Might Is Right

by Ragnar Redbeard

  13

  The problem that we are ever called upon to solve or be eaten up, is not how to make life ‘happy and equal’ for happiness is a moving mirage, and equality an impossibility but how men may conquer their Opportunities, surpass their Rivals, extirpate their Pursuers.

  The race is still to the swift and the battle to the strong. Beauty and booty are always the prerogatives of victorious valor. Woe unto the outgeneralled ones!

  “Tis a battle for bread, for love, and for breath,

  “Tis a race for life to the jaws of death.”[12]

  Upon the island of Java there is a remarkable valley of death. It is literally strewed with the bones and skulls and skeletons of innumerable dead animals and creeping things. In the due season, giant turtles, five foot by three in diameter, travel up through it from the sea, to lay their eggs. En-route, they are set upon by packs of wild dogs and these dogs roll the turtles upon their backs and then devour them alive, by tearing out their unprotected entrails. When the dogs are gorged, they in their turn, fall an easy prey to ambushing tigers. Then hunters kill these tigers for their variegated skins. Rank grass springs up after the rainy season, through the skulls and bones that litter this tropical golgotha and droves of cattle gather there to fatten. Again the cattle are hunted for their hides, horns, and flesh, and their bones are also left where they fall, to manure the valley and prepare it for new generations of hunters and hunted. Such is in miniature, a picture of the everyday world as it actually is. All living beings are pursuing and — being pursued.

  Woe unto those that stumble! Woe unto Ye who fall!

  They who accept the “Equality, Faith, Hope, and Charity” ideal, in any shape or form whatever, interpret the facts of mortal life as they are not — as they have ever been, as they can never be. Indeed when the animal world becomes ‘moralized’ and ‘equalized’ it will be extinct. No doubt when contemplating the dark side of all this, Pascal was impelled to write with superstitious medieval diapason: — ‘I am affrighted like a man who in his sleep has been carried unto some horrible desert island, and there awakes, not knowing where he is, nor how he shall escape.’

  Degenerates only are thus affrighted at the tragic majesty of their surroundings.

  If this struggle is ordained of us, why not enter into it with kingly courage, with dauntless delight? Why not go forward, daring all things, to conquer or to die?

  Is it not better to perish than to serve? “Liberty or death” is not a meaningless phrase. No! it is of tremendous import to those who — comprehend.

  What is death that it should make cowards of us all? What is life that it should be valued so highly? There are worse things than death and among them is a life of dishonor. All men lead dishonorable lives who serve a master with hand or brain.

  Life itself is but a spark in the gloom that flashes out and disappears. Why therefore not make the most of it here and now — Here and Now!

  There is no “heaven of glory bright,” and no hell where sinners roast. There is no Right, there is no wrong — nor God — nor Son — nor Ghost.

  Death endeth all for every man,

  For every “son of thunder:”

  Then be a Lion in the path;

  And don’t be trampled under.

  For us there is no rest — no Kingdom of Indolence, either on this earth or beyond the skies — no Isles of the Blest — no Elysian Fields — no garden of the Hesperides. No! No! All these magical legends are but fanciful waking dreams — “fiction of mortals of yore.”

  Here and now is our day of torment! Here and now is our day of joy! Here and now is our Opportunity — to eat or to be eaten — to be lion or Lamb! Here and now it is war to the knife — no escape — no retreat. Choose ye this day, this hour, for no Redeemer liveth!

  Every attempt made to organize the Future must necessarily collapse. The present is our Domain and or chief duty is to take immediate possession thereof upon strict business principles.

  Strive therefore against them that strive against you, and war against them that war against thine. Lay hold of shield and buckler or their equivalents, stand up! Be a Terrible one in thine own defense. Raise up also the Clenched Hand and stop the way of them that would persecute you. Say unto thine own heart and soul: “I, even I, am mine own redeemer.”

