Might Is Right Read online

  As for the American People of to-day: is not their written constitution but a cunningly constructed straight-jacket — their moral codes, padded prison-cells: their statute laws handcuffs and leg-irons — their Captains of Industry keepers and turnkeys in clever disguise? One hundred years ago they ostensibly commenced ‘independent’ operations with the richest continent on earth as their private property — their subscribed capital; and during the whole of that period, have they not been as busy as so many relays of draught beasts-of-burden, pumping the tremendous natural wealth out of their home soil, and pouring it over-sea, into the cess-pools of Europe?

  Is not that the work of lunatics? They smashed and splintered the wooden political yoke of an English king and then proceeded to rivet around their necks a brand new yoke of bolted steel, which they forged especially to fit themselves: and which they dignified under the name of “Constitutional Freedom”.

  Is not that also the work of lunatics? Cursed indeed are the harnessed ones! Cursed are they even though their harness be home made — even though it tinkle musically with silver bells — aye! even though every buckle and link and rivet thereof is made of solid gold.

  How absurd of men to hurrah over their ‘glorious political liberty’ who have not even been able to retain possession of the substantial products of their own laboriousness. After a century of ‘constitutional progress,’ ten per cent of the population are absolute owners of ninety-two per cent of all the property.

  Now, O reader, Are not these things the outward and visible sign of organic dementia?

  2

  The Declaration of Independence commences by proclaiming an unctuous falsehood, a black, degrading self-evident lie — a lie which no one could possibly believe but a born fool. With insolent effrontery it brazenly proclaims as ‘a self evident truth’ that ‘all men are created equal’ and that they are ‘endowed,’ by their ‘Creator’[5] with certain ‘inalienable’ rights — rights which it thereupon proceeds to define in canting phraseology, imbecile and florid as it is false.

  Indeed the mock-heroic preamble of this rhetorical pronunciamento is but a cunningly constructed piece of blague deliberately intended to deceive and betray. It consists of a patchwork of plagiarized catchwords, annexed wholesale from the ravings of seventeenth-century Levellers, crazed puritanic Mattoids and eighteenth-century cretinous French Jacobins: — all mixed up and jumbled together with a long rigmarole of semi-meaningless pretty phrases, culled mostly from an old time melodrama.

  The Declaration of Independence has less real meaning for present conditions than a bottled-up Indian war-whoop of the same period would have, if uncorked now. It is a back-number, musty, high smelling, and worm-eaten: only fit for the walls of a museum or the brain-cells of — a daft philosopher.

  Its ethical and most of its political conclusions are shams, deceptions, and cold-blooded dishonesties — incandescent Lies — glorified, belauded, printed in letters of gold, but nevertheless — Lies.

  Indeed it has always been considered a piece of amusing mockery by those who really understood the secret intent for which it was originally constructed: viz: — as a lasso for the bellowing Herds, that, about one hundred years ago were beginning to run wild, and escape from their herdsmen, and herdsmen’s stock-whip, in this (then) boundless New World.

  To all contemporary demagogues, the high-sounding phraseology of the “Declaration” is as honey from paradise. Everywhere its seductive abstractions are the Avatars of anarchism, communism, republicanism, and scores of other zymotic convulsionisms. Why then should sane men continue giving lip-service to this subtle deception? Why should they, by their silence, acquiesce in the malefic efforts of Organic Weaklings, (instigated by prattlers of a false philosophy) to enforce by electioneering mass-pressure an impossible and hideous Equality Ideal?

  Every national appeal is now made, not to the Noblest and the Best, but to the riff-raff — the slave-hordes — who possess less intelligence than night-owls. All that is brave, honorable, heroic, is ignored tacitly, for fear of offending the deified Herd — ‘the Majority’. “Equality of conditions” is its debasing shibboleth and verily he who has temerity enough to spit upon Equality is liable to be horned to death.

  The ‘Voice of the People’ can only be compared to the fearsome shrieks of agony that may now and then be heard, issuing forth from the barred windows of a roadside madhouse. ‘The voice of God!’ Alas! Alas!

