The Martialist: The Magazine For Those Who Fight Unfairly

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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.

The
Martialist
Q & A
by Phil Elmore, Publisher

Questions? Feedback? Click
here
to contact us.

I’ve read your
introduction to The Martialist. You say that “society is full of
predators.” On what do you base this assumption? This idea that
predators wait for us under every rock and behind every tree isn’t realistic.

It isn’t? Think about that for a
moment. Stating plainly that society is full of predators isn’t a paranoid
assertion, emotional hyperbole, or a marketing ploy. It’s a fact.
If you can look around and honestly state that you don’t believe our society (I
am American and speak only about the United States) contains a
significant criminal element that preys on our citizens with regularity, you’re
living in denial. You don’t believe the news reports of shootings,
stabbings, rapes, burglaries, and robberies that appear every day in the
media. You don’t believe the tales of your friends, relatives, and fellow
citizens who all seem to know someone who’s been robbed or assaulted or found
themselves in an extremely threatening situation for which they felt
unprepared.

When you disbelieve in this manner you are evading
reality refusing to see something you don’t wish to see. This is
understandable for the reality in which we find ourselves, the reality of
violence and of the potential threats that exist within society, is
unpleasant. It is not a nice thing to think about and it does not make us
happy. We do not get to choose to believe only those things we want
to believe, however.

News reports and personal stories of
violence are “anecdotal evidence.” They don’t support your
assertion. The media is known to sensationalize things. “If it
bleeds, it leads,” right? Things aren’t as you’re painting them.

One could choose to ignore all these pieces
of evidence, yes. One could choose to ignore the statistics for the murder
rate in one’s city and for national rates of violent crime. One could
proclaim the data of one’s senses and the accumulated crime figures for an
entire country to be media sensationalism and illogical, hysterical
interpretation of events far less harmful than our fearful assessment indicates.

One would be irrational to do so.

Check your premises, as
Ayn
Rand was fond of urging. Ask yourself if you would leave your child
unsupervised in the food court of the average shopping mall. Ask yourself
if you would leave the doors of your home unlocked at night. Ask yourself
if you would feel ill at ease walking through a parking garage shrouded in
darkness. Ask yourself if you would roll down your windows and chat with a
homeless man if he approached your car when you were stopped at a light.

If you answered “no” to any of
those questions, I have just one more:

Why?

Recognizing that there are people who will
prey on you if given the opportunity and that there are people who seek to make
those opportunities is not paranoid hysteria. It is merely
realistic. Preparing to meet emergencies that have not yet occurred is not
paranoid or mentally unbalanced. It is prudent.

Have you ever purchased life insurance?
You don’t actually think you’re going to die soon, do you? Have you ever
purchased a handgun and obtained a license to carry it? You
don’t actually think there are home invaders hiding in your shrubbery right now,
do you? I tell you now that it is very possible you’ll get through your
entire life never being confronted by someone who means you harm or who seeks to
take what you have earned. I hope you do. Unfortunately, the
possibility that you won’t is also real. It is measurable.
You should not expect to face rampaging barbarian hordes the second you leave
the relative safety of your home but neither should you think, “It can’t
happen to me.” The list of martial artists and others who have lost
fights and had their lives forever changed because they were naïve
enough to assume this is a long one.

Those who understand the risks life entails
also understand that they must hedge their bets and be prepared for possible
dangers. They do not stockpile illegal weapons. They do not dig
foxholes in their flowerbeds. They do not sit at home sweating bullets and
aiming firearms at passing cars from beneath ghillie suits knitted from their
living-room curtains. They do, however, think carrying firearms or other
weapons suitable for personal protection is a reasonable action. They understand that a society increasingly
hostile to individual self-defense, regardless of whatever lip service that
society pays to recognizing your right to preserve your life, may indeed punish them
should they make the choice to use force no matter how justified they might
believe themselves to be.

No one said these people don’t exist or
that you shouldn’t take precautions. It’s not realistic to think you could
be attacked at any moment or that you’re always in danger.

No, it isn’t. The problem is that you
have no way of knowing, beyond the most general of speculation, when you truly are
in danger. Very few assaults are scheduled ahead of time. Very few
home invaders call ahead. You’re not in constant danger, no but the
fact that danger exists is a constant one. Societal predators adhere to no
fixed schedules and recognize no restrictions on their depredations beyond those
imposed by force or its threat.

