Constitutions. For there is more than one Constitution, mate, but there are no more than two. One was a fighting frigate commissioned by the early Federal Navy, also known as Old Iron Sides, and the other is freedom's fundamental document which was woven from the hallowed fabric of the Judeo-Christian context and the Enlightenment, which are really but one and the same, even though distorters of each often enjoy bickering over pretended differences and personal prejudices. Many contemporary scholars held in high regard by other postmodern pedants will strive to teach ye that there are many Constitutions, depending upon private interpretations, but they are grossly mistaken. Their faulty view stems from the inability of their small minds to harbor the fundamental precepts of the Judeo Christian heritage and the Enlightenment, and thus when they read the Constitution, the words fail to signify the concepts and sentiments set down by the Founding Fathers. The postmodern pedants know and understand this fully well. They rejoice in their shortcomings, and they celebrate their ineptitudes-- satire is their reality, and reality, to them, is satire. They perceived the hypocrisy that existed in honorable offices and professorships from time to time, and they knew they could out-do it while also sanctifying it.

They are highly effective in signing aboard new recruits, as they bribe the members of the rising generation with inflated grades and sex without consequence, which might please the short-sighted pre-lawyer or "consultant", but which provides sour sustenance for the Statesman. And to a far greater degree than any enemy ever before seen upon this earth, the postmodern elite are capable of turning wives against husbands and children against parents, dividing the family against itself, and conquering the hearts and minds of women, children, and feminized men with promises of material paradise, all the while deconstructing superior notions of eternal honor and transforming the material economy into entirety. Their greatest weapon has been their ability to simultaneously define deviancy down in all of life's arenas, thereby eroding the traditional context which could once endure minor corruptions and assaults on decency in any given area. Look around yerself mate, and ye may see some good people falling in the relentless crossfire of deconstruction, temptation, and paganism. And the postmodernist's greatest victory has been the establishment of the general sentiments that nothing has gone awry and that things have only gotten better. Their greatest victory has been convincing so many that there is nothing to fight for.

The postmodern elite are effective in flattering and retaining loyal men and women in their ranks, as they make deans, doctors of philosophy, lawyers, and administrative bureaucrats with officious-sounding titles out of any dolt ambitious enough to forsake the Traditional Truth and submit to their stringent brand of relativism. Unlike society at large, mediocre pedants have little to lose by assuming the suits, trappings, and salaries of hollowed, politicized professorships, but as time progresses, their presence in our cultural ports only serves as a blockade to the Prophet's proper judgement.

Blind to the profound Glory of Shakespeare and Jefferson, many of these sad sophists are actually convinced that the only reason the Greats endured was because of pure politics. Politics was the sole mechanism by which their own dumbed-down intellectual existence kept afloat. It is a common human frailty to project one's shallowness and shortcomings upon all that one views, and like so many other frailties, the postmodernists turned this vice into a virtue. Thus whenever a postmodern reader cannot comprehend the profound beauty of Hamlet, the words must be meaningless. The postmodern leadership embrace the seemers at the expense of the dreamers, and they appeal to the darker elements of man's nature, turning perversions, jealousy, licentiousness, crassness, and pure politics into virtues. They leave magnificent bureaucracies in their wake of deconstruction, so that only banal conformists and uncreative souls might endure being dragged through the flotsam and jetsam in aspiring to their helms. Their current reign is a temporary, empty victory for temporary, empty men, but this does not mean that they are not formidable foes.

For the brutal pseudo-relativism they employ as a leveling scythe has a vast reach as it is swung across generations. Parents shall always have the upper hand when it comes to desecrating their children's heritage, and the postmodernists took full advantage of their positions. The wayward, corrupted boomers deconstructed the reference frame from within which right and wrong could be distinguished, and the present-day teen's sordid, sinful actions are no longer judged as wrong by those standing at the cultural helms. Without the traditional moral beacons, it becomes ever more difficult to set out in this life upon a proper course, as the very standards by which standards are defined, have been eradicated. So often now, before the child even knows it, she has crossed the line into liberalism. Before she knows it, she is deflowered, wasted, pregnant, stoned, anorexic, STD'd, or bulimic, and if she isn't her best friend or sister is. So it is that The Catcher in the Rye runs faster and faster while falling further and further behind. By deconstructing the traditional foundations for romance, the postmodern elite become ever more successful at dividing men and women. For how can she learn of trust, love, and honor, when she doesn't know her father, and how can a young man learn of the profound, humble, wondrous beauty of the woman who waits for him, when women are ordered to never wait? Without Penelope waiting on shore, will Odysseus ever return?

