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In the Old Testament, Oliver Cromwell's favorite inspirational
reading, the Jews had fought to free their "promised land" of Jebusites,
Canaanites and Philistines. In fact, their God had ordered them to do it.
Why? Because God was the caretaker of a specific pool of genes. The
Jebusites, Canaanites and Philistines were not carriers of Jehovah's
favored genetic strain. Hence, concluded God, they had no place in the
land the Lord had set aside for his chosen pool of DNA.
The commands of the Hebrew God were the same as those that
primal instincts had delivered to the rat. What sounded like the voice
of the Most High was actually the whispering of the animal brain.
Oliver Cromwell's animal brains didn't just murmur their points
of view. They roared. Cromwell was born in Huntingdon, England, in
1599. ^^His father was a cloth fuller who had accumulated a good
deal of property in the little town. His mother was from a well-to-do
family of farmers.
As a child, Oliver was one of those little monsters whose
behavior can make us ashamed to call ourselves human. He grabbed
pigeons from neighbors' dove-cots, killed and ate them. He stole
apples from nearby orchards. His raids on the fruit trees were so
frequent that he was dubbed "The Apple Dragon." Vandalism was
another of his favorite sports. In particular, young Oliver enjoyed
breaking down hedges. Cromwell had ample time for these escapades.
He played hooky from school for months at a time. His parents took
little pleasure in his hobbies. They beat their rampaging boy endlessly.
But the pain didn't even slow little Oliver down.51
In his late teens, the beast broke out of Cromwell in a slightly
different form. Like a teenager in a wealthy Connecticut suburb or an
inner-city slum, he was obsessed with violence, sex, gambling and
chemical abuse. Oliver delighted in attacking decent women in the
streets. The historical records say he "ravished" them. In modern
parlance, the term might be rape. Cromwell did not restrict his
assaults to ladies. He was known to bludgeon respectable men with
his quarter staff. To top it all off, the charming lad drank like a fish.
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