Ragnar Redbeard - Might Is Right

When citizens disobey legal “regulations” they are generally interviewed at first, by a blue-coated “guardian of the Peace,” with an official warrant and a varnished club, who tamely leads them away to a State dungeon, or indicts them before a State Inquisitor. Behind the armed police and the suave Judge, stand in threatening array, the whole military and naval forces of Government and Law.

Law Courts and Thrones are (de facto) built upon bayonets. Likewise all Statutes, Constitutions, and Moral Codes are written by the Sword. Material Strength is now, and ever has been, and ever must be, the true basis upon which all political institutions rest. No other foundation is feasible.

What the sword has established the sword must defend. Symbolic thereof, every emperor and president, every sultan, king, shah, or savage chief, is proclaimed before drilled legions and raucous multitudes; amid the fan-fare of battle trumpets — the unsheathing of battle-sword — and the thundering roar of battle-cannon. Two examples, from two continents, — from two different systems of Government, — may be quoted as sufficient proof of this: —

Sir Edwin Arnold describes the recent Coronation of the Emperor of Russia, an hereditary absolute monarch: — “Behind and between the royal chairs, stood the new Commander of the silver-eagled regiment, his saber bared and gleaming.” When cannon volleys, booming across two continents, from Riga to Vladivostock, announced the final crowning of their Suzerain; 2,000,000 Sclavonian warriors bared their heads in acknowledgement, clanged their weapons in token of pride, and swore eternal allegiance.

“Governor John R. Tanner (of Illinois) mounted on a black horse, and wearing a broad-rimmed felt hat, with gold braid and tassel, (also cavalry saber), will ride down Pennsylvania Avenue (Washington) at the head of the First Regiment… National Guards, in the Presidents inaugural… crack Illinois soldiery marching… next the President’s Personal Escort… Troop A. 8 thInfantry… Along with the regiment will go the gun corps and the gatling guns that did service… during the Deb’s insurrection.” The President of these United States, an elective Monarch, is a Commander-in Chief of the federal armed forces: and possesses more administrative authority than any Asiatic despot.

Every military and naval officer in England, receives his commission direct from the Queen. Until recently it was customary at Coronation ceremonials for an hereditary Champion (armed cap-a-pie) to ride out into the courtyard and there, before assembled commoners, knights, nobles, generals; officially challenge to personal encounter, anyone who dared to even question the royal titles.

European land-title deeds may be (in every instance) traced back to military and kingly power. In all the English colonies, waste lands are occupied and cleared, under “Crown grants.” The same principle prevails in this Republic and among all savage tribes.

By force all things that exist are evolved, maintained and perpetuated. Force aggregates and separates the atoms that go to make up this cosmic universe of mind and matter. It integrates them into forms, organic and inorganic. It disintegrates them again and again. It builds up and pulls down, without the slightest respect to man’s wishes or desires. It theorizes, creates, constructs, annihilates, attacks, and repels. It is literally in all, through all, and over all.

Even the undulatory migration of races, that now proceeds (over sea and continent) in great animalistic waves, as it did in the days of Akbar and Tamerlane, is also the vibrations of force, acting through human media. It is the incarnate pulsations of Power.

Antiquarian delvings in America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Islands of the Sea corroborate the written annals, folk-lore, and legends of tribes and nations. The past of this pendant ball, is one long awe-inspiring chronicle of cannibalisms, invasions, ravishments, cataclysms, “battle, murder, and sudden death.”

The surface of the soil is a lethal chamber — the bottom of the sea a charnel house. Both are littered from pole to pole with the ruins of forgotten “civilizations” that men and nature have delighted to destroy. Everywhere and always the debilitated have perished, everywhere and always the mightiest have won. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, Power, Slavery, Pain, Joyance, side by side.

Races of Helots are never wanting! See to it that you Men, that you breed fighters! See to it that you train them too! “The harper is not made otherwise than by harping” nor the warrior otherwise than by war. Let muscle force be pitted against muscle force, brain power against brain power and let winners wear the laurel and losers wear the rasping sackcloth. Let there be no compromise — no half-hearted philandering — no backing down but as Darwin commands, let the strongest live and the vilest die.

Black, furious and tragic are the bloody annals of man’s evolution, and there is no rational evidence upon which to conclude that it shall ever be otherwise — or that it would be wise for us to attempt the making of it otherwise.

Why then be discontented with that which we cannot alter, even if we dared. Better after all, fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay. Let it be as it has ever been — as the grim old Norseland skald chanted it, when our Race began to emerge into the dim distant twilight of the gods.

Be it among animalculæ, moth or mollusc, birds of the air, beasts of the field, fishes of the sea, planets, suns, stars or solar systems; Force reigns unchangeable, unchallengeable, inexorable.

When the kindly Roman emperor imagined that peace had settled down permanently upon the ancient world; even then, the (dissemulating) assassin’s dagger was sharpening for his throat: and now, while Lower Organisms dream of a “world of lovers” — of arbitration instead of hostility — of conciliation between rival carnivores; the mechanism of deletion is silently under construction: that (when completed) will sweep them off the face of the earth.

The Strongest organisms are always the determinants. They hold in their hands (absolutely) the destinies of weaker organisms. Further, in all the interwoven differentiations of matter and mind; equality, mercy, pity, are wholly at a discount — except alone in family relationship. (A man’s family is his property — it is part of himself. Therefore his natural business is to defend it, as he would his own life. Women and children belong to man; who must hunt for them as well as for himself. He is their lord and master, in theory and in fact.

Under natural conditions, there is no haven for the wretched, no hope for the weaklings, no resting place for the weary, no quarter for the beaten. Nature loathes Infirm Ones. Every organism, every human being, must conquer or serve. This is an Ultimatum.

Life is a race for Power into the very jaws of death and “hell take the hindmost.”

Hell take the hindmost! No! — that isn’t so! Christ takes the hindmost! Exactly! that is correct! In real life he is the true Prince of Evil. Soothingly he saith: — “Come unto me all ye that are weary or heavy laden;” and, those who obey are sure of — hell. Nay, ascendeth up for ever and ever.”

In ancient ages the Incapables were permitted to perish without comment: but with us it is different.

Almsgiving, first by the monastery, now by the State, has preserved them and their leprous seed, until modern nations are actually swarming with men and women (rich and poor) who are totally useless and totally vile. Selective influences that operate under natural conditions, have been kept in abeyance by religions and moralisms: until the whole human race is saturated with inherited mental disease and rottenness-of-the-bones. Our Christian civilization is a forcing-chamber for weakly animalculæ. Natural conditions are a lethal-chamber for them. The proper home for incurables is — the grave.