Two Types of Self-Defense (Original)

From 2018

Two Types of Self-Defense

by Lucas J. Mather

In the present crisis, those of us interested in active self-defense must distinguish between 2 types of self defense, and each requires description and its own kind of training activity. Special attention will be given here to the second kind. I then give a brief suggestion about ways to strengthen that type in your context.

The first kind of self-defense is probably what comes to mind when you hear the term: self-defense against criminals. What kind of criminals ?¹ Self defense against violent criminals. Self defense against immoral, violent criminals. When they attack you.

Think of The Karate Kid (1984). This is a tale of the first kind of self defense. This kind of defense involves training in open-handed technique , such the martial arts, boxing, or wrestling (inclusive or). But it can also include self-defense training with weapons: tactical pens, striking beveled lighting technologies, chemical sprays, bladed weapons, and firearms.

The second kind of self defense is self defense against the criminal justice system that, due to poor policy or lawmaking or court decision (inclusive or in the present crisis), misunderstands what a criminal is, and immorally regards the victim of violent crime as a criminal when that victim defend herself from truly immoral criminals.

The second kind of self defense rests on the truth that everyone has a moral, natural right to self defense. In fact, everyone has a moral and natural right to defend innocent human life, and property, from wanton immoral destruction or even from negligent harm.²

The story of how this policy-making goes is an interesting one, to be sure, and has quite a long history in the Western Cultures.

But broadly speaking, there are two attitudes toward the first type of self defense that relate with the existence for the need of the second kind of self defense.

The Republican tradition regards the right to self-defense from immoral, violent criminals³ as flowing right out of a confidence that we have a God-given right not to be immorally killed, threatened, assaulted, abused, enslaved, and so on, and that we have property rights we enjoy that have the same moral protection from immoral crime. Some Republicans throughout history have been what are called "me-too" Republicans, and these are Republicans who want to be liked by Democrats -- want to fit in with them for whatever political , professional, or social reason at the time.

[Photo above: Reason Magazine ran an obiturary on Otis McDonald in 2014: https://reason.com/2014/04/06/otis-mcdonald-rip-the-man-who-got-the-se/ ]

The Democratic tradition has a leftist streak that regards the victim of immoral violence involving slavery or assault or attempted murder as a criminal if they fight back or if they are prepared to fight back. So, for instance, Justice Taney in the Dred Scott decision recognized that if blacks were citizens of the United States and hence could sue for their freedom under the Fifth Amendment, then they'd have the privileges of citizenship, which would include protection of the rights to be armed wherever they went.⁴

What Taney meant was that the right to be armed in public, in the Democratic tradition of the time, was the right to be prepared to successfully and effectively defend oneself from violent, immoral attack. It was a right to be be prepared to effectively engage in the first kind of self-defense.

And just being prepared to do so -- merely being in, maintaining that position -- was illegal for blacks, according to the Democrat Taney.⁵

That is to say, blacks had 2 things they needed to defend themselves against : violent , immoral criminal attack, and the criminal justice system, which regarded *them, the victim* as also criminal if they fought back, or even if they possessed the ability to fight back .

Republicans, of course, rectified that to a significant extent at great cost, at great personal cost -- at ultimate personal cost for many tens of thousands -- before they lost steam and gave up the South to Democratic terrorists for 90 years. But they did overturn, in a highly partisan fashion, because there was no other option at the time, that Dred Scott decision. Chief Justice Taney, a Democrat (of course)⁶ regarded the thought of an armed black man who possibly could defend himself as evidence of the view he espoused in that decision, that blacks were not citizens of the United States, nor could they ever be.

In recent times, the Democratic strain to regard victims as criminals has spread beyond blacks to whites, Mexicans, women, and Chinese people as well.

Lest you think that “that was then” and “this is now” (which is trivially true), recall that Otis McDonald was a black man who was in that same situation when the Democrat city of Chicago spent over a million dollars to deprive him of the natural right to protect himself from both criminals and the government who sought to criminalize his innocent conduct. That is to say, he himself needed both types of self-defense:

1. Otis McDonald, a black man, needed to protect himself from crime absent the police, who were only 15 to 23 minutes away.

2. Otis McDonald, a black man, needed to protect himself from being criminalized for protecting himself from crime.

The case went all the way to the Supreme Court in McDonald v. Chicago (2010). It was only Republicans on the Court that recognized that Otis McDonald was threatened in two ways: by thugs, ordinary criminals, and by politicians and bureaucrats working for the government pretending not to be thugs and ordinary criminals.

