The Great Error Of ―Humane And
―Non-Injurious Self-Defense
ProgramsWITHOUT going into details, we will say that we have had a not inconsiderable amount of association with individuals in the intelligence field. And while motion pictures and television in general offer an overly romanticized and glamorized view of what secret intelligence work is actually like, there is one aspect of clandestine services work (which is a facet of intelligence) that really is pretty accurately described: the dangerous aspect of it which, when it is present, is very dangerous, indeed.
The game of espionage and counterespionage is played for keeps; and anyone who has been involved with it to any degree knows this very well. It‘s a life or death thing for those who operate as spies or agents-in-place for any intelligence organization — and there‘s simply no way around this fact. All attempts to whitewash the dangers and the risks do no service to those involved. Such foolishness only makes their already extremely dangerous work even more dangerous, by failing to acknowledge their absolute need for meticulous attention to good tradecraft.
It‘s exactly the same thing in self-defense and close combat. These are simply not activities unfraught with real peril. When an individual must physically defend himself or others, and/or when — in whatever context it may occur — one must engage a deadly enemy in hand-to-hand combat, the predicament is very dangerous, the risk of injury and death is great, and there is no good purpose served by whitewashing these facts, and by pretending that some ―lesser means than utterly decisive and destructive ones, will enable one to prevail.
As a professional we receive the industry journals in the martial arts field. We do not subscribe to them. They are simply sent to us. And while we find little in these publications that is relevant to that which we do, we have noted for years now that another ―fad has emerged in the martial arts. It goes under the name of ―Non Injurious Self-Defense or ―Humane Self-Defense. It has two major selling points — both of which are, as we shall shortly demonstrate, indirect arguments for all sensible people who are concerned about personal defense, to avoid anything resembling their doctrine. The selling points are:
1. This form of self-defense avoids needless cruelty and violence. It enables a decent human being to protect himself, when necessary, without stooping to the barbaric level of the violent offender.
—and—
2. This method of personal defense provides the optimum degree of legal protection for the defender who employs it, since he never resorts to excessive force, and is therefore always safe from prosecution by the law, after the fact.
However well-intentioned the ―humane approach and rhetoric may be, it amounts to the worst possible disservice that martial arts training can provide to those who come to training seeking a means of realistic self-protection. The fact that the sales pitch has enormous appeal to a lot of people means nothing. Those who need to learn self-defense and hand-to-hand combat for personal or professional reasons are not necessarily in a position — prior to receiving both good training and real world experience — to know what they require in order to be prepared for the real thing. The teachers ought to know, however. And in our opinion it is prima facie evidence that they do not know, if and to the extent they advocate the ―non injurious stuff.
Here are the unpleasant facts:
First: It really isn‘t possible to be fully prepared to defend yourself if you lack the preparedness, willingness, and ability to stoop to the lowest level imaginable, to ferociously engage your attacker(s) with merciless, destructive intent and skills. Who do you think attacks people, anyway? We are not concerned here with misguided thinkers who have made a slight error in judgment and who have unintentionally encroached upon your ―space! We are speaking, when we speak of self-defense, of dangerous, cruel, violent, predatory individuals who are deliberately acting in an aggressively harmful manner (almost always, for reasons that are entirely unknown to you) and whose capacity and intentions remain a mystery. These creatures cannot be accurately assessed and evaluated as to their motives and their ultimate ability to injure, maim, and kill. All that you know — or that anyone can possibly know — at the time of a violent criminal attack, is that you are being violently set upon, and that
YOU JUST MIGHT BE MAIMED OR KILLED AS A RESULT OF WHAT IS HAPPENING TO YOU.The notion that, for whatever reason, one has some kind of ―moral obligation not to fight ferociously and foul — not to savage and devastate a violent felon or other attacking beast — is stupid. One is hardly morally superior to an attacker if one refuses to resort to whatever foul measures may be employed at the time of the attack to stop the bastard who is doing the attacking. One is a stupid fool.
It is the very fact that an individual is decent and innocent that virtually mandates that he utilize any and every vicious and unfair measure at his disposal in order to stop some malicious offender who attacks him. Decent people belong in human society. Predatory, violent felons do not. Whatever injury they suffer at the hands of their intended victims is more than well deserved. To hell with them. Whether we are speaking of a bully in grade school or a home invader; the choice to prey is made by the offender. Whatever —
WHATEVER — the victim does to stop the filthy monster is a reflection on the initiator of violence, never on the defender.
Those who stand outside the situation that is faced by a violent predator and who proceed to pontificate about what ―ought to be done or not done, according to some specious set of imbecilic ―rules, in order for the victim(!) to remain morally unsullied when he undertakes the desperate act of self-defense, deserve to be thrown into a similar predicament as the victim whom they so arrogantly admonish. The victim is RIGHT and the predator is WRONG. Whatever the victim does to defend himself is morally justifiable.
The simple, unvarnished truth is that there is not and there cannot be any kind of ―unnecessary cruelty or ―excessive violence in self-defense. Anyone who raises a hand unjustifiably against someone whom he intends to victimize has by definition of his action undertaken cruel, excessive, and extraordinarily violent conduct.
HE HAS TO BE STOPPED.Second, there is no guarantee of legal protection whenever force is applied — no matter how righteous or justifiable the context, and regardless of how ―humane the applicant of the self-defense skills endeavors to be. The law has persecuted innocent people before, and it will doubtless do so again. Atrocious felonies often go unpunished (and are, like to hear it or not, all too often committed by law enforcers), while minor misdemeanants are hobbled by the system. Clarence Darrow was quite correct when he observed that ―There is no justice, inside or out of court.
The Rational PacifistNOTE: We wrote an editorial for the December 2008 issue of our monthly periodical, ―CQ (Close Quarters: The Professional Journal of Ungentlemanly Warfare©) which, when we completed it, pleased us. We felt, in that editorial, that we had succeeded in making some very necessary points regarding violence, nonviolence, pacifism, and related concepts. Upon reflection, we decided to reprint an abbreviated version of that editorial here, in Sword & Pen. We hope that our readers will consider the message contained in the following, and take it to heart:—
Pacifism―WE just might surprise some of our readers when we say that we are a staunch pacifist — and what is more, we advocate pacifism. Now before you . . . decide that we have gone insane . . . we must add the following to the proclamation that we are a pacifist:
We do not define pacifism‘ as the term is commonly
employed.
―Our definition of pacifism is: A personal philosophy that advocates the omission of violence and intimidation from human relationships and from society‘s acceptable norms of conduct, and that forbids the initiation of force by any individual or by any entity, except in defense against aggression. . . .
―According to the way in which the term pacifism‘ is utilized by those who claim to be pacifists, pacifism advocates not merely the absolute refusal to initiate force in human relationships (certainly a good thing), but also (we believe, insanely) advocates nonviolence per se, regardless of the context in which violence may be used. Thus, a conventional pacifist‘ would quite literally do nothing if he were to be physically attacked, or if someone he loved were physically attacked, and he were present at the scene.
―Our view is . . . different. According to the way in which we define and adhere to a pacifistic lifestyle, we agree that the initiation of force is abhorrent and wrong — except when employed . . . preemptively against a clear and present imminent threat of physical violation. We absolutely refuse to either initiate force in order to gain anything to which we have no objective right, and/or we absolutely refuse to ever engage in any form of mutual combat (ie in plain English, we refuse to get into fights — to be provoked into them, or to agree purely for reasons of personal impulse gratification‘ or satisfaction‘ to engage in them). We define self-defense as action taken in response to another‘s unavoidable aggressive action, and we advocate self-defense and the use of any and every degree of violence — armed and unarmed . . . in unavoidable self protection or in the defense of other innocent persons. . . .
. . . this idea of a person who is ready, willing, and able to do battle being . . . non violent‘ or pacifistic . . . is incomprehensible to some. This is unfortunate, but it is the result of the brainwashing that has been hammering our culture for the last 60 years. Today, those institutions of imprisonment which we euphemistically refer to as the ‗public schools‘ very literally have policies forbidding children to fight back against bullies, and defend themselves. The purpose of this evil?