It was a selfish and effective strategy to commandeer the institutions of higher aesthetics with politics and perversions, and many mediocre men and women believed themselves to gain vastly in the decline. They believed themselves to gain, but they didn't. For in reality, in obtaining the positions of presidents, editors, and professors, rather than the honor and integrity of the traditional positions raising the sophists from their corrupted state and granting them a sublime diginity, the institutions were dragged down to the sophist's politicized, sunken level. Such is the nature of all institutions, titles, and honors bestowed-they only ever derive their meaning from the souls of great men, and a villain will turn a title of nobility into a bawd long before the title of nobility transforms him into a saint. From the military, to the family, to the judiciary, to the literary, to the presidency, the postmodernists have been victorious in their defeat of common sense and common decency. And it's going to take far more than litigation to reverse the course and defeat them, for at the end of the day, litigation has created nothing new. It has neither inspired the children to dream of eternal love nor to read the Greats. Litigation was the postmodernists' forte, as it is a realm which welcomes unending trivia and obfuscation, so let poetry be ours.

The postmodernists scuttled the cultural ships which once transported profound, meaningful prose to the people, pillaging the elementary schools, the middle schools, the high schools, the colleges, the universities, and The New Yorker. Though there are thousands and thousands of diligent, conscientious teachers out there and amongst our crew, there are just as many politically ambitious, intellectually-indifferent men and women who gained coveted administrative positions in academe via postmodernism's inverted ladder. And once there, they quickly made their ignorance their arrogance, their politics their principles, and bureaucracy their business. Unburdened by literary talents, passions, and proclivities, the administrator is far more dexterous in conforming and thriving in periods of decline, as it's easy for a man of small conscience to maintain his poise through all the atrocities he's blind to. So it is that the worst oft smile their way to the top, as the pinnacle is dragged down to the their level. The leaders of the Postmodern Elite, marked more often by intellectual and moral indifference than by vision, were assured good press just as long as they promised to put a smile on the decline. So it is that when we arrived at Princeton, although all the deans were smiling, a context to support our souls did not exist, and thus, in addition to writing in the tradition of the Great Books, we set about resurrecting the tradition itself.

The Postmodern Elite have the temporary advantage of being unburdened by Conscience, Principle, and Honor in this world, and thus they are free as they are quick to use deceptions, convolutions, and dervish subterfuges in furthering their nihilistic cause, while we, as true poets and philosophers, must always walk upright, mates. And in doing so we shall not be tread upon. We shall stalwartly counter treachery with truth and nihilism with nobility; we shall counter pornography with poetry, we shall refute vulgarity with values, we shall place philosophy and principle over politics, and we shall rebuild the beacons of the Greats which have been deconstructed. And most importantly, perhaps, we shall counter whining with wit and wisdom.

For with the Western Canon lining our decks, we too have many formidable weapons in this battle, and in the long run, we have the sole instrument that's proven to be victorious over all-God's moral Truth. The moral conscience is the mark of all Great Literature and all Great Men. And out here it's quite an advantage to believe in True North, as it allows our fleet to faithfully navigate by our moral compasses in the postmodern fog, while the enemy may only navigate by hubris's whimsical compass. The enemy's relativism works well enough in tax-subsidized journals, where one might sail in endless circles with no heart-felt destination, or in periods of decline, where one's objective is to gain equality by running the ship of state aground, but in a renaissance, relativism is rendered worthless. And that, my friend, is why the postmodern elite so fear the three sonneteers; for our poetic beacons shine on through the postmodern fog, placing their intrinsic meaninglessness in the greater context of a renaissance. We agree with the postmodernists that context is of the utmost importance, but we part ways when it comes to choosing the correct context. For when it comes to creating art, one would be wise to build it upon the rock of ages, and thus we prefer God's immutable context over their temporal, political one.

