GREAT LITERATURE-- THE NEXT LOGICAL STEP AFTER BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD THIS ISSUE PRINTED WITH 100% RECYCLED ELECTRONS-- FORWARD ME TO A FRIEND!

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Captains:
Drake "Red Avenger" Raft, Elliot "Ahab" McGucken, Becket "Bluebeard" Knottingham

TABLE OF CARGO CONTENTS

2. Readers Respond: Thank you, thank you, you're all too kind!

Ahoy One-eyed Jack, Captain Pleasure, Polly, Girating Rhythm, Captain Cook, Long John Silver, Chickee Ala the Sea, Bo Knows Pirates, Keelhaul, Stede Bonnet, Devil Boy, bildad, Young Jim, Fletcher, Durty Karen, Devilcruz, Aztec, Satindoll, Braveheart, Patch, Pilgrim, J james, Heidi O'the sea, Namrof The Blue, and Pegleg. Did you witness the crescent moon on this soft August eve? Ahoy Pirates of the Western Soul! Ahoy Swampfox, Gray Beard, Mercutio, Cookie, Tar Hell, Scorch, Apollo, Captain Crab, Yankee, Petard, Death Knell, Hurricane, No-beard, Van Der Vecken, Jammer, Minuteman, Trebt Reznor, and Nefarious! Are you ready to raise the anchor mates? Ahoy Quacker, Nab, The Crimson Binome, Wit Sunday, Buzzard Breath, Coo, Evil1, Billy Bones, Flying Scottsman, Rapacious, and Greek God! Feel you the evening breeze-- see you the red at night? Ahoy God's Comic Parzival, Willer, Armondo the Red, The Black Spot, Jollygreeny, Plankwalker, Satan Baby, Bandanna man, and Merciless Bounty! Ahoy to you and five-hundred other merciless souls aboard the flagship of the conservative WWW literary revolution. Tie on those pirate bandannas and prepare to rig the Roger's canvas and run down-wind in the Truth's raging gale! We're armed with the Western Canon, taking no prisoners, striking fear into the post-modernist heart, retaliating for the countless untold crimes committed against the Great Books of The Western Heritage! And a big Ahoy to the two hundred and fifty buccaneers in Blackbeard's Cabin. To join the motley crew in the captain's quarters, send the message, "join jollyroger," to jollyroger@jollyroger.com.

Last spring I caught President Shapiro of Princeton University leaning ever so slightly to the Right in the wake of the November elections. He has this page in the PRINCETON ALUMNI WEEKLY which he never uses to express his passion-- money. Instead he usually talks about how much he likes solving physics problems and reading all the great books on deconstruction which Princeton professors murder trees for, but in the March issue, he devoted a few sentences to acknowledging that the University might exist to serve the people of this nation in "certain" ways. I figured I'd see if he meant what he was talking about, or if he was just pulling a "post-modern-Bill-Clinton-create-a-momentary-reality-to-maximize-$$$-it's the-economy-stupid" while maintaining a liberal stealth agenda. Some creative writing teachers (liberal therapy session leaders) command salaries of over $150,000 dollars at Princeton, while writing crap that nobody reads, except for wackos who feel empowered when they buy a book that another wacko wrote. This is ridiculous, so I thought I'd cut Shapiro a deal:

President Shapiro Princeton University

Dear President Shapiro,

In the March Princeton Alumni Weekly, I noticed your observation that, "Universities and colleges, public or private, are public trusts chartered by the state for common interests of the nation. Although the independence of colleges and universities serves broad national interests, the state has certain rights to seek change."

Also, you said, "liberal education-- despite its current aspirations to openness and inclusiveness-- has often been an instrument of exclusion."

I agree with you in both statements, and I was hoping you might wish to take this opportunity to help liberal education at Princeton realize its aspirations. My sophomore year at Princeton Joyce Carol Oates tried to kick me out of her class for writing poems that rhymed. A version of the poems went on to become the lyrics for the hit songs of the spring's Triangle Show production. Her discrimination against my conservative views did not discourage me, nor did Toni Morrison's. I am proud to say that although I am yet a physics graduate student, my poems are already being taught in introductory literature courses. I am happily pursuing my goal of obtaining the Nobel Prize in Literature.

My poetry speaks to the deeper soul of my generation-- the part that so much of today's culture has let wither. My poetry would help you along in your noble efforts of trying to curb alcohol and drug abuse at Princeton, as the poetry introduces the students to the "high" of the rational soul, which they will find to be far superior to the "high" experienced with the beer, pot, and cocaine that I noticed as an undergraduate. I think my poetry will be more effective than having bottles of beer instead of kegs at reuinions.

I hope you take this opportunity to offer me a job teaching poetry at old Nassau. By doing so you could reassure the people of this nation that the Western values by which this country was founded, and by which it prospers, are yet worthy of being paid homage to in verse. I love old Nassau, and my only hope is to ensure that she remains committed to fostering an atmosphere conducive to an open exchange of ideas, and romance. I know I'm not alone.

