THE FOUNDING OF CLASSICALS INC.
From The Jolly Roger to Classicals Cafe.
The Spirit of the Millenium's Renaissance
Often enough it occurs that we receive inquiries regarding the nature of our founding that it merits a brief narrative. How was it that three small-town midwesterners came down with sea fever, journeyed eastward to the intellectual seaport of Princeton, ran the blockade, and dedicated themselves to lives of the mind? By what elements of Providence were we called upon to preserve the better parts of our beings in immortal words? When did we awake from a dream of a renaissance to find ourselves afflicted by that haunting American Spirit. That rugged Spirit which inspires youths to set aside more worldly pursuits and become defenders of the Great Dead, pursuers of the ungraspable phantom of life, and fishers of men? How was it that we envisioned a world which lay beyond the postmodern fog, commissioned a literary warship, signed aboard over 20,000 intellectual rebels, and set sail to find the virgin literary frontier and establish a classical context? For only within a classical context did our words have a chance of resounding. Words are only as good as the context in which they are penned, and contexts are only as good as the words penned within them.
Elliot "Ahab" McGucken, Drake "Red Avenger" Raft, and I, Becket "Bluebeard" Knottingham, hailing from Ohio, Wisconsin, and South-Dakota, showed up as freshmen at Princeton with little more than a profound love for literature, embroidered with a subtle Puritan lust for all things gothic and profound, like her enchanting smile and ineffable poise.
The three sonneteers became inseperable friends after meeting on the J.V. tennis team and then writing songs and skits for and acting in the Princeton Triangle Club. General Washington's words do well to capture the essence of the profound camraderie felt between the chief literary officers of the Good Ship:
My first wish would be, that my military family and the whole army should consider themselves as a band of brothers, willing and ready to die for one-another.It was late one rainy April night, after a rehearsal for the spring Triangle show, that the spirit of The Jolly Roger was conceived, and so it is that we believe the spirit begins at conception. We were hanging out, sitting upon the props on center stage in McCarter Theater, when Drake produced a copy of Moby Dick and began reading aloud from "The Lee Shore." I remember this one alternative girl, Tia, popped her head in the back of the theater asked us what in the world we were doing there so late, and Elliot told her we were holding a secret-society meeting. Drake told her we'd let her in if she humbled herself before Melville's literary supremacy, whereupon she laughed and took off to go tack up some more posters or catch South Park or something. And so we founded a secret society dedicated to living the vanquished literature of the Great Books, which eventually evolved into a Chapel Hill grunge band for tax purposes when we all headed South to the Research Triangle as graduate students. Boy, did we rock. What the Beats did for poetry, we did for grunge. Probably our greatest album was "Alternative Girls." You've most likely heard the title track on your college station-- it's the one that goes "Alternative girls never know my name, alternative girls are the ones who dress the same," but it's pretty difficult to make out the words in the song, as we were trying to sound authentic. It was pretty autobiographical, though.
Then, in 1994, the spirit manifested itself as the world's largest literary warship, flagship of the renaissance generation, The Jolly Roger, dedicated to restoring Law and Order to literature, and reuniting Words with Plot, Character, Structure, Form, Content, Meaning, and Divine Glory. While sailing aboard the Roger, we settled the world's largest virtual classical community upon several websites, some of which were recently reviewed in a cool article in The New York Times. Music couldn't capture the Apollonian concepts that we had been born to express, such as Fidelity, Prudence, Commitment, Character, Virtue, Loyalty, and Reverence, and we found ourselves far more at home upon this profound new medium rooted within the printed word, the World Wide Web. And besides, grunge wasn't ours-- it was pretty much the corporate pagan's, and it wasn't too much fun working for them, having to follow all their stringent marketing-manager rules and conforming to their aging, nihilistic mindset, so we quit.In the near future, as we boldly captain the flagship of our generation's aesthetic renaissance, we hope to open a chain of Classicals Cafes/Bookstores, resembling the one pictured above, which can be enjoyed at 667 West Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC. We're not interested in making a lot of money, or anything, but we think it'd be cool to foster a more profound culture. We recently entered a new-ventures competition in the Kenan-Flagler business school, as the business school is next to the physics department, and we thought we'd say "hi." We presented our maverick business plan, explaining that we expected to be paid in poetry, as it's the most profound and enduring currency that has ever been printed upon paper, but the professors' and judges' foresight did not encompass eternity, and we finished second. But as is so often the case, that which is not approved by the reigning expert's imaginations is approved by Natural Law, lifted by the Invisible Hand, and realized by Providence.
Remember how in the opening of Moby Dick Ishmael walked the winter streets of New Bedford, seeking shelter from the "very dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold and cheerless?" That's how we felt, walking through the fog-laden, scuttled halls of academia. Remember how he stood before the Crossed Harpoons and then the Sword-Fish Inn, and regarded them as "too expensive and jolly?" That's how we felt standing before the 90210/yuppie bars on Franklin street. And remember how Ishmael "followed the dreary streets that took me waterward, for there, doubtless, were the cheapest, if not the cheeriest inns." Well it is within this metaphorical waterward locale where we have built the first Classicals Cafe, knowing that the greater souls are perpetually drawn by the one element in which they can see their infinity reflected-- the sea. Classicals Cafe, the home port of The Jolly Roger, is pretty plain within, with spartan second-hand furniture and a rudimentary menu, but it's lined with shelves carrying all the Great Books, both new and used, and thus it shall do as shelter from the postmodern fog. If ye would like to own and operate one, and enjoy the view from a beacon of Western Civilization, drop us a line.
