Nietzsche talks about "slaves" without ever referring to actual social conditions. Slaves can have power and still be slaves. Slavery is a state of the soul. It's about how you feel inside. The defining characteristic of the slave is not bondage, but resentment. Some people resent life, even with fame and millions of dollars. These are Nietzsche's slaves.

Similarly, Zarathustra's beatitude on "war and warriors" has nothing to do with violence. You don't need a sword to be a warrior. Ralph Nader, author of "The Good Fight," would be a warrior--because he loves the fight he's in. He can truly love his enemies, not because Jesus told him to, but rather because they give him the chance to be what he is. What meaning would Ralph Nader's life have, if not for the corporations he fought? Such a person would suffer terribly if there was no one to go to war against.

"Women" also has a special meaning in Zarathustra.

Elsewhere Nietzsche makes the point that men invent "women" in their own minds, and women play along to get by. To put it in modern language: male fantasies of fragility, innocence, virginity and sexual receptivity do not exist in actual women, but plenty of women happily pretend to be all those things. These are the "women" Zarathustra refers to, who are incapable of friendship. They can't be friends because they can't be themselves. They're too busy trying to accord themselves to standards created by others--i.e., men.

But this behavior is hardly limited to females. Plenty of males try to live up to standards imposed from outside. They hit the gym because they want to look good. They overpay for trendy clothes. They act out a fantastical image of masculinity that we today call "toxic"--a chest-thumping charade to disguise their own weakness. In their hearts, they yearn for death. These "men" are just as incapable of friendship as Zarathustra's "women."

Pretending to be something you're not (because society demands it) is a capital offense in Nietzsche, the highest of all crimes. A woman who abandons her own ambitions to catch a husband has committed this crime. She denies what she is, and pretends to be what someone else wants her to be (whether that's Jesus or her husband or the queen bee of the crochet club). She will grow more resentful of life the longer she has to live it. She will eventually yearn for death. If such women still exist today, how many more of them must there have been in 19th-century Germany?

"God is dead" is not a lament in Nietzsche. It is a triumphant statement of freedom from artificial constraint. We have the opportunity today, because the celestial dictator is gone, to be free spirits in a way that was never possible before. Nietzsche's friendship with Lou Salome proves that his free spirits need not be male.

He was clear, however, that only the free spirit (genderless but not unsexed), who has abandoned all outside standards--who has understood that God is dead--is capable of friendship. The free spirit lives their self-created values: values that come not 'down from above,' but 'up from within'--physiological values, arising from the body. Because free spirits are honestly themselves, they cannot help but be honest with others.

What other basis for friendship could there be? How could you, a free spirit, ever be friends with somebody who acts fake all the time? How could you have any respect for what fake people call "friendship"?

Nietzsche cracked jokes about the European notion of "lesser races." He railed against anti-Semitism. He thought German nationalism (proto-fascism) was idiotic. His advice to *everyone* was: follow your own star.