For only $30,000 a year, I could add diversity to the University and provide the students with a classroom atmosphere that would awaken their subtle sense of rationale. I could exalt their souls and teach them that the words in the Great Texts mean something. And I could do it at a fraction of the cost of what it takes to employ the other professors. I am what an economist might refer to as, "a good deal."

I hope that you will see it fit to try me out for a year. When the students are as impressed with my poetic expertise as I know they will be, you can then offer me a more permanent contract-- something with tenure, and a more substantial salary. Thus I could do an honest day's work, serve Princeton, the nation, pay off my college loans, and make conservatives feel better about donating money to Princeton.

My exemplary work can be viewed on the WWW at http://jollyroger.com .

If you have trouble reaching the site, please let me know, and I'll be happy to forward a book to you.

I appreciate your committment to poetry,

Elliot McGucken.

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Well, then I waited for about five months, and this is the spine-chilling, forboding letter I received in the mail, from The President's Office, Princeton, New Jersey:

Mr. Elliot McGucken
P.O. Box 1087
Chapel Hill NC 27514

Dear Mr. McGucken:

I am sorry to be so slow in writing to acknowledge the letter you sent me last spring. I was glad to learn that you have continued to write poetry since graduating from Princeton and that your work is being used in a number of literature courses.

While I appreciate your interest in coming back to teach poetry at Princeton, there is no way that I can "offer you a job. . . at Old Nassau." Faculty appointments, here as at other universities, are initiated in the individual departments or programs and must be conducted in accordance with regular search procedures. You may be interested to know that the current director of our Program in Creative Writing is Paul Muldoon, who recently received the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry.

Again, my thanks for your letter and your continuing interest in Princeton.

$incerely,
($igned)
Harold T. Shapiro.

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Ahoy! He's not captaining the ship! The President has no say as to who gets hired or what gets taught! There's been a mutiny me friends! Notice his calm temperament and his placid tone in the face of such an atrocity! The liberal scurvy dogs must have a cutlass to his throat and a pistol to his head! Can you hear them whispering, "keelhaul", in the poor man's ear? The liberal faculty has seized control of the University, and is intent on steering it leftward into the same oblivion, murkey waters, and misery that inspires feminists to pick up quills and write! Let's help him, me pirates! Let's save Shapiro! Man the Western Canon! We'll deliver broadside blasts of Truth to his ship! Disable the masts and cut off her money so she cannot maneuver along the course of her stealth liberal agenda! Then we shall board her, untie Shapiro, and allow him to raise money for the Truth aboard THE JOLLY ROGER ! He'll be happier here, as THE JOLLY ROGER has no racial quotas, and thus is not a racist institution, like Princeton. All hands, willing to work for the Truth, are welcome aboard! I have sent him a letter, detailing our operations! I have taken care to code the most essential parts of my prose in satire, for satire, being rooted in the truth, does not show up on the liberals' radar, and it will be completely dismissed as an impertinent, right-wing, radical diatribe. But it is reality, and as sure as Shapiro is a conservative at heart, he will comprehend our noble plan to return the University to The People. Here's the plan, me pirates:

President Shapiro
Princeton University

Dear President Shapiro,

Though Shakespeare said, "Brevity is the soul of wit," Einstein contended, "everything should be made as simple as possible, but not more so." And so it shall take a couple pages to inform you why BeaconWay Press now offers a superior spiritual and intellectual product to that of the corporation you're CEO of, Princeton University. I have pirated the treasures of the Western Heritage which liberals have buried beneath layers of bureaucracy and nihilism, and I am now intent on returning them to their rightful owners-- the people of this nation. The BeaconWay Lighthouse has been erected to mark the solid ground of the Western Heritage, and too it shall serve to warn the young of the treacherous graveyard of liberalism's sinking ships, from where the Hollywood power-brokers and pop-culture sirens beckon. G'n'R used to put on a good show, before the drugs caught up, and Beavis and Butthead are intelligent and entertaining, but while we were all having a good time watching MTV, the feminists & friends rampaged the great works and seized control of literature, and now it sucks. You know there's that time they call the next morning, and right now that's what it is for my generation. While liberals would prefer that we grab another drink, light up a joint, knock our conscience back with a pill, buy another CD, put on a condom, and vote for a post-modern puppet of theirs, I think it's time we sober up. I'm personally sick of getting called a slacker and being told by liberal boomers that the voice of my generation is a heroin addict. Brought up on free love, we wouldn't mind working for some that is worth something-- I mean in the past two days I've talked to two girls and a guy who don't want to date anyone they're not going to mary-- imagine that! This country was founded upon the two pillars of individual freedom and moral responsibility, and BeaconWay Press exists to shed light upon the liberals' contemporary assaults on both.

