Hello, Dark Sportsters. It is the displeased video image of your Commander here, Greg Nikolic:

The brutal men who killed Trotsky in Mexico after his years on the run were rabid rats. They probably didn’t care much for Communism. What they cared for was being part of a structure of power that rewarded them well for their subservience.

(By the way, Stalin’s insecurity is shown in his relentless pursuit of his old rival. Even when Stalin had won decisively, he was still not content to rest on his laurels. Even then he was scheming on how to re-solidify his grip on power, which by now was absolute.)

The rabid rats are counterpoised by the principled men. Adolf Hitler was a principled guy. The first ones to shout “Free Palestine!” are principled people. (The later copiers may not be so principled… They may in fact be rabid rats in hiding.)

Then there are the free livers. These are men who are just trying to get the most out of life, to maximize their time on Earth. They are much more prone to be atheists than diehard religionists (the principled men are often hardcore religionists) and are typically the sort of man who goes to work for a major investment bank in New York. I am reminded of the team of bankers that migrated as a group from one company to the next, or the radio disc jockeys “Humble and Fred” of the Toronto airwaves scene who stayed together from one radio station on to the next, as their friendship became something to treasure, to maximize, in the face of official disapproval.

(Official disapproval is always of the rabid-rat variety. You’re not supposed to value friendship highly as a vital feature of life. You’re supposed to break apart and re-form at the behest of the corporation, kowtowing to its prerogatives and its needs…)

The rabid rat is a small kind of man. He is the kind of man who, in Japan, is desperate to work for only the very biggest of zaibatsus, seeking to shelter in its bigness and submerge himself in its culture, its way of life, its modus operandi. Stalin was a big rabid rat. He was not really a Communist, but only a seeker after something that would give him a platform on which to stand. He was a rabid rat with a bullhorn in his gray paw.

What I like about the free liver is his no-bullshit, pleasantly frank attitude. You can talk with him. If you talk with a rabid rat, he’ll literally rat you out to gain currency with the powers that be. If you talk with a principled man, he’s bound to lecture you on your moral failings and shortcomings.

The principled man is the rarest of the three types, and the most dangerous. He follows his heart. He has the inner courage to stand against the world’s iron dictates. Even when he is wrong, he believes himself to be right. He is stubborn, bull-headed, and naturally tough and resilient.

The free liver’s great weakness is that he is prone to being an opportunist. Although his heart and mind are in the right place, sometimes he makes an accommodation with a revolting force in order to live left alone, in peace. However, that is balanced off by the great variety of free livers, their tendency to be artists and entrepreneurs, their love of life and their hatred of ascetism. They would never scourge themselves like good Christians. They would rather be the first to eat the apple from the Tree.

I would like to live in a world of free livers. If I had to order my preference of men, it would be free livers, then principled men, then rabid rats. You’d think, being the kind of man I am, I would value the rabid rats for the services they could perform for me, but I think most of them are not of the top intellectual caliber. For that, you have to turn to the free livers.