Ragnar Redbeard - Might Is Right

‘Love your enemies and do good to them that hate you and despitefully use you,’ is the despicable philosophy of the spaniel that rolls upon its back, when kicked. Obey it, O! reader, and you and all your posterity to the tenth generation shall be irretrievably and literally damned. They shall be hewers of wood, and carriers of water, degenerates, Gibeonites. But hate your enemies with a whole heart, and if a man smite you on one cheek, smash him down; smite him hip and thigh, for self-preservation is the highest law.

He who turns the ‘other cheek’ is a cowardly dog — a Christian dog.

Give blow for blow, scorn for scorn, doom for doom, with compound interest liberally added thereunto. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, aye four-fold, a hundredfold. Make yourself a Terror to your adversary and when he goeth his way, he will possess much additional wisdom to ruminate over. Thus shall you make yourself respected in all the walks of life, and your spirit — your immortal spirit — shall live, not in an intangible paradise, but in the brains and thews of your aggressive and unconquerable sons. After all, the true proof of manhood is a splendid progeny; and it is a scientific axiom that the timid animal transmits timidity to its descendents.

If men lived ‘like brothers’ and had no powerful enemies (neighbors) to contend with and surpass, they would rapidly lose all their best qualities; like certain oceanic birds that lose the use of their wings, because they do not have to fly from pursuing beasts of prey. If all men had treated each other with brotherly love since the beginning, what would have been the result now? If there had been no wars, no rivalry, no competition, no kingship, no slavery, no survival of the Toughest, no racial extermination, truly what a festering ‘hell fenced in’ this old globe would be?

Reverend Ferdinand M. Sprague, of Chicago (who may be taken as a common specimen of the priest-politician), in a little pamphlet lately published, entitled ‘The Laws of Social Evolution,’ writes thus: — “The sheet anchor of Socialism according to its ablest exponents, is the Holy Christian religion. Its motto founded on the precept ‘love thy neighbor as thyself’ is — ‘each for all, and all for each.’ Its working principle for the present is altruism.” [3] "The ethics of Socialism are identical with the teachings of Christianity." Encyclopedia Brittanica.

Nearly all the canonized ‘Fathers’ of the early Roman propaganda (most of whom, by the way, were slaves, freedmen, or eunuchs) advocated similar Ideals. Even now, the anointed and sanctified head of the Catholic Church resurrects the same hoary old utopianism, in a Jesuitic encyclical addressed to his flock. (How suggestive of being shorn and skinned, is that word ‘flock.’)

Again, the Epistle of James, who is known to have been Christ’s full brother killed by a special policeman’s club, in a street riot has been reprinted and widely circulated by Socialists, in order to sow and broadcast their illogical theories of a universal brotherhood, founded upon enforced labor, regimentation of the herd, and majority votes.

Many modern cities are also infested with plausible epileptoid priestlings of unreason, like Dr. McGlynn, Professor Bemis, Hugh Price Hughes, W. T. Stead, Myron Reed, and Professor Herron of California. All these men are unrivalled masters in the art of persuasive declamation. They accept the New Testament as their text book and preach therefrom to morbid multitudes the atrocious and shallow gospel of equal rights, equal liberty, equal brotherhood, as the veritable omnific word, the newly discovered emancipating protocol of the Crucified (yet all-mighty) Don Quixote — the Saviour-god of Asia Minor — he who was born in a cattle-shed and died on a gallows.

A god begging his bread from door to door! — A god without a place to lay his head! — A god spiked to two pieces of crossed scantling! — A god stabbed to death by an hired officer! — A god executed by order of a stipendiary magistrate! — What an insane Idea — Is it an Idea, or rather a wasting cranial disease? Talk about ‘the heathen in his blindness’ and superstitious madness in past ages! Why it is as childplay to the hysteric Idolatry of to-day — the deification of a Jew. The ‘Divine Democrat’ was executed upon a government gibbet, because the Rulers of Imperial Rome were more powerful men than he was. His strength, and that of his followers, was not equal to theirs.

He died an abysmal failure — a Redeemer who did not redeem — a Saviour who did not save — a Messiah whipped like a calf — a slave-agitator deservedly destroyed for preaching a Falsehood — the monstrous gospel of Love, Brotherhood, Equality.

Even from the spiritual point of view, there is nothing whatever in his life or its after effects to show that ‘The pale man upon the cross,’ when he moaned and wept so bitterly, ‘beheld any further down the Void, than those who gathered round to see him die.’

Of what use was that ‘pale dreamer’ to the iron-conditions that existed in the conquered and garrisoned Fortress of Jerusalem? For once the city mob were on the right trail, when they petitioned for the release of Bar Abbas, rather than the supple singer of a ‘Sweet bye and bye.’ Bar Abbas is described in ‘the Scriptures’ as a petty thief. He was really an armed insurgent leader — the slayer of Roman tax-gatherers — a guerilla chief (like Rob Roy, Robin Hood, William Wallace, William Tell) who levied toll upon opulent Hebrews for patriotic purposes.

Had I been there that day, I also would have joined in the demand: — ‘Release Bar Abbas unto us.’ — Better one Bar Abbas than a thousand Christs.

Alas! Alas! O Galilean! Thou art neither the Way, the Truth, nor the Light!

Reverting, however, to Chicago’s reverend Utopia-constructor, thus waileth he with cajoling crudity: “The laws of social evolution, far from being the blind, barbarous, and brutal struggle for organic existence, consists in the physical, intellectual and moral well being of all the members of society, so constituted that the politico-ethical principles of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity shall have the largest possible realization throughout the social organism. The main features of the condition of progress are christian churches, christian schools, christian governments, christian ethics and economics.”

Another seductive but most malignant State Socialist (Henry George) roundly proclaims that ‘The salvation of society, the hope of the free, and full development of Humanity, is in the gospel of brotherhood, the gospel of Christ,’ and thereupon he proposes to make politicians the national rent-tax collectors, Administrators of everything in general, and all-round Distributors of State Pensions to ‘the poor and needy.’ Has not mankind had sufficient experience of what politicians are? — Those black-hearted creeping thieves and frauds. Their sting is deadlier than the bite of a cobra, and in the breath of their mouth there is — death . Curses be upon ye, O! ye Politicians, and upon all who advocate increasing your prerogatives!

Presidential candidates, from Jefferson, to Lincoln, (also their apish imitators) have generally indulged in equally shallow rhodomontade, because it means votes, and for votes, office-seekers would dress up in glowing language, and ray forth any devilish deception.

For two thousand years these effeminate superlatives have been trumpeted to the remotest corner of every Christian land, and yet (while enervating the morale of people) they have dismally failed to inaugurate the much foretold Earthly Paradise. They were preached by bare-foot monks at the inauguration of the Dark Ages, in order that those saintly lovers of the common people might creep into the administration of co-operative wealth and power. Now, the same general ideas are revived and dressed up (this time in politico-economic garb) by the eloquent agitator, in order that he may rule and plunder in the future, through the agency of the State; just as the priest once ruled and plundered through the equally rapacious agency of the Church.