Might Is Right

by Ragnar Redbeard

  Power and proprietorship cover a multitude of sins — of alleged sins: but men and women, (especially women) have an overflowing fund of sympathy and forgiveness — for the “Bold Bad Man” if he is victorious. How women admire men of leonine resolution and Eagle Principles. How they detest cowardice, “goodness,” feebleness, effeminacy, failure. There is no character in history so universally applauded, as the bold “bad” rebel and the mighty conqueror.

  Therefore get you gold and land and power somehow. If foiled and baffled one way, try another. When there’s a will, there are a thousand ways. If the worn and beaten tracks are intentionally blockaded against you, do not hesitate to cut-out a new highway through the jungle — for yourself. Never mind the pulpiteers and editors. They are hired to blind and blockade you. Above all things do not follow the multitude, for it tramples downward, ever downward along Via Del Mortes to abysses of poverty, chains, and shame. Retreat not, turn not aside to the right hand nor to the left, but zig-zag on. Ask no quarter, no sympathy. “Die the death” rather than surrender and perishing — strike at your conqueror. “Withhold not good from him to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it,” But withal be honorable and upright; never forgetting that bravery (which includeth all other virtues) is the highest wisdom — and material success the chief end of man. ‘Upward thou must rise, or falter — bend the neck or stand triumphant — be the anvil or the hammer.’

  Battle and conquer here and now, for behold! — to-morrow you die! you die! — and that is the end of you. Let Napoleon’s ideal be thine. Napoleon was Darwin on horseback. When addressing the ragged and famishing army of Italy, these were his words: — “Soldiers! abundance courts you in the fertile plains below — (the plains of Italy)…are you deficient in constancy and courage?” Events proved that they were not deficient in constancy and courage.

  Consequently the spoils of Italy and the stored-up treasures of the great Venetian Bank were equalized among them. Everywhere similar conditions have prevailed absolutely, and always will prevail. There is land for the taking, and gold for the raking; and fame, and power, and song; for the brave, the bold, and the strong. — and for none other. Therefore, be thou a Napoleon — don’t be a Christ.

  Get you Property by whatever method comes easiest to you. Reverting to terms economic ‘buy power in the cheapest market and sell it in the dearest.’ Gratify your life-hopes as the lions and eagles do, i.e. along the lines of least resistance — even as do growing plants in a dark cellar. Do they not endeavor to reach sunshine by the most direct route?

  Scorn all insolent dictation as to right and wrong. Decide right and wrong for yourself. Get property, honestly if you can; but remember “business is business.” (“Mr. Cecil Rhodes under heavy fire for fifteen minutes, captured one herd of cattle himself.”[15]) Life is life and defeat is hell. Obey thine Inner Voice! It can never err. It is thy very soul. Be a Darwin in active operation. Do noble deeds, don’t dream about them all thy life long.

  ‘Moral principles’ you say! What are moralisms that they should paralyze your arm and brain? Are they not artificial human enactments, apparently sanctified; but not necessarily natural, honest, just, or true? Moral codes are the Black Terror of all dastards.

  The ethical principles of Christendom, judging by daily developments, are the principles of a mocking, sneaking hypocritical devil — if there is a devil.

  2

  Readers must distinctly understand that sexual morality is nowise condemned in these pages. In all sexual relations (as in everything else) “morality” is what Strength decrees. Women are frail beings at the best of times and in their secret hearts are probably lovers of the unlimited. For the welfare of the breed, and the security of descent, they must be held in thorough subjection. Man has captured them and besides providing for, and protecting them it is necessary to keep them “on the chain” as it were. Woe unto him, woe unto them, and woe unto our Race, if ever these lovable creatures should break loose from mastership, and become the rulers or equals of Man. (But that is impossible.) From the earliest ages, Man has captured his wife by force or stratagem and to this day he does the same. Marriage ceremonies symbolize his proprietorship — his capture. The marriage ring is one link of a chain, emblematic of the fact that the prehistoric bridegroom chained his “beloved one” in a cave; till she became tame, tractable, reciprocative.

  The sexual degeneracy that is now so prevalent among us, is the result of Christian Civilization; that is to say, the Demonetization of Man and the equalization of woman. As long as the husband is absolute Imperator within his own four walls, the poisoning of the marriage bed (now so common, and so loathsome), cannot take place. If his wife or an intruder dares to dishonor him, their death is an effective deterrent. His daughters, controlled with equal vigor, are not permitted to mate with every strumous Dick, Tom and Harry, that comes smirking along; but are “given away” to Men who are born of Good Stock; or who have proved their inherent manhood and capacity — in carnivorous combat.

