Dead Pantagruel

The most interesting conservative site out there - "a localist, decentralist, anarcho-Christian and authentically conservative approach to politics and culture" - is closing up shop. The New Pantagruel: Hymns in the Whorehouse has done nice work for three years. You may not agree with the contributors, but NP has struck an original chord for conservatism, drawing not from the sanitary hypocrisy of the religious right, or the empty-headed rhetoric of rightwing bloggers and pundits, but from Rabelais' scatological sense of the absurd combined with a gift for eloquence.

While likely not a conservative myself - whatever that means - I will truly miss them. I'll let them close with their own words. While I disagree that it is enough to love and inhabit one's own small circle, we ought to see in these words those little things we all share. Life is, after all, a "joyous catastrophe."

...to live in love with the frailty and limits of one’s existence, suffering the places, customs, rites, joys, and sorrows of the people who are in close relation to you by family, friendship, and community--all in service of the truth, goodness, and beauty that is best experienced directly. The discipline of place teaches that it is more than enough to care skillfully and lovingly for one’s own little circle, and this is the model for the good life, not the limitless jurisdiction of the ego, granted by a doctrine of choice, that is ever seeking its own fulfillment, pleasure, and satiation.

Taking that charge seriously, The New Pantagruel has, essentially, argued itself out of existence. This is a good thing. In the end, we are pessimistic romantics. We believe life is eucatastrophic: a joyous catastrophe. Instead of spending endless hours before the faceless void of the “new media,” we will be engaging the tragedies and necessities of raising families, rebuilding neighborhoods and small towns, and fighting to preserve and save that which we love. As we dive back into the particularities of our places and people and their needs, we hope you will do the same.