The Enter Stage Right Link of the Month
web posted December 1997
The Jolly Roger
One of the first conservative newsletters I ever read back in the early
days of the World Wide Web was from The Jolly Roger. The joys of a Lynx
browser...
Generation X is often viewed as a group of lazy shiftless goatee-sporting
whiners, but those in the know realize that many Gen Xers are actually
goatee-sporting conservatives, or in the case of Drake Raft, Becket Knottingham
and Elliot McGucken, "grungeservatives". It's a generation characterized
by distrust of traditional institutions coming not from some summer of
love, but because we realize they just don't work and they are wrong.
"We do not share the pessimism found in the corporate conglomerate
publishing houses that the common citizen is not capable of quality literature,
but rather we feel that those in the elite editorial circles have lost
touch with the deeper needs of present-day culture. Their politicized,
watered-down literature does little to fill the contemporary spiritual
void. They are incapable of providing the common man with a literature
that means something to him, which is why they write for themselves."
They promote conservatism with a literary skill rarely found at many similar
websites. Championing the Western Canon, the three target a culture which
instead of valuing the inspiration of some of the greatest works in our
culture, attack them by praising works which present humanity as ignoble
and unreasoning. Knottingham himself was nearly kicked of a creative writing
class at Princeton by Joyce Carol Oates, queen of humanity haters.
"The conservative artist and intellectual ask nothing from the greatest
government on earth, nor do we ask anything from the universities or the
major media establishments, but that our unalienable Rights be protected. The
government has already provided us with the freedom to express our thoughts,
and the WWW has provided us with a medium to publish our literature. And
that, along with fellow humans yearning for truth and beauty, is all that
is needed to launch a literary revolution, sans sex, sans drugs, sans
government grants, sans a recommendation from Joyce Carol Oates, sans
approval from the editors of Rolling Stone."
I can't say I agree with everything on the good ship Jolly Roger but there's
enough that I can grok these guys as allies in the struggle against those
who would demean humanity as cattle.
Go to The Jolly Roger, sign up for their mailing list and read the words,
because there words mean things. Literature and conservatism among the
Gen X crowd is not dead yet! 