Jack Donovan Quotes

It’s tragic to think that heroic man’s great destiny is to become economic man, that men will be reduced to craven creatures who crawl across the globe competing for money, who spend their nights dreaming up new ways to swindle each other. That’s the path we’re on now. What a withering, ignoble end…

Men of ideas and men of action have much to learn from each other, and the truly great are men of both action and abstraction.

Sometimes men pick fights just for something to do-just to feel something like the threat of harm and the possibility of triumph.

People can talk tough without having to do the primitive math of violence, because they believe that law enforcement will either intervene and stop or punish an attacker.

Civilization comes at a cost of manliness. It comes at a cost of wildness, of risk, of strife. It comes at a cost of strength, of courage, of mastery. It comes at a cost of honor. Increased civilization exacts a toll of virility, forcing manliness into further redoubts of vicariousness and abstraction

Men cannot be men—much less good or heroic men—unless their actions have meaningful consequences to people they truly care about. Strength requires an opposing force, courage requires risk, mastery requires hard work, honor requires accountability to other men. Without these things, we are little more than boys playing at being men, and there is no weekend retreat or mantra or half-assed rite of passage that can change that. A rite of passage must reflect a real change in status and responsibility for it to be anything more than theater. No reimagined manhood of convenience can hold its head high so long as the earth remains the tomb of our ancestors

Vulnerability invites violence.

When someone tells a man to be a man, they mean that there is a way to be a man. A man is not just a thing to be—it is also a way to be, a path to follow and a way to walk. Some try to make manhood mean everything. Others believe that it means nothing at all. Being good at being a man can’t mean everything, and it has always meant something

Strength isn’t the only quality that matters. Sometimes it doesn’t matter at all. Strength is rarely a disadvantage.

Without strength, masculinity becomes something else—a different concept.

When men evaluate each other as men, they still look for the same virtues that they’d need to keep the perimeter. Men respond to and admire the qualities that would make men useful and dependable in an emergency. Men have always had a role apart, and they still judge one another according to the demands of that role as a guardian in a gang struggling for survival against encroaching doom. Everything that is specifically about being a man—not merely a person—has to do with that role

Strength, Courage, Mastery, and Honor are the alpha virtues of men all over the world. They are the fundamental virtues of men because without them, no “higher” virtues can be entertained. You need to be alive to philosophize. You can add to these virtues and you can create rules and moral codes to govern them, but if you remove them from the equation altogether you aren’t just leaving behind the virtues that are specific to men, you are abandoning the virtues that make civilization possible.

Plato (or Socrates) also compared men to dogs. One of the great tragedies of modernity is the lack of opportunity for men to become what they are, to do what they were bred to do, what their bodies want to do.

Honor Diversity” is an interesting slogan, because it essentially means “honor everyone and everything.” If everyone is honored equally, and everyone’s way of life is honored equally, honor has no hierarchy, and therefore honor has little value according to the economics of supply and demand. “Honor diversity” doesn’t mean much more than “be nice.

Plato (or Socrates) also compared men to dogs. One of the great tragedies of modernity is the lack of opportunity for men to become what they are, to do what they were bred to do, what their bodies want to do. They could be Plato’s noble puppies, but they are chained to a stake in the ground—left to the madness of barking at shadows in the night, taunted by passing challenges left unresolved and whose outcomes will forever be unknown.

A child is a child, but an incompetent adult is a beggar.

If anything has made men more effeminate in the past half-century, it's been the running feminist critique of masculinity.

The man who wants to be great believes that he is worthy of greatness. And it is so because he makes it so.

Strength is the ability to exert one’s will over oneself, over nature and over other people.

If you are never truly challenged in a meaningful way and are only required to perform idiot-proofed corporate processes to get your meat and shelter, can you ever truly be engaged enough to call yourself alive, let alone a man?

Being good at being a man isn’t a quest for moral perfection, it’s about fighting to survive. Good men admire or respect bad men when they demonstrate strength, courage, mastery or a commitment to the men of their own renegade tribes. A concern with being good at being a man is what good guys and bad guys have in common.

Flag-wavers often say, “If you don’t like my country, then leave.” But there is nowhere to go. There is no escape.

Life is conflict; peace is death. Forces of chaos keep the cycles of history moving.

