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“Stay ‘unreasonable.’ If you
don’t like the solutions [available to you], come up with your
own.”
Dan Webre
The Martialist does
not
constitute legal advice. It is for ENTERTAINMENT
PURPOSES ONLY.
Copyright © Phil Elmore,
all rights
reserved.
YEAR
FOUR! THE MARTIALIST ISSUE 4.03
It hardly
seems possible that we’re in our fourth year since The Martialist began. In 2003,
thanks to encouragement from RBSD instructor Dan Webre (and some
stinging criticism from the lady behind the Hideaway knife, who read me
the riot act regarding what I had to offer the self-defense community),
I leveraged the minor success of PhilElmore.com’s martial arts pages to
create an entire online magazine devoted to self-defense. We didn’t
have much of a subscriber list when we started — to be honest, I don’t
recall how long it took us to build a respectable base of customers —
and the frames pages I cobbled together sure weren’t much to see. What
he had, however, was a concept. It wasn’t fully
defined, but it has remained our vision for the last three years. The
Martialist is dedicated to success in pragmatic, real-world
self-defense, regardless of provenance, without dogma and irrespective
of tradition, dismissing nothing that is useful and aligning with no
political camps save expedience in self-preservation.
In the
intervening years my own work has become more focused. The
Martialist is a collaboration. while I am its founder, its
heart and soul are the contributors and readers who have made it so
relevant and so popular. I have learned a lot from everyone involved
with this publication. What I came to realize — and the idea at the
heart of the whole matter, really, though not explicitly stated in our
early months — was that there exists a real need for practical
self-defense information by and for average people. Yes, the market is
overflowing with former SEALS and umpteenth degree grandmasters selling
their self-defense programs, but along the way, a lot of the relevance
of these programs is lost. The lack in so many of these materials —
produced by well-meaning, respected individuals with impressive
credentials — is that those producing them are sometimes too far
removed from the average man and woman. That is the point at which The
Martialist — its perspective, its voice, its mission —
becomes relevant.
Self-defense by and for average people takes into account the
very real sensibilities, needs, limitations, and concerns of ordinary
people trying to survive and prosper in a dangerous world. The average
reader of The Martialist isn’t a soldier or a law
enforcement officer, though we have plenty of readers who are one or
both of these things. The average contributor to The
Martialist isn’t the owner of a martial arts school, though
we’ve had plenty of contributors with impressive backgrounds. No, by
and large (though with plentiful exceptions), The Martialist
is the creation of mere mortals — people with jobs, families, and
lives that don’t revolve around fighting, who want nothing more than to
keep their families safe, to walk from their doors to their cars
without fear, to gain and keep what they’ve earned while preventing
society’s predators from taking it by force.
It has been very gratifying to see this idea — and the philosophy of
dynamic, assertive, pragmatic self-defense that is martialism
— resonate with so many people. When The Martialist became
an idea, rather than simply the thoughts of one man (or of multiple men
and women), it showed potential for greatness. It continues to
demonstrate and meet this potential. The more people who tell me they,
too, are martialists, the more I realize just what we’ve managed to
contribute to the self-defense community. Martialism and The
Martialist are ideals, principles that anyone can uphold.
They are, they epitomize, success in self-defense. That is the mutual
goal that binds us together and gives us common cause as we move
forward into Year Four.
One of the
things that has surprised me, as The Martialist has
risen to prominence, is just how incredibly angry some people get about
it. While I wouldn’t say I’ve made enemies (because I simply
don’t know my critics well enough to call them enemies), I’ve certainly
upset a lot of brittle, insecure, and foolish people in the martial
arts and self-defense community. Given the character and the
opinions of these people, we must be doing something right.
If a man can be judged by the quality of his enemies, I’m comfortable
with whatever conclusions you draw in reading commentary about me and
this ‘zine.
If
you haven’t already done so, I strongly encourage you to register and
participate in the official discussion forum of The Martialist:
Pax Baculum,
a play on words that loosely means “peace through force.”
Once again I encourage anyone
considering writing for us to go ahead and submit their work.
We’ll seriously consider anything that is sent here, so if you’re
throwing around an article idea, please do feel free to send it
along. If we can’t use it, we won’t, but we like to look at
everything.
Don’t
forget that half of the magazine is available for free, right here,
every month. Just so you can catch up, if you
haven’t read the free content for our issues so far this year, here are
links to them:
Issues 4.03
Issues 4.02
♠
Issue 3.12
♠
Issue
3.11
♠
Issue 2.11 ♠
Issue 2.12
♠ Issue
3.09/3.10
Issue 2.10 ♠
Issue 2.09
♠ Issue 2.08
Issue 2.07 ♠
Issue 2.05-2.06 ♠
Issue 2.04
Issue 2.03 ♠
Issue 2.02 ♠
Issue 2.01
YEAR ONE
2004 ♠
March 2004
Jan-Feb 2004
♠
December 2003 ♠
November 2003
October 2003
♠
September 2003
♠
August 2003
July 2003
♠
June 2003
♠
May 2003
In the column to the right you’ll
see a link to this month’s free content repeated. Below that
is the listing of this issue’s subscriber content.
Each issue contains such a list – so you can see what you’re
missing. We hope that if you like what you see for free
online, you’ll be intrigued by the topics covered in our subscriber
mailing. To subscribe and receive these articles each month
via e-mail, click here.
Our goal at The
Martialist is to provide you with quality information,
education, and entertainment – material that will help you
make choices about realistic self-defense.
You may not like everything you see, but
that’s okay – because I don’t agree with everything I publish
from others, either. (We encourage you to submit your own
articles from different perspectives, too.) As you will read
many times in perusing our articles, the choice is yours.
Make
it wisely.
Click here For the free content
This issue’s subscriber content:
Living in the Tactical Closet
By Phil Elmore
A Strategic Approach to Self-Defense
By Arthur Lautner
Cold Steel Counter Tac 1
Review by Phil Elmore
Is the Glock Inherently Unsafe?
By Phil Elmore & Ed Miller
Victorinox SwissChamp Survival Kit
Review by Phil Elmore
Considering Holster Options
By Phil Elmore
The Martialist Manifesto
By Phil Elmore
Call to Arms
By Chris Zaccara