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COMMENTARY
February 23, 2005
Why I write
I write a column like this every few years and I think other columnists should do it too. The genre began with George Orwell whose own piece entitled Why I write appeared in 1947. (Unless the genre began with Montaigne.) The text of that can be Google-found and I strongly recommend reading it especially to other writers. Which is no small class of persons: there are a lot of us in this prolix age. And few if any so wise and clear as Orwell whose little essay will prove better than the one you'll now read. In my case what better time for I am freshly back from a month's vacation during which I was more successful at avoiding the news than I have been in a long time. I am frankly somewhat bewildered in trying to catch up with so much that has recently happened in the world and some of that historically significant. One thing alone I would like to say immediately and boldly about the last four weeks. That election in Iraq vindicated every word I have written on the Middle East in the time since 9/11. It also shows unmistakeably that Bush was right and the world was wrong. But more of this another day: I say it only in reply to the (quite literally) thousands of persons who have written condescending letters to me over the past few years dismissing me as an idiot. I have been wrong about many small things; I am relieved to be right about a big one. That will serve as a reason why I write incidentally. The desire to be a public witness to the truth. The Pope wrote an Apostolic Letter that was published January 24th (the feast day of Francis de Sales the patron saint of journalists). It was entitled in English The Rapid Development . It touches on the huge struggle in the world and through the mass media between the true and the false the good and the evil the beautiful and the ugly. No journalist can pretend to be neutral in that war. There may be all kinds of room for disagreement about what is right and prudent in any situation and even about what are the facts. But our world is at war and always has been between forces for good and evil in many complex permutations. Never simple but often more simple than appears. To seek what is right and fight for it is the calling of every decent man and woman. As journalists we are especially called for what we write becomes for better and worse the light in the minds of many others. The journalist who thinks what he writes doesn't matter is not humble but irresponsible. The one who is cynical and posturing -- who pretends to be world-weary -- is not neutral in the face of events. He is on the wrong side. The one who thinks he is a mere entertainer is an even greater fool than I am: for there is no such thing as "pure entertainment". Everything has moral consequences including mere idleness. And yet the journalist who is humourless and refuses to make what he writes interesting quite apart from being soon out of a job (though maybe not in Canada) has also let down his colleagues. God never said we had to be dull. And the world itself is such a miracle: grimness can never fully correspond with the facts. There is a simple formula for getting this right. It is to take the subject very seriously and oneself much less seriously. I am surprised how many journalists instinctively reverse this formula. Of course I write for money. I have children to support an estranged wife and the growing burden of Canadian taxation (the more crippling in my case after nearly four years of being singled out for continuing destructive tax audits). The writer must live and breathe in a competitive environment as any soldier should try to survive if he possibly can. But the big test of soldier or journalist is his willingness to lose all if necessity dictates. The soldier is the greater: he must pay with his life; the journalist can only lose his livelihood. And at the end of the day they are still hiring at Burger King. The soldier not willing to lay down his life can never be trusted. And likewise the journalist who will run from his duty to avoid being fired can never be trusted. But one cannot boast for one knows in one's own heart what a coward one can be; and how many times I have myself been responsible for letting down the side. It is all an act done better at some times than at others: but an act within a world that is real and therefore an act with real consequences however minor the field of action upon which one plays. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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