What’s the point in trying if you know the game is rigged? For the satisfaction of knowing you are contributing to the greater good? That’s just the kind of stupid thing an intellectual would say.

There are no true enemies, only potential allies — hearts and minds yet to be won, “peaceful people” being deprived of their natural right to fast food, wall-to-wall carpet and high definition pornography. There are no more statues of heroes because no true villains can be acknowledged. There is no Beowulf because there are no monsters or dragons — only outsiders who are disenfranchised and misunderstood. Monuments can only be raised to mythic martyred unifiers like Jesus Christ or Martin Luther King or Abraham Lincoln. This

To be a barbarian today is to draw your own perimeter and build social networks and reciprocal relationships that are not dictated or controlled by the Empire.

The collapse may be imminent and its doomsayers may be vindicated, but waiting for the world to start is not the same as starting it.

Better to live vigorously, better to fight, than to simply wait for the end...in peace.

You’ll want men who are competent, who can get the job done. Who wants to be surrounded by morons and fuck-ups?

The natural gods of men are other men, mythic or real, who embody manhood in men's eyes.

No matter how exotic or seemingly different another man is, there's always some reflection of self in another male.

These venomous, needy souls speak of “toxic masculinity,” but who is more toxic than the person who needs to change to the whole world so that they can love themselves?

If you're going to be a master of your own life and your own world, you choose your values.

no man who has become masterful at anything has achieved that mastery without a certain amount of failure along the way.

There is no point in an adult male’s life when he can be excused from carrying his own weight, except when he is sick, injured, handicapped or old. Human societies accommodate all of these exceptions, but competency has always been crucial to a man’s mental health and sense of his own worth. Men want to carry their own weight, and they should be expected to. As Don Corleone might put it, women and children could afford to be careless for most of human history, but not men. Men have always had to demonstrate to the group that they could carry their own weight. Until

Negative information about immigrants and minority groups is covered up by egalitarians or so legally perilous to talk about in some parts of the West that the polite and well-meaning nation of Sweden has become known as the rape capital of Europe. Instead of dealing with the problem, the Swedes obscure and talk around it and many have simply accepted it as the “new normal.” Self-defense

I’ve been a non-believer all of my life, but I’d drop to my knees and sing the praises of any righteous god who collapsed this Tower of Babel and scattered men across the Earth in a million virile, competing cultures, tribes, and gangs.

We were born into a peace of plenty, a pleasure-economy, a bonobo masturbation society. The future that our elite handlers have in store for us advertises more of the same. More detached pleasure, less risk, freedom from want, more masturbation.

Evaluating and altering the way you use the word “we” in speech, thought and writing is the simplest, yet also one of the most profound changes you can make in your everyday life to secede psychologically from the global collective and become a barbarian.

The Internet is a good filter. It’s a good way to find men who share some of your values. However, your friends on message boards and on social networking sites, scattered all over the world, are not going to be there for you when the proverbial shit hits the fan. Spend more time making contact with men who are geographically close to you. If you have close friends in your area, consider moving into the same apartment complex or within a few blocks of one another. Think about the way gangs start in inner cities. Men and boys have lived and died to defend tribes with territories as small as a few blocks. Proximity creates familiarity and shared identity. It creates us. Spreading our alliances across nations and continents keeps us reliant on the power of the State and the global economy. Men who are separated and have no one else to rely on must rely on the State.

Western men are supposed to constantly ask women for permission and make sure women don’t feel threatened or undermined in any way. When

Borders do not make a people. People make borders.

Assholes who run into trouble all the time probably run into trouble because they are assholes. There

Men who don’t care about what the other men think of them aren’t dependable or trustworthy.

The Empire sells superficial identities that are fleeting, synthetic, empty and unsatisfying. In a world of single, spoiled boys who have been able to walk away from any commitment or association — lifetime brotherhood is a radical idea. Collective honor is a radical idea. Working to help people you know and care about instead of strangers is a radical idea. The

a recent column for Asia Times, Spengler argued that cultures facing their own imminent demise implode or lash out. They operate under a different standard of rationality, like a man who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Our modern idea of rational behavior fails to comprehend that kind of spiritual crisis. He wrote: “Individuals trapped in a dying culture live in a twilight world. They embrace death through infertility, concupiscence, and war. A dog will crawl into a hole to die. The members of sick cultures do not do anything quite so dramatic, but they cease to have children, dull their senses with alcohol and drugs, become despondent, and too frequently do away with themselves. Or they may make war on the perceived source of their humiliation.”[52]

Major West, a character in the zombie movie 28 Days Later, tells a story reminiscent of the founding of Rome. He gives the rationale for the rape of the Sabine women in just a few lines: “Eight days ago, I found Jones with his gun in his mouth. He said he was going to kill himself because there was no future. What could I say to him? We fight off the infected or we wait until they starve to death... and then what? What do nine men do except wait to die themselves? I moved us from the blockade, and I set the radio broadcasting, and I promised them women. Because women mean a future.