Classicals is a sailor's club for rugged seafarers seeking to swap yarns about placid literary journeys as well as ruthless battles fought in the popular culture and academy. There's a silent rebellion rising about the globe, and Classicals is a naval officers' club for all the brave souls seeking to liberate literature from postmodern politicians and insolent pedants who have been dictating unto the people as if they were poets. It's a laid-back hangout for members of Jefferson's Natural Aristocracy, where the Classical Literary Gentleman can feel at home, where quiet erudition, character, rhyming, metered poetry readings, and subtle profundity reign superior to intoxicated pretense, dissolution, myopic yuppie jazz, intellectual apathy, Hollywood triteness, and moral indifference. Cigar smoke mixes well with Poe, Hamilton, Stevenson, and Melville, but it grates upon the senses when it wafts amongst those bearing pretentious facades. If yer going to smoke like a man, ye might as well think like one. And while we're on the subject of pretentious facades, have ye noted how the present secular culture oft rewards the bearers of pretense, the unmoored relativists, while punishing the honest and those who openly express their more profound spiritual aspects? As Jonathan Edwards, one of the first Puritan presidents of Princeton, reminds us,
We find that true saints, or those persons who are sanctified by the Spirit of God in the Bible, are called spiritual persons. . . those who are spiritual are set in opposition to natural men, and carnal men. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them; because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things." (I Cor. 2:14-15).So it is that we, as reverent scholars of the sober soul, have been granted the right to judge. For over five thousand years the Great Thinkers, from Moses to Socrates to Jefferson to Einstein, have agreed that the contemplative, educated, rational mind enjoys a far deeper existence than the idle, shallow, or numbed mind, and as it is profundity that we are after, it are their words which form the context in which we write as well as in which we live. The greatest of all poets, Shakespeare, bore mankind's soul while keeping his own shrouded, but none can deny that at the base of his wondrous, thundering words existed a most profound, moral conscience. How could one conceive of Hamlet if one had not walked in Hamlet's shoes? So it is that we perceive Great Characters to reside at the base of all the Great Works of Western Civilization. And as the Great Books lie at the center and circumference of the most regal community upon the web, by the transitive property we may conclude that the Classicals context shall be best enjoyed by ladies and gentlemen of noble character and immaculate integrity. And we salute ye, for character is fundamental to our precious liberty, as John Adams reminds us:
And liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know-- but besides this they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible divine right to the most dreaded, and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers.Take these words to heart, mates. Those in my generation who find themselves yearning for political office will do well to discipline and refine their characters with classical educations, for I say that as this generation awakens to a renaissance, it shall find itself seeking moral, erudite leaders.
In celebrating the grand opening of our first Classicals Cafe, we would also like to commemorate Mr. Drake Raft's engagement to Ms. Bootsy Starbuck McCluskey, which would merit an entire novel in and of itself, but will have to be summarized by Drake's engagement poem and Bootsy's original letter to Drake, A Nantucket Ghost Story. Congratulations guys!
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This Ring I cast my gaze upon the deepest soul, Saw a rippled reflection in your eyes, Strength and beauty upon the shallow shoal, While that which I love so much deeper lies. Character and prudence I've come to know, Compassion for the weak and the weary, Charity for those whom you help to grow, A symphony when all else is dreary. And girl we're going to get out of here, Just two spiritual rebels on the run, No money-- just hope, and all the good cheer, Knowing that this renaissance has begun. And in its context these words shall reside, I say they'll live to see eternity, After we've been laid to rest side by side, When even diamonds shall no longer be. The closer I get, the more I am free, These words are the ring, if you'll mary me. |
When Samuel Adams' daughter, Hannah, became engaged to Thomas Wells, Mr. Adams presented Thomas with some cool advice:
The Marriage State was designed to complete the Sum of human Happiness in this Life. . . I could dwell on the Importance of Piety & Religion, of Industry & Frugality, of Prudence, Economy, Regularity & an Even Government, all of which are essential to the Well being of a Family. But I have not Time. I cannot however help repeating Piety, because I think it indispensible. Religion in a Family is at once its brightest Ornament & its best Security. The First Point of Justice, says a Writer I have met with, consists in Piety; Nothing certainly being so great a Debt upon us, as to render to the Creator & Preserver those Acknowledgments which are due to Him for our Being, and the hourly Protection he affords us.-- Samuel AdamsNow Samuel Adams was one of the founding fathers known as "the last Puritan," and to tell the truth, we think his advice rocks. "What God has joined together," we learn from Religion and nowhere else, "let not man put assunder." So it is that in order to lend to the consecration of Drake and Bootsy's wedding, as well as to all future weddings to take place amongst the members of this generation and all generations to come, we have erected the Chapel by the Sea, and we have enlisted a minister who has been eternally preserved in the pages of the greatest book penned upon the American shores. Father Mapple from Moby Dick graces our Pulpit, and the enlightened who have read the book shall recall his eloquent sermon regarding Jonah, who was swallowed by a whale for disobeying God and fleeing upon a ship when God had called upon him to speak the Word in his city. I guess we were kind of fleeing in our own right, when we were playing in a band instead of utilizing our Apollonian talents to pen the Truth. I remember the night Drake realized it, and read the chapter from Moby Dick just before one of our gigs in Wilmington. And it is no small coincidence that Hurricane Fran hit the coast that howling Spetember night, and canceled the show halfway through our opening number. As Father Mapple stated:Shipmates, this book of Jonah, containing only four chapters -- four yarns -- is one of the smallest strands in the mighty cable of the Scriptures. Shipmates, it is a lesson to us all as sinful men and a lesson to me as a pilot of the living God. The sin of Jonah was his wilful disobedience of the command of God.--Moby DickBut Jonah repented, and even rejoiced in his punishment, and returned to serve his Lord. And Father Mapple closed the sermon with,when the word of the Lord came a second time; and Jonah, bruised and beaten- his ears, like two sea-shells, still multitudinously murmuring of the ocean- Jonah did the Almighty's bidding. And what was that, shipmates? To preach the Truth to the face of Falsehood! That was it! This, shipmates, this is that other lesson; and woe to that pilot of the living God who slights it. Woe to him whom this world charms from Gospel duty! Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God has brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please rather than to appall! Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness! Woe to him who, in this world, courts not dishonor! Woe to him who would not be true, even though to be false were salvation! Yea, woe to him who as the great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching to others is himself a castaway! . . .But oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the top of that delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep. Is not the main-truck higher than the kelson is low? Delight is to him- a far, far upward, and inward delight- who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self. Delight is to him whose strong arms yet support him, when the ship of this base treacherous world has gone down beneath him. Delight is to him, who gives no quarter in the truth, and kills, burns, and destroys all sin though he pluck it out from under the robes of Senators and Judges. Delight,- top-gallant delight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a patriot to heaven. Delight is to him, whom all the waves of the billows of the seas of the boisterous mob can never shake from this sure Keel of the Ages. And eternal delight and deliciousness will be his, who coming to lay him down, can say with his final breath- O Father!- chiefly known to me by Thy rod- mortal or immortal, here I die. I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this world's, or mine own. Yet this is nothing: I leave eternity to Thee; for what is man that he should live out the lifetime of his God?We hope that ye sign yerself up for the weekly sermon, taken straight from the King James Bible, and that ye come by each week to discuss it at the Chapel by the Sea.
II. The Founding Fathers In composing a brief summary of our history, we naturally have found ourselves saluting the people from whom we draw continual inspiration-- the founding fathers of The Western Heritage, and especially the founding fathers of the United States of America, who were able to blend all the most noble aspects of Religion, the Classics, Science, and the Enlightenment in devising a republican government which regards all citizens equally beneath the Laws, and which supports all that we publish and all that we believe via the First Amendment. Check out our Declaration of Literary Independence, which was originally drafted in March of 1995, commemorating the inception of our literary freedom upon the WWW.Just as the Puritans and countless others settled the new world with dreams of spiritual freedom, so too has The Jolly Roger been transporting people yearning for a moral aesthetic freedom to a world where the classics are cherished, honored, read, and discussed. Whereas the expatriot bastions of postmodern deans, administrators, and record executives are highly-skilled in producing burgeoning material wealth, they are incapable of authoring the spiritual, intellectual, and moral renaissance that my generation finds itself yearning for. The postmodern ladder so many boomers ascended to secular success could never support the more profound spirits.
Circumambulate the college campus, friend, and ye shall see the marriage of the negating spirit of multiculturalism to the essenceless spirit of business "science" curriculums, and I say that it is a perfect match, for while one scorns the higher aesthetics and prophets of Western Civilization, the other is immune to them. Do not get me wrong here, for I am speaking neither against diversity nor business, and certainly not against the idea of the University, for we own one of our own. As classical liberal scholars and cultural conservatives, we are most diverse in nature. The works represented by our sites span over five-thousand years of mankind's global pursuit of morality and freedom. The Bible itself spans the two most profound and influential religions in the Western world. And can anyone name a better business plan than the U.S. Constitution, which provides the Laws by which virtually all modern commerce is conducted, while simultaneously transcending mere monetary goals and protecting the people's most fundamental rights? At Classicals.com we diversify in all kinds of eternal commodities, and we faithfully invest our souls in the printed word, knowing that we shall reap perpetual returns.
And who was ever a better representitive of Diversity and Business than Benjamin Franklin, the American Enlightenment's Proteus. Scientist, businessman, statesman, journalist, diplomat, man of letters, and international celebrity, he was kind enough to compose the most awesome autobiography, wherein he chronicled his business, moral, and intellectual philosophies, which were one and the same, as they so often are in men of profound Character:
I never doubted. . . that the most acceptable Service of God was the doing Good to Man; that our Souls are immortal; and that all Crime will be punished and virtue rewarded either here or hereafter; these I esteem'd the Essentials of every Religion, and being to be found in all the Religions we had in our Country I respected them all. Tho' I seldom attended any Public Worship, I had still an Opinion of its Propriety, and of its Utility when rightly conducted. . .And on his self-education and diligent reading habits:This Library afforded me the Means of Improvement by constant Study, for which I set apart an Hour or two each Day; and thus repair'd in some Degree the Loss of the Learned Education my Father once intended for me. Reading was the only Amusement I allow'd myself. I spent no time in Taverns, Games, or Frolics of any kind. I was in-debt for my printing house, I had a young Family coming on to be educated, and I had to contend with for Business two Printers who were establish'd in the Place before me. My Circumstances however grew daily easier: my original habits of Frugality continuing. And My Father having among his Instructions to me when a Boy, frequently repeated a Proverb of Solomon, "Seest thou a Man Diligent in his Calling, he shall stand before Kings, he shall not stand before mean Men. I from thence consider'd Industry as a Means of obtaining Wealth and Distinction, which encourag'd me: tho' I did not think that I should ever literally stand before Kings, which however has since happened; for I have stood before five, and one even had the honor of sitting down with me, the King of Denmark, for dinner."From time to time we have been accused of arrogance upon our sites for doing nothing more than being outspoken about the Convictions and Ideals we hold dear. This is one of the more pronounced ironies of this inverted postmodern age, that those who humble themselves before God and the Greats should be considered arrogant. For we are the most humble men aboard the Good Ship. We have humbled ourselves before the profound rugged individuals who labored countless collective hours to pen the definitive Laws which today protect the entrepreneurial soul's Natural Rights in America. We have humbled ourselves before Plato, who explained how so often it is that those who truly see are banished from the government's helm, while the mediocre mob institutes a blundering bureaucracy and siezes control. We have seen these same sentiments echoed in Madison's, Hamilton's, and Jay's Federalist Papers, wherein a government with checks and balances is proposed, to protect the minority from the multitudes, and to protect the multitudes from the minority, and to provide both with the freedom to own private property, in both the spiritual and material sense. Socrates, my eternal friend, speak the wisdom by which we have captained The Jolly Roger through treacherous postmodern fogs and hostile harbors, on towards the fresh green breast of Kill Devil Hill, the pastoral campus of Western Canon University, the mystique of the starbuckclassicalpoetry.com Poetry Port, and the gratious reverence of Federalistnavy.com:Imagine then a fleet or a ship in which there is a captain who is taller and stronger than any of the crew, but he is a little deaf and has a similar infirmity in sight, and his knowledge of navigation is not much better. The sailors are quarrelling with one another about the steering-- every one is of opinion that he has a right to steer, though he has never learned the art of navigation and cannot tell who taught him or when he learned, and will further assert that it cannot be taught, and they are ready to cut in pieces any one who says the contrary. They throng about the captain, begging and praying him to commit the helm to them; and if at any time they do not prevail, but others are preferred to them, they kill the others or throw them overboard, and having first chained up the noble captain's senses with drink or some narcotic drug, they mutiny and take possession of the ship and make free with the stores; thus, eating and drinking, they proceed on their voyage in such a manner as might be expected of them. Him who is their partisan and cleverly aids them in their plot for getting the ship out of the captain's hands into their own whether by force or persuasion, they compliment with the name of sailor, pilot, able seaman, and abuse the other sort of man, whom they call a good-for-nothing; but that the true pilot must pay attention to the year and seasons and sky and stars and winds, and whatever else belongs to his art, if he intends to be really qualified for the command of a ship, and that he must and will be the steerer, whether other people like or not-the possibility of this union of authority with the steerer's art has never seriously entered into their thoughts or been made part of their calling. Now in vessels which are in a state of mutiny and by sailors who are mutineers, how will the true pilot be regarded? Will he not be called by them a prater, a star-gazer, a good-for-nothing?Of course, said Adeimantus.
Then you will hardly need, I said, to hear the interpretation of the figure, which describes the true philosopher in his relation to the State; for you understand already.
Certainly.
Then suppose you now take this parable to the gentleman who is surprised at finding that philosophers have no honour in their cities; explain it to him and try to convince him that their having honour would be far more extraordinary.I will.
Say to him, that, in deeming the best votaries of philosophy to be useless to the rest of the world, he is right; but also tell him to attribute their uselessness to the fault of those who will not use them, and not to themselves. The pilot should not humbly beg the sailors to be commanded by him--that is not the order of nature; neither are `the wise to go to the doors of the rich'--the ingenious author of this saying told a lie--but the truth is, that, when a man is ill, whether he be rich or poor, to the physician he must go, and he who wants to be governed, to him who is able to govern. The ruler who is good for anything ought not to beg his subjects to be ruled by him; although the present governors of mankind are of a different stamp; they may be justly compared to the mutinous sailors, and the true helmsmen to those who are called by them good-for-nothings and star-gazers.
Precisely so, he said.
For these reasons, and among men like these, philosophy, the noblest pursuit of all, is not likely to be much esteemed by those of the opposite faction; not that the greatest and most lasting injury is done to her by her opponents, but by her own professing followers, the same of whom you suppose the accuser to say, that the greater number of them are arrant rogues, and the best are useless; in which opinion I agreed.
--Plato's Republic, BOOK VI
One of the wonderful things about the American Founding was that it was penned by philosopher statesmen such as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and Benjamin Franklin. As bureacracies did not yet control any aspects of education in America, the word "intellectual" had not yet been equated with pedantry and buffoonery. Men rose to the pinnacles of erudition not by diplomas, but by their own devices, and the best and the brightest convened at the helm of the brand new nation. All bureaucracies are by nature pyramid schemes, and the broader men, who span more than one block at the base, possess too much breadth to rise to the top. So it is that the renaissance man, higher culture's greatest asset, is exiled in ages of specialization. And the greater the bureacracy, the narrower the men who preside over them. Big government favors small spirits.
The profound leader engages in politics, but is dictated unto by the immutable tenets of his charactacter, while the the postmodern leader knows of no immutable tenets, and is dictated unto by the appetite arising from the void at the center of his core. Postmodernists enjoy justifying their treachery and underhandedness by asserting that the nature of politics has always been thus, but there again they mislead. For there exists two types of politics-- politics in the service of that which is Good and Right and True, and politics in the service of utter selfishness. As all institutions are ultimately subject to God's Natural Law, corrupt politics, separated from a profound governing spiritual force, shall lead to the demolition of all institutions afflicted by it.
The WWW has afforded us the opportunity which the universities could not-- to live our lives in a profound classical context, and to ascend while so much declines. We know the meaning of General Washington's words:
Standing as it were in the midst of falling empires, it should be our aim to assume a station and attitude, which will preserve us from being overwhelmed in their ruins.III Sailing Towards A Classical Popular Culture The constant theme throughout all of our websites has been the creation of a popular culture in the context of the timeless classics. Upon reading the eloquent documents and letters penned by the founding fathers, it became apparent that America was founded upon a rich combination of classical and Judeao Christian ideals. From Cicero's commentary on statism to Moses's moral philosophy to the works of Shakespeare, our founding fathers such as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton all read and wrote in the community of eternal souls. These men were the ultimate intellectuals, and there was not one Ph.D. amongst them. We have recognized that what made them great was their ability to contemplate in the Judeo-Christian-Classical-Scientific context, embracing the virtues of all these pursuits, while being wary of potential abuses. It is this fundamental moral and intellectual context of the American Founding, along with all the contemporary advances, which we are striving to capture and preserve upon all the websites affiliated with The Jolly Roger and Classicals Inc.The general cultural decline that all those endowed with perception and honesty will agree to is largely due to the eclipse of aesthetics by psuedo-scientifc, political, and pernicious minds. We have chronicled all these elements at Western Canon University.
As literature is written not only to be read, but also to be lived, the only mechanism by which Law and Order can be restored to literature is by the millenium's renaissance. Thus the three sonneteers have devoted all our efforts towards realizing this task.
As brevity is the soul of wit, perhaps two couplets best capture the essence of our ongoing literary endeavors, from the christening of The Jolly Roger in 1995, to the yet to be Classicals Cafe:
Oak planks of reason, riveted with rhyme,
Designed to voyage across all of time.and,
Technology cannot change what words mean,
There's yet us, the phantoms in the machine.Like most lasting memories from one's college years, it all began as a joke. It started out as a secret society at Princeton, The Princetonians After Dark, and it soon evolved into The Jolly Rogers about ten minutes before we convened for the first official meeting. We were seniors at Princeton with a week of exams yet left in the spring semester, and everyone who hadn't been let into a secret society yet was feeling a bit nervous.
There is a tide in the affairs of men, as the saying goes, and as Becket had stumbled upon a treehouse a week earlier while taking a shortcut through the Institute for Advanced Study woods, the time was ripe. After we'd composed and delivered the invitations on a portentous, thundering, late May night, it began to dawn upon us that we'd done it all just a bit too well. We realized that all forty people were going to show up the next night, at five after midnight, at the ramshackle treehouse half a mile out in the Institute woods. We'd christened the treehouse the Pirate's Nest on the maps we'd included in the invitations, just to make sure that all the inductees would have no doubts as to our authenticity. 
So we rounded up a few more people and props, and we secured officers and created a history which dated the secret society back to 1772, and allowed us to include James Madison as one of the founding fathers, for he had attended Princeton sometime around then. That would be the same James Madison who said,
"Without educated citizens, popular government is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both."Then came the moment where we had to formulate some sort of a mission statement, so we decided to devote The Jolly Rogers to the Great Books, as all credible secret societies must be associated with banned substances and daring deeds performed in the dark of night. All romance is a rich blend of the profound and the forbidden, and in the excommunicated rhyming, metered poetry penned by dead white males we found both. Thomas Jefferson had once said, "I cannot live without books," so we made that the secret motto on the invitations, to be revealed only at meetings or in times of extreme crisis.The name "The Jolly Rogers" derives from the black pirate flag with the skull'n'bones, which is known as a Jolly Roger. The origin of the name is credited to French buccaneers, who used to fly "pretty red" pirate flags, or "joli rouge". The Devil was often referred to as Roger by sailors of yore, and as pirates prided themselves in their profound sense of humor and irony, joli rouge soon found itself transformed into Jolly Roger. Now what you have to realize about pirates is that they didn't like fighting or bloodshed any more than the rest of us, so the whole purpose of the flag and their attitude was to scare the bejesus out of their intended victims, so that they could claim their loot and peacefully part, after marooning the commandeered ship's crew. That's exactly how we were. We didn't want to spend any time arguing with feminists or petitioning or hanging out with intellectually-indifferent administrators. Most of the student-government people got on our nerves, and most of them were ardent about brown-nosing the entrenched liberal establishment, so we never considered dealing with them a day at the beach. We needed something that would psyche them out-- something that would prevent them from messing with us while we pirated the profound from their institutions, and set about returning it to its rightful owners, the people. By calling ourselves "Conservative Scholars of the Western Soul," we basically hoisted a pirate flag in the middle of campus, and a seismic tremor resounded about the globe, as the collective hair on the back of the collectivist scholar's collective necks bristled simultaneously. We'd been at Princeton for three years, and maybe we hadn't been hanging out in all the right places, but we hadn't run into all that much in the way of the profound, and naturally we came to the conclusion that somebody, somewhere, had buried it. And when Becket metaphorically hoisted the pirate flag in his creative writing class one day by writing a love sonnet which rhymed, the fringe feminist tipped her hand and attempted to kick him out of class. Guilt was written all over her face.
The Jolly Rogers secret society was how Drake, Becket, and I spent our last week at Princeton back in 1991, and today the underground organization is still in existence, even though having actual members and meetings has detracted from the original spirit. We could tell you more, but we would have to kill you. Let's just say that the same romantic sentiments embroidered throughout spires and gargoyles at Princeton carried over into all the websites affiliated with The Jolly Roger. Make no mistake-- we shall be forever endeared to Princeton's ineffable mystique. Hope shall spring eternal from our alma mater. While the postmodern secular administrators' hardening, minds age beyond the rising context, the youth about which Princeton is centered shall yet be able to dream, and I say that all who are brave enough to dream shall share in our renaissance.
As previously alluded to, upon reading the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, and the eloquent letters penned by the founding fathers, it soon became apparent that the founders of America and the founders of Classicals Inc. possessed many of the same attributes. Both Classicals and the United States of America were founded by a group of well-read colleagues who were as passionate about freedom as they were about literature, morality, and God, and both maverick societies were created by men who lived in houses without central heating. Our hideout, which stands eight miles west of Chapel Hill down Jones Ferry Road, is pictured below: 
Both Classicals and the free, democratic republic of Amercia were detested and feared by tyrannical elements, including the King of England and the postmodern academy and publishing world. Of course we humble ourselves before the giants of the American founding, as they were risking their lives while all that we're risking is our future job prospects in American academia and a mention in the Chronicle of Higher Education or Rolling Stone. If Alexander Hamilton could go down in the duel that Aaron Burr challenged him to after Hamilton allegedly cast some aspersions upon Burr's name during a presidential election which Burr lost to Jefferson, the least that we could do would be to defend to the metaphorical death the Western Heritage and our freedom to create in its rich context. In contemplating the upcoming duel with Burr, Hamilton stated,My religious and moral principles are strongly opposed to the practice of dueling, and it would ever give me pain to be obliged to shed the blood of a fellow-creature in private combat forbidden by the laws.And yet he dueld, and those who were present say that he purposely fired a wild volley so as to miss Burr. But Burr did not hesitate to deliver the shot which killed this self-made man, born out of wedlock in the Caribbean, with neither a father nor a fortune to his name. Yet even so, in revolutionary America, he enlisted in the army, was appointed an aide-de-camp by General Washington, and went on to help compose the Federalist Papers and theUnited States Constitution. Although he fought for his country and died in a violent event, Hamilton also penned,... the very finer feeling of a delicate mind revolts from the idea of shedding human blood and multiplying the common evil o[f] life by the artificial methods incident to [war]. Were it not for the evident necessity and in defence of all that is valuable in society, I could never be reconciled to a mili[tary] character...(sic)
Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton are guys who we'd have wanted to go have a beer with, in the traditional sense of "having a beer", which falls far short of the average state of presence at a Dave Mathew's concert. The founding fathers would've been most fun to hang out with while their minds were at their peak acuity, neither burdened nor blunted by alcoholic substances. Speaking of beer, due to a combination of the shortcomings of the liberal educational system and the rambunctiousness of coroporate America, many of my peers have come to believe that Samuel Adams is a beer, where in reality he was one of the founding fathers known as "the last puritan" (as previously alluded to), or as Thomas Jefferson described him, "the patriarch of liberty." Samuel Adams wrote to James Warren
Since private and publick Vices, are in Reality, though not always apparently, so nearly unconnected, of how much Importance, how necessary it is, that the utmost Pains be taken by the Publick, to have the Principles of Virtue early inculcated on the Minds of the children, and the moral sense kept alive, and that the wise institutions of our ancestors for these great Purposes be encouraged by the Government. For no people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign invaders.How we wish we would've known him at Princeton! He would've gotten a kick out of The Jolly Rogers. And it makes ye wonder-- where are the Madisons of our generation? How come Details isn't locating them and interviewing them? Perhaps the noble task, as well as the awesome opportunity, has been left to The Jolly Roger.Just as we noted the lack of the profound upon the Princeton Campus, so too have we noted the same in the culture at large. My generation has neither a writer nor a common literature, nor do any large-cirulation magazines exist anymore where an aspiring writer can submit their poetry or prose. Nobody in my generation is looking to Details nor The New Yorker to introduce the voice of our generation, as the industry lost it's literary credibility long ago by repeatedly attempting to market books like Less Than Zero and Generation-x as "The Catcher in The Rye of The Grunge Generation." There was only ever one Catcher in The Rye written for this generation, and it was penned by J.D. Salinger.
