The Ignoble Beast

There is no more brilliant juxtaposer in blogdom than Jonathan Schwarz:

George Bush:

"This has been a joyous experience, and still is."

George Bush:

"I'm at peace with myself."

Rush Limbaugh:

CALLER: It was like a college fraternity prank that stacked up naked men—

LIMBAUGH: Exactly. Exactly my point! This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation.

Michael Ledeen:

"No stages. This is total war...If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely and we don’t try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war...our children will sing great songs about us years from now."

Friedrich Nietzsche, in On the Genealogy of Morals:

[W]e ask ourselves who it is that is really evil according to the code of rancor. The answer is: precisely the good one of the opposite code, that is the noble, the powerful...anyone who knew these "good" ones only as enemies would find them evil enemies indeed....once they step outside their circle become little better than uncaged beasts of prey...They revert to the innocence of wild animals: we can imagine them returning from an orgy of murder, arson, rape, and torture, jubilant and at peace with themselves as though they had committed a fraternity prank—convinced, moreover, that the poets for a long time to come will have something to sing about and to praise. Deep within all these noble races there lurks the beast of prey, the splendid blond beast, bent on spoil and conquest.

This hidden urge has to be satisfied from time to time, the beast let loose in the wilderness...even their highest culture shows an awareness of this trait and a certain pride in it...