We are, each of us, alone. And this is the first law of masculinity. And it is the most important law. Your value is equal to the value which you bring to the tribe. We are not equal. You are not special. Respect is earned, not given. Your brothers will not love you unconditionally for who you are, just being yourself. They will criticise you, push you to your limits, bring out the best in you, and give you their respect when earned. And this isn't shocking at all. This is common knowledge to any man. Your childhood is over. The boy is dead. It's time to be a man for the rest of your life.

Remove justice, and what are kingdoms but gangs of criminals on a large scale? What are criminal gangs but petty kingdoms? A gang is a group of men under command of a leader, bound by a compact of association, in which the plunder is divided according to an agreed convention. If this villainy wins so many recruits from the ranks of the demoralized that it acquires territory, establishes a base, captures cities and subdues people, it then openly arrogates itself the title of kingdom, which is conferred on it in the eyes of the world, not by the renouncing of aggression but by the attainment of impunity” —St. Augustine, City of God. 4-4.

Politics becomes even more of a magnet for self-aggrandizing sociopaths and liars than it already tends to be by nature, and men with no meaningful political power or authority waste their time and energy trying to convince complete strangers to convert to their way of thinking, even when those strangers have different group identities, different religious beliefs, and completely incompatible or opposing ideas about what is good or “best in life.

Good, modern, civilized Western white men are so easily cowed by charges of bias and privilege that they work tirelessly to outdo each other with social displays of moral universalism — by cucking themselves in every way imaginable. Western

Politicians see a more politically and socially active population that must be appeased, and they will continue to fall all over themselves to get the female vote. Women are better suited to and better served by the globalism and consumerism of modern democracies that promise security, no-strings attached sex and shopping. The new Way of Women depends on prosperity, security, and globalism. Any return of honor and The Way of Men and the eventual restoration of balance and harmony between the sexes will require the weakening of all three.

For instance, while writing this, I was summoned to attend jury duty. Throughout the jury selection process, coordinators and judges reminded us how important our presence was, and how deeply they and the State of Oregon appreciated our service. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Oregon and several judges who may or may not have been actors thanked us via video. The big joke of it was that attending jury service is mandatory and my summons threatened me with the possibility of being held in contempt of court for non-compliance. That pretty much sums up how the state “appreciates” its citizens. “We

Courage implies a risk. It implies a potential for failure or the presence of danger. Courage is measured against danger. The greater the danger, the greater the courage. Running into a burning building beats telling off your boss. Telling off your boss is more courageous than writing a really mean anonymous note. Acts without meaningful consequences require little courage.

One of the great tragedies of modernity is the lack of opportunity for men to become what they are, to do what they were bred to do, what their bodies want to do. They could be Plato’s noble puppies, but they are chained to a stake in the ground—left to the madness of barking at shadows in the night, taunted by passing challenges left unresolved and whose outcomes will forever be unknown.

Until you can function as a competent member of the group and carry your own weight, you are a supplicant and a drag on the collective. A child is a child, but an incompetent adult is a beggar. One of the problems with massive welfare states is that they make children or beggars of us all, and as such are an affront and a barrier to adult masculinity. It has become clichéd comedy for men and women to laugh at men who are concerned with being competent. The “men refuse to stop and ask for directions” joke never seems to get old for women, who are more comfortable with dependence, or socialist types, because reducing men to a childlike state of supplication and submission to state bureaucrats is required for big-government welfare states to function. Masculine loathing of dependence is a bulwark to the therapeutic mother state.

The danger for the Noble man is in resigning himself to “wait” for the revolution. You’re alive NOW, man. Memento mori. Don’t spend your life waiting for something to happen, for some chance occurrence, for someone else to do something for you, for someone to free you, so that you can finally be who you want to be. That’s slave thinking. You might as well wait for your reward in Heaven. Do what you can, while you can.

