[Special thanks to Bradley J. Steiner for providing the content.]
[Click on image for full-sized version]
The Great Error Of ―Humane And
―Non-Injurious Self-Defense
Programs
© COPYRIGHT 2009 BY BRADLEY J. STEINER - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Sword and Pen – January 2009 Issue
[Reprinted With Permission]
American Combato
Seattle Combatives
WITHOUT 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment