The beginning and end of writing is an activity of the soul; that is, discourse is generated by and in turn only appreciated by the individual who is intelligent and free. Most of my friends who write, write only for those few free and intelligent souls that they know: themselves, and their friends. They hesitate to write for a larger audience because they cannot trust that any larger audience will share enough of the common experience or education necessary for words to achieve their intended effect. Without a common context, they and I fear, all the mechanisms by which language can influence the soul are rendered impotent; metaphors fail to strike home, allusions bear only false witness, and potential oracles remain as lifeless and offensive as mere chicken innards.

In our world of "universal education," citizens are nearly universally uneducated, and any potential Audience, to paraphrase Hamman and Nietzsche, is "the nobody whom everybody knows," that ubiquitous Public which, through lack of wisdom, lack of taste, and lack of will, almost ceases to exist altogether; I say almost because, as those of us who have dared address the Public know, it still possesses just enough energy to call us names, to steal our literature, and to leave death-threats on our answering machines.

The faceless Public is Liberalism; for no man, so long as he still has a mind and a soul, can deny without contradiction that he intends the Truth with his words and seeks the Right with his actions. It is only when his thinking is clouded with inhuman Theories, when his spirit is distracted by selfish Ideologies, when his appetite is falsely stimulated by the temptation of the Agenda -- only, that is to say, when he loses his soul -- that his freedom and intelligence can fade away and his voice can join the mindless droning of the Public.

Now in this day, we can fairly expect all good writing to be as hard to read for any general audience as good proverbs and aphorisms have always been to the most sophisticated thinkers: its truth will be enigmatic, but because of the reader's limitations, not the writer's. Always, however, the truth will be available. And this is why we write, and why we are willing to direct our ideas toward an unfamiliar and often reluctant Public.

Of course, ideas being what they are, they cannot be received without some effort on the part of the receptor, and so we hold no delusions about our ability to get people to think without their help. But we at Hatteras have reason to believe that there are more than a few intelligent and free individuals out there we haven't yet met, and still more waiting to strive towards intelligence and freedom -- against the best efforts of those powerful interests that would prefer a population so mild and manipulable as would have no allegiances but to the crude economic and political products that are offered for the day's consumption. At Hatteras, our allegiance is to our friends, and our friends are those who share our further allegiance to the Light which can penetrate the Fog and dissipate the Darkness. We hope that by providing a reflection of the Light we may increase the Friends of Light, that the Light may guide more souls, strengthen them, and reassure them that they are not alone.

The Editors--

Joshua P. Hochschild & Elliot McGucken, 1996