Let’s face it: criminalizing innocent conduct is itself truly criminal. That’s what the City of Chicago did to Otis McDonald and countless others under the guise of “public safety”: the left-leaning Democrats who run the City criminalized innocent conduct of the first kind self-defense (against violent, immoral crime). They went further than that: they criminalized merely being prepared for effective self-defense against immoral violent crime. It was only Republicans on the Court who saw through that “public safety” talk for what it really was: a grave deprivation of the fundamental right to self-defense.

[Photo above: Otis McDonald in Google Images, courtesy of Chicago Tribune. As of Friday 14 July 2023, the link to their obituary was broken.]

The Democratic Party has the same anti-self defense strain as was successfully applied in their Leftist colleagues' countries: the Socialist countries that have disarmed victims of crime, because, again, being a victim who asserts a right to be prepared to effectively fight back -- who merely possesses the means to fight back in self defense -- is itself a crime, a fake crime, as we’ve seen, under this way of looking at things.

Countries like Nazi Germany, a Socialist workers movement on the Left, widely disarmed victims of violent crime.⁷

The left-leaning socialist countries like the Third Reich or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet Union) and all of its satellite countries disarmed potential victims of violent crime. Only the perpetrators of the crime of theft of property were allowed to be armed in Socialist revolution. So, if your Soviet son wanted to help to invade Afghanistan, he could be armed, but not at home in Moscow unless working for the Socialist government. This is nearly the exact way that many Democrats in America feel about arms. They feel , for instance as a starting point, that an 18, 19, or 20 year old cannot be armed unless they join the military or police.

[Photo 3, above: TRP Podcast guest Dr. Stephen P. Halbrook, JD, Ph.D.’s work on Socialist gun control was Episode 54 of The Republican Professor Podcast. See footnotes for link to the audio and video].

Socialist Venezuela engaged in disarmament recently, and Cuba had and has the same policy under Socialism and Communism. The Left believes that defending oneself from crime --real crime -- is itself a crime. Merely having a gun to halt a murder is itself a “crime” under the left-leaning way of thinking. So, trying to stop a murder in say, a synagogue, would , in the Democratic tradition in its current iteration, be a “crime” in and of itself. It sounds like I’m describing California because I am.

The best of the Republican tradition disagrees with that and fights against that as an aberration of the natural law and a perversion of justice.

Under this analysis, the Democratic slave owners and disarmers of blacks in Reconstruction and segregation were Left wingers just as much as the City of Chicago in 2010, or the Hispanic disarmament Socialists in recent Venezuela and the Jew-hating Socialists in Germany and the God-hating Socialists of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

A Left winger is anyone who believes that victims are themselves criminals because they assert a right to be prepared for effective self defense, defense of their property, or their family and community in public. The Left wing is united under the banner of an extreme skepticism in God-given natural rights of self defense. They cloak their goals in community-rights talk, “public safety.” Democrats now and then have this strain deeply ingrained in its various iterations. Republicans don't (unless they've become me-too Republicans).

In the present crisis, one cannot simply train in the first type of self defense without active engagement in the second, for both threaten the self , the family, the community in which you live. For example, one cannot just get firearms training and expect to be safe when attacked, for Democrats and the Democratic tradition in various degrees of ferocious strength will come after you and threaten your life with arrest, indictment, prosecution, and theft of property they call "seizure" and will do it all under the guise of "law" or "regulation." All because you successfully engaged in the first kind of self defense.

What can be done?

Just like there have been a plethora of self defense training centers for developing the first kind of self defense (Judo, JuJitsu, and so on), there should be training centers (there are already some) for developing the second type of self defense.

The US Conceal Carry Association (USCCA), US Texas Lawsheild and other similar organizations are experts in this. However, this kind of legal self-defense by itself doesn’t go far enough in the present crisis.

There also needs to be the kind of Republican political activity that will win this as if it is a war. That's how Dred Scott was overturned in the first place. Republicans won elections, and instituted anti-Leftist policies, laws, regulations, Constitutional Amendments , and Court decisions (not all good, some me-too) in the many decades that followed Dred Scott.

War came, but it came when Democrats fired upon Republicans, not the other way around.

And I believe the same should be true today. We should politically and culturally engage full-stop until there is little to no need for the second kind of self defense, at least in the United States of America.

