The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 12Brann, William Cowper
History
The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 12
Brann, William Cowper
Brann, William Cowper, 1855-1898; Essays; Reformers
The heart of that nation is dead, its soul hath departed,
and no antiseptic known to science will prevent putrefaction.
How is it with us? Forty thousand people own
one-half of the wealth between two oceans, while 250,000
own more than 80 per cent. of all the values created by
the people. What is the result? Money is omnipotent.
Power is concentrated in the hands of a little coterie of
plutocrats--the people are sovereigns de jure and slaves
de facto. A mongrel Anglomaniaism is spreading among
our wealthy, like mange in a pack o' lobo wolves. Our
plutocrats have become ashamed of their country--probably
because it permits them to practice a brutal predacity
--and now cultivate foreign customs, ape foreign fashions,
and purchase as husbands for their daughters the upper-
servants of European potentates--people who earned their
titles of nobility by chronic boot-licking or sacrificing
their female relatives to the god of infamy. Year after
year these titled paupers--these shameless parodies on
God's masterpiece--paddle across the pond to barter their
tawdy dishonor for boodle, to sell their shame-crested
coronets to porcine-souled American parvenues, who if spawned
by slaves and born in hell would disgrace their parentage
and dishonor their country. Our toadies and title-
worshippers now have a society called the "Order of the
Crown," composed of puppies who fondly imagine that
they have within their royal hides a taint of the impure
blood that once coursed through the veins of corrupt and
barbarous kings. Perchance these dudelets and dudines
will yet discover that they are descended in a direct line
from King Adam the First and are heirs to the throne
of Eden. Our country is scarce half developed, yet it is
already rank with decadence and smells of decay. Our
literature is "yellow," our pulpit is jaundiced, our society
is rotten to the core and our politics shamefully corrupt
--yet people say there's no need of iconoclasts! Perhaps
there isn't. The iconoclasts used hammers, while those
who purify our social atmosphere and make this once
again a government of, for and by the people may have
to empty gatling guns and load them with carbolic acid.
National decay and racial retrogression may be inferred
from the fact that alleged respectable white women have
been married to black men by eastern ministers who insist
on solving the race problem for God and the South by
giving to the typical American of the future the complexion
of a new saddle and the perfume of a Republican powwow.
When these ethnological experts tire of life, they should--
come to Texas. When white people lose their racial pride
they've nothing left that justifies the appointment of a
receiver. We hear a great deal about "race prejudice,"
and I want to say right here that there's just enough of it
in my composition to inspire an abiding faith that the
white man should be, must be, will be, lord paramount of
this planet. I promise you that when you elect me to the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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