Nietzsche and the New Morality

It amuses me that Nietzsche provokes such a negative reaction among contemporary Americans. His views on the "herd" and the superior virtues of the "ubermensch" are derived from the same moral calculus held by early English settlers towards the native american inhabitants living in the New World, and toward African slaves imported to work the southern plantations of white Anglo-Saxon farmers. The European Enlightenment idea that all people are created equal was never intended to apply to such foreign cultures as Africa, Asia, India or the North American tribes. The belief in natural rights was reserved for members of European descent, primarily the Anglo-Saxen and Nordic races. Christians have never had any trouble in finding scriptural passages to justify a refusal to include "inferior races" as their brothers in Christ. So why are so many Christians offended when Nietzsche (or Zarathustra) comes down from the mountain to announce that "God is dead?" Unlike Moses, who came down from the mountain bearing stone tablets engraved with God's law to the Israelites, Zarathustra comes to liberate humanity. Zarathustra doesn't kill God. He merely looks around and observes how people behave, then comes to the perfectly rational conclusion that God must not exist, otherwise he would never tolerate mankind's treatment of his fellow man. Nietzsche was no apostle for brotherly love. He despised most of humanity, regarding them as members of a herd, as an assortment of crude, boorish, uncivilized creatures who masquerade as people of higher intelligence, but are, in fact, no more civilized than the wild animals living in the jungle. For Nietzsche, God is a fable invented by the herd to justify a belief in their own superiority. Yet the true virtuous man, the ubermensch, does not make excuses nor lower himself to the herd, who is incapable of understanding him. If God is dead, then what need is there of morality or compassion? The Ubermensch makes his own morality. He is Achilles who answers to no one and bows to no king. Should a great man bow to a peasant? Of course not. Nietzsche observes that most men hide behind the opinions of their neighbor, their priest, their councilman, or mayor. But the great man keeps his own company. His conscience is clear. He is beyond shame. He is a force of nature and will not be humbled by the petty bourgeois values of ordinary men. In a sense, he is a god of his own making. Another Caesar, Napoleon, or Alexander. How can the little people, the herd, even dare to look upon him? Yet the little people, the herd, have their own scale of values. They look down on all people of technologically backward cultures. So behold the new morality that Zarathustra brings: the freedom to despise all people lower than yourself. In Nietzsche's view, we are all monkeys in this jungle. But some monkeys are smarter than the rest. And so in the Darwinian model of evolution, it is we, the smart monkeys from Europe carrying a Bible in one hand and a musket in the other, who deserve to rule over the backward monkeys of other races. This is called our "manifest destiny." Or in Judeo-Christian terms, "God's will."