  Let them be hurled back to confusion and infamy, who devise thine undoing. Let them be as chaff before the cyclone and let the Angel of Death pursue them, nay overtake them. In a pit, they have hidden a trap for thy feet: into that very destruction let them fall. Then, exultant, “sound the loud timbrel.” Rejoice! Rejoice! in thine own salvation. Then all thy bones shall say pridefully “who is like unto me?” — Have I not delivered myself by mine own brain? Have I not been too strong for mine adversaries? — Have I not spoiled them that would have spoiled me.

  14

  This circling planet-ball is no navel-contemplating Nirvana, but rather a vast whirling star-lit Valhalla, where victorious battlers quaff the foaming hearts-blood of their smashed-up adversaries, from the scooped out skull goblets of the slain in never-ending war.

  And behold it is good! It is good! It is very good!

  “Blending in bloody strife,

  Throat to throat, life for life;

  Struggles the human still.”

  And in that invigorating struggle strength is renewable. Fitness to reign, propagate and possess, can there alone be tested with mathematical precision (in nature’s majestic Judgment Hall), that is to say on the plains of Conquest where foeman look into foeman’s eye and death lurks, like a ravenous leopard, in every bush.

  They who claim Mastership on any other basis than conquest are Upstarts, Usurpers and ought therefore to be deposed without pity, and without mercy in accordance with the cosmic decree of ethnic displacement. Death I say! — Death! to ev [op cit]

  Life is a duel and only the Fittest can possibly hope to succeed. If you would Survive O reader! (in the highest meaning of that word) go to, and put some splendor in your deeds. Beware of false philosophies that equalize you with slavelings and dastards! Beware of fattened priestlings and tax-collecting statesmen!

  Beware the tongue that is smoothly hung, and never forget for one moment, that your greatest enemies upon earth, are those crafty courtiers who eloquently, cunningly flatter you, that they may first win your heart, and then skin you alive. The modern Mephistopheles is the soft-toned preacher in his pulpit — the editorial sophist in his net-work of lies, — the political crocodile on his “planks” and his platforms.”

  A trinity of hell-hounds are they! Oh! Would that they had but one neck and I was — Judge Lynch!

  America! America! in spite of all the surreptitious bonds that in thy sleep have been laid upon thee yet pregnant thy womb is with men of Nerve — men of Valor — men of Might. Lo! the hour approacheth when in dire travail thou shalt give birth unto Thunderbolts, and Joves to handle them.

  Behold that time cometh! Nay, it is at hand! But it will not be a period of pure delight. No! No! — it will be a day of wrath, a dreadful day — a day of Judgement, Tribulation, Triumph.

  And Democracy! Democracy! thou leprous thing! — thou loathsome disease! — thou plastic demon! — thou murderer of man! Many nations have bowed down to thy infection, and perished from off the earth, but America! America! shall wipe thee out, — thou blight-some malady — thou human rinderpest!

  Verily! Verily! a new nobility shall be born unto thee O America! — a breed of Terrible Commanders! — of Grim Destroyers — A nobility unpurchasable with the minted tokens of money-changers — a nobility of Valor, of Power and of Might — a nobility honourable, clear-sighted, clean-skinned, unconquerable..

  * * *

  Through the future shines the sun of splendid struggle. Heroic Natures there lead on, as they led at Illion. The Natural Man steps forth once more in all his daring grandeur, Smashing unclean Idols, defying Gods and Laws and slave-made Morals.

  THE PHILOSOPHY OF POWER.

  Conde
nsed:

  How did government of man by man originate?

  By force of arms. Victors became rulers.

  But among us government force is abolished?

  That is a popular delusion. It is stronger than ever.

  How is it that we do not see it clearly?

  No need of compulsion with inferiors ever eager to obey.

  How can the Mastership of man be destroyed?

  It can never be destroyed. It is essential.

  But for one man to reign over another is wrong?

  What is ‘wrong’? The Strong can do as they please.

  Who are the ‘Strong’?

  They who conquer. They who take the spoil and camp on the battlefield. All life is a battlefield.

  How did subjectiveness originate?

