Comments on: The Dissident Right Has An Idiocracy Problem By Juvenal Early

By: Bill Meyer

Bill Meyer — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 04:27:53 +0000

One of our largest challenges is liberals read, and too many conservatives still watch TV, wanting their comfy pablum spoon-fed. I have a local talk show and struggle at times getting citizen involvement on issues. It takes reading, comprehension, and writing skills to combat the Communist blob admin state, but many prefer watching the “right cable shows” as if that’s an accomplishment.

By: Ilana Mercer

Ilana Mercer — Sun, 13 Dec 2020 06:24:59 +0000

Which site, in particular: The Unz Review?

By: S. Patel

S. Patel — Sat, 12 Dec 2020 14:29:15 +0000

the article bemoans the lack of good writers on the right, based on a selection of sites that conservatives stopped reading years ago. no mention why the idiocracy is not a problem for the left. or the idea that even if the best writers were still at TAC and writing the good stuff it would still change nothing. or whether any Trump supporters ever read TAC. and the author is afraid to mention the only site that still issues bold opinions, mixed with bunk as well, but nobody is forced to read everything. Ilana posts on that site, so author must know it, but pusillanimity spread fast??

By: Ilana Mercer

Ilana Mercer — Sat, 12 Dec 2020 02:56:13 +0000

Now Juvenal and Protege are jousting. OMG!

By: Juvenal Early

Juvenal Early — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 21:30:13 +0000

I had meant to skip the comments section but was alerted to a couple by a little bird (I suspect it was the perspicacious https://barelyablog.com/maga-mama-a-parrot-that-loves-potus/) Mr Geraci (well-known among the crowd who summered in Rockford, when Chronicles was published under the aegis of the Rockford Institute) I am grateful for your own memories of the magazine’s Golden Age. Mr Protege, your speculations on the great George Garrett should remain, as they are: speculative. I was tempted at first to tell you to stick your own poison pen in your ear, but I know you are a faithful reader of this website and the fine lady who rules this oasis of sanity with benevolence. I’m old enough to remember all the Buckley purges at National Review, and the disastrous consequences they had on the conservative movement, such as it is and was. Certainly, I don’t wish to go creating any new schisms in the ranks, as the post-iceberg Titanic begins its descent.

By: Dissident Mama

Dissident Mama — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 05:41:37 +0000

Agree with Early’s overall assessment, especially re: Dreher, who tries to be everything to everyone when he’s just your average liberal dipshit. If he would just embrace that, he might be more tolerable.

By: Ilana Mercer

Ilana Mercer — Thu, 10 Dec 2020 06:00:08 +0000

Yes, “Early” is a smart and easy going fella, Musil. He seems so full of details I can’t hope to absorb, that I forgot to ask whence his pen name came. I liked it; so I left it. I wonder if your guess is correct.

By: Musil Protege

Musil Protege — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 09:25:33 +0000

This is a pretty amusing read, especially in the case of Dreher, long a pet hate of my own. In fact one could devote an entire article to his shortcomings as a writer and a conservative. Or an article about TAC in general. They really did go off course the moment PJB left. I kind of remember Sam Francis wrote some articles for TAC in the early days. Wouldn’t have been many, since he died in 2005. Later, Dreher had the nerve to say what a repugnant man Francis was, in the blog he runs under the TAC aegis. TAC, as Mr Early says, should be voted off the island.
As for Mr Early himself, he certainly seems a splenetic fellow, almost to a satiric degree. He puts me in mind of a novel I once read, “Poison Pen,” by the late George Garrett. Interesting, since Garrett, a novelist who should have been better known (isn’t that the way with a lot of good ones?) was associated with Chronicles magazine over the years. He was also an English professor at UVA, a poet and a highbrow belletrist. In “Poison Pen,” Garrett was slumming to a degree (& the book put off a few people). The first person narrator (Garrett’s Alter Ego?) simply goes from one rant to another, picking his targets indiscriminately, choosing especially to focus his bile on actresses, supermodels, and other academics who write novels, who were probably friends of Garrett in real life. Sometimes hilarious, bordering on cruel, Garrett has what seems to be a good time settling scores or pretending to, and you often can’t tell what’s real and what’s a put on. I mention this book because I get the idea Juvenal Early took the same obscure novel as a model of sorts. Not only was Garrett a friend and contributor to Chronicle, he was, I think, a fan of the original satirist Juvenal, even wrote parodies of some of Juvenal’s poetry. Mr Early would certainly know who Garrett was. And of course, General Jubal Early was Robert E Lee’s friend, Lee’s “bad, old man,” and, postbellum, purportedly the man whose own efforts to provide a Defense of the Southern Cause led many Yankee court historians to label it The Lost Cause. Anyway, I hope we hear from Mr Early again, perhaps when he’s wielding not quite so poison a pen.

By: Ilana Mercer

Ilana Mercer — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 05:49:12 +0000

Bob Geraci: It helps to be a warrior writer (check), but one should be first and foremost a damn good writer. The one woman (Gracy I have not read; I'll leave that torture for "Juvenal Early") is the equivalent of barefoot and pregnant in the editorial room. She should be paid NOT to write, as my late father was wont to say about bad writers, musicians, etc. And AH litters another full website with her incontinent prose. No excuses for such prolific porridge. "Dreary" from TAC is terrible, too. I could never get through a paragraph of his.

By: Bob Geraci

Bob Geraci — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 19:26:51 +0000

One of the things I loved about the column written monthly by the unnamed former editor of Chronicles magazine was that it sometimes left me laughing out loud or it put a grin on my face a mile wide. What was it about that column that is different from what the author of this essay laments about Annie Holmquist’s prescription that we need to laugh more about the antics of the other side? There is no question as Holmquist maintains, that the left has no sense of humor; they are by and large miserable people and that becomes evident when one is engaged in any form of conversation with them. The “right” side has a deep sense of humor and no one displayed and hopefully still displays that feature more than Pat Buchanan – he was always a treat to watch on the long-gone McLaughlin Group show on PBS as no matter what, he would find a reason to chuckle and laugh out loud (just realized as I am writing this that inside McLaughlin is the word laugh!). Yes we need to laugh, and perhaps Annie is suggesting we laugh for the same reason Buchanan or the unnamed editor does, which is a laughter emanating from an understanding that the situation at hand, whatever it might be, is so ridiculously absurd in terms of its premises or arguments, that laughter is all that it deserves. But that laugh, I think is different than what the writer of the essay above is lamenting. It’s a laughter that has a bit of legitimate viciousness about it. Not just cynical, but more of a contempt while still being able to see how funny in the macro what is being laughed at really is. It’s a laughter that you know immediately that the person laughing has a grasp of history and culture which makes the perspective being offered that much richer. In addition to this critique of Holmquist, the essayist makes a sadly valid point that the right has lost to a large degree its warrior spirit.
Bob G.