The speech I wrote and didn't get to give

The Column: 06.23.23

I was eager to deliver a commencement address this spring and had one prepared but nobody invited me, which is a shame, because mine is more practical than 78% of the ones the Class of 2023 had to sit still for. It is a speech in favor of not rushing ahead to confront injustice and correct wrongs but to encourage other people to do it and then see what happens to them.

Everyone is in favor of courage and standing up to authority but there are advantages to cowardice too and a person should consider all options before picking up your bright sword and charging forth into the breach. I’m thinking of my classmates who went out for football and got dinged for the glory of the Maroon and Gray and now they’re unable to multiply fractions or recite “Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote, the droghte of March hath perced to the roote,” or tell the difference between a subjunctive mood and an introspective one, and when they shake their head No, I hear dinging. I’m thinking of idealistic friends who went to work for the Federated Organization of Associations thinking they’d reform it and they became executive vice presidents of artificial intelligence and lost their ability to speak genuine English.

I became a poet and wanted to create pure beauty out of rainbows and rosebuds and flocks of birds singing madrigals and I was up against angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, and it was no contest, same as my gentle folkie friends singing about looking at clouds from both sides got blown away by Springsteen’s Nebraska guy with the sawed-off .410 on his lap going through the Wyoming badlands killing everything in his path. Kindness is not necessarily a winning hand in this world.

Same with the Republicans running for president this year. Their inner Boy Scout — and Nikki Haley’s inner Camp Fire Girl — is urging them to speak the truth and go after the Man, as in “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead,” but many wise captains have been careful to keep another ship between them and the torpedoes and thereby survived the war and received medals for heroism because the real heroes had been hit by torpedoes.

Ordinarily, candidates would gang up on their leading competitor and criticize his policies and positions on issues, but this year’s Republican race isn’t about issues or policies, it’s about the most outrageous and vicious witch hunt in American history carried on by Biden’s band of closet thugs, misfits, Marxists, targeting Trump because he’s the only man who’s man enough to beat them, and this pitch seems to resonate with enough Republican voters that a sensible candidate hesitates to be the first to utter the words “paranoid lunatic” — let someone else have the honor of running down the landing ramp and rushing onto the beachhead, they will remain at the stern and see how the battle progresses.

As Mark Twain said, “To do good is noble. To tell others to do good is even nobler and much less trouble.” He also said that the secret of success is ignorance and confidence, the two combined are unbeatable, as we can see from the guy with the squiggles in his hair. He is a coward like me; we both skipped football so we didn’t get concussed and he is able to give long speeches with big words, and we dodged the draft, refusing to give our lives to advance the political fortunes of Richard M. Nixon.

I would’ve told the Class of 2023 to be wary of the advice of commencement speakers to aim high and be the best you can be, which has led many people to spend a pile of dough on a fancy college degree who could’ve gotten a more useful education by driving a cab in New York for a few years. My college education taught me how to write intelligently about books I never read, a talent that leads in the wrong direction. I wish that instead I had interviewed my parents and written their life story. Knowing where you come from is a good thing before you start out to achieve greatness. Someday you’ll wish you had done this so why not do it now? Drive cab by day, write family history at night. I guarantee that inspiration will strike.

Garrison Keillor’s newest book, Cheerfulness, is now available — CLICK HERE

For Cheerfulness notecards — CLICK HERE