  The first slave was a defeated fighter, afterwards tamed by hunger and blows. His descendants being born and trained to submissiveness are more tractable. All the Servile Classes are posterity of beaten battlers.

  Then vassalage still flourishes as of yore?

  Certainly. In the pitiless strife for existence, all weaklings and feeble-minded persons are justly subordinated.

  But we are taught ‘all men are created equal’?

  You are taught many a diplomatic Lie.

  How can a slave recover his liberty?

  By re-conquering his conqueror. If he feels that he not man enough then he must submit, cut his own throat, or die fighting unsubdued.

  But freedom may be granted to him?

  ‘Freedom cannot be granted, it must be taken’.

  Then Strife is perpetual, inevitable, nay, glorious?

  Yes! It is intended as an ordeal, a trial by combat. It unmistakably divides the guilty from the non-guilty.

  But that is a harsh philosophy?

  Nature is harsh, cruel, merciless to all unlovely things. Her smile is only for the Courageous, the Strong, the Beautiful and the All-Daring.

  You have no comfort for the ‘poor and lowly’, the ‘innocent ones’, the ‘downtrodden’?

  The poor and lowly are a creeping pestilence — there are no innocent ones, and the downtrodden are the justly damned — sinners in a hell they’ve made.

  You praise the Strong, you glorify the Mighty ones?

  I do. They are Natures noblemen. In them she delights: the All-Vanquishers! the Dauntless Ones!

  CHAPTER IV: MAN — THE CARNIVORE!

  It has taken countless evolutionary epochs to make man what he is, the most ferocious hirsute beast of prey that inhabits the caverns and jungles of earth.

  Can his osseous mechanism and pathological instincts be summarily extinguished or reversed, merely by connecting him, per an electric wire, laid through the sewers of Rome, to the feeble dynamos of Bethlehem, and Tarsus? Can his structural anatomy, intended for conflict and slaughter, be transformed in a day, a year, or even in “a million, million of suns?”

  To overmaster and devour his neighbor, in the reasoned effort to obtain food and booty, land, love, renown and gold is bred into the very marrow of his bones. Therefore all efforts made by Reformers and Messiahs, to transfigure him into a “lamb” are fore-ordained to fathomless failure. Indeed it would be much more reasonable of them, to attempt the transfiguration of a grizzly bear into a parlor poodle or propose the transformation of a bald-headed eagle into a gently cooing turtle-dove.

  Nearly all the prophetic demi-gods of Democracy from Paul and Isaiah to Carlyle and Ruskin, have ever been madly screeching by the roadside, vainly endeavoring to stay the march! march! march! of a world of bannered armies; striding grimly, sternly by. What are these howling prophets of Evil but dogs eloquently baying at the moon? “Right wheel there! Right wheel! Turn back! Turn back! You are going to the devil!” is there resounding ear-splitting chorus. But the human flood sweeps on silently, scornfully, confident, inspired as it were by some over-mastering instinct. “We may be going to the devil,” is the unspoken retort of these thundering legionaries — these Nations “but even so! is not the Devil honest — the Destroyer of Deception! — the Disobedient One?”

  Can you lasso the stars with a green-hide lariat? Can you block the march of Might with magnificent howls of declamatory despair? No! No! Skyward or hellward, man moves on and on and on. If there are barricades in his way, he must surmount them or blast them aside. If there are Wild Beasts ready to spring upon him, he must destroy them or they will destroy him. If the highroad leads though hells, then those infernos must be besieged, assailed and taken possession of — aye, even if their present monarchs have to be rooted-out with weapons as demoniac and deadly as their own.

  This world is too peaceful, too acquiescent, too tame. It is a circumcised world. Nay! — a castrated world! It must be made fiercer, before it can become grander and better and — more natural.

  Fools indeed are they who would arrest the unfolding process with “humanitarian” Cagliostroism, and “rescue the perishing” mummery. Maniacs are they who would ward off the suns blazing rays from withering souls or the blighting frosts of winter from hearts that are already broken. For, I doubt not, through the ages, one tremendous purpose runs; and maturing crops are ripened with the process of the suns — to be sickled down, threshed and rolled away.

