Tennessee WordSmith: A Liberal Dose, September 16, 2025 "Final Newspaper Column"

A Liberal Dose

"Final Newspaper Column"

Troy D. Smith

I started writing my "Liberal Dose" column in the Sparta Expositor in February, 2021, weeks after the Jan. 6 Insurrection. In the more than 4-and-a-half years since, I have covered a lot of topics on there... and, after a brief time of optimism and relief, watched our country go backward instead of forward at a rate, and to an extent, I could not have imagined in my worst nightmares.

And, I regret to inform you, that column has come to an end -at least in print, though I will continue publishing it online on my blog.

I was informed this morning that the paper is dropping the whole opinion section -due to the increased amount, and disturbing nature, of death threats to me over the past several days. I already received some from time to time, but since the assassination of Charlie Kirk it has apparently skyrocketed, and the editor does not want to risk my life.

"Well, you know," I started to say to her over the phone, and she cut in: "Yes, I know, you'll keep doing it online anyway."

I told her that my column for this week -after the wave of professors being fired for their responses to Kirk's death, and after several VERY disturbing incidences lately of truth and honesty in higher education being imperiled -had been going to be entitled "Things it is currently safe for me to talk about," followed by a half-page of blank space.

The only comment I have made about Charlie Kirk's death was a few days ago, on social media. This is an exact quote of it: "It is sad -and deeply hypocritical -to see conservative friends celebrating Charlie Kirk as a free speech icon and in the same breath rejoicing over people being fired from their jobs for expressing their opinion of him."

To which my own sister and niece responded by cussing me out, calling me names, and blocking me -saying how dare I compare someone losing their job to someone losing their life. I would very much like to tell them that as of today my job AND my life are in danger, but I can't. Because they blocked me. Over that very innocuous statement, which neither celebrated Kirk's death nor criticized his memory.

That's the country we are now living in.

For about a week after the election in November, I was in a deeply introspective, sobered mood. I was mourning, actually. I wasn't mourning an election, or even my country. I was mourning myself. Because I knew that the results of that vote made it very much a statistical possibility I would be fired from my job, arrested, or murdered in the next year. Because I know myself, and I know I will not be silenced. Even if I tried, I would not succeed for long -like the prophet Jeremiah, the truth would cry out from my bones.

At the end of that week, I accepted the likelihood, and set back to work. I did not share with a living soul what I was feeling that week, though I have done so since. The odds of all those things have gone up considerably in just the past few days.

And I will not be silenced. I can NOT be silenced, for the truth will always live on -it spreads from ear to ear and from soul to soul to everyone who hears or reads my words, and everyone who hears or reads theirs, rippling across the universe. I am only a note in that symphony, and I intend for that note to be as full and as powerful and as true as it can possibly be.

Future generations will stand in judgment of authoritarians and the people who, either through fear, greed, weakness, or meanness, follow them... like all those who went before them. And no future efforts to scrub truth from history will endure for long.

As a youth I chose my own role models and heroes -from history, literature, and popular culture. Atticus Finch, Will Kane, Rick Blaine... William Tynedale, MLK, and, most of all, Jesus... and yes, Peter Parker. One individual standing up for truth and justice does make a difference, whether it seems like it or not at the time, and myriads of such individuals together can turn a tide.

Or to quote King Arthur in Camelot: "Less than a drop in the great, blue motion of the sunlit sea. But it seems that some of the drops sparkle. Some of them DO SPARKLE!!"

Or, to quote Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha:

"This is my quest, to follow that star

No matter how hopeless, no matter how far

To fight for the right without question or pause

To be willing to march into Hell for a heavenly cause

And I know if I'll only be true to this glorious quest

That my heart will lie peaceful and calm when I'm laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this

That one man, scorned and covered with scars

Still strove with his last ounce of courage

To reach the unreachable star."

Or, to quote Jean Valjean (and the whole cast) in the finale of Les Miserables:

Take my hand

And lead me to salvation

Take my love

For love is everlasting

And remember

The truth that once was spoken:

To love another person is to see the face of God...

Do you hear the people sing?

Lost in the valley of the night

It is the music of a people who are climbing to the light

For the wretched of the earth

There is a flame that never dies

Even the darkest nights will end and the sun will rise

They will live again in freedom in the garden of the lord

They will walk behind the ploughshare

They will put away the sword

The chain will be broken and all men will have their reward!

Will you join in our crusade?

Who will be strong and stand with me?

Somewhere beyond the barricade is there a world you long to see?

Do you hear the people sing?

Say, do you hear the distant drums?

It is the future that they bring when tomorrow comes!"

All those musicals and movies, and characters, have meant a lot to me. 30 years ago, at the dawn of the internet age, I chose the chat name Paladin... in part because of the TV western hero, but mostly for the meaning of that word (which people younger than me, sadly, only know as the very skewed role-playing type): A knight without a master, looking for a righteous cause to lend his sword, and his life. Not right MAKES right, to again quote from Camelot, but might FOR right. That is among the highest aspirations of humanity.

With these few words, most of them not my own, I have told you who I am. As, I hope, my actions have shown you. I will not betray who I am, and what I believe, even though the world crumble around me. And all my words, and all my actions, come from a place of love and not a place of hate.

Godspeed. And power to the people.

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE