Monday, July 22, 2019

July 22, 2019


MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

What is THE AGONIST, and Why Should You Support It?

Friends,

Over the past several years I have passed on a limited number of recommendations involving financial matters to readers: one was to support North Carolina Representative Larry Pittman, who has led the fight in the North Carolina General Assembly to defend and protect our historic monuments, flags, and symbols of our heritage.  He needs our continuing assistance.

Just recently I have strongly recommended purchasing a superlative DVD copy of Walt Disney’s classic film, “Song of the South,” [https://songofthesouth.org/]. Currently, the Disney Company refuses to make this movie officially available, but there are sources for it, and SongoftheSouth.org is one of the best for all round quality.

Today I make another recommendation, and it is to support the work of a new online quarterly, The Agonist journal.

The Agonist journal began with a Winter 2019 issue, and since then there have been Spring and Summer issues. I have been privileged to contribute articles to both the Winter and Spring 2019 issues, and I look forward to offering future contributions.

The Agonist is a serious effort to counterbalance the unparalleled ignorance and unhinged revolutionary insanity that is seriously infecting and destroying this country. Articles and essays are thoughtful and well-presented, significant contributions to our national discussions on critical issues.

The journal needs our support; and so I pass on a letter from its editor-in-chief.

THE AGONIST Journal Needs Your Support
Dear contributors, readers, friends, and others:
Some of you have written for The Agonist journal; some of you have work forthcoming at it; some of you are readers; some of you are friends. In any case, we hope you think we have published high quality essays, book reviews, poetry, and short fiction so far.
A labor of love, this quarterly web journal operates at a loss. We did not create it to make a profit, and don't expect it to, either. We undertook this project because we wanted writers to have a medium where they could publish without being constrained by political correctness and other prejudices. To be sure, pretty much every publication purports to take chances and to advocate something called free thought, but very few actually do.
We also wanted to give writers a space for serious cultural commentary, for essays that don't try to chase headlines or the current news cycle, and that are not meant to be consumed in three minutes' time, but to serve a more rewarding (if more difficult) purpose. Finally, we wanted to help preserve intellectual and aesthetic standards in a time when they are increasingly threatened by "equality," “diversity,” and other notions of "progress."
We are very happy to have added Anthony Esolen, Paul Gottfried, Scott Beauchamp, Peter Paik, and Robert Calco to the masthead. We are very happy that each of our three issues has had essays picked up by RealClear Policy. We are very happy that, in a short period of time, we have been able to publish so many fine writers and poets. Yet we are doing this on a shoe string budget. We are not published by a "non-profit" or a think tank. We are not pushing political candidates or a political agenda.  An independent, heterogeneous, and uncompromising publication, we do not fit into the usual categories, and we think that's a good thing in this difficult and uncertain and increasingly conformist time. But to continue, and to succeed, we need more funding.
We need that funding to pay writers and to cover other production costs—again, we aren't doing this to profit. There’s no money in poetry, it has been said, and there’s no poetry in money, either. Unlike many literary journals, we don't charge a reading fee. Neither do we want to charge people to subscribe, or want to put ads on the website. We want to put our works on the web where anybody in the world can read them whenever they want at no cost. With sufficient public support, we will be able to do so.
Please therefore consider supporting our project, and if you know anybody who might do so, send him or her a link to our donations page: http://theagonist.org/pages/donate.html
By our next issue we will be able to take donations by credit card and debit card at our website. For now, we can take them by check, PayPal, and Patreon.
Here is a link to our Patreon account: https://www.patreon.com/TheAgonist
PayPal donations can be sent to c.e.grotius@gmail.com.
Donations by check can be sent to the publisher/editor:
Christopher DeGroot
P.O. Box 30512
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103

Thank you and all the best!

The Editors

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