People are always rattling on about what "we" should do, whether they are talking about "their" country or "their" race or all of humanity or some other abstract group of humans who don't give a damn what they think about anything. Who is "We?" Who can you legitimately speak for? Who cares what you say? If you don't know, you're just running your mouth. You're just some guy yelling at the TV during a football game. Your "we" can't hear you and if they could, they wouldn't care anyway.

The universalism of today, the universalism that can only condemn those who condemn and separate those who separate is the product of global commerce. The one true god of the universalist is Mammon, and he embraces anyone with cash who doesn’t scare away other customers. This is why we are told to accept the unacceptable, to condemn religions that condemn, to share cultures with everyone as if they belong to no one, to deny all racial affinity, to pretend that men and women are interchangeable. Because exclusion is bad for business. If

As demographics in America have changed, the big studios have rushed to include actors that reflect those demographics. There is no cultural hegemony emanating from a particular people with a particular identity, merely a profit-driven system of production that responds to changes in the market, with the aim of reaching the most consumers possible. The only culture being imposed through this mechanism is anti-culture — moral and cultural universalism that dissolves social boundaries to make the maximum number of consumers feel included. While

While I try to avoid it, I’m sure I’ve recently — perhaps even somewhere in this book — included myself as an American or a white man or a Westerner by using the word “we.” It’s a convenient shorthand. However, I have been careful about my use of collective speech, working through roughly the same thought process described above, for several years now. When I mean the American government, I say “the American government.” I do this because I’ve come to the conclusion that the American government is a “them,” not a “we.” As the old saying goes: “say what you mean and mean what you say.” So

Interestingly, a point that never emerged in the press but that Tim Donovan revealed to the police was that Annie had specifically "asked him to trust her" for that night's doss money. This "he declined to do." Had this incident become common knowledge, it's likely that Donovan would have faced an even worse public backlash for his role in Annie's demise. "You can find money for your beer, and you can't find money for your bed." the deputy keeper is said to have spoken in response to her request. Annie, not quite willing to admit defeat, or perhaps in a show of pride, responded with a sigh: "Keep my bed for me. I shan't be long." Ill and drunk, she went downstairs and "stood in the door for two or three minutes," considering her options. Like the impecunious lodger described by Goldsmith, she too would have been contemplating from whom among her "pals" it might have been "possible to borrow the halfpence necessary to complete {her} doss money." More likely, Annie was mentally preparing "to spend the night with only the sky for a canopy." She then set off down Brushfield Street, toward Christ Church, Spitalfields, where the homeless regularly bedded down. Her thoughts as she stepped out onto Dorest Street, as the light from Crossingham's dimmed at her back, can never be known. What route she wove through the black streets and to whom she spoke along the will never be confirmed. All that is certain is her final destination. Of the many tragedies that befell Annie Chapman in the final years of her life, perhaps one of the most poignant was that she needn't have been on the streets on that night, or on any other. Ill and feverish, she needn't have searched the squalid corners for a spot to sleep. Instead, she might have lain in a bed in her mother's house or in her sisters' care, on the other side of London. She might have been treated for tuberculosis; she might have been comforted by the embraces of her children or the loving assurances of her family. Annie needn't have suffered. At every turn there had been a hand reaching to pull her from the abyss, but the counter-tug of addiction was more forceful, and the grip of shame was just as strong. It was this that pulled her under, that had extinguished her hope and then her life many years earlier. What her murderer claimed on that night was simply all that remained of what drink had left behind.

Anti-Noble morality is the product of ressentiment. The Anti-Noble man feels trapped. He believes that his happiness and fulfillment have been thwarted by others. He resents them for having better opportunities, for having greater wealth, for having more power, for using that power to coerce or oppress him. The Noble man views people, actions and circumstances as either being positive or negative, “good” or “un-good” in relationship to his own interests, subjectively. Instead of recognizing the tragic and unfair nature of human existence, the Anti-Noble man constructs a system of morality that he convinces himself is objective, rather than subjective — as it truly is.

