    33

    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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