Yet altruism, wholesale self-renunciation — wholesale burden-bearing, for the sake of ‘Outraged and Suffering Humanity,’ is the maddening basis upon which ‘our good Lord Jesus,’ and his demented imitators have erected their sporadic sociology — their Magnificent Satanism.
Does not simple business acumen whisper to us that every man’s chief occupation upon earth is to sustain himself. ‘I mean subsist at any cost; you shall want ere I shall — business is business.’ If men had sufficient personal initiative to think along these stern lines, there would be little use on earth for the theologian and ‘the reformer;’ those twin Mephistos who find their renown and grandeur, in the abasement of mankind. The battle of life would then be so grim, terrible, and realistic; (so Trojan in fact) that those holy dissimulators and crafty deceivers, would rapidly die off, or be eaten off; for in the clash of naked interests, the Best and Bravest only could possibly survive; and no one would ever dream of including them among the Best or Bravest.
Count Leo Tolstoi, undoubtedly the ablest modern expounder of primitive Christliness, in a much translated volume, entitled: — “Work While Ye Have Light,” writes thus: — ‘Our Faith tells us that bliss is to be found, not in resistance, but in submission; not in riches, but in giving everything away; we have not quite succeeded in casting off every habit of violence and property.”
To the most inept understanding, could any proposition be placed in a clearer light? Is it not as simple as ‘rolling off a log,’ that the individual who even attempts to become a true and honest Christian must become like unto a tame sheep? What a sublime Ideal? How heroic?
The bliss of a sheep! How superlatively delightful? How divinely glorious? And a Jew as the Good Shepherd, who leadeth his lambs “to green pastures, and quiet resting places, the pleasant waters by.” For two thousand years, or so, His fleecy flocks have been fattening themselves up with commendable diligence — for the shearing-shed and the butchers-block.
Let any nation throw away all ‘habits of violence,’ and before long it must cease to exist as a nation. It will be laid under tribute — it will become a province, a satrapy. It will be taxed and looted in a thousand different ways.
Let any man abandon all property, also all overt resistance to aggression and behold, the first sun will scarcely have sunk down in the west, before he is a bondservant, a tributary, a beggar, or — a corpse.
Property is necessary to the complete and free development of personality, and therefore human animals should somehow obtain a full and fair proportion thereof at any cost — or perish in the attempt; for he who cannot possess himself of property is much better buried out of sight. Our cities are literally honeycombed ‘with treasure caverns, heaped up with gold, title-deeds, silver, and instruments of credit: our valleys and our mountains are
bubbling with wealth untold; and yet, poor miserable ‘servants of Christ’ pass idly by. Men, they call themselves! I call them — castrates.
If Tolstoi’s obsequious principles are derived from the Sermon on the Mount, then who can deny but that the Sermon on the Mount is a sermon unto decay and slavery? If they are derived from the Golden Rule and if the Golden Rule is the word of God, then can it be doubted that the word of God is the word of Fraud. There is far too much of this ghastly ‘goodness’ in the nation, far and away too much. It is time men who can think began to emancipate themselves, and consider the fact that: — Morals, laws and decalogues were made by liars, thieves and rogues.
All good citizens however are hereby warned and solemnly advised, not to smash-up the Ten Commandments — not to burn up the Golden Rule — not to break-up the Moral Law — for that would be terribly wicked! terribly! On the other hand they must obey all Law implicitly (no matter how it originated) and be sure (above everything) to order themselves lowly and reverently before executive officers of the Law; even if in doing so, they are deprived of their Property, and their Liberty for ever. Obedience, you see, is of God ‘who so loveth the world’ but Disobedience is horrible and of the Devil, and the Devil is a frightful rascal, who has not the slightest respect for anybody or anything: not even the American Constitution. Let us curse the Devil then and obey — the Law.
Liberty is honestly definable, as a state of complete bodily and mental self-mastership (which includeth the possession of property; also defensive weapons) and thorough-going Independence from all official coercion or restraint. Liberty in the conventional sense is a miserable Lie.
To be independent is synonymous with proprietorship. To be property-less, and unarmed, is the condition of actual dependence and servitude. Unarmed citizens are always enslaved citizens, always. Liberty without Property is a myth, a nursery tale, believable only by babbling babies and ‘fools-in-th’-forest’ — fools in th’ city also. “Liberty regulated by Law” is, in practice, tyranny of the darkest and foulest description; because so impersonal. There are numerous worthy, reasonable, and practical methods whereby individual tyrants may be removed; but a tyranny ‘regulated by Law’ is only removable by one method — the sword in the hands of men who are not afraid to use it, or to have it used against them: that is to say — the Sword in the hands of the Strongest.
During the whole course of human history, there is not upon record, one authentic instance wherein a subjugated people has ever regained property-holding Liberty, without first butchering its tyrants (or its tyrants’ armed slaves in battle) thereafter confiscating to its own use, the lands and realized property that previously had been in the possession of its defeated foes and masters. This statement is made with cool deliberation and aforethought. Let it be disproved by any one creditable example to the contrary, and the Author is prepared to forfeit 50,000 ounces of pure gold and enough ‘dimes and dollars’ to erect in Chicago, a bronze statue of ‘Our Blest Redeemer’ (crown of thorns and all) 100 cubits higher than the Masonic Temple. This offer is strictly bona-fide and shall remain open till 1906, so that philosophers, editors, statesmen, divines (and other accomplished liars) may have enough time to blind themselves, wading through National Archives, and the putrid rubbish heaps that men call Public Libraries. Should some or all of said Mutual Admiration Society maniac-geniuses go blind, also deaf, dumb, and silly: this wicked old world may probably whoop with delight — should it happen to hear of the fact.
During the three years of Christ Jesus’s peripatetic trampings, he never said anything that had not been better said a thousand times before, by Dervishes, Spellbinders and Mahatmas. Neither did he do anything that had not previously been better done, by the jugglers and wonder-workers of Egypt, India and Assyria. Not a few of his ‘miracles’ are to this day, part of the ordinary stock-in-trade of fortune-telling gypsies, third-class strolling players, and charlatans in general.
The very phrase that He uses to sum-up and memorize His patent Cure-all, was undoubtedly stolen (directly or indirectly) from Plato, the Rig Veda, or Confucius. The Golden Rule is not only a snare and a tangle, but it also is — a literary piracy.
‘He raised the dead,’ you indignantly protest: and even supposing that he did, wherein is the positive advantage? What is gained by restoring vitality to the decomposing corpse of an animal that may be so easily duplicated — an animal that is a positive nuisance, numerically. What is the “good” of breathing the ‘breath of life’ into an odorous winding-sheet-full of maggots and mouldy bones? Are there not plenty of animalcula on earth, without dragging them out of tombs? (Especially are there not plenty of leprous Asiatics?) Death and destruction are necessary to the health of this world and therefore as natural, and lovable, as birth and life. Only priests and born cowards moan and weep over dying. Brave men face it with approving nonchalance.