  3

  There are two methods whereby masterful ambitious men may hold any population in a state of ordered subjectivity. The first and by far the most honorable method is through an irresistible and highly-trained standing army, ready to deploy anywhere; with mechanical precision at a telegraphic nod in order to lay down the Law at the cannon’s mouth and sweep away all dangerous opposition.

  The second and cheaper method is, first of all to inoculate those intended to be exploited with some poisonous political soporific, superstition, or theoria; something that operating insidiously, hypodermically, may render them laborious, meek, and tractable.

  The latter plan has ever proved itself most effective because Aryan populations that would fight to the last gasp against undisguised military despotism; may be induced to passively submit to any indignity or extortion, if their brains are first carefully soaked in some Abstract Lie.

  At the period of the war of Independence, North America was far too wide, far too sparsely settled, and far too poor in concentrated wealth to be effectively ruled and plundered upon the standing army principle: either by King George or the successful Junta of power-wielding Revolutionists.

  Hamilton, Hancock, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Henry, and all the vested material interests that stood a solid phalanx behind those voluble patriots cast about for some safer method of ruling the minds of the uninformed but extremely valorous yeomanry, backwoodsmen and mountaineers.

  After mature consideration they determined to lull and lure the armed peasantry back again into a condition of blissful somnolence, by instilling into their newly aroused minds, false but seductive political Idealisms, as subtle supplements to the fallacious, and equally delusive, (but pre-existent) religionisms and moralisms. This cunning plot worked like a charm, for Equity of Rights seemed to puritanic minds the logical outcome of that other hoary old lie — ‘Equality before God’. (“What a set of damned rascals they were!” was Governor Morris’s terse, rugged, but ever memorable description of the Congress of smart Corruptionists that adopted and formally proclaimed those famous and fatal Abstractions.)

  Thereupon the Sword of Power, that conquered on the battlefield, was carefully hidden away out of sight and ‘Constitutionalism’ invoked to aid in the re-harnessing of the Conquerors of Cornwallis, by their new masters. The old systems of Jurisprudence and Government (founded on naked force) were cleverly retained even amplified and at the same time the white skinned populations were cunningly proclaimed ‘free and equal.’ Never having enjoyed genuine personal freedom (except on the Indian border) being for the most part descendents of hunted-out European starvelings and fanatics, (defeated battlers) they now stupidly thought that they had won freedom at last by the patent device of selecting a complete outfit of new tax-gatherers every fourth year.

  4

  When we look back upon the childlike faith in Constitutionalism, displayed by our Revolutionary Fathers together with their infantile republican specifics for the redemption of mankind, we cannot help smiling. At every general election, since 1776,

  Americans have voted solidly for increasing the despotic authority of their elective rulers and task-masters. Personal liberty is very nearly unknown (except in the newspaper) and any citizen who dares to think in direct opposition to the dogma of the Majority does so at the risk of his life, if he thinks too loudly.

  Indeed, men of initiative and enterprise are now in the regular habit of purchasing immunity from Communal molestation by bribing legislatures and officials upon a wholesale scale. The State is a blackmail agency.<
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  Enterprises necessitating state-permits and large preliminary expenditures of capital, cannot be safely undertaken, until elective satraps (Aldermen, Judges, Governors, Congressmen, Presidents, Senators, etc.,) have first negotiated a percentage “rake-off”. Neither life nor property is safe from the malignance, revenge or greed of government officials or their confederates. He who would assert himself in this Republic, under present conditions, must be a man of unscrupulous acumen and shrewdness. He must know the exact price of every ‘patriot,’ with whom business brings him in contact and be ready to pay it without demur nay — with an appearance of hearty enthusiasm: otherwise it will go hard with him. Should he be a poor man, his chances in life are infinitesimal; so long as he is conscientious. No citizen can ‘call his soul his own,’ who dares to openly attack the administrative scoundrelism — scoundrelism based securely upon purchasable majority votes. Those thievish official peculators of Turkey, China, Persia, and Morocco, would hang their heads in utter shame at their own clumsy methods of robbery, if they once beheld the magnificent mechanism and finesse wherewith American politicians enrich themselves by bleeding the treasuries, stealing public lands, and sweating the revenues.

