WARRIOR FIRST

"FIRST A WARRIOR, OR ALL ELSE IS FOLLY"

EDITORIAL by Bradley J. Steiner

from CLOSE QUARTERS:
THE PROFESSIONAL JOURNAL OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE©Copyright 2009 All Rights Reserved

                                                       
“First a warrior, or all else is folly”
—Anonymous

OUR late friend, the kenpo-karate expert John McSweeney, often quoted the above statement. It was from John that we first heard it. It is appropriate to the thesis at hand.

It is not at all popular today to advocate the warrior spirit and warrior skills for the private citizen. Yet those who insist that “only the police” or “only the military” should in fact be in possession of arms and be training in lethal close quarters combat skills, are advocating a position that is nothing less than tyranny.

The right to self-defense when the individual’s person, property, rights, or dignity is being violated by any entity — individual, group, government, or “official” organization of any description — must be recognized as an unconditional absolute, or there is no real freedom and there are no individual rights, at all. It is preposterous and intellectually insulting and offensive to say that someone has the right to his person, his privacy, his property, and the prerogative of deciding that which he will do in life and how he will live, and then in the same breath to mutter that his right to protect and to defend all or any of this is “limited” or is subject to the permissions and approvals of some “higher human authority” — emperor, ayatollah, king, queen, potentate, fürer, prime minister, presidium, committee, collective, proletariat, or president, etc. That people have bought this latter bullshit since the species first came out of the trees is merely a confirmation of their stupidity, uselessness, and — in general — lack of any capacity to appreciate that which their nature requires for living as human beings on earth. It does not alter the irrevocable fact that any situation save that of POLITICAL FREEDOM and PERSONAL AUTONOMY is, as far as any creature deserving of the designation “human” is concerned, evil.

This principle is, we maintain, an absolute. It is valid regardless of the  degree to which one cares to put it to the test. Thus, a schooyard bully and a thug government differ only in degree, not in quality; and both must be dealt with in the same manner: by applying self-defensive force. The right to employ and to apply such force must always be held to be unconditional and absolute, or true civilization cannot exist.

The private, free citizen of a properly run constitutional republic that is built upon the premises that the Founding Fathers of the United States of America gave us, has an absolute and unconditional right to defend himself, his family, his home, his community, and his nation. He does not “derive” this right from some collection of disgusting, law-degreed, scumbag, powerlusting, psychopathic, greedy, inexcusable bastards who managed to con the sea of braindead window dummies all around him into voting them into office. The only legitimate “office” that may properly be held by anyone in a government such as the one that used to exist in the United States of America, is an office dedicated to the protection of those rights — Natural, Human Rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — guaranteed to be recognized and upheld by the Constitution of the United States of America, and the Bill of Rights.

In a free country the PRIVATE CITIZEN is supreme. Such law enforcement officials as may need to be employed are the servants not the masters of the citizenry. It is they (the servants) who derive their “right” to be armed and to use weapons from those whom they serve; it is not the other way around — i.e. the way it is today. The citizenry — in a free nation — may decide to disarm the police. Only in a tyranny may the police act to disarm the citizenry.

As for the military, the Founding Fathers established the right system. Never ought the military in a free nation to be used against the citizenry. N-E-V-E-R.

Obviously, things are now upside down in this Country. When they were predominantly rightside up (ie prior to 1960) an essay such as this one could never have been inspired, and would never have been necessary.

Every human being has the right — the EQUAL right — to defend himself. No innocent individual human life is “more entitled” to be defended than is another. And in order to exercise that right, every individual has the right to acquire, maintain, and when and if necessary use the skills and the tools with which defense of himself and those whom he loves may be undertaken.

Some careful thought will demonstrate that in a feral world (and we live in a very feral world) those who lack the skills and the tools with which self-protection may be implemented are at the mercy of any predatory individual(s) who chooses to employ force in order to violate others physically, and/or in order to take or to destroy the property of others.

The conclusion, therefore, that indeed, one must first of all be a warrior, or all else is folly, can be seen to be very logical. What good are rights without the power to defend them? Of what use or good is it to BE “right”, when you lack the ability to defend your position against those who are “wrong”?

First a warrior, or all else is folly.

One final thought about the “Rights of Man”: It is crucial to comprehend that these rights exist for all men, everywhere, and for all time. These rights can be violated (as they have always been in the Western European, Eastern European, and Asian socialist states), or as they are now being flagrantly violated and trammeled in the United States of America. But they are absolute and they are the proper estate of every human being — acknowledged and recognized, or not. This was the thesis of our Founding Fathers in America, and the Document that they authored (not to “provide” man’s rights, but to recognize them as unalienably inviolate) — the Constitution of the United States of America and the Bill of Rights — may be shredded and burned, but that in no sense negates, abridges, or even remotely affects the TRUTH of those Rights of Man being his; and being his forever and for all time.

It is these facts that stand as sanctification for every man’s right to be a warrior first, with all of that which his so being implies.

More: YOUR “being a warrior first”, dear reader, is, when you ponder the matter, much more than your prerogative. It becomes, when you take your status as a free man seriously, your obligation.

--Bradley J. Steiner [Steiner is a colleague of John Perkins and President of the International Combat Martial Arts Federation]