TO PROGRAM PEOPLE AS YOUNG AS POSSIBLE IN THE IDEA THAT THEY MUST TURN TO, CONTACT, CALL UPON, AND RELY ON OUTSIDE AUTHORITIES, AND NEVER UNDERTAKE INDEPENDENT ACTION — EVEN WHEN THEIR PHYSICAL SAFETY, PERSONAL DIGNITY, AND PRIVATE PROPERTY IS THREATENED!―Do not deceive yourself. [Those] . . . who run . . . any public . . . school probably are too brainwashed, politically correct, babbitized, and useless to perceive the ultimate cause that they are serving, themselves. However, YOU ought to understand it. And you ought to resent it. And you need to oppose it.
To suggest to a child . . . that he has no right to defend himself is akin to suggesting that he has no right to see a physician if he feels sick, or to eat a meal if he is hungry. This is evil. It is not a well intentioned mistake‘. Official policies are set down by people who have had the benefit‘(?) of legal counsel, and who have pondered both the immediate results and the long-term implications of that which their policies are destined to achieve, once implemented. The . . . debris who populate the ranks of the ‗teachers‘ and school administration clowns in the public schools simply (as the Nazi servants so emphatically protested during the Nuremberg trials) follow orders‘.
―No one who tells a child not to defend himself loves or cares about that child. Nor does such a bastard ‗hate violence‘. Rather . . .[he] . . .has no concern in the world about who harms who, so long as he . . . is
NOT PERSONALLY BOTHERED, INCONVENIENCED, OR VICTIMIZED BY VIOLENCE, himself.
―Look at gun control.
―Those who advocate gun control are not in the least concerned about violent crime, stopping dangerous criminals, safety, or any of the other things that they proclaim. They are after power . . .
―All rational pacifists ought to be unswervingly in favor of firearms . . . in the private sector. Let those who love peace prepare for war. They should be against any form or version of gun control and they should recognize and constantly seek to educate others about the fact that firearms in the hands of private citizens is one of the greatest assurances that violent crime will be held to the barest minimum in human society.
Far from provoking violence, armed individual preparedness is the most powerful force DISCOURAGING violence. Criminal offenders do not commit their crimes in hopes that they themselves will be injured or killed; and violent criminals have no desire to take their chances with an armed, angry, properly skilled citizen who is unafraid to shoot back., and who is supported in his unrestrained use of deadly force by his fellow citizens and the legal system, when he undertakes it in legitimate self-defense.
―If you hate violence,
SUPPORT EVERY INDIVIDUAL‘S PERFECT RIGHT TO KEEP AND TO BEAR ARMS, AND TO DEFEND HIMSELF AS PREDATORS MAKE IT NECESSARY FOR HIM TO DO!―While the power lusting . . . throughout history who have sought to disarm private citizens will never acknowledge the fact, it is nevertheless true and provable that the only way to disarm the people is by employing or threatening to employ armed force against them, and by subsequently retaining the prerogative (and the means) of so doing, after the people have been divested of their privately owned weapons.
―As a true lover of peace the rational pacifist will be the greatest proponent of defensive preparation and of the unhesitant, decisive employment of overwhelming force whenever any entity — be it a solitary thug, or a . . . tyrant — poses the threat of force . . .
―The individual who flatly refuses to sanction or to employ any force, ever — regardless of the need for force in defense of the innocent — ought not to be able to hide behind the ‗honorable‘ title of pacifist. Such a one is not in any sense or meaning of the term a true lover of peace. [He] . . . is a cowardly facilitator of evil, whose proclamation that regardless of how egregious any predator‘s act, he (the so-called ‗pacifist‘) will not raise a finger to oppose it, makes him more contemptible than the predator, himself.
―[We are] . . . a proud proponent of pacifism. We advocate nonviolence, peaceful settlement of all disputes, and respectful disengagement from contact and dealings whenever mutually beneficial terms cannot be agreed upon between individuals. However, whenever confronted by any entity . . . [that proceeds] . . . to initiate force or the threat of force in order to injure, terrify, coerce, exploit, enslave, rob, or in any conceivable manner violate the God-given Rights of Man*, we advocate that whatever degree of force may be necessary in defense against such entity be employed with determination, total ferocity, and righteous indignation. To use violence in legitimate self-defense is good, and it is moral. It is the only use of violence that the true pacifist — being a person of peace — sanctions . . .
Bradley J. Steiner
© COPYRIGHT 2009 BY BRADLEY J. STEINER - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Sword and Pen – January 2009 Issue
[Provided With Permission]