  In his sexual relations, the insolent interference of Church and State, is gradually reducing Man to a mere cipher, and establishing a system of organized concubinage; or rather promiscuity. The records of our divorce courts show that sexual infidelity is spreading like wildfire. A prominent New Yorker has publicly asserted that two-thirds of the “married” women in that city are systematically unfaithful: and a fat sordid priestling (named Moody) openly advises his female lambs, to enter into the joys of ‘godly freedom’ via that harlot factory, the Divorce Court.

  A woman is two-thirds womb. The other third is a network of nerves and sentimentality. To “emancipate” her, is to hand her over to the tender mercies of clerics, who have learned to “play” upon her emotionalism. Then Credos become illegitimately powerful and even to dictate “the whole duty of Man.” After a time diabolical pastor-theories inspire politics and rule nations. Then the State becomes the individual’s Dictator. Men are demonetized while degeneracy and socialistic hybridism sets in, like a slimy flood.

  Prostitution (for hire) is also the direct outcome of unnatural conditions, brought about and established, by the harmonious infernalism of statesmen and prelates. In many countries this vile thing is ‘regulated’ by law, and in all great cities it is a sure source of revenue, not only to the police forces, but to every man who invests in real-estate or banking scrip. A great city is a great ulcer, and a great ulcer is a sure symptom of congenital blood poisoning. Undoubtedly the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was a good thing.

  If our modern Sodoms were all razed to the ground, how Nature in all her perennial purity would rejoice exultantly? How she would wrap their tombs and crumbling tumuli with a blaze of shining glory:

  If development persists along present lines, the time is not remote when it shall be truthfully recorded: “There is no marriage in America.” A terrible menace to manhood lurks in the dictation of Slave Majorities in this as in all other affairs. Under the plausible form of Divorce Proceedings, a devilish enginery has been established: by means of which the once pure and Saxon Invaders of North America, are rapidly transforming themselves into hordes of semi-socialistic free-lovers.

  The sanctity of the Home is disappearing. No longer can it be asserted that a “man’s house is his castle.” Marriages are becoming proportionately less and less: and baby-farming by the Government, is in full blast. Home life is withering away under the blight of State Interference and Pastoral Benediction.

  Look over at France where (with the growth of government supervision) the absolutism of the husband is attenuated to a mere fiction — and what do you see? A nation steeped in communistic eroticism, as in a stygian sewer. French women are notoriously unfaithful, and the most horrible sexual lusts are practiced and pleasantly laughed at. There promiscuity results in barrenness; and this, when supplemented by correlated self-sterilization, is rapidly transmuting the once all-powerful Frankish Confederacy, into a feeble and decaying tribe of wasted marasma-struc
k manglings, sheltering themselves beneath the all-protecting wing of an Asiatic Despot.

  The title of a man to the proprietorship of his wife does not originate with Church, or State, or Majority Votes. It is inherent in the Man himself. It began in capture and is continued by capture, modified of course by mutual affection,[16] mutual toleration, and parental love. It existed before the State Monstrosity was invented, and it must be maintained intact, even if both Church and State (those twin devils), have to be utterly annihilated. The Christian Church commenced operations among Roman slaves and Syrian harlots. Its founder himself was the fruit of clandestine intercourse. He never married but consorted with publicans, pariahs, magdalenes, all his life. By his silence upon one famous occasion, he condoned adultery; and in his nebulous Paradise (which socialists and anarchists and other priestlings assert will “come” upon earth) he insinuatingly states there is “no marriage or giving in marriage.”

  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.”

  3

  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.’

  4

  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.

  In war, your chief end is to smash and paralyze your enemies’ combinations. To do this effectually you must meet wile with wile, steel with steel, and blow with blow. You must be equally prepared to fight in the open or fight under cover; to fight on sea, to fight on land, or to fight in the air. You shall wage your own war — you shall think your own thought. It is pusillanimity that evolves the Slave, and breeds the Idolator. ‘Quit yourselves like men, O ye Philistines!’

  Tacitus with true Roman stateliness observes: — “The gods look with favor upon supreme courage;” and Herbert Spencer savagely asserts that “a creature not energetic enough to maintain itself must die.” Cursed are the white-livered, they make excellent fertilizer. Truly — ‘The seed of the wicked shall be cut off.’

  This age of ours wants men above all things — “men of spirit” — men ever ready to look into the eyes of death, without winking. Behold! I post up this New Proclamation. ‘The man who made Justice was a Liar.’