Does Might Make Right?

From the time we presumably are old enough to understand, we are told: “Might does not make right.”

That admonition usually comes after the fact, when those words are of little comfort to the victim of a bloody nose and of even less interest to the bully responsible for the pain.

Of course might makes right.

That’s how the world has always worked — dating to the first time an argument between cave dwellers ended with one of them picking up a rock and caving in the other’s head.

Thousands of years after humans moved out of caves and into other forms of dwelling, that belief remains immutable.

Consider this response by Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff for policy under President Donald Trump, when CNN’s Jake Tapper asked, in a Jan. 5 interview, about Trump’s desire to control Greenland. “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” Miller said.

Within our borders today, the idea that might makes right is the implied, if not explicit message behind abuses of authority by masked federal agents, who, in their zeal to carry out the Trump administration’s deportation policy, too often have gone beyond what reasonable people might find appropriate or necessary.

With every video, with every dubious statement and spurious explanation, it becomes difficult to view these incidents as anything other than cruelty for the sake of cruelty, administered by those who have been told, by Miller and other Trump subordinates, that they have immunity from prosecution for even their most violent tendencies.

Yes, large numbers of people alleged to be in the country illegally were deported during previous administrations, but what we are witnessing today is an alarming degree of wanton behavior.

In a statement issued Jan. 21, the lay and rabbinic leadership of the Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist movements joined to “condemn, in the strongest terms, the violence with which the Department of Homeland Security is enforcing American immigration law.”

Jewish scripture cautions against mistaking might for right.

One example is found in the Book of Zechariah, one of 12 books of the so-called minor prophets, written over decades beginning around 520 BCE (Before Common Era), and found in Nevi’im, the section of the Tanakh that follows the Torah.

In Zechariah 4:6, the phrase, “Not by might nor by power, but My Spirit” is meant to signal that great works, in this case referring to the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem, are accomplished through divine enablement, not only human strength or resources.

This passage was turned into a popular Chanukah song by Debbie Friedman:

Not by might and not by power
But by spirit alone shall we all live in peace
The children sing, the children dream
And their tears may fall, but we’ll hear them call
And another song will rise
Another song will rise, another will rise
Not by might, not by power, shalom

A more direct warning comes from The Book of Habakkuk, written about 610 BCE, in which the Hebrew prophet, Habakkuk, questions G-d about why the Chaldeans, a people living in Babylonia, were sent to punish Judah for the people’s idolatry, corruption, and disobedience.

G-d replies that, in effect, the Chaldeans — “They are terrible, dreadful; They make their own laws and rules” — will get their just deserts in due time.

In Habakkuk 1:1, is written:
“Then they pass on like the wind,
They transgress and incur guilt,
For they ascribe their might to their god.”

Translations of this passage include: “Then they sweep by like the wind and pass on, these men whose power is their god” (bold-faced type added for emphasis).

Put another way, as in Proverbs (11:29): “He who troubles his own house shall inherit the wind.”

More than a century ago, in 1920, barely two years removed from the horrors of World War I, Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan spoke of the relationship between might and right.

“The sole reason we are still very remote from regulating our conduct in accordance with the spirit of justice and mercy is that we are mostly persuaded that they can hardly be expected to prevail against the animal passions of human nature that are usually supported by the weight of brute force,” said Kaplan, a scholar in Conservative Judaism who founded the Reconstructionist movement.

Kaplan did not despair, though, stating that “In the end, they [justice and mercy] are bound to be victorious.”