I understand your delay in acknowledging the letter I sent last spring. I'm sure you're occupied with plans for Princeton's upcoming 250th anniversary as well as the lawsuit that has been filed against you. It is a sign of the times that scholars united in the pursuit of the Truth are unable to keep a debate out of today's tarnished courtrooms, but since liberal professors have been so effective in devaluing the language, money is now able to purchase the "truth" in many elite circles, and some with weaker spirits deem a lawsuit the only way to be heard. And among liberals I'm beginning to think it just might be.

But when it comes to the majority of people of this country, many of whom reside in fly-over country, of course I disagree with the above sentiments, for any poet knows the truth speaks more loudly than does the lawyer. The faith I harbor in the sober spirit of the people of this nation is equal to the faith I harbor in the ability of the printed word to represent the Truth. Justice, being sacrosanctly wed to the Truth, is thus rooted in language. So it is that Poetry which rings True to the people is a far more powerful device than the lawsuit in obtaining Justice.

But since cultural liberals hold race and gender in higher esteem than the language and the Truth, America now witnesses spectacles like the OJ trial, alongside Presidents with legal defense funds-- yours being the students' tuition. When Bill Bradley, another cool Princeton graduate, jumped liberalism's sinking brigantine, he was heard to yell, "The political process has become an unresponsive, self-absorbed cycle of money-raising, polling and pandering!" You proabably feel the same way, as you have a similar job, the major difference being that a US Senator is hired to serve The People, and the University President is hired to serve tenured socialists. So you don't have to jump ship, yet.

I understand too your inability to affect the hiring practices of the university, and your reluctance to attempt to do so. I don't like dealing with all the catty fringe feminists and multiculturalists any more than you do. As the motto of Princeton is, "In the Nation's Service," it must sadden you to witness Princeton being left in the wake of the magnificent changes which are sweeping this country at the grass-roots level, even though The New York Times doesn't report it because they don't want conservatives getting credit for all the problems that are being solved without liberal interference. Problems such as today's failed welfare state and nihilistic educational bureaucracies. The liberal press writes all the progress off with, "there are a lot of angry young white males out there." Actually, I'm pretty jolly to see the forces that attempted to sever my soul and amputate my conscience being defunded. The NEA and NEH serve to make the artist and scholar dependent upon the government, which anyone knows sucks if they've ever read Orwell's ANIMAL FARM (outside of a deconstructionist theory class). It's awesome out here in the real world, but the old guard at Princeton, like most tyrants, is intent on keeping the young from being born even though they themselves are dying. For the tenure system allows ideologies to exist long after their natural life, long after they are of any use to the people, long after the people of this country have voted against the failed policies of liberalism. It's almost as if the people of this country don't need socialist English professors for their Happiness. I know this is not your fault, as the chess king, surrounded by the wealth of his castle, flanked by a rook and a bishop behind his pawns, can still be check-mated by a knight, which in this case is the Truth. I know it must be tough watching the contemporary Truth be sacrificed for a dying ideology while handcuffed in awkward positions by fiscal/fund-raising obligations, so to cheer you up I'm sending on to you a little sign for your desk to kick off the '95-'96 school year, "The Buck Never Gets Here." And I don't mean the $$$$-- even though if you guys keep up the arrogance and fail to hire poets of the highest calibur such as myself, that could come to an end too.

Another drawback of the tenure system is that it does not support a free marketplace of ideas. As a successful economist you understand that a great feature of a representitive democracy is the free marketplace of political leaders it fosters. The elected leaders obey the laws of supply and demand-- you remember those curves, and thus the people are served by those picked by Adam Smith's Invisible Hand, irregardless of the liberal press's tyranical intentions. Princeton, locked in the vise-like grip of liberals of all ethnicities and sexual persuasions, now offers an inferior intellectual and spiritual product, even though its great tradition, name, and techical schools are enough to yet lure the best and the brightest of students, many of whom went to high schools where words meant things, like myself. You know? My parents and the Ohio public schools I atteneded as a young skull full of mush brought me up and educated me to articulate the Truth, and then at Princeton I was told that there was none, and then booted out of class for writing it, even though it didn't exist. It's OK for people to keep on going to Princeton for their transcripts, but for their education, you ought to tell them to go to the Great Books, like mine which will be published just as soon as some editor figures out they can make money off of exalting my generation's soul, rather than blugeoning it with more Douglas Coupland books about Shampoo.

Contrast the peoples' growing distaste for the Liberal Professor with their embracement of Rush Limbaugh. Although he has failed to garner the T.S. Eliot Poetry Award (a distinction that places him in the company of T.S. Eliot), the greatest poet of contemporary civilization, Rush Limbaugh, with a little help from the free radio market, educates over 5,000,000 people for free each and every day. Rush Limbaugh, not Princeton economists nor any government task forces, created the brand new market of AM talk-radio, which has fostered thousands and thousands of jobs. Rush Limbaugh, not Princeton nor Molly Ivins, is training the future leaders of this nation. But inspite of his noble service, I don't expect that he'll receive an honoray degree at your institution at any time in the near future. Many students at Princeton have been conditioned to enjoy the priviledge of feeling guilty about their wealth of opportunity far too much to ever let Rush be honored. They would organize sit-ins in your office to protest Rush's taking the prized privilege of being a liberal with a good conscience away from them, with his dangerous rhetoric that is rooted in Truth, guided by logic, and which massages one's common sense. Many young liberals are looking forward to being generous with other peoples' money and jobs, and if this dear opportunity is taken away from them, they will have to work for a living. Bob Dylan received an Honorary degree as an entertainer and a spokesman for the young liberal movement, but you guys are are as totally arrogant now as you were when you were stoned, and you'll look the other way as many times as it takes and keep right on dangling condoms infront of the innocent, luring them into liberalism, and kicking us out of creative writing classes. I mean hey-- I remember you handed Martin Scorsese an Honorary Degree at my graduation. Did you like the scene in CAPE FEAR where Robert Deniro bit the shoulder of the woman he was raping? I know that two of the favorite contentions of liberal "artistes" are the myths that art doesn't affect the people, and that art is merely portraying society. Well rape is a terrible thing and like feminists I don't enjoy seeing it any more than you do, and let me add that it does not portray the society I know. My friends respect women, and if ever someone were to so much harrass or slander their girlfriend or their mother, that person would be dealt with swiftly and accordingly-- Justice would be performed. And it's funny how while liberals purport that forty-five minutes on the hour of violence, sex, Rosanne, and Oprah has no affect on society, they make their living off of selling the fifteen minutes worth of add space which exists for the sole purpose of affecting the behavior of people. Now I know that as a liberal you might look at the people as idiots, and you might propound that Oprah is there because it is what the people want, and they chose her over great literature, but you are wrong. The liberals eradicated great literature, and left us with no alternative to alternative. While this is good for both David Geffen and Joyce Carol Oates, it kind of sucks for my generation. I mean the industry executives will reward you with fame, fortune, and adulation if you shoot-up-- they'll throw in a bonus if you contract AIDS-- but if we try to be different, and think, and introduce a rational and logical art to our generation, your feminist friends will kick us out of creative writing class. I always wondered what you thought about Socrates' views on Sophists. I mean I don't think he would've liked the people who made money off of deconstructing him, nor saying nothing and raising funds-- he would've liked Rush. But liberals hate him because he is one of the few contemporary radio entertainers who is inspired by truth and reason, rather than drugs. The times, they are a changin'-- it used to be that the DJ introduced the songs, but now the Pretenders' "Ohio" introduces Rush. Amen.

The feminists, multi-culturalists, and other resentniks you employ have destroyed the language and eradicated the Western Canon for a good reason-- in the context of the Great Books the inferiority of all they pen is exposed. By destroying all standards they have created a context where their tight-knit political structure can be preserved. Although their actions have made your job easier, as all that's required of a contemporary University President is the ability to perceive skin deep and count, the resentniks' actions have been devastating to the spirit of my generation. Lacking all humility in the presence of Greatness, they have exalted the role of the critic beyond that of the Creator, and they have redefined "literature" as something so utterly grotesque that those who enter the University loving the Great Books will major in physics where the Canon is not slaughtered. Thus the feminists and their socialist kin are assured better laser printers for their manifestoes which criticize Western Science. Never once, in all your President's pages in the PRINCETON ALUMNI WEEKLY, nor in your commencement speeches, have I witnessed you distancing yourself from these nutty losers. Thus, because you are President of Princeton, and because the word President is synomynous with Leader, I presume that your ship is continuing on its leftward course towards the graveyard of liberalisms' sunken vessels because the Captain wants it to. I mean it's a free country, which makes you a free man. I was just pirating around about all that hostage stuff earlier on-- it was the coded satire stuff I was talking about.

But it's cool-- like Reality, Western Science and the Pentagon do not care what feminists think, and the two have again delivered with the World Wide Web. For the WWW has fostered a Free marketplace of thought, where only words that mean things can survive. Thus the liberally-controlled markets of ideas are today being left in the wake of the Conservative Literary Revolution. Liberals, you'll remember, hate words which mean things, and thus they are at a disadvantage in this brand new medium, as words echoing the rational thought of the people, not sounds nor visions nor any of that Dionysiun Snoop Doggy Dogg-style stuff, are anchors of the messages presented. Rather than gaining empty prestige by publishing one's poetry in the liberal journals that nobody reads, the individual poet can gain a trusting audience by publishing words that mean things upon computer screens scattered across the globe. Literature's not about telling the people what to believe, as so many liberals think-- it's about expressing the reality they know. The net is the net by which we shall gather fellow fans of words that mean things. Ahoy!

Thomas Jefferson once said he could not live without books, and I can't see why my generation should be expected to, just so that the adherents of a bankrupt ideology might continue to draw tax and tuition dollars from an unsuspecting public and parents like my own who had no idea Princeton's idea of a liberal education was one where independent thinking and the Truth are scorned, assaulted, and marginalized. In an issue of The Princeton Alumni Weekly a couple of years back, where some professors arrogantly claimed that literature is officially dead, much like a liberal might do, Professor Fleming of the English department said, "I'm going to be quite disturbed if, through the institution of tenure, we establish a caste of literature professors in this country who in fact don't know any literature." While those of us who love Great Science and Great Literature perceive a tightening job market, those who Hate both Great Science and Great Literature, like Andrew Ross and Elaine Showlwater, find acceptance and a salary at Princeton. Andrew Ross's latest book was dedicated to, "all the science teachers I never had, with whom this book would have never been written." Yeah, but it would have never been printed, yow stupid, arrogant, new-age-wacko fruitcake. And while Elaine is able to publish her garbage, SEXUAL ANARCHY, I am unable to find a publisher for the Great Literature I have authored, THE DRAKE RAFT FIELD TRIP, which chronicles liberalism's attempt to take down the rugged individual Drake Raft, and everything noble, along with it. What's going on here is that the same liberal/socialist/English Professor/Deconstructionists who trained Elaine also hand-picked and trained today's editors, and thus an editorial elite now exists who are unable to serve the people with meaningful poetry and prose. Instead they must resort to Seinfeld Guides, neon Slacker Handbooks, or patting each-other on the back with literary awards that the people fund with taxes and tuition. But no governemnt nor corporation can create a literary movement-- only the people can do that. What kind of a person would waste their time writing a book called, "SEXUAL ANARCHY?"

And then there's you saying in this past spring's commencement speech, "in making the difficult choices ahead of us we should encourage our representitives to not to be shortsighted in approaching our fiscal problems, and we-- the Taxpayer and Voter, need to indicate our own willingness to make sacrifices to accomplish this end." Nay, I say-- the choice is easy. As a small business owner I have respect for the working man and I will sacrifice the taxpayers' hard-earned money and let them keep it while I endeavor to create Greatness on my own. Just get the governemnt out of my way. The choice is easy-- abolish the NEA and the NEH. Let the people choose what art they wish to purchase with their own money. Let them choose what to teach their children. If the people are too stupid to appreciate lesbian performance art and Piss Christs, then they don't deserve it. If the liberal elite want nihilism and pornography in their homes, they have ample money from selling sex and drug culture to the children to purchase it themselves. Nay-- the choice is easy-- defund liberalism. Like the firefighters in FARENHEIGHT 451 whose job it was to burn books rather than extinguish the flames which destroyed them, the primary job of the modern liberal "artiste-croissant-muncher" is to eradicate Greatness. The University bookstores have become so cluttered with all these tuition/tax subsidized liberal garbage that cool stuff is becoming harder to locate by the minute, while Algore's forests are falling. Nay-- the choice is easy-- the arrogant elite cut themselves off from the peoples' intellects and common sense so they could play politics-- now the people shall reciprocate, and cut off the liberal elites' money. I contend that the signers of the Wondrous Declaration of Independence did not pledge their Lives, their Fortunes, and their Sacred Honor to a new form of government that seizes money from the Working man to fund desecrations of the Western Heritage-- his Heritage, and God-- his God. By the time the Princeton Student figures out what you're doing with a good portion of our parents' money and money we have not earned yet, you own our college loans. I think that an interesting President's page would be an essay on why somebody such as myself who wishes to serve the people with Great Literature for a living should be expected to fund those who would blunt the souls of my peers with pornography, pronounce words meaningless, and declare Great Literature evil, thus simultaneously attempting to destroy my market, render the tools of my trade obsolete, and make my name into one of a blasphemer. I have noticed you fail to mention these aspects of reality as often as you speak your speeches or write your columns. This is because the truth is not yet deemed a fiscally responsible topic for a fund-raiser, but as my generation grows older and realizes how much of our money will be going to service the debt, I guarantee that you will find it easier to freely speak the Truth. Within the next few years I predict you will be able to use the word, "conservative," in your addresses without causing major bedlam at Princeton. In fact, I have imagined the occaision, and I have preserved the future in my novel, The Drake Raft Field Trip. The thing is, though, nobody can read it because it freaks the liberal editors out. I'm just kidding-- you can check it out at , "speech."

In the opening pages of her 1993 novel, "Foxfire, Confessions of a Girl Gang," Joyce Carol Oates, who kicked me out of creative writing class for being nineteen and loving literature, writes-- I mean fantasizes-- "Yes we committed what you would call crimes. And most of these went not only unpunished but unacknowledged-- our victims, all male, were too ashamed, or too cowardly, to come forward and complain." Nay-- I do not come forward to complain. I come forward to exalt. When I wrote of the great friendship I shared with Derek back in Ohio, Joyce elaborated on how young men often feel a homo-erotic attraction towards one-another. When I wrote of the youthful romance and the bittersweet adolescent sunsets over the Portage Country Club golf course, shared with a girl coming of age in this era tinged by the spartan liberal pop-culture, Joyce went off on how men often seek dimmer, younger women so they can become their teachers. Basically she told the class that I was a bisexual who liked his women stupid. She often compared the task of writing to "slamming one's fingers in a car door," and while I love writing, and would not do it if I did not have such a terrific time encapsulating the profound in an unparalleled manner, I can yet see where she's coming from: when I attempt to read her work, which begins nowhere, goes nowhere, and arrives in the air, I can see how she might view the writing process as something akin to, "slamming one's fingers in a car door." Reading her, I feel her pain. She had her trite games in the creative writing class that yesterday's politics had bought her, but they will not buy her literature a place in history. For she penned her words in an era where they were proclaimed to harbor no meaning, and all was politics. No future scholar will wish to wade in the waters the post-modern pedants muddied so as to appear deep. You will never witness a liberal deconstructing Ms. Oates' work because it deconstructs itself. The resentniks' literature will fail to inspire future scholars to read it in the same way that it fails to inspire the people on the street to read, for it offers nothing in return. You cannot refute this, President Shapiro, for you cannot name a single character out of Joyce Carol Oates' forty or so novels who has touched your heart or warmed your soul, for there are none to be found. She refrains from including characters in her fiction, as they would be an unecessary burden, for they are only useful in chapters where dramatic action occurs. She is read primarily by other feminists to be empowered, as they feel good by reading a woman who looks as they do. When Joyce Carol Oates said, "thoughts aren't real," I realized that she had taken away all that a young scholar has worth living for, and given him something worth dying for. Now of course I don't really care about her as a writer, but I mention her here because of the ideology she represents, and the immoral tactics she uses to propagate and preserve it. As Ahab projected the world's whimsical evil, the proud man's contumely, the unanswerable and ineffable question, the ungraspable phantom of life, upon Moby Dick, I project all the grave offences of liberalism upon Joyce Carol Oates, because it's fun. By her I witnessed first-hand the venom upon which modern liberalism is based. Plus she looks like a feminist, and she serves as verification of Rush's undeniable truth of life # 24 (not that he needs it), "Feminism was established so as allow unattractive women access to the mainstream of society." I was nineteen and I had done nothing more than love Shakespeare and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Ah, but I know what happened to Ahab, and I know enough not to let her misery become mine. Neitzsche warned against staring into the void for too long, for the void will look back into you, and you shall become it. Rather than waste time extinguishing a dying ember, I have always been one to use the water on a freshly sprouting acorn. My poetry is good enough to make a Southern girl cry, it's good enough for a distinguished physicist to quote at a lecture, but it's not good enough for the liberal elite. How about that. My poems were good enough to entertain people as the lyrics of the Hundredth Anniversary Triangle Show, and they were good enough to strike fear into the heart of a feminist, but because I write about the reality I know as a white male, Toni Morrison deemed my work as "fifty-ish and contemporarily impertiment." Joyce will not be remembered for her thoughts, which she admitted weren't real, but she will be remembered for having kicked Elliot McGucken out of creative writing class, and thus knighting him with credibility, even before his words crowned him with credibility as they reached the literature-starved people on the WWW, and things.

Perhaps you will read this and grasp its formidable essence, and perhaps you will not. But this letter was designed to exalt the honest man's soul, and that it shall accomplish irregardless, as a population equal to the entire student body of Princeton will read this within the next few days. If you were responsible as you are smart, you would organize a task force and come up with a list of books that should be taught in order to unite the Princeton community so that my generation would have something in common to converse about at dinner other than MTV. You would throw the liberal Universe into utter disarray and propose a core curriculum. You would show some leadership and emerge from behind the veil of objectivity which is so often used as a cloak for mediocrity, and you would say, "This is what is important for everyone to know. This is what an education constitutes. I know this because I have contemplated the matter, and after employing reason and logic I have arrived at the conclusion that this is what should be taught at Princeton. This is the stuff I love. These works are why I was inspired to become an educational bureaucrat, and serve humanity by raising funds so rich kids could be educated." Until you take the risk of following your passions, you shall never inspire anyone else to follow theirs. Princeton is advertised as a place where one can receive a liberal-arts education, but once we arrive there we learn that you have no idea of what one is, nor do you think it important to attempt to come up with an idea of one. In the same way that Bill Clinton is loved by the press because he has no firm convictions, you probably get along just fine with the liberal faculty because you express none either. Thus they can pursue their esoteric liberal stealth specialties, and you can preside at the graduations/benedictions as the penultimate modern scholar who believes that there are no truths, and everyone's happy, except for the fringe psychos like myself who think words mean things. But we are not fooled. You have made your move in this paradox called life, for just as, "there are no truths" is a truth, to choose to say nothing is to say a whole lot. Each time you do it you announce to all that you are a liberal. We wouldn't have such a problem with that if it weren't for the fact that all you guys are trying to hide it.

The Western Soul is at stake here, and it is the same as mine. Thus while you hesitate with your finger in the wind, while liberalisms' fleet sinks all about and beneath you, I without hesitation shall embody Princeton's Spirit and serve the nation by celebrating Poetry, Western Science, Democracy, the Free Market, and God, while you serve a bankrupt ideology, its adherents, and those who think that brown-nosing liberal professors is going to get them somewhwere. We know what great books are, because we're smart-- you can check out our BeaconWay Canon.

I love Princeton and the vast majority of the people I met there, and I only wish to serve them with a mirror of their sober spirit. The deconstructionists have done their jobe well, and now there is nothing left to deconstruct. They have razed the fields, and the time has arrived to plant anew upon the land the liberals left fallow so that they'd have ample mud to obfuscate the issues in their stealth cultural operations. The WWW is a great mechanism for sewing the seeds of The New Literature, and the wonderful thing about it is that myself and all my Generation-X peers don't need permission from the editors of Rolling Stone to do it. I mean where else but upon the glorious WWW could I exalt my contemporaries' spirits with the printed truth-- The New Yorker?

In this year's commencement speech you stood at the same spot from where George Washington once adressed his brave troops and you said, "I believe the current skepticism will in time give way to a new and broader set of objectives which we can pursue, aided once again by a sustained committment to education and the creation of new knowledge." This liberal psychobabble resembles Hillary's politics of meaning, but you're on the Right track. The skepticism you perceive is not about a faltering faith in The American Dream, like the New York Times would like us to believe, but it is a skepticism about liberalism's ability to solve the problems it has created. Your sentiment could have been stated more succinctly and accurately with, "Liberalism is being replaced by Conservatism." For The American Dream is alive and well among this boomer-labeled "Slacker/Grunge Generation-X," most of whom want their kids to grow up in safe neighborhoods and attend schools where Shakespeare is carried instead of guns, in a country where parents don't spend their children's money to fund the disintegration of families.

I understand that you are prevented from making bold actions, such as declaring the reality of the Conservative Literary Revolution, and making it mandatory for all Princeton students to check out the BeaconWay WWW site, as history shows the King is never the guy who instigates the revolution. This is because the people who form his immediate context-- the people he hangs with-- are as well off as he is in the current system, even though it is failing the people of his Kingdom. Let them eat cake, or something. I harbor no skepticism nor fear of the future, for history also shows that the Truth, like God, has a way of arising wherever it has been buried. You just wait and see, dude. I mean this is going to be fun! It is good to remember that once upon a time neither Shakespeare nor the Bible existed upon this earth. These Holy Sciptures were Given to man to fill the void that he feels as a tiny part of this infinite universe, and if the Scriptures are taken away, men will witness kids having kids and he will Create the Scriptures anew. Liberalism attracted those who saw the Great Works as separate and alien to man, for only somebody of such a disposition can believe that they have the power to deconstruct the tales and philosophies that the Great Souls preserved within the printed word. One cannot destroy the Great Books any more than one can destroy the human race, and any ideology which succeeds in accomplishing either will accomplish both. But among the young exists the resilient will to live, and this is the reason the modern liberals will fail, and the American Dream shall prevail.

I hope you see it fit to urge Paul Muldoon to consider me. While you say that you play no role in the hiring of faculty, I remember well the time you personally reversed the admissions decisions on two rejected applicants who had parents with influential bank accounts or something. I still owe on the college loans I retained at Princeton, and thus while I have no money to offer, I have something of far, far greater value-- poetry which rings true to the people.

During the recent Hurricane Felix I was windsurfing out on Ocracoke Island, off the coast of beautiful North Carolina. One day when the weather made windsurfing unadvisable, with the peaks of the swells reaching to the heavens, the troughs touching hades, and the wild wind whipping along at over seventy miles an hour, I put on my best red pirate bandanna ( http://pirate.html ), and embarked upon a little walk to witness the fury of the elements. I happened upon an old, weathered graveyard where some of the brave and mighty men of the Ocrakoke Island Coast Guard back in the eighteen hundreds had finally come to rest. They'd been drowned at sea while answering the Call of Duty. On one of the tombstones I could just barely discern the words that were etched upon it, "The sea is foaming, the wind blows with all her fury-- surely we shall hear the call of ships in distress today. And go we must, knowing that there is no guarantee of an equivalent voice ever calling us back to shore." And so I throw myself into this task, answering the Call of Duty to speak the Truth, knowing that the political forces which threaten to shipwreck the Western Soul will conspire against me own. A writer must venture forth, brave the ever-altering surf, and find the Truth without knowing for certain that there will be an audience calling for it. There is no guarantee, but the writer does not ponder this point-- he writes what must be written. Somebody has to bring to land the Great Works that Princeton University was founded to teach, and if I hesitate here, and say-- "no, that's OK, Harold Shapiro's a nice guy, he means well and he dresses nicely," this literary revolution could descend without a trace, taking my soul along with it. So I write. That is the difference between the poet and the politician, as the politician is forever facing landward, waiting to hear that which he will say. So it is that the politician follows the people, and the poet leads them. Thus the poet leads the politician, and the truth ultimately prevails. This, me pirates, is where our Faith is born. Faith is the difference between the two men-- faith in the infinite that renders the poet insignificant-- faith which makes the poet humble before God and the People, and exalts him before the political elements and the raging surf. And it's the pounding surf which young writer shall forever feel drawn to-- for away out there, upon the watery frontier, beyond all that man has touched, they catch a fleeting glimpse of the Truth. Go to any beach, my friend, and you will see the people align themselves so as to gaze out over the infinite-- for in the vast expanse we find a mirror of our souls. The same mirror we gaze into when we hold up the Bible or Shakespeare before our eyes, and glimpse our very spirit reflected back into itself. Was it not Ahab who searched upon the watery frontier for the ungraspable phantom of life, and perished in pursuit? Was it not Narsissus whose gaze riveted upon the watery mirror when he found his true semblence there? So we risk losing ourselves within the same reflection where we seek ourselves, but Great Literature shows time and again that the noble do not turn back. Socrates said, "the unexaminded life is not worth living," and his was taken away for examining too closely the infinite that made all the poets and politicians about him look silly. And Einstein, seeking to refute the whimsical theory of quantum mechanics he helped found, only found further evidence, as he looked ever deeper, supporting the fact that the highest-ordered mathematical description of reality describes nature as fundamentally unordered. And though Sisyphus never got the rock to the top of the hill, and all these Great Men never found within the seven seas the phantom ships they set out searching for, look at the beauty they left in their wakes. It is man alone in this universe that dreams of perfection, and each only for a moment. And so I write.

Ahoy! Nature is blind as she is whimsical, and I do not take her personally. She can attempt to break my heart and shatter my dreams, but I will not spend the brief time God has granted me upon this earth playing her accomplice in this. I will not break the heart of the nineteen-year-old that I once was. Upon the new medium of the WWW, standing vigilant at the wheel of THE JOLLY ROGER, I shall sail forth in this literary revolution. We are shipping tonight. And Princeton and the liberal New York editors will get to ask themselves the question, "do we wish to sign aboard eternity?"

Whereas a corporate bureaucrat such as yourself can divest himself from the corporation at any instant and jump ship, the artist is his own vessel. This reflects in the fact that while it might not matter if your ship is sinking, as you can always do something else, like run the World Bank, it would matter to me if mine were, for the hull is my soul, the sails my mind, the wind the Truth, and the captain my heart. Thus I cannot jump this ship, for I am it, and if ever she hould go down, I shall follow. And that's why THE JOLLY ROGER has been constructed from, "Oak planks of reason, riveted with rhyme, designed to voyage across all of time."

Whose ship, do you think, will the people choose to voyage upon?

Sincerly,

Elliot McGucken
Captn. of The Jolly Roger

More letters to the editor:

Date: Mon, 7 Aug 1995 03:32:40 GMT
From: matt
To: Elliot McGucken

Elliot, Are you up for any guest spots on talk-radio? There is a super am out of Denver, KOA-AM. The station reaches 38 states and 1.5 million on a good night. I have been on the station 3 times in the past month as a guest. Last week they kept me on for 2 hours! Let me know. I will be glad to tell a producer there all about you. You touch my heart, McGucken, with your words. DON'T STOP! I was reading the August HARPERS today. (Have you read it? It is on the topic of publishing on the net ..who needs publisher's row etc..) It was very you. Get a copy if you can.

Your page looks like a great resource for this tired old teacher of High School Critical Thinking class. Expect to get raided regularly. Joe

From: Eric
To: mcgucken@physics.unc.edu
Subject: Beaconway

I like your Web site. I'm surprised the University hasn't shut it down. -Eric

P.S. Check out http://www.berkeleyic.com/gop

I am delighted to see fellow conservative twentysomethings with intellectual aspirations. Living and working here in Washington DC for the government, I can tell you that there are far too many goose-stepping Newt-worshippers who don't have a clue what He stands for or what Conservatism really means. Please subscribe me to your Jolly Roger journal, and keep the Revolution alive. Thanks and good luck.

Sorry to keep writing you, but I showed some friends of mine your web pages. We were wondering if we could either publish or just reprint some of your articles that you have on the web. We would give you full credit and list your web page, too. I hope we can. We put out a newspaper, unofficial, and would love to include your ideas. Maybe we could get people to start and think.
Thank you, Derek

Thought I might drown. It's about time. I was worried for a while. I nearly went mad this evening during my English Lit class. The instructor, a certain something Serrano tends to preach feminism. Read the first 63 pages of Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing, by Kirszner & Mandell, Second Edition. ISBN: 0-15-500496-4. You must know how hard it is to read this diatribe. Nearly every analysis of every story by the authors of this book has the word "feminist", "feminism" in it. This was only our second class meeting, but I think I've figured it out and I'm ready to fight. I'll let you know how I do. Sincerely, John Kessler

Drake "Red Avenger" Raft
Elliot "Ahab" McGucken
Becket "Bluebeard" Knottingham