Just as the university campuses have no core curriculum nor sense of "things to be known," my generation has been given no literary rules by which to play by. Postmodern administrators commandeered Nietzsche and levelled all literary aesthetics enroute to hiring and tenuring professors based on politics, gender, sexual orientation, and race. Aboard The Jolly Roger we have always contended that the eternal soul knows no color nor gender, and that it are the eternal elements by which all intellectual works should be judged. For only the eternal elements can become classics by enduring generation after generation. All polemics, bureaucracies, and fads shall fade, and thus these entities, while prevalent in the popular culture and mass-educational institutions, are not included amongst our literary aspirations.
Today our dream is to create a classical context-- to lay the foundations for the millenium's renaissance. The WWW is allowing us to unite the scattered lovers of classic literature about the globe, and even as seafarers whose eyes have never been opened to the glories of literature come across our sites, a forgotten aspect within their spirits is awakened. We have a stalwart faith that the Classics are capable of signifying something to everyone. After all, they're Classics. By finding words for rising cultural sentiments, by serving people with poetry and prose that exalts their souls, and by providing discussion forums for people to share the beauty of the Great Books, we are creating the living context within which new classic literature will be penned. Only those who honor yesterday's Greats shall be honored by tomorrow's. All great journeys begin with a single step, and that first step is most always a bold vision rendered by an individual wielding a pen. History has known no greater entrepreneuers than the authors of the Great Books, for each Great Book is a small literary business which endures throughout eternity, providing both spiritual and monetary wealth.
After shopping around his first novel,The Drake Raft Field Trip, to New York publishers, Elliot received many encouraging letters stating that while they liked the book, they were uncertain of the contemporary market for an author's first literary novel, and thus they would have to pass. That was awhile back, and since then he has found that market upon the web, and a draft of the book which has been stapled together at Kinko's can be bought at http://jollyroger.com/rogerlodge.html. Elliot is currently working with an agent on revising the draft. They shall be able to approach the publisher with not only a contemporary novel written in a classical conext, replete with a plot borrowed from Hamlet and literary references for all who can use them, but they shall also be representing the world's largest classical community. The crew of The Jolly Roger truly believes that many editors would enjoy the opportunity to publish quality literary fiction, and we intend to give them that opportunity. The latest technology has allowed us to mary popular culture with the timeless classics, and in so doing we have defined a new literary cultural niche.
Another aspiration of ours is to translate the web-oriented classical community into a real-life community, centered about the rich context of the classics. We think it would be cool to have a chain of Cafes which showcased all of the classical literary and musical talent of the members of my generation. A place where you could buy, exchange, and talk about all of the coolest classical CDs, books, prints, and posters of classic paintings. It would be awesome if we rebelled against the postmodern boomer slackademics and held a renaissance. For the moment it's a tough dream to sell to the establishment in both academia and the corporate publishing world, for pretty much the same reasons. Both corporate America and the academies are drifting in the wake of the counter-cultural revolution of the sixties, and the power structures which exist are by and large indifferent or hostile towards words that mean things, references to traditional religion, and the idea that my generation is far more profound than what the corporate demographers and marketing managers would have the world believe. It almost seems at times that today's educational leaders are more comfortable with dealing with kids on drugs in the schools than kids who believe in God, as the first is only getting in tune to his deeper self, while the second is violating the postmodern secularist's misinterpretation of the Constitution. 
But as Bob Dylan once said, "The times they are a changin'," and I see that this generation is yearning to speak for itself. We shall be an older generation when we rebel, as our rebellion shall be an Appollonian one, rooted in the rational. It is not so much in a teen's nature to rebel against the Dionysian, as it is in the mature adult's nature to do so, especially when they have witnessed the cultural and societal decay which results from unrestrained, unchaperoned, indulgent, perpetual "me-first" yearnings for gratification and intoxication. 
The "grunge, slacker, generation-x" monikers already echo of our boredom with the popular culture that is fabricated and marketed by strictly superficial aspects, targeted towards the superficial elements. And too, these monikers are dismal locales for a soul to be consigned to. There's a yearning out here for a noble independence. We're not satisfied to write in the cultural wake of the plundering and pillaging of the world's greatest literary traditions, but rather we wish to write for the eternal community of souls. For those who have written and appreciated the classics throughout all of eternity, and for all eternity to come, are truly the memebers of our generation. So it is that a classical context must exist before classics can be read, appreciated, understood, and created. It is our goal to create this classical context. As is engraved in a wall at Western Canon University (www.westerncanon.com):
Before we take to sea we walk on land,
Before we create we must understand.So we all came down to the Triangle for graduate school at UNC, Duke, and NCSU. We kind of wanted to keep hanging out, and too, the music scene was supposed to be happening around here back in 1991 (as it still is), and we were entertaining the notion of playing in a grunge band, even though we didn't do drugs or anything. It was all kind of a joke for us, because if you don't do drugs or deal with the mandatory staged alcoholism, addiction, and abuse, you lack credibility in the rock'n'roll arena. It was like how Slash said, "It'd be different if I was a violinist, but rock'n'roll is all about sex and drugs. There's just no other way." Anyway, that really just wasn't us. I know it sounds nuts, but we'd rather spend a night rereading Moby Dick than standing around stupid at some concert. I went to the Smashing Pumpkins awhile back, and in about ten minutes I was bored. What it was was that you could tell Billy Corgan was bored. I think the eigth grade girls infront of us got a kick out of the show, but they were passing around a joint, so I guess that'll do it for you-- as long as it's your first concert.