In the future that globalists and feminists have imagined, for most of us there will only be more clerkdom and masturbation. There will only be more apologizing, more submission, more asking for permission to be men. There will only be more examinations, more certifications, mandatory prerequisites, screening processes, background checks, personality tests, and politicized diagnoses. There will only be more medication. There will be more presenting the secretary with a cup of your own warm urine. There will be mandatory morning stretches and video safety presentations and sign-off sheets for your file. There will be more helmets and goggles and harnesses and bright orange vests with reflective tape. There can only be more counseling and sensitivity training. There will be more administrative hoops to jump through to start your own business and keep it running. There will be more mandatory insurance policies. There will definitely be more taxes. There will probably be more Byzantine sexual harassment laws and corporate policies and more ways for women and protected identity groups to accuse you of misconduct. There will be more micro-managed living, pettier regulations, heavier fines, and harsher penalties. There will be more ways to run afoul of the law and more ways for society to maintain its pleasant illusions by sweeping you under the rug. In 2009 there were almost five times more men either on parole or serving prison terms in the United States than were actively serving in all of the armed forces.[64] If you’re a good boy and you follow the rules, if you learn how to speak passively and inoffensively, if you can convince some other poor sleepwalking sap that you are possessed with an almost unhealthy desire to provide outstanding customer service or increase operational efficiency through the improvement of internal processes and effective organizational communication, if you can say stupid shit like that without laughing, if your record checks out and your pee smells right—you can get yourself a J-O-B. Maybe you can be the guy who administers the test or authorizes the insurance policy. Maybe you can be the guy who helps make some soulless global corporation a little more money. Maybe you can get a pat on the head for coming up with the bright idea to put a bunch of other guys out of work and outsource their boring jobs to guys in some other place who are willing to work longer hours for less money. Whatever you do, no matter what people say, no matter how many team-building activities you attend or how many birthday cards you get from someone’s secretary, you will know that you are a completely replaceable unit of labor in the big scheme of things.

A graveyard of gods spreads out before us as we sit on our high seats and look out over the sands of time, littered with the half-sunk and crumbling visages of every Odin and Ozymandias.

Nietzsche’s diagnosis of deicide mutated into a malignant iconoclasm, not in the name of strength and life-affirming values as he had hoped, but in a “Harrison Bergeron”-style handicapping of all aspirational ideals.

There is no point in an adult male’s life when he can be excused from carrying his own weight, except when he is sick, injured, handicapped or old.

It has always been the job of men to separate “us” from “them,” and to police and protect the boundaries of the band, tribe, kingdom or nation. The function of women has always been to unify the tribe from within, to nurture positive relationships, to make everyone feel wanted and included, and to care for and empathize with the young, the old, the sick and the wounded.

En el futuro que globalistas y feministas han imaginado, para la mayoría de nosotros solo habrá más trabajo de oficinista y masturbación. Solo habrá más disculpas, más sumisión, más pedir permiso para ser hombre. Solo habrá más exámenes, más certificados, requisitos obligatorios, procesos selectivos, comprobación de antecedentes, test de personalidad y diagnósticos politizados. Solo habrá más medicación. Habrá más presentaciones de secretaria con una taza de vuestra propia orina caliente. Habrá estiramientos matutinos obligatorios, presentaciones de vídeos de seguridad y firmar papeles el resto de vuestras vidas. Habrá más cascos, gafas, arneses y chalecos naranjas con tiras reflectantes. Solo puede haber más asesoramiento y entrenamiento de la sensibilidad. Habrá más aros administrativos por los que pasar para poner en marcha vuestro propio negocio y mantenerlo a flote. Habrá más pólizas de seguro obligatorias. Con seguridad, habrá más impuestos. Habrá, probablemente, más leyes bizantinas y políticas empresariales contra el acoso sexual, y más vías para que las mujeres y los grupos protegidos os acusen por mala conducta. La vida estará más micro-controlada, habrá más regulaciones mezquinas, multas más elevadas y penas más duras. Habrás más posibilidades de que infrinjáis la ley y más formas para que la sociedad mantenga su cómoda ilusión escondiéndoos bajo la alfombra. En 2009, en los Estados Unidos, había casi cinco veces más hombres cumpliendo condena o en libertad condicional que en servicio activo en todas las fuerzas armadas.64 Si sois buenos chicos y seguís las normas, si aprendéis a hablar de forma pasiva e inofensiva, si podéis convencer a otro pobre sonámbulo de que estáis poseídos por un casi insano deseo de ofrecer atención al cliente o incrementar la eficacia operativa mejorando los procesos internos y la comunicación organizativa, si podéis decir gilipolleces como esta sin reíros, si vuestros expedientes pasan la prueba y vuestro pis huele bien, podéis conseguir un T-R-A-B-A-J-O. Quizá podáis ser el tipo que corrige los test o autoriza las pólizas de seguros. Quizá podáis ser el tipo que ayuda a alguna corporación desalmada a conseguir más dinero. Quizá podáis conseguir una palmadita en la cabeza por dar con la brillante idea de dejar sin trabajo a otro puñado de tipos y externalizar sus aburridos empleos en algún otro lugar en el que están deseando trabajar más horas por menos dinero. Hagáis lo que hagáis, no importa lo que diga la gente, no importa en cuantas actividades de grupo participéis o cuantas invitaciones de cumpleaños recibáis de la secretaria de alguien, sabréis que sois una unidad de trabajo completamente reemplazable dentro del gran esquema de las cosas.

