[Bill: This is one of the greatest arguments against the Stormfront, conservative, don't-wear-uniforms types ever written.]

Why do certain opposition parties fail to flourish? Solely for the reason that they refuse to forsake the path of morality or legality. Hence the measureless hypocrisy of devotion, love, etc, from whose repulsiveness one may daily get the most thorough nausea at this rotten and hypocritical relation of a "lawful opposition".

In the moral relation of love and fidelity a divided or opposed will cannot have place; the beautiful relation is disturbed if one wills this and the other the reverse. But now, according to the practice hitherto and the old prejudice of the opposition, the moral relation is to be preserved by all. What is then left to the opposition? Perhaps the will to have a liberty, if the beloved one sees fit to deny it? Not a bit! It may not will to have the freedom, it can only wish for it, "petition" for it, lisp a "please, please"!

What would come of it, if the opposition really willed, willed with the full energy of the will? No, it must renounce will in order to live to love, renounce liberty -- for love of morality. It may never "claim as a right" what it is permitted only to "beg as a favor". Love and devotion demand with undeviating definiteness that there be only one will to which the others devote themselves, which they serve, follow, love.

Whether this will is regarded as reasonable or as unreasonable, in both cases one acts morally when one follows it, and immorally when one breaks away from it. The will that commands the censorship seems to many unreasonable; but he who in a land of censorship evades the censoring of his book acts immorally, and he who submits it to the censorship acts morally. If some one let his moral judgment go, and set up a secret press, one would have to call him immoral, and imprudent in the bargain if he let himself be caught; but will such a man lay claim to a value in the eyes of the "moral"? Perhaps! -- that is, if he fancied he was serving a "higher morality".

A Nero is a "bad" man only in the eyes of the "good" ... The good see in him an arch-villain, and relegate him to hell. Why did nothing hinder him in his arbitrary course? Why did the people put up with so much? Do you supposed the tame Romans, who let all their will be bound by such a tyrant, were a hair the better? In old Rome they would have put him to death instantly, and would never have been his slaves. But the contemporary "good" among the Romans opposed to him only moral demands, not their will; they sighed that their emperor did not do homage to morality, like them; they themselves remained "moral subjects", till at last one found courage to give up "moral, obedient subjection."

Then the same "good Romans", who as "obedient subjects" had borne all the ignominy of having no will, hurrahed over the negarious, immoral act of the rebel. Where then in the "good" was the courage for the revolution, that courage which they now praised, after another had mustered it up? The good could not have this courage, for a revolution, and an insurrection in the bargain, is always something "immoral", which one can resolve upon only when one ceases to be "good" and becomes either "bad" or -- neither of the two.

Nero became very inconvenient by his possessedness. But a self-owning man would not sillily oppose to him the "sacred," and whine that the tyrant does not regard the sacred; he would oppose to him his will. How often the sacredness of the inalienable rights of man has been held up to their foes, and some liberty or other shown and demonstrated to be a "sacred right of man!" Those who do that deserve to be laughed out of court -- as they actually are -- were it not in truth that they do, even though unconciously, take the road that leads to the goal. they have a presentiment that, if only the majority is once won for that liberty, it will also will the liberty, and will then take what it will have. The sacredness of the liberty, and all possible proofs of this sacredness, will never procure it; lamenting and petitioning only shows beggars.