett, Margaret Cordon, Alex
Miller, Chris Stidvent & Mark Zane; Editori
al Writers: Jason Brown & Alex Walters;
Editorial Cartoonists: Brad Graeber &
George Nasr
Photographers — Mike Friend, Roger Hsieh, Nick
Rodnicki & Eddy Wylie
Page Designers - News: Kristin DeLuca; Sports:
Robin Greathouse; Aggielife: Stew Milne
Copy Editors — Rob Clark & Sterling Hayman
Graphic Artists - Toon Boonyavanich & Melissa
Oldham
Strip Cartoonists — Valerie Myers & Quatro Oakley
Office Staff - Office Manager: Julie Thomas;
Clerks: Wendy Crockett & Heather Harris
News: The Battalion news department is managed by
students at Texas A&M University in the Divi
sion of Student Publications, a unit of the De
partment of Journalism.
News offices are in 01 3 Reed McDonald Building.
Newsroom hours:
Sunday, 2 p.m. to 1 0 p.m.
Monday — Thursday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Friday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Newsroom phone: 845-3313; Fax: 845-2647
The Battalion Online: The Battalion offers photos
and the day's headlines on the worldwide
web. Web Site: http://128.194.30.84
Advertising: Publication of advertising does not im
ply sponsorship or endorsement by The Bat
talion. For campus, local and national dis
play advertising, call 845-2696. For classi
fied advertising, call 845-0569. Advertising
offices are in 015 Reed McDonald and of
fice hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday
through Friday. Fax: 845-2678.
Subscriptions: A part of the Student Services Fee entitles
each Texas A&M student to pick up a single
copy of The Battalion. Mail subscriptions are
$20 per semester, $40 per school year and $50
per full year. To charge by VISA, MasterCard,
Discover or American Express, call 845-2611.
The Battalion (USPS 045-360) is published daily,
Monday through Friday during the fall and spring
semesters and Monday through Thursday during the
summer sessions (except University holidays and
exam periods), at Texas A&M University. Second
class postage paid at College Station, TX 77840.
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The
Battalion, 230 Reed McDonald Building, Texas
A&M University, College Station, TX 77843.