He llegado a la conclusión de que la ventura del hombre es encontrar un equilibrio entre el mundo doméstico de comodidad y el mundo de conflicto viril. Los hombres no pueden ser hombres —y mucho menos héroes o buenos siendo hombres— a menos que sus acciones tengan consecuencias significativas para la gente que les preocupa de verdad. La fuerza necesita una fuerza opuesta, el coraje requiere riesgo, la maestría requiere trabajo duro, el honor demanda responsabilidad ante otros hombres. Sin estas cosas, no somos más que niños jugando a ser hombres

Strength, Courage, Mastery, and Honor are what they must demand of each other if they are going to win.

Until you can function as a competent member of the group and carry your own weight, you are a supplicant and a drag on the collective.

Strength is a “use it or lose it” aptitude.

The cost of civilization is a progressive trade-off of vital existence. It’s a trade of the real for the artificial, for the convincing con, made for the promise of security and a full belly.

What the modern world offers average men is a thousand and one ways to safely spank our monkey brains into oblivion.

To be honored, as Hobbes recognized, is to be esteemed, and as humans are differently-abled and differently motivated, some will earn greater esteem than others.

Being good at being a man is about being willing and able to fulfill the natural role of men in a survival scenario. Being good at being a man is about showing other men that you are the kind of guy they’d want on their team if the shit hits the fan. Being good at being a man isn’t a quest for moral perfection, it’s about fighting to survive.

Men aren’t wired to fight or cooperate; they are wired to fight and cooperate.

Courage and strength are synergetic virtues. An overabundance of one is worth less without an adequate amount of the other.

You look just like a guy I saw on a wanted poster, Mr. Donovan,” the agent said, staring at Reece with bright, unflinching eyes.

Mr. Donovan, I have been in this chair for over thirty years.

When lives are on the line, people will drop the etiquette of equality and make that decision again and again because it makes the most sense. That practical division of labor is where the male world begins.

Feminists, pacifists, and members of the privileged classes recognize that brother-bonded men who are good at being men will always be a threat, but forget that some of those men are necessary to create and maintain order in the first place.

A man who is more concerned with being a good man than being good at being a man makes a very well-behaved slave.

…greatness flows from the creativity and overcoming that chaos and challenge inspires in the man whose Noble belief in his own worth drives him forward to demonstrate his potential and realize the miracle of his own godhood. If you cannot see the way, make the way. If you despise the world around you, do not lament the passing of a dream you never knew — dream the world that you want NOW. Begin from where you are. Dream a new world and impose it from above. Thrust your hands into the decaying soil, scoop it up and sculpt it — give it shape with all of your strength. Life was never fair and creation was never easy. Take the world you have and make the one you want. Be the god that gives it life. And if you don’t know where to start — if you have nothing but your own body — start there. Create and recreate yourself. Be the clay, and become your own dream. Not because you have to, or because it is needed or necessary, but because you want to. Why not? Isn’t that what the conqueror, the master and the first king says? “Why not me?” Why not be the creature who creates himself?

Becoming a barbarian — becoming the kind of man who can belong to a tribe — requires a level of commitment that makes “good, modern, civilized men” uncomfortable.

