A few quotes that say it all…

“Distrust everyone in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!” –Friedrich Nietzsche 

“All in all, punishment hardens and renders people more insensible; it concentrates; it increases the feeling of estrangement; it strengthens the power of resistance.” –Friedrich Nietzsche

You may notice that I’ve started this out with the urge to punish. For me, it’s akin to murder and patriotism, just slightly different expressions of the same underlying homage to revenge that seems to lay at the heart of the far right’s ‘morality’. For me, ‘morality’ is nothing more than a social fad, and as Nietzsche surmised, a function of power, not truth. The same is true of ‘patriotism’, which, as Einstein suggested, ultimately ends in state-sactioned murder.

It’s interesting that in the earliest texts of the Bible — icon of the far right (both the Sanskrit and the Stevens Text – translation from the Greek), the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill’ — a mistranslation, actually stipulates, ‘Thou shalt not murder’. That would be ‘state sponsored’ or personally motivated.

“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” –Samuel Johnson

“Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism — how passionately I hate them! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.” –Albert Einstein