Does the staff of The Martialist urge
you to assume everyone you meet is going to try to kill you? Of course
not. Rather, we state quite plainly that among the handful, dozens, or
scores of people whose paths you cross on any given day as you go through your
life could be individuals who represent a threat and you
won’t know ahead of time who they are. As a result you must maintain a
perceivable level of alertness when you are out and about. You may choose
to take this a step further and seek out the training and the tools including
legally possessed weapons that give you an advantage should an
altercation occur.

A lot of “combat” instructors,
who preach the doctrine of overwhelming force in the face of the attack, are
telling their students to do things that would send them to jail! Your
opinions are no different and you seem to side with exponents of the killer
mindset philosophy. Are you encouraging illegal
actions?

No. I am not and could not encourage
anyone to take specific actions because I cannot live any other person’s life
for him or for her. The attitude of martialism, among other things, is
based on respect for individual sovereignty the idea that you as a person are
inviolable unless you choose to violate someone else’s sovereignty. I see
my fellow citizens’ freedom of action as a benefit, not a threat but for this
reason I believe individual responsibility for individual action begins and ends

with that individual. No one can take decisions for you. No one can
take responsibility for those decisions but you. I am encouraging you to think
and to do what you believe to be the right thing based on all the factors
legal, social, moral, spiritual… personal.

I hope you never have to fight anyone for any
reason. But if you must defend yourself if you find yourself
faced with force that cannot or should not be avoided and you choose to preserve your well-being
or the well-being of others I hope every such fight is unfair.
I hope you are so prepared that there is no question who will win and who
will lose if you must use force against an aggressive foe. That is what it
means to “fight unfairly,” to “cheat” when engaged in the
gamble that is life. Hedge your bets through education and training.
Stack the deck by being more prepared than those who would hurt you.

I also hope you recognize the risks. I
hope you understand: society often demands that you assume the risk
that you let the attacker dictate the encounter and use no more force than the
force he employs. You may find this morally objectionable. You may
believe that because he has chosen to attack you, he assumes the risk of
whatever you might do to defend yourself in dealing with a situation he created.

The choice is yours and the consequences
are yours to suffer.

The contributors to The Martialist hope to
empower you with information that helps you be prepared, avoid problems, and
deal with aggression if you must but this e-zine is not legal advice and cannot take
the place of your own judgment. Only you can decide what you must do and
what consequences you are willing to accept. Can you live with hurting
someone? Can you live with going to jail for doing it? Would you
rather suffer injury yourself before risking the horrors of prison, of societal
censure? That choice, too, is yours to make.

Most people assume their instructors are
giving them “correct” information. If you side with these
black-clad combat types, how are you not simply encouraging people do break the
law without realizing the full extent of their actions?

As adults, we are responsible for what we do and what we believe. The martial arts world is rife with instructors who take
advantage of their students people who rape them, defraud them, bully them,
brainwash them, teach them poor techniques or questionable principles.
Countless discussions online have been devoted to these abuses. Simply
because you meet someone who claims to be a teacher, who imparts information to
you, who earns (or otherwise acquires) your respect and your admiration, does not
mean you can disengage your brain and let that teacher think for you.

You must strive, at all times, to have an active
mind. Take no one’s word for what is legal, for what is moral, for what is
right. Instead, approach the issues as logically, as rationally, as
you can. Do your homework. Think. If what you are learning in
class strikes you as incorrect, as dangerous, as useless, or as otherwise
questionable, say so. If the answers you receive do not stand up to
logical analysis, walk away. Make your own decisions in life based
on the available information.

We who write for The Martialist hope the
information we provide will interest you and also entertain you. We do
not, however, expect you to simply turn off your minds and believe everything we
tell you. You are a sovereign individual and you must think for yourself.

Some of the instructors you defend are
teaching preemptive strikes “self-offense as the best defense,” and
so forth. That’s going to get you killed in court!

Yes, it very well could. It could send
you to prison for a very long time. Those same instructors will tell you
that the opposite allowing the attacker to dominate the altercation, to take
the initiative will get you killed physically. That’s the choice you
make, the choice that makes violent confrontations such a wrenching dilemma to
many living in contemporary society. You are damned if you do and damned
if you do not. The choice you must make is, what do you believe to be right?
Do you believe you and your attacker are morally equivalent? Do you
believe you deserve to assume the physical risk of the confrontation?

You’re creating a false moral imperative
to justify actions of which society does not approve. How dare you
encourage people to flout society’s conventions?

I am encouraging people to do nothing except think for themselves. You are born into a social contract consisting of a single clause:
you
must obey society’s laws to remain within it. We at The Martialist
do not encourage you to oppose societal conventions or to break the law far
from it. However, we do not believe that society is always right simply
because it is society. Do you honestly believe the opinions of the
majority are immutable and never to be questioned?