  Indeed, our Grand Vizers (heaven bless them) not only plunder living generations, but they even make Futurity contribute to their hungry rapacity.

  Their schemes of financial legerdemain are of unparalleled brilliance and grandeur. They borrow thousands of millions upon National Credits from the Usurers, and then proceed to apportion the money unto each other, under the elaborate pretence of needful public expenditure, redeeming the currency, etc., etc.

  In order that the Jew may be secured in his usurious ‘shent-per-shent,’ oppressive taxes are laid on the Peasantry wherewith to pay the annual interest charge upon the Bonded Millions. All of these tributes are collectable (in appreciating gold) at the point of the Supreme Court’s bayonet. However, military assistance is very seldom needed to enforce the tax-collectors’ demands, because most Americans are exceptionally docile and ‘good.’ No need of coercion with a palsied people, ever eager to obey the slightest nod of their Masters.

  America! America! Never shall you realize the true meaning of thorough-going Independence and Self-Proprietorship, until an American Cromwell, or an American Cæsar has signed the death-warrant of an American King. The executive that sells his people into bondage is a Public Enemy, whether he be an elective Monarch or an hereditary King. Such a Scoundrel and Traitor has no rights that property-holding Freeman are bound to respect: no not one. By accepting the gold of Public Plunderers, he makes himself an Ishmaelite. His hand is against every man’s hearth and every man’s property. Therefore every man’s hand should be uplifted against him. In days not long gone by, men of our Race have hung bribe-takers with scant ceremony; and even rolled the heads of Kings into the executioner’s basket.

  If we are not to be robbed now of everything we possess and reduced to conditions of absolute State servitude, we must not shrink from doing so again.

  Despotism, if it is to be overthrown, must be fought with its own weapons, and the vilest of Despotisms are ever founded upon Majority Votes.

  As for ‘the Common People,’ they are energetically chasing shadowy paternalisms, and allowing their substance to be ‘appropriated’ on a gigantic scale. They are living in a fool’s paradise of ‘progress,’ and ‘peaceful industrial evolution,’ as the cant phrases go. Some of these days they may possibly wake up (when too late) and discover, with alarm and astonishment, that all their mock iambics have been of no avail against the insidious growth of centralized Oligarchic Hebraism, ballot-box desolation, and industrial imperialism.

  Americans have yet to learn, that each generation must fight out its own good fight, and not rely for the preservation of its hardihood and independence, upon moth-eaten parchments nor on fraudulent statesmen, now in the graveyard — statesmen who spent their petty babblesome lives; not in doing heroic things, but in founding and enthroning the abominations that afflict us all to-day like a palsy. Our national hero-worship badly wants reconstruction.

  5

  Many years after the “Declaration” was issued, our written Constitution was constructed with much voluble sophistry and mimic strife. That document, considered as a whole, is the most cunningly worded and at the same time most terrible instrument of Government and Mastership that any Anglo-Teutonic tribe has ever yoked itself up under. Pretending to ‘grant’ liberty and self-government, it practically annihilates both. Under the show of “guaranteeing” personal independence and civil rights, it has organized an elective tyranny; wherein the mob-monarch possesses more arbitrary authority than any dynastic despot since the days of Darius or Balschazzar.

  The highest crime is actually written in the highest law of the land.’

  “Thus, did the great Guile-masters,

  Their toils and their tangles set;

  And as wide as was the water:

  So wide was woven the net.”

  Indeed the written Constitution of our Republic is a monstrous mechanical contrivance, that bids fair (when once it has got properly under way) to squeeze the very heart out of all the Best Elements in America.

