The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 12Brann, William Cowper
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The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 12
Brann, William Cowper
Brann, William Cowper, 1855-1898; Essays; Reformers
Speaking of prize-fights reminds me that a governor
who, after winking at a hundred brutal slugging matches,
puts his state to the expense of a legislative session to
prevent a pair of gladiators pounding each other with soft
gloves, is not suffering for lack of Gall; that those pious
souls who never suspected that pugilism was an insult to
our civilization until they got a good opportunity to make
a grandstand play, then whereased and resoluted themselves
black in the face anent its brutality, should be presented
with a medal of pure brass. Politics is said to make
strange bed-fellows, but I scarce expected to see a shoe-
string gambler and would-be Don Juan lauded by ministerial
associations as "our heroic young Christian governor."
Gall? Why, Geo. Clark presumes to give Bismarck
pointers and congress advice. Nobody knows so well how
to manage a husband as an old maid. A bachelor can give
the father of a village pointers on the training of boys.
Our Northern neighbors know exactly how to deal with
the nigger. The man who would starve but for the industry
of his wife feels competent to manage the finances of
the country. People who couldn't be trusted to wean a
calf, tell us all about the Creator of the Cosmos. Sam
Jones wants to debate with Bob Ingersoll, and every forks-
of-the-creek economist takes a hard fall out of Henry
George. The A.P.A. agitators prate loudly of freedom of
conscience and insist on disfranchising the Catholics. We
boast of religious liberty, then enact iron-clad Sunday laws
that compel Jew and pagan to conform to our creed or go
to prison. The prohibs. want to confine the whole world to
cold water because their leaders haven't sufficient stamina
to stay sober. Men who fail to make a living at honest
labor insist on entering the public service. Political
parties charge up to each other the adverse decrees of
Providence. Atheists deny the existence of God because he
doesn't move in their set, while ministers assume that a
criticism of themselves is an insult to the Creator.
. . .
But to detain you longer were to give a practical
illustration of my text. I will be told that Gall is a necessary
evil; that a certain amount of audacity, of native
impudence, is necessary to success. I deny it. Fame and
wealth and power constitute our ideal of success--folly
born of falsehood. Only the useful are successful. Father
Damien was the grandest success of the century; Alexander
of Macedon the most miserable failure known to
human history--with the possible exception of Grover
Cleveland. Alexander employed his genius to conquer the
Orient and Cleveland his stupidity to ruin the Occident.
The kingdom of the one went to pieces, and the party of
the other is now posing as the lost tribe of the political
Israel!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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