(The first kind has existed since Cain and Abel and probably won't go away -- but Abel didn't have to deal with the second kind).

You can help by training in logic and argumentation. Take a logic class from a professional. Master the material. Take Constitutional Law from a professional, and find a good mentor to help you avoid mistakes and landmines along the way.

Have a great weekend, and don't give up the fight. God bless.

Copyright Lucas J. Mather, 2018, 2023
All Rights Reserved
Unedited Version Originally published to Facebook on Saturday 17 Nov 2018 at 6:17 pm. This version has been slightly altered from the original.

1. This question is important to ask because there are now multiple kinds of criminals: Immoral criminals who unjustifiedly harm and victimize others, breaking the law of God and of nature in the process. This is what we might call the real criminal, not the fake kind described below. Examples include stealing and murder. Armed robbery is stealing is a certain way. Rape would also be included as a type of stealing. Kidnapping as well. In Exodus chapter 20, these types are forbidden in Israel’s new positive law from God. The very next chapter provides the death penalty for stealing people for the sake of enslaving and selling them—the exact conduct that American slavery, defended for generations by Democrats and ended by Republicans—was founded on. (Exodus 21:16)

Another kind of “criminal” is merely a criminal so-called, and isn’t a real criminal in the sense above but is instead we may correctly surmise as a fake criminal, one invented by people instead of discovered in the natural law, an invention of partisans of the growth of the Administrative State: These fake criminals are Administrative criminals, who , though they do nothing wrong per se, fail to fill out paper work and pay fees. Such offenses have examples in the recent California so-called “Assault Weapon” ban, where, if one were in a coma, for example, during the registration period for the “bullet-button” weapons, and failed to fill out the paper work and pay an extra fee to register your gun that is already registered with the California DOJ, such non-conduct was deemed a felony — a criminal offense — by the Democrats in Sacramento. Let me say that another time : for the first time in history, our era includes in the definition of “crime” (even the worst kind of crime, a “felony”) non-conduct, such as being in a coma and not filling out paperwork for a gun you already own and is already registered to you. That is to say (let me say it a third time), doing nothing is now a felony. No overt act , let alone an immoral act, was entailed by such predication of this type of so-called “crime.” It used to be that you had to do something, let alone do something really bad, to be a felon. Democrats think this development constitutes progress, the possibility under their legislation that one could being doing nothing at all and wake up at 8 am one morning a felon, having done nothing but sleep from 11:59 pm the previous day a model citizen, to 12 midnight a minute later now a felon. That’s why they call themselves “progressives.” This is what the progress is : a progress down the path departing away from common sense and natural law so that they can continue to grow the Administrative State at the expense of individual rights.

2. Moreover, everyone has a right to defend themselves effectively and successfully (sorry for being redundant). That is to say, in the right to self defense, self-defense is a success term, like perception is a success term. If one perceives something, the thing is there to be perceived: success in perception is entailed by the term. We don’t merely have a right to try and fail in self defense. In other words, we don’t merely have a right to ineffective self defense. If we have a right to self defense, and we do, it’s a right to succeed : it’s a right to effective self defense.

3. That is, the first kind of criminal, the real kind, distinguished from the fake kind of criminal, in footnote 1.

4. Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 US 393 (1857) at 417, available here : https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=3231372247892780026&q=dred+scott+v+sandford&hl=en&as_sdt=2003

5. The dissents in the Dred Scott decision (7-2) were Republicans: Justice Curtis and Justice Mclean, the latter of whom invoked the Christian doctrine of Creation, the imago dei, as grounds for his dissent (recalling the Creation language in the Declaration of Independence); he also dissented in the horrendous Prig v. Pennsylvania (1841), a case involving a Democrat slave catcher and a run-away slave, a slave running away from a Democrat state).

6. Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 US 393 (1857) at 417, available here : https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=3231372247892780026&q=dred+scott+v+sandford&hl=en&as_sdt=2003 .

7. The Republican Professor Podcast featured one notable book along these lines called “Gun Control and the Third Reich,” by Dr. Stephen P. Halbrook, J.D., Ph.D. Dr. Halbrook is a successful appellate lawyer, having one multiple US Supreme Court cases in Constitutional Law. The Episode is available here (audio and video): https://www.therepublicanprofessor.com/2022/06/09/ep-54-gun-control-the-third-reich-w-dr-stephen-halbrook-ph-d-j-d-of-printz-v-u-s-1997/