REAL or IMAGINED
“One Can Ignore Reality….But One Cannot Ignore The Consequences of Ignoring Reality”
Social Chaos is Brewing – and NO ONE in Authority Will Warn You About It . . . .
It’s All Up to You – As it Should Be.
DON’T BE A VICTIM
“I Saw an Opportunity and I Took It.”
Written by: Greg Ellifritz
A couple weeks ago we got a call about a stolen bicycle. A college-aged female rode her bike to a local drug store and went inside. She didn’t lock up the bike. When she came out a couple minutes later, the bike was gone.
Fortunately, several witnesses saw the theft and got a good description of the suspect. I found him and arrested him (still riding the stolen bike) about 20 minutes later.
In the grand scheme of things, not a big deal. A theft. An arrest. It happens every day.
While I was speaking with my prisoner during the arrest process, I recognized that most of you will never be in such a position to talk candidly with a thief (who also had past arrests for felonious assault, kidnapping, rape, and a host of other crimes). Since I get this “honor” quite regularly, I’m happy to share the what I learn with you all.
Our thief today is homeless. He’s 32 years old and overweight. He’s a regular consumer of crack cocaine. He has no job and no place to live. He sometimes stays at friends’ apartments, but his permanent address is a local homeless shelter. The sum total of his possessions consisted of a change of clothes, a broken phone, and less than $4 cash.
When I asked the man why he stole the bike, his comment was enlightening:
“I took it because I have the chance to stay at my friend’s place tonight instead of the shelter. My friend lives in (the next town over) and it would be about a four hour walk to get there. It rained all day yesterday and it looks like it’s going to rain some more today. I just didn’t want to spend four hours walking in the fucking rain and getting soaking wet again. I figured a bike would be faster.”
He continued by saying: “I knew it was wrong to steal the bike, but I just don’t care. I didn’t want to get wet no more. I saw an opportunity and I took it. I’d do the same thing all over again if I got the chance. Biking is just faster than walking.” Continue reading . . .
Natural Law vs. Socialism
I became interested in the writings of C. S. Lewis during the height of the “Hobbit” fascination in the ‘70’s when I read the Chronicles of Narnia. I next read
the Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce and Mere Christianity. The more I read, the deeper I found myself becoming influenced by the profundity and insight of his writings. I believe Mr. Lewis to be one of the great thinkers of the Twentieth Century.
This morning I ran across the following quotes and believe that they are relevant to our goal of being self-reliant.
“Two wars necessitated vast curtailments of liberty, and we have grown, though grumblingly, accustomed to our chains. The increasing complexity and precariousness of our economic life have forced Government to take over many spheres of activity once left to choice or chance. Our intellectuals have surrendered first to the slave-philosophy of Hegel, then to Marx, finally to the linguistic analysts.
As a result, classical political theory, with its Stoical, Christian, and juristic key-conceptions (natural law, the value of the individual, the rights of man), has died. The modern State exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good — anyway, to do something to us or to make us something. Hence the new name ‘leaders’ for those who were once ‘rulers’. We are less their subjects than their wards, pupils, or domestic animals. There is nothing left of which we can say to them, ‘Mind your own business.’ Our whole lives are their business.
I write ‘they’ because it seems childish not to recognize that actual government is and always must be oligarchical. Our effective masters must be more than one and fewer than all. But the oligarchs begin to regard us in a new way.”
“What assurance have we that our masters will or can keep the promise which induced us to sell ourselves? Let us not be deceived by phrases about ‘Man taking charge of his own destiny’. All that can really happen is that