Ragnar Redbeard - Might Is Right

Protestants still think it a crime and a scandal to worship the mother of their god; but Catholics consider it right and proper to deify the Hebrew maid, who remained a maid (what a paradox?) after borning a son.

To eat pork and beans is frightfully wicked for a Jew, but passable for a cultured Bostonian. To drink whiskey is iniquity to a Turk, but exhilarating to a Scotlander. Roast beef is a goodly dish to and English ‘barbarian,’ but famine-stricken orthodox Hindoos die rather than taste thereof. Dueling is honorable in some countries but dishonorable in others. So also pugilism, private revenge, tyrannicide, bull-fighting, regicide, and warfare. The Quakers, Anarchists, and Young Men’s Christian Associations, are unceasingly railing against ‘war and all its horrors,’ whereas there are not a few benighted infidels, (including the author) who regard war as nature’s Greatest Prophylactic.

Polygamy is “wrong” in England and America, but monogamy is righteous, and polyandry “right” (being licensed by the state); whereas in Eastern Europe and among all “savage” tribes, polyandry is iniquity; polygamy — blessedness; and monogamy — vileness.

In ancient Lacadæmon stealing was considered highly meritorious if not found out , as in modern America. Solon places theft among the professions, and he knew what he was doing. Aristotle includes ‘robbery’ among the different kinds of hunting. (There was no hypocrisy about these classical authors. They called a spade a spade, and searched Nature (not libraries) for facts. Herein is the secret of their genius and undying renown.) If a man steals a horse or a steer, he is lynched (if captured) as an ‘enemy of society’ but if he steals the value of a million horses by wrecking a savings bank; he is straightaway made a Senator or Knighted. It is a criminal act to burglarize another man’s house, but it’s “enlarging our markets” to steal Texas from the Mexicans; Alsace and Lorianne from the French; Egypt from the Turks; or Madagascar from the Hovas. The fact is, that all the greatest statesmen and kings have been (most commendably) the Higher Criminals. Wars are marauding expeditions and all kingships and property originates in Warfare.

Slay one man (in order to rob him) and you are a murderer. Slay a million men (in order to rob them) and you are a renowned general. Annex from one person and you are a felonious ruffian, but annex from the whole population , or from rival nations, and you are made Chancellor of the Exchequer; Chairman of Ways and Means; or decorated with the grand cross of the Legion of Honor. Maraud direct for your own profit, and you are a heinous rascal, counterfeiter, forger, bandit; but maraud indirect, ‘on public service only’ and you are proclaimed “our opulent fellow-citizen and distinguished patriot.”

Take from the peasantry even an infinitesimal proportion of their petty property, and they will lynch you as a lazy thievish tramp; but take two-thirds of their harvests by law and rule (rent, interest or tax assessments) and they will turn out in the middle of the night, to cheer you in your steam-horsed palace car, as it whirls through their ‘God forsaken’ villages.

To “steal the goose from off the common” is awful rascality, but “to steal the common from the goose” is splendid statesmanship. Men who write down Holy Fables in books are called Apostles of God, or canonized as saints; but men who tell regulation lies in the ordinary course of business are popularly supposed to be wicked and ungodly scamps. The delightful story-teller who prints a pleasing yarn, coined out of his alcoholic imagination, is known as a gifted author: but the plain blunt writer who interprets Facts and proclaims them openly, is an incarnation of iniquity, madness, blasphemy — a veritable Apollyon, Satan. “What is one man’s meat is another man’s poison.”

Again, he who prevaricates in a pulpit for ‘the Glory of God’ is everywhere known as a Doctor of Divinity, but he who bears false witness in an ordinary Court of Justice, is universally condemned as a perjured villain.

It is questionable if there is one codified crime that would be considered a crime in every land on earth. Just as there are a thousand different icons and ideals of god, so there are a thousand mutually repellant views of Right and Wrong. Every climate, every nation, every community, has its own notion of what Virtue means. Moral Dogmas are manufactured to suit the occasion, and are always used as instruments of intimidation. They are not necessarily in harmony with, or based upon Nature: except in the sense that Fraud is natural. Biologically and historically considered — ‘there is nothing either Right of Wrong, but thinking makes it so.’

Every age and nation must interpret Right and Wrong for itself. So must every man . It is each man’s manifest duty to invent his own Ethical Credo. If he neglects this duty, and supinely (without thinking) adopts the Credo of the herd into which he is born; then his individuality is merged and lost. Other men with more personal will-power, may then set up fallacious, maladroit Dogmas — counterfeit twenty-four inch gauges — and compel him to “conform” against his wish. They become rulers and proprietors, while he descends to the position of a dependent or vassal. Here is the permanent menace to freedom that lies imbedded in all ethical, political, and religious Codes.

He who “keeps the commandments” of another, is necessarily the servant of that other. He who curbs his own thought, to please a majority; has already lost his mental liberty. He who implicitly relies upon “public opinion” becomes a mere marionette — a bloodless dummy. Professing independence, he is practically a prisoner in his own domain.

The pride of life is in deciding and doing — in taking the initiative — not in obeying the dictation of others. He who “keeps the commandments” is, and must always remain a subordinate — in a beggardom of rules and regulations. He who disobeys “the commandments” becomes himself a Commandment-Maker; that is to say, a ruler over the minds and bodies and property of inferior organisms. Obedience is characteristic of the menial. Disobedience is the stamp of the hero. “Man is the measure of all things.” — (Protagoras.)

“He who takes no initiative, and determines no issues, however intelligent and trustworthy” plays a subordinate part.” [17] Admiral Walker, U.S.N., in Forum, Dec., 1896. All great deeds are the result, not of Majority Votes, but of Individual Activity.

Every man who is free (and freedom means something more than the mere privilege of dropping regulation pieces of print into a Majority Box) should judge ‘all things’ by his own personality. He should regard himself as the measuring rod — the determinant — the unit of value, and carefully abstain from blindly adopting other men’s measurements, without personal verification and reasonable tests.

The easiest way for a band of public robbers to plunder a nation, is for them to issue counterfeit currency, and exchange it for intrinsic values : and the easiest way to enslave a Race is to wheedle it into, or impose upon it counterfeit Ethics, that is to say, fraudulent standards of morality.

When the weighing scales (or measures) are falsified, all subsequent exchange becomes marauding. Then foreclosing bankers become cattle-lifters, and machine politicians develop into pirates. Thus it happeneth that the words ‘politician’ and ‘thief’ are now interchangeable terms; more especially in America, France, and Australia. “Government is the Great Blackmailer.”

Better far, for a free animal to be killed outright, than to be mastered, subordinated, and enchained.