Might is Right The Reign of the Brute
"Life is strife for every man,
For every son of Thunder;
Then be a lion, not a lamb,
And don’t be trampled under." —Ragnar Redbeard.
Might is Right The Reign of the Brute
The Reign of the Brute—The Gospel of brute strength and the power of money.
A book of quite another character comes by way of America.“Might is Right”is the title of it, and its gospel is the cult of brute strength and the power of money. It is accompanied by a small journal printed on yellow paper bearing the name of“The Lion’s Paw: the Journal of the Gods,”whose mission it is to boost the doctrines promulgated in the book. The author’s name is given as “Ragnar Redbeard,” but it is not with him or his book (which is a bold tirade in favor of Capitalism), but with his newspaper Hench-man, we are here concerned.
Life is strife for every man,
For every son of Thunder;
Then be a lion, not a lamb,
And don’t be trampled under,
sings this rampageous journalist, and thus continues in truculent prose:
If men would become free and remain so, they must of necessity encourage and stimulate their combative and savage nature. They must not be too tame and peaceful. They must make themselves feared or be despised.
They must become a living terror to all tyrants and foes, and especially to the modern mob politicians who would tax them out of their property, that is to say, their economic independence.
Property, remember, is an integral part of freedom and manhood. They who have no property are at the mercy of those who have. Woe unto him who has “nothing.” Economic dependence is flaming hell.
In the history of the nations, the sword at all times commands the plow, the hammer, and the spade. Everywhere the soil must be captured before it can be cultivated. In primitive times this was obvious.
Nobody gets an acre or builds a home without fighting for it, and upon land titles written in blood, the entire fabric of modern industrialism is founded. The sword is at its base, in an economic as well as a historic sense. Hence the sword, not labor, is the true creator of economic values.
here is much more of the like half-mad brutality. But enough. It is only mammon-debased America in all Christendom who could applaud such decadent raving. And even in the States, it is only the pig-sticking plutocracy of Chicago (where it is published) who could descend to employ such brutal bravos as the editor of “The Lion’s Paw.”
WORKER, 09 September 1911
