Jean Honore Fragonard, The Swing; 1766

THANK YOU to the small number of readers who have responded to my latest fundraising appeal. I am grateful for your support and especially for the support now and in the past of some who have given repeatedly. There are those who understandably cannot give anything.

A free press is never really free. There are always serious costs, mostly in labor and time, to producing any kind of ongoing publication. For magazines, the cost of the paper and mailing are small compared to the cost of labor. One of the hallmarks of anything done well is that it appears effortless. I like to think that is the reason so few readers help to sustain this particular garden of ideas. They mistakenly believe it doesn’t require great personal sacrifice on this end.

The Internet offers wonderful opportunities to cultural dissidents. Every day, we are up against a well-funded journalistic juggernaut. At least we have this chance to make a stand. There is never a day that goes by in which I do not turn down many possible subjects. There is so much to say about the lies and invidious manipulation we face. Unfortunately, the Internet also offers a very ambiguous contract between the reader and the writer.

In addition to doing some housecleaning of this site, I hope to put some of my writings on culture and society that have not yet been posted here in book form in order to make the labor and time that go into this site not such a drain on my family. Advertisers contact me fairly often, but I have ignored them. There must be some space that is advertisement-free. You may disagree, but that is my view. I doubt the revenue from these ads would be worth the loss of a relatively uncluttered visual space.

I regret to inform readers that for the time being I cannot continue to sustain this site at its current level. I will be posting less often and hosting fewer debates. I mean this as no rebuke to you. Please continue to send suggestions and commentary, but fewer of them will see the light of day. I am grateful, as ever, to those who have shown much confidence in this site, either in the form of donations or commentary. Many writers on the Internet receive nothing for their labor. I am proud to have kept this affair going despite this stark reality. Getting to know you and tangle with you have been great intangible benefits. “Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature,” said Pascal, “but he is a thinking reed.”

All our dignity consists, then, in thought. By it we must elevate ourselves, and not by space and time which we cannot fill. Let us endeavor, then, to think well; this is the principle of morality.

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