Grim's Hall

From the Texas Mercury:

The Texas Mercury has published some of my poetry in the past, but like the wild El Paso of song, it's a pretty rough and free-for-all place. In spite of that, I'm linking to it because I love their philosophy:

The Texas Mercury is beholden to no interest, genuflects to no god, and endorses no party. We intend to publish every view not now in the useless mainstream press, and publish it without hold or censure. We will be publishing communist, racist, hedonist, and fascistic ideas- anything novel or outside the purview of the staid politics of our day, so long as it be well written and without mercy. As we see it, modern society has all the important ideas of life exactly backwards: we are completely against the belief in sensitivity and tolerance in politics and raffish disregard in private life. The Texas Mercury is founded on the opposite principles- our idea is of tolerance and polite sensitivity in private life and ruthless truth in politics. Be nice to your neighbor. Be hell to his ideas.

I think that's got it about right. Racist and Communist ideas fall under their own weight in a forum that pulls no punches. Therefore, there's no harm in letting their advocates have an honest try.

This week the Texas Mercury has an historical debate of some interest to Southerners, continued from a previous week, as to the degree of Celtic influence in the American South and West. Excerpt from the debate:

As a prelude, I will say that virtually all people who routinely write �south� and �southern� rather than �South� and �Southern� fall into one of four categories: 1) Yankees; 2) New South liberals (who invariably desire the perverting and refashioning of Southern culture into something acceptable to Yankee WASPs: most �conservative� businessmen from the South of the past 60-80 years have been New South liberals, as are most �conservative� Republican politicos from the South); 3) proponents of American Empire; 4) ignorant.

As I said, it's a free-for-all. If you are inclined to slugfests in saloons, head on over. If you are one of my more delicate readers, please take this warning and enjoy the writings through some of the more refined links.