Kurt Schlicter recently wrote of the shocking displays of violence against ICE agents in Los Angeles that they are designed to “intimidate normal people into submitting and embracing” the agenda of “the [Democrat] politicians associated with” the “goals” of the violence “in the hopes that it will stop.”
While the Democrats’ strategy may have worked in other times and places, Trump has “called their bluff” via his deployment of thousands of California Army National Guard personnel. Hence, the “normal Americans” who would otherwise be tempted to “submit” to the Democrats’ agenda for fear that “no one can protect them” can now rest assured that Trump will do so. “Trump…will protect them, and therefore normal citizens don’t have to submit to the intimidation.”
To the essence of Schlichter’s analysis, I take no exception. That being said, the notion that the majority of Americans would default to the government, rather than to themselves, for their protection and that of their loved ones, their local communities, and their country is one that any liberty-loving patriot should find profoundly concerning.
That government exists for the sake of safeguarding the rights of its citizens, and for protecting them from enemies foreign and domestic, is a given. Ultimately, though, Americans are responsible for their own protection.
Unless you’re a person who has round-the-clock security, law enforcement is, by and large, the clean-up crew: They typically arrive after the violation has already been committed. One would think that those who are distinguished on account of their appeals to “limited government,” “self-reliance,” and “individualism” would know this better than anyone.
Conservatives and libertarians regularly express support for the Second Amendment, it’s true. Yet they are missing the forest for the trees if they fail to realize that the 2A enshrines even more fundamentally than the right to bear arms the right to protect oneself by all lawful means. A gun is just one means of doing so.
It is not, ultimately, a gun or any other weapon that will protect you.
It is you who will protect you.
Artificial weaponry is only as effective as the natural weaponry of the person wielding it.
Only if a person has the skill and the will to move his body, his natural weaponry, with maximal efficiency, that is, with subtly, fluidity, and, crucially, with every intention to neutralize the threat by whatever the means—and to move like this under the adrenaline-fueled dynamics of a potentially mortal attack—only then will he maximize his odds of effectively employing whatever artificial tool is at his disposal.
This means that those who are interested in conserving that which they love must train to do so.
The riots presently engulfing Los Angeles are but the latest reminder of the hideousness of violence. Reasonably decent human beings deservedly detest violence and only ache to co-exist peacefully with their neighbors. Yet there can’t be any peace, any genuine peace, unless and until those who desire it are ready and able to unleash the dogs of war upon those who would threaten to undermine that peace.
Or, as has been said more euphemistically, “peace through strength.”
As long as some people are at the mercy of others, whatever peaceful co-existence appears to exist between them is just that, a mere appearance. It is a fake peace, an instance of a cold war that will turn hot once again if and when those who are more prone to violence decide to return to besieging those who they perceive to be soft targets.
Everyone, regardless of age, sex, body type, or physical limitations can train so as to make it significantly more difficult for belligerents to victimize them. Everyone, that is, can develop martial prowess. Those who insist that they are too old, small, weak, injured, slow, or insufficiently athletic confuse “combat sport” with combat. They forget that “martial” means “of or pertaining to war,” that both etymologically and in point of historical practice, the martial arts are the warrior arts, the arts of war.
Relatively few people outside of young, fit, athletic men can successfully compete in sport fighting. Your average woman is wildly unlikely to prevail over a man in a boxing match, a grappling contest, or a “street fight,” just as an older person is unlikely to prevail over a younger person in these contexts.
On the other hand, when it comes to the fight for one’s life, or the lives, say, of one’s children, the outcome needn’t be determined by size, strength, and speed. As Miyamoto Musashi, the famed 17th century Japanese Samurai warrior, wisely remarked:
“No man is invincible, and therefore no man can fully understand that which would make him invincible.”
Translation: Anyone can kill anyone.
No one can beat up a bull. The bull has every physical advantage over any human being. But if that human being is the matador, then he knows that as long as he moves sooner than the bull, better than the bull, and with every intention of permanently incapacitating the bull, then, within a microsecond, he will manage to neutralize the superior size, power, speed, and aggression of that animal.
The matador is well aware that a bull could end him in an instant. He knows that he is most definitely not invincible. Thus, he moves accordingly—or he dies.
Americans who want to increase their odds of being able to successfully defend themselves and their own against the predatory designs of those who would prey upon them should train to be the matador. They must train to cultivate a genuinely martial spirit.
In the last analysis, after all, it is not to President Trump or to anyone else that a self-governing citizen is to turn for protection.
Americans who pride themselves on being the inheritors of the system of government for which the Founding generation sacrificed all shouldn’t need to be reminded that it is to themselves that they must turn in defense of that which they prize.
And this in turn entails an obligation, on their part, to make sure that they possess the capability and resolve to do just this—by training for it.