That’s the same logic used by criminals to
rationalize their actions. They claim society doesn’t understand them or
approve of them but they are justified in doing what they did.

It’s also the same logic used by the Founding
Fathers of the United States in signing the Declaration of Independence.
It’s the same logic used by Harriet Tubman, who smuggled slaves to
freedom. It’s the same logic used by civil rights protestors in the 1960s
who resisted prejudice and institutionalized racism and wrought incredible
change in society by so doing. Who was Rosa Parks to encourage
others to flout society’s conventions, after all?

My point is that a belief is not
automatically correct or incorrect, moral or immoral, simply because societal
convention holds it to be so. You cannot say, “I am morally right
simply for standing up to society, with which I disagree” any more than you
can say, “I am morally right because I am taking the brave stand of
agreeing with societal conventions.”

The
morality
of an act must be determined objectively and within context.
Predators who try to justify evil using morality or some great crusade (against
a society that supposedly marginalizes them) invariably rely on illogical thought
processes to make their cases. No amount of believing themselves to be
justified alters the objective analysis of their actions. Moral
judgments can be difficult, but this does not make them impossible. All
rational adults possess the ability to make them if they choose to do so.

If you judge incorrectly
if you are in
error you will pay for your mistakes. That, too, is inescapable.
More profoundly, others will pay for your errors in moral judgment.
That is yet another factor you must take into consideration when choosing to use
force and deciding the degree of force you will employ.

The choice, again, remains yours to make. Choose
wisely.

You can’t suggest an individual has the
moral authority to defy society, though. That’s irresponsible. Who
determines “moral authority?”

Suggesting that societal conventions are
immutable is what I would consider irresponsible. If society can never be
wrong, no societal ills can be challenged, no unjust laws resisted for the challengers will be shouted down as immoral for daring to
dissent.

Moral authority, for that matter, isn’t
granted by some agency from whom we must petition it. Moral authority is a
function of reality of logic applied to that reality. A person
who initiates
force against you is violating objective moral principles and thus
surrendering his or her sovereignty through that violation.

I’ve read posts online by people who don’t
like you or who say you shouldn’t be taken seriously.

I’m not surprised. Why would you take
them seriously? One of my favorite critics used to be a particularly sad,
anonymous devotee of the S.C.A.R.S. combat system who seemed to have profoundly
low self-esteem. A few others include people whose systems I’ve publicly
panned, like the “Hikuta” practitioners, as well as various vulgar
children, brittle ninja, neckless mixed martial arts (MMA) freaks, the cast of
countless trolls at Bullshido, and
other pretenders. Every time someone like that criticizes me online, I
know I’m doing something right because anyone who would side with these kung-fools
is going to get what he deserves, ultimately.

You express a lot of opinions, but you’re not
a member of the military, a law enforcement officer, or anybody of consequence.
You know nothing about these things, so how can you talk about them?

Yes, how dare I have an opinion?
Lots of people think you’ve got to have an impressive resume to have an opinion.
Still more think you’ve got to be a member of some select club say, the club
of instructors, or the club of military veterans, or the club of law enforcement
officers. I say that anyone can express a logical opinion and
substantiate it using reason. Every argument can stand or fall on its
own merits. Every concerned citizen has a right to his opinions and
may express them as he or she sees fit. I’m simply better at expressing my
opinions than many and I have a very good platform from which to do so.
That platform exists because my contributors and I took the time to build it.

You’re reading an online magazine
an e-zine published, edited, and written (at least in part) by a mere
civilian. I’m a writer, not a fighter. I’m a
citizen, not a soldier. I’m an average guy, not a superhero. I’m an everyman,
not an athlete. In the time I’ve studied the martial arts and self-defense I’ve
managed to learn concepts and make conclusions about things that I think are
worth passing on to other average citizens in the context of sharing them as
such. I don’t try to pretend to be anything I’m not and I don’t expect anyone to
be impressed by anything I say simply because I say they should be or because of
whatever credentials I’d like to have and don’t.

I can’t wave around a black belt certificate, a veteran’s record, a police
officer’s badge, or any other claim to authority as a way to support my
arguments, because I don’t possess any such thing. What I do have is an
active mind, a respect for logic, and ability to reason, and more than a decade
and a half spent pursuing success in self-defense through varying avenues of
study (including commercial and non-commercial martial arts).