There are many these days who aspire to become statesmen, and I say they seem far more interested in becoming the State than becoming Men. In studying for their LSATs and forgetting to read the Greats-- the Greats who tutored Jefferson, Lincoln, and Washington in their studies of the Law-- contemporary politicians in both parties are oft bereft of the sublime nobility of internal integrity. They are but rudderless ghost ships, unmanned and unarmed, drifting wherever the winds of popular opinion might blow them, impotent in both wit and proverb, perpetually flirting with the lee shore of deceit, decline, corruption, tyranny, lawlessness, and insignificance, all to win the short-winded victory of an empty election. They write their acceptance speeches in college, and they spend the rest of their lives seeking podiums from where they might deliver them. So infinitely hard these politicians strive to gain the superficial adulation of the superficial pundits who work for the superficial press, and the better ones achieve their preeminent meaninglessness with uncontestable, selfless dedication. Their souls are structured after the popular business plans of the day-mammoth media companies without meaning, seeking to be all things to all people, while signifying nothing. Were it not for the private visions of the hard-working, faithful people of this country, and the Jeffersons, Madisons, and Lincolns who rise to help to bolster the dreams and visions which preserve freedom from time to time, we'd have run aground long ago. It is the peoples' profound ingenuity, entrepreneurship, and fortitude that contemporary politicians are in an endless race to take credit for and then punish with taxes. These STATESmen seem to take great pride in demonstrating that one may grow the economy, which they define as quantifiable material wealth, while abandoning all proper notions of values, ownership, and virtue. But had they read the Greats, they'd know that the ancients all stated long ago that serving Mammon and serving God were two different ventures. Even in their irreverence and debauchery, these modern instacrats are unoriginal. And none of them can ever hold a candle to the men they ceaselessly quote and seek to emulate, for were they Great Men, they would be content to quote and emulate themselves.

The pen is mightier than the sword, but it was not the pen alone which won the Revolutionary nor the Civil wars. And while serving God and serving Mammon constitute two different enterprises, both are necessary for a country to prosper. Politics and Principle are also often opposing forces, perhaps today as never before, but I say we have little to fear from politics if we make principle its master. So it is that the sword, finance, and politics-- the three earthly actions and manifestations of men's abstract aspirations-- must always be informed by a moral Prudence, guided by God and Reason. The Pen, God, and Principle must always be held superior to the Sword, Money, and Politics. And because this was the order of things during the American Founding-- because the Ship of State was originally launched upon this proper course, and because poets, entrepreneurs, and leaders have remained free to rise to the helm-- this country has endured and prospered for over two centuries. The First and Second Amendments exist in symbiotic equilibrium, as they defend both the freedom to think and the freedom to act-the freedom to define the law and the freedom to enforce it. And so it is that the mighty USS Constitution was but a physical manifestation prompted by the iron ideals laid forth in the United States Constitution, as words became actions, and the first two amendments were united in significance. Ahoy then Admiral Raft-- we wish ye well aboard USSCONSTITUTIONS.COM!

George Washington and John Paul Jones, Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison and Thomas Jefferson were exemplary masters of the Sword, Finance, and the Pen. All were highly-principled men, routinely crediting God with the greater gifts of life and liberty upon this earth. And as we would do well to draw upon their wisdom, as they drew upon their forebears', we have now divided our duties in a manner corresponding to theirs. So it is that Captain Drake Raft shall become our lead admiral and warrior aboard the USSCONSTITUTIONS.COM, while Captain Elliot McGucken shall take charge of the finance and technological innovation which transports you to our sites, and I, Captain Becket Knottingham, shall attend to literary matters. Of course there shall be overlap in our endeavors, just as the Founding Fathers, unconstrained by the modern artificiality of degrees and disciplines, all walked upon the same common ground. For I say we shall forever be united as "The Three Sonneteers."

And if ye would like one of us to come and speak to yer organization about any of these broad themes relating to the continuing voyages of the Good Ship Jolly Roger, drop us a line, mate! Contact us at becket@jollyroger.com, mcgucken@jollyroger.com, or drake@jollyroger.com. Be it a business, boy scout troop, college club, or church group, we'd love to exalt and entertain ye with some of the patented wit and wisdom from treasure holds of The Jolly Roger!