  2

  Undoubtedly the Black Magic of the Christ Myth, combined with the subterranean sorcery of medieval sacredotalism has partially succeeded, not only in sapping individual initiative, but also in suppressing in our Race many of its ancestral leonine traits and superb Barbarian Virtues. But as yet, it has not wholly triumphed in its emasculating necromancy. No! it has not transfigured us all into teams of contented oxen and bunches of earmarked sheep, although that is its final hope. There are some of the grand old stock, left alive. Few indeed are they amidst a world of slaves and swine.

  The lion is still the lion, although his teeth have been most foully filed down by abominable moral codes; his skin made scrofulous with the mange and leprosy of caged peacefulness — his paws fettered by links of slave-voted statutes and an iron collar of State Officialism wound around his regal neck.

  Someday, sometime, he is destines to break through the vile bonds that have been cunningly laid on him, escape from the wasting decline that originates from unnatural confinement and regain once more his primitive freedom of Action. The treacherous legislators and illustrious statesmen, who are now so eager to teach him the method of growing wool like sheep and how to fit his battle-scarred shoulders to a horse collar, may then be sorry and sad (if they have time) — for he will probably chew them up.

  Great and powerful governments, Commanding Peace, come into existence only in ages of decadence; when nations are on the downward grade. If the human animal lives a natural, cleanly life, out on the plains and forests, away, where oceans rollers crash along the shore, or on the banks of the pouring rivers he requires no police-force to “protect” him — no usurious Jew to rob him of his harvests — no tax-gathering legislators to vote away his property, and no ‘priests of the Idol’ to “save” his soul.

  It is false standards of morality that debase and enfeeble individuals, tribes and nations. First, in obedience to some sovereign code, they lose their hardihood and increase their numbers. Then that all may live, they become laborious, submissive to Regulations; and finally — with Death held up by priestcraft as a fearsome Terror, all personal valor fades away. Thus nations of spaniels are manufactured.

  The normal man is the man that loves and feasts and fights and hunts, the predatory man. The abnormal man is he that toils for a master, half-starves, and “thinks” — the Christly dog. The first is a perfect animal; the second, a perfect — monster.

  Every belief that makes a duty of humility — that inspires a people with “moral” courage only, enervates their fiber, corrupts their spirit, and prepares them first for thralldom and then for — throttling.

  It is not possible to conceive of Grand Life without incessant rivalry, perpetual warfare and the implacable hunting of ma
n by man.

  Terror, torture, agony and the wholesale destruction of feeble and worn out types, must mark in future, as in the past, every step forward, or backward in evolution, homo-culture and racial displacement.

  The soil of every nation is an arena, a stamping ground, where only the most vigorous animals may hope to hold their own. What is all history but the epic of a colossal campaign, the final Armageddon of which is never likely to be fought, because, when men cease to fight — they cease to be — Men.

  This old earth is strewn to the very mountain-tops with the fleshless skulls and rain bleached bones of perished combatants in countless myriads.

  Every square foot, every inch, of soil contains its — man.

  3

  The evolution (or de-evolution) of mankind demands the perpetual transfiguration of one man into another, continuous re-incarnation, eternal re-birth and re-construction. Scientifically considered, the “resurrection of the dead” is not an illusion. Every living organism is formed from the decomposed essence of pre-existent organisms. The “man” of to-day is actually built out of the grave-mould of his prototypes; perhaps of ages long forgotten. Thus, without death there could be no birth-material; and without conflict, fierce and deadly, there could be no surpassing.

  But to individuals foolishly trained to bewail their fate, all these commonplace facts are agonizing.

  “When we solemnly look upon this perpetual conflict,” writes Schelling with true theocratic pessimism, “it fills us with shuddering sorrow, and with boundless alarm — but how can we help it? Hence the veil of sadness that is spread over all nature, the deep indestructible melancholy of all life.”