  Our Federal Government may be, very appropriately compared to a pirate ship cleverly disguised as a friendly armed cruiser; convoying a fleet of peaceful merchantmen loaded with an immense treasure and 70,000,000 passengers. When it first came to their ‘assistance’ it was — O! so kindly! so affectionate! so full of loving regard for its intended prey, for the welfare and bon-voyage of its quarry. Now however that its forty-five ships of state are out in the open ocean, and absolutely at its mercy, it strips off its decoy rig; hoists the ‘Deaths-head-and-bloody-bones,’ opens its hidden portholes, runs out its round-lipped broadsides, and yells through its editorial speaking-trumpets: —“Heave to there, or you’ll be blown out of the water”.

  Thus it will be seen the Jesuitic ‘Evangel of Equality’ has proved itself a tremendous success. It seduced the American People into a feeling of contentment and security till their ‘bonds’ and fetters were properly forged, polished, and neatly riveted on.

  Well fashioned, indeed, was the Net! — A splendid spider web it has proved itself, and withal, needful.

  Under the hypnotic spell of a ‘free and equal’ dream, Americans have been hustled into a convict-prison of laboriousness to piratical masters a thousand times more terrible and more unyielding than any history can describe. All that is now left of Liberty is its name, and the harmless privilege the common people have of scolding their Proprietors in vulgar editorial diatribes at or about election times. Occasionally they do descend into the streets, indulging in sanguinary vociferations upon the same general principle that impels a mangy cur to howl most dismally — if struck with a brick.

  The conflict between the masters and the helots is over for the present and the masters having conquered are in possession of the booty and the field. Hark! the songs of victory — the flap of the battle-pennons!’

  Indeed, considering all the circumstances, the common people are ‘lost souls’ — no matter what they now do they must remain in hell. Their position is that of a worm trying to escape from its hole in a heated, burning log; if it runs to the right it runs into heat and smoke, and if it runs to the left it runs into blazes. A few minutes more and — it is roasted alive.

  Even should America’s servile multitudes appeal to the arbitrement of Physical Force, they cannot possibly win. Possessing neither the strength, courage, brains, arms, money, nor leaders: they must be blown into eternal fragments by their master’s highly trained artillerists, and scientific destroyers.

  6

  The citadel of Power is now consolidated and prepared with the most improved armaments to repel any assault, no matter how well sustained. The nation is intersected in all directions, with iron highroads and splendid waterways, whereon armies and navies may be moved from city to city, with facility and dread effect. The war of Sece
ssion (or rather the war for the annihilation of Self-Government) demonstrated conclusively that a Centralized Authority, resting on herd-votes of the vulgar and fanatic is (in practice) military Absolutism. There is no other Power in the land that can effectively hold it in check. The Czar of Russia possesses less actual authority than our Federal Government. With a standing army in the hollow of its hand, it can do exactly as it pleases, i.e. if it can collect enough revenue to purchase ‘statesmen’ and pay the salaries of its praetorian cohorts.

  Most Americans are only now beginning to perceive these things, but they were forseen, (and also foretold in part) by clear-sighted individuals before the Constitution itself was formally Enthroned.

  To-day all the old sphinx questions are up again for solution. No man of balanced sense can honestly believe that these problems are to be settled by ballot-box stuffing or Editorialism. Settled they must be upon ‘the good old rule, the simple plan,’ and thereafter settled and re-settled again and again; for, there is no finality in social adjustments and there should not be. Material strength is the basis of all human greatness and material strength must ‘settle’ the tyranny of the greatest number; probably with fire and steel. All other theories are chimeras — lies — delusions — make-believe and of no account.

  The Philosophy of Power has slumbered long, but whenever men of sterling worth are found, it must again sweep away the ignoble dollar-damned Pedlarisms of to-day and openly, as of old, dominate the destiny of an emancipated and all-conquering race.

  What is viler than a government of slaves and usurious Jews? What is grander than a government of the Noblest and the Best — who have proved their Fitness on the plains of Death?

  Cromwell and his Ironsides — Cæsar and his Legions shall be born again; and the thunderous tread of Sulla’s fierce destroyers shall roll and rumble amid the fire and glare and smoke of crumbling constitutionalisms: ‘as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be’ — warfare without end.