Some people are more cut out for concerts and dance clubs and the Greek scene, and others shall find more profound relaxation and better company in Nietzsche, Plato, Shakespeare, Salinger, Jefferson, and Fitzgerald. The only problem was, where could the latter ones go? College? The Clubs? The Chancellor's office? Class? One of the reasons I ended up majoring in physics was that I couldn't stand the way the fringe feminists and postmodern slackademics kept murdering all the cool books, and as at least three-fourths of the class was strictly there to brown nose whoever was standing at the the lectern, it didn't make it any more of a picnic. In physics it was different. Nobody ever talked about anything, and I could sit there and write poetry just as soon as the professor lost me. I tried attending poetry readings, too, but that didn't work out either. I went to a couple, and they only read a bunch of rhymeless, meaningless, passionless, modern mediocrity, and everyone was just oh so polite and phony everything. The thing about poetry readings in a college town is that they always get commandeered by the local faculty. Just imagine if rock'n'roll were controlled by the sentiments of aging liberal boomers-- actually I guess that explains it.
Now although we attended Princeton, we were never required to study the great Intellectuals, Leaders, and Practical Philosophers. Princeton's an awesome name to psyche people out with when you're interviewing for marketing-consulting-management positions, but if you're looking for an education in the Greatest that has ever been thought and said, if you're looking to reap the greatest spiritual treasures, if you're looking to enrich your soul, if you're looking to gain a profound foundation upon which you can build upon and create, you're pretty much on your own. They have a nice library, but they've fired all the tour guides.
We were never introduced to the Founding Fathers of America nor the literary Greats in college, and while we can almost forgive the self-indulgent tenured postmodern boomer generation for their failure to provide this generation with an education, to continue on upon their current morally-indifferent course is a vast affront to both the great spirits of yesteryear and the children of this nation. But as usual, we write not to lament, but to exalt, for the primary purpose of Classical's Inc., from The Jolly Roger to Federalistnavy.com, is not to criticize the shortcomings of ambitious, superficial men, but rather it is to serve the children with the greatest that has ever been thought and said. We've read up on the history of the Western Mind, we comprehend our place in history, and we see ourselves as the millennium's literary and spiritual reformers. For we recognize that literature and the spirit are welded in holy matrimony, and again, what God has joined together, let not man put assunder.
For a time most technological advances in the communications arena tended to amplify mankind's more Dionysian or pagan attributes, such as Greek countenances and festivals of intoxication on the silver screen and MTV, and Trent Reznor on the stereo. Even Hollywood movies like Good Will Hunting which strive to capture the spirit of genius only end up trivializing it. For Genius cannot exist without a profound, mature, moral dedication to God and Truth. Genius cannot exist without a mystified exhilaration and bewilderment. This sense of noble destiny, this rugged individulism was found in Einstein, Jefferson, and Newton. If Will Hunting was so deeply profound and intelligent, how is it that he never noticed the cultural, literary, and moral decay of the culture which surrounded him? Perhaps he was a genius, but he was too busy reading from a liberal Hollywood script, so it was hard to tell. But that is the two-dimensional "phony" nature of Hollywood, and it is why a true literary genius, Salinger, shunned it. Perhaps Good Will Hunting is after the same Apollonian cultural elements that we are, but while the movie provides but the appearance, we provide the reality, for all intellect and all morality are primarily defined by the printed word. And now, enter a new medium, the WWW, which is rooted in the printed word, and suddenly the profound possess the upper hand. It is the printed word by which we define our characters, by which we make our promises, by which we conceive of our life's meaning, and by which we ponder all that we ponder. The printed word is the seed of all that is Appollonian, of all that is rational. For the rational cannot exist without reasons, and all reasons are presented in words.
The freedom of speech clause in the First Amendment was conceived in order to protect Appollonian forms of discourse, such as intellectual debate and the sober, printed language. Jefferson and Franklin never had any intentions of utilizing it as a justification for one's right to sell smut, degrade women, or denigrate the children's cultural context. John Adams stated, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." And it is a bold new literature that shall awaken the moral imagination of my generation.
So there you have it. That's how it all came to be. The WWW is the medium upon which the rising generation is free to define its soul, and as it lends itself to the printed word, it is the perfect place for a contemporary literary renaissance, where the permanent profound can meld with the living romance of the gothic Carolina nights. And after having said all that, I cannot deny the simultaneous simplicity of literature. I guess what it all comes down to is that we wouldn't want to live in the "Southern Part of Heaven" without setting some of youth's most sublime, yet fleeting, sentiments down in ink, as best we can, before they're gone for good. God bless ye and God bless America.All the Best & Happy Holidays,
The Crew, February, 1998
© 1997 Raft, Knottingham & McGucken. All rights reserved. Looters will have their throats slit.
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