I have a BA in Philosophy, and I think I’ve read close to everything Friedrich Nietzsche ever wrote, including his extant personal correspondence, and I can confirm for the good people of Kentucky that going around reading Nietzsche unsolicited to Baylor students is the hostile act of an anti-Christian. You don’t have to take my word for it. Here is the summation of Nietzsche’s tremendous polemic The Antichrist:
With this I come to a conclusion and pronounce my judgment. I condemn Christianity; I bring against the Christian church the most terrible of all the accusations that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. It is, to me, the greatest of all imaginable corruptions; it seeks to work the ultimate corruption, the worst possible corruption. The Christian church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul. Let any one dare to speak to me of its “humanitarian” blessings! Its deepest necessities range it against any effort to abolish distress; it lives by distress; it creates distress to make itself immortal. . . . For example, the worm of sin: it was the church that first enriched mankind with this misery!–The “equality of souls before God”–this fraud, this pretext for the rancunes of all the base-minded–this explosive concept, ending in revolution, the modern idea, and the notion of overthrowing the whole social order–this is Christian dynamite. . . . The “humanitarian” blessings of Christianity forsooth! To breed out of humanitas a self-contradiction, an art of self-pollution, a will to lie at any price, an aversion and contempt for all good and honest instincts! All this, to me, is the “humanitarianism” of Christianity!–Parasitism as the only practice of the church; with its anaemic and “holy” ideals, sucking all the blood, all the love, all the hope out of life; the beyond as the will to deny all reality; the cross as the distinguishing mark of the most subterranean conspiracy ever heard of,–against health, beauty, well-being, intellect, kindness of soul–against life itself. . . .
This eternal accusation against Christianity I shall write upon all walls, wherever walls are to be found–I have letters that even the blind will be able to see. . . . I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and small enough,–I call it the one immortal blemish upon the human race. . . .
And mankind reckons time from the dies nefastus when this fatality befell–from the first day of Christianity!–Why not rather from its last?–From today?–The transvaluation of all values! . . .
THE END
Rand Paul says that he used to read this stuff to the overwhelmingly and devoutly Christian students who attended Baylor University with him.
“The only thing I remember from college of these little pranks is that we were kind of nerds, we used to sometimes take people and we would read (19th century philosopher Friedrich) Nietzsche to them because we thought we were really clever.
“Most people thought we were a bunch of nerds but nobody ever thought we were kidnapping them or making them pray to some idol because the thing is, it’s just so ridiculous,” he said.
Paul did so as a member of the NoZe Brotherhood, an irreverent Secret Society established in 1924. They were banned from campus two years before Paul joined them and started reading Nietzsche to the Baptists who attended the school.
The NoZe Brotherhood, as the group was called, was formally banned by Baylor two years before Paul arrived on the grounds of “sacrilege,” the university president said at the time. “They had ‘made fun of not only the Baptist religion, but Christianity and Christ,’ ” President Herbert Reynolds told the student newspaper, The Lariat.
The group hardly denied the charge. One “brother” told a reporter from the Lariat during Paul’s sophomore year that the group was raising awareness of an abundance of both “hot air” and “dangerous and even toxic levels of Christian atmosphere on campus.”
Now, I might very well have felt the same way if I had been attending Baylor University at that time. And I don’t think being obnoxious and insensitive in college is disqualifying for high office. Furthermore, someone can find Jesus at any point in their lives, sometimes with salutary effects. Finally, there should be no religious tests for office seekers in this county, even informally. It is a great shame that there is only one member of Congress (Rep. Pete Stark of California) who is willing to admit that he is atheist. Atheism is such a dirty word that a recent study found that 15% of Americans claim no religion but only 1.6% will describe themselves as atheists or agnostics. I believe all elements of society should be represented in Congress, including the 15% of us who don’t subscribe to any particular religion. I think learning about Friedrich Nietzsche’s beliefs is part of a well-rounded education. I don’t care that Rand Paul was a real knucklehead in college who thought it was clever to taunt the mostly devout students he studied with. But, maybe you do care. Maybe it says something about his character and what kind of show he’s putting on for Kentuckians. Maybe he’s not really sincere when he assures you that he has Christ in his heart. Maybe he’s lying to your face. Maybe you’d prefer to be represented by Jack Conway.