To this I also bring my ability to write clearly,
effectively, and in an engaging and entertaining style, which I like to think is
what makes The Martialist worthwhile. When I write an article, I
don’t simply pontificate on topics about which I know nothing even if,
frankly, I haven’t “been there and done that.” I apply the data of my
senses, my own research, material produced by others, and everything else
available to me, supporting my arguments as best as I am able. The reader
is free to draw conclusions on that basis and to criticize what I write
accordingly.

What I’ll never do, however, is tell you that I’m
some sort of expert and that you should agree with me because I’m Phil Elmore.
That’s an attitude I won’t accept in others and I would never presume to
disrespect my readers by indulging in it. I believe everyone has something
to contribute and every human being has the inalienable right to self-defense.
That means the opinions and the life of a “mere mortal” a private citizen, a
civilian, a subject are just as worth considering when supported reasonably
as those of any other person.

There are plenty of sites, books, and training
materials produced by self-appointed experts and hard-traveled veterans of all
manner of hardship and horror. You’re free to purchase their wares just
as I do but you needn’t confine your studies solely to them. If you’re
an interested private citizen like me (or even a military or law enforcement
operative interested in what private citizens think), this publication can be of
great value to you. I presume no particular superiority to anyone reading
this, but neither do I diminish what I think I can offer.

That’s the respect I have for you, the reader.

All right, then, let’s talk about
credibility. How many people have these combat instructors killed?
How many real self-defense altercations have they had? How many people
have YOU fought, Phil Elmore? What credibility do you think you have?

I can’t address the personal experiences of
anyone else, but this query speaks to logically fallacious thinking. The
validity of a given statement or opinion (unless that opinion specifically
invokes the authority of the person stating it as reason to find the opinion
compelling) is found entirely within the substance of the opinion. To
attack the person offering that opinion is the logical fallacy of ad hominem
specifically, “attack on the man.”

Examine each opinion critically. Ask
yourself to what degree that opinion corresponds to reality. If you lack
the information to make that determination, reserve judgment. Do not,
however, attack people when you should be dealing substantively with
their ideas.

If you believe only those who’ve maimed or
even killed other people have the “credibility” to express opinions
about self-defense and the use of force, you are free to ignore or dismiss
anyone who hasn’t. Be careful, however, in offering speculation as to how
few “real” experiences someone else may have. Those who’ve
actually used force in real life outside of environments in which it is socially
sanctioned (such as war and the enforcement of law) will be reluctant to speak
of it publicly and for good reason. Don’t ever mistake the
refusal to speak of something as the admission that the person refusing does not
understand and has not experienced it.

Of course, don’t be taken in by affected
thousand-yard stares and world-weary protestations, either. There are
plenty of Virtual
Tough Guys who use reverse psychology to bolster their egos. No matter
what you are told, you can’t know personal information that another
person won’t share. You can assume if you wish. Sometimes you’ll be
right. Other times you’ll just look petty and foolish.

If the traditionalists reading this wish to
look down their noses at the “reality” fighting crowd, sniffing that
such people are posturing loose cannons who have no real fighting experience,
they should be sure to include the hundreds or thousands of traditional and
contemporary martial arts instructors churning out deluded students today.
Far too many schools in the martial arts world commercial strip-mall dojos, traditional sport-oriented training halls, individual teachers who’ve
traveled abroad and fancy themselves enlightened through this exposure are
producing individuals who think they’re going to control any encounter, doling
out compassionate and harmonious self-defense while dancing their way through
trouble, quoting lines of Japanese or Chinese poetry the entire
time.

Making someone
believe
his sport is a means of defending himself is as offensive as the
condescending and often ignorant pronouncements of practitioners of these
“martial” sports. If what you practice is not a martial art at
all, your complaints about those who are teaching self-defense may or may
not be the product of ignorance. Examine your opinions critically.

Now, where I am concerned, personally, I will
tell you right now that I will not answer the question, “How many people
have you fought?” No good ever comes of it. If I’ve been in
documented altercations, these would be a matter of public record. If I’ve
been in undocumented altercations, I’d be a fool to admit it. If I say
I’ve been in no confrontations, this will be taken by some as license to dismiss
what I say without actually examining the content of those opinions.

If you wish, then, to take my
refusal to answer the question as some sort of
admission of a lack of experience, you may. If you wish to see some
unflattering motive in refusing to answer the question, you certainly can. I have never
pretended to be anyone I am not and I have never claimed to be an expert or an
authority.

What I am is a concerned individual who believes strongly in
what he does and in the information he shares.

What you think of that, and
what you do with it, is up to you.

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