Ragnar Redbeard - Might Is Right

During the first three centuries “Christians” was another name for “free lovers” — meeting in catacombs and secret places, to enjoy promiscuous sexualism, before the “end of the world” came — an event they expected every day, for three hundred years.

The leprous repulsiveness of medieval sodalities and modern monasticism, is all too well known, and requires no more than a passing allusion. “The cells where corralled onanism dwells” are as notorious as they are ultra-natural. Not only the lairs of male and female celibates, but the vestries of churches and temples, have ever been hot-beds of lasciviousness, seduction, and all uncleanliness.

“The harlot is Christ’s sister, and the tramp is Christ’s brother;” proclaims “our dear comrade, W.T. Stead,” and he out to know. Has he not theatrically tried his hand at “being a Christ” (vide “Liza Armstrong and Modern Babylon”) — in order to turn an honest penny?

In deference to Barbarian prejudices (after the Alaric and Attila immigrations) the Early Church abandoned its communistic Free Loverisms. But to provide holy sanctions and written authority for its change of heart; monkish forgeries of “Epistles from the Saints” were manufactured on an extensive scale and cautiously published throughout Europe.

To-day, with the advent of Triumphant Democracy, all vile old slave-practices are being actively revived.

Verily! Verily! Triumphant Democracy, thou art a foul thing! — Triumphant Desolation! — Triumphant Amphimixis! Lo! this is the redeeming spirit that was to “cleanse the heathen as white as snow.”

Many modern chapels are little better than assignation houses; and the tambourined, uniformed Christlings of the slum-corners are boastfully recruited from the vilest of the vile. An enterprising Chicago pastor has even started a free-love seraglio (with himself as the divine Thunder Thrower) which he calls ‘Heaven;’ and one of its ugliest angels has boldly sworn in open Court, that she was impregnated by the Holy Ghost; to whom she bore a son — in the orthodox style.

Altogether primitive Christianity is in its renaissance. Behold it cometh to pass! “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven;” is being rapidly and joyously materialized.

Deity hath established Himself as Statute Law. ‘The State which is the People’ is His throne, and ‘the Church which is righteousness’ is his footstool. Glory! Glory! Glory! “All the ends of the world hath seen the salvation of our God.” Behold Christliness realizing itself through social institutionalisms! Behold the golden harvests grown from the seed of Legislation!

O for the Barbarian swarms of the Danube and the Rhine! — for the Blonde Pirates from the Northern Seas! O for men of a spirit, with lion hearts and lion brains! — for one cohort of True Knights, who would consolidate their Hopes and Convictions into Naked Swords! Alas! Alas! Vanity of vanities, all is vanity! The age of Chivalry is dead and gone. “So sleeps the proud of former days — so glory’s thrill is o’er.”

In all practical operations, non-principled persons possess a distinctive advantage over “principled” ones. Honesty never succeeds for when it succeeds, it is not honesty. There is no fair play in Love and War; and all life is made up of Love and War. Genuinely honest men, die as a rule like dogs — in a ditch; and in business affairs they are “nowhere.” In their dotage or ‘in God’s good time’ — they (nearly always) go over the hill to State Infirmaries, unknown, friendless.

What chance has a conscientious man, when pitted in statesmanship, literature, or commerce, against the Organized Knavery of sanctimonious and powerful cut-throats? To them he is a pigeon to be plucked — a buck to be hunted — a criminal to be chained — a madman to be made sport of — a lamb to be skinned — a heretic to be — burnt alive.

Certainly it is not good strategy for a man to openly proclaim his loss of faith in conventional moralisms: if he desires to get-on in the world. A wiseling keeps his real sentiments on this point to himself — guards them as his own life. The best mask for moral heresy is one of pretended sanctity. It is very effective. Nearly all the Higher Thieves are ostentatiously pious. Thus when you hear pulpiteers and journalists vociferously proclaiming their profound acquiescence in “moral principles,” it is safe to conclude that they are engineering some subterranean swindle.

‘Belief’ is a war-stratagem — an instrument of deceit, a convenient falsification formula — a beautiful hoodwink. Hence it is, that very religious and very holy persons, are almost always thorough-going scoundrels at heart — utterly unreliable — utterly untrustworthy. Generally their whole lives are one long drawn our mendacity, and genuineness-of-Thought or Action is in their mind, attenuated to a mere sham.

Politicians, authors, pastors, ‘prophets,’ historians, philosophers, and editors, are notorious falsifiers of nature and fabricators of subterfuge. Soaked in unnaturalism, saturated through and through with delirium-breeding hashish-literature, they become organically incapable of speaking, let alone of thinking or writing honestly. Artificialism has trained them to be prevaricators, and prevaricators they must remain until the clods from the grave-diggers shovel rattle down on their coffin lids. As the Old Man of the Mountains trained his fanatical Assassins, and sent them forth to slay, so Civilization trains its Fiendling Intellectuals and sends them forth to assassinate Human Nature. They are the murderers of manliness — the regicides of Thought — the annihilators of heroism. Would that I had a legion of demons, to wring their necks. They have smothered the grand and masterful old Northern realisms beneath pestiferous rubbish-heaps of Oriental Mythology — of Hebrew old clothes. They repeat automatically in sounding diction, what has already been stuffed into them, as it were, with a ramrod. Their learning is the learning of the ‘learned pig’ in a menagerie; and their virtue is the virtue of a conscientious Jesuit. March of Mind they call it! — ‘As organs grind the note they’re set to…brains jejune…Grind, year in year out, the same Old Tune.’

The men who conspicuously “succeed in life” — the generals and nobles, merchant-princes, powerful prelates, opulent bankers, wealthy manufacturers, never overload themselves with artificial moral principles. In their secret hearts they utterly despise all evangelicalisms and as for written law, they are above and beyond its reach. Kings, conquerors, millionaires, are perpetually being denounced for not abiding by Laws and Regulations enacted by Majority Votes.

The man who plays ‘the game of life; in strict accord with certain cut and dried principles — principles that everybody knows by heart, is not likely to come out a winner. He who in his younger days, incommodes himself with copy-book moralisms and terror of the Law; is like unto a soldier who (before entering the battlefield) ties his right hand behind his back and pledges himself to strike and shoot his adversaries on one pre-arranged spot of their bodies only. Could such a mad-man soldier hope to conquer? What chance would he have if pitted against brave, dauntless, well-equipped antagonists; who had not foolishly bound themselves by such a stupid obligation?

“The right of Nature, which writers commonly call jus naturale , is the liberty each man hath, to use his own power for the preservation of his own nature: that is to say his own life, and consequently of doing anything , which in his own judgement and reason he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereto” writes Hobbes in his “Leviathan.” The man who permits himself to be directed and mastered by the insolent moral principles of the Multitude, is like an eagle with clipped wings and broken talons.