Do the other people in this group know that they are in a group with you? Would the other people in this group acknowledge you as a representative member? What would other members of this group do for you if you needed help? What would you do for them, if they needed help? Do the majority of the people in this group share your values? Are you sure?

This horizontal culture of leveling has been replacing the vertical culture that preceded it — a culture that looked upward for inspiration to gods in the heavens and heroes on marble pedestals. Ancient and recent heroes of men have been posthumously diabolized by the thumbs of bored and bitchy social media mobs — accused of brand spanking new sins they never knew they were committing

The refusal to elevate an ideal of perfection because perfection is unattainable and near perfection is exceptional, is the product of a nihilistic ethos characterized by cowardice and self-loathing.

A parley?” he said, rubbing his watering eyes. “Who do you think you are, Jack Sparrow? This isn’t Pirates of the Caribbean.

The path is not away from ressentiment, but toward a higher ideal. The Noble Beast is not traveling away from weakness, but toward strength and a lifestyle that thrives on strength. He is focused on what he is, and what he is becoming — not “others” or their paths, which serve only as warnings and counterexamples.

This Noble Beast is both creature and creator — a Dionysian man of the earth who responds to its chaos and disorder by dreaming and imposing his own solar, Apollonian vision. He is a self-creator, a visionary force of order, a starter of worlds.

This man was born within the physical and psychical boundaries of the Empire of Nothing, but he is possessed by an atavistic wildness. He finds himself unsatisfied with seeking only that which is necessary for his own survival and pleasure. It is a higher happiness he seeks — the joy of self-revelation and becoming that can only be achieved through pressure and trial. He loves himself, says YES to his own life, celebrates his own existence, and seeks to discharge his own strength. He is a man who wants to become more of what he is, more of what a man is. He wants to be stronger, more courageous, more skillful.

To call out virility as a virtue — for its own sake — is to say, “I am a man, and that is good, because I love myself and my life and my fate and I want to be more of what I am, for my own sake.

and

A shell splinter cut Rags’s left forepaw. Another caromed off his gas mask, mangling his right ear. A needle-like sliver was imbedded under his right eye. The terrier was dazed for a minute, Then he struggled to his feet. Donovan lay where he had fallen. His gas mask had been shot away; arms and legs were cat by shrapnel. Blood from a gash in his forehead was blinding him. Over all hung the burning tang of gas—thinned somewhat by a northwest breeze, but still strong enough to sear the throats of sergeant and terrier. Between wheezes and coughs Rags pawed the now useless mask from his head. He licked first the sergeant’s outflung hand, then his face. Donovan roused himself. He lengthened the wire that tied the message to the dog’s collar, so Rags could carry the paper in his mouth. It would be lost if the little terrier succumbed before delivering it. The Sergeant started the dog toward the guns. As near-by bursts intensified the gas, Donovan staggered to his feet and urged the dog to a run. The terrier, favoring his wounded paw as much as he could, moved at a limping trot. Donovan, stumbling along behind, saw the concussion of a nearby shell-blast turn the little terrier on his back.

A gray-clad giant closed with Donovan, and the sergeant, caught off balance, stumbled and fell, with the enemy on top, clutching the American's throat with one hand and trying to swing a clubbed Mauser pistol with the other. Rags leaped for the hand that held the pistol. As his teeth sank into the man’s wrist the pistol clattered to the ground. The grip on Donovan's throat relaxed. The sergeant shook the man from him, and after a few minutes of desperate fighting the Americans mopped up the nest.

In the none-too-bright light he examined his canine recruit. The little fellow was weak from hunger—but game. His coat, normally ragged and shaggy, was tangled and snarled, from foraging—probably futilely through the streets and alleys of Paris. But there was a brave gleam in his eyes, and his tail thumped a sort of cheerful quick-step as he sat and looked Donovan over.

To protect and serve their own interests, the wealthy and privileged have used feminists and pacifists to promote a masculinity that has nothing to do with being good at being a man, and everything to do with being what they consider a “good man.” Their version of a good man is isolated from his peers, emotional, effectively impotent, easy to manage, and tactically inept.   A man who is more concerned with being a good man than being good at being a man makes a very well-behaved slave.

In The Empire of Nothing, the high arbiters of morality are in effect the offended complainers—those grievance grifters who are always upset, always unsatisfied, always the victim, always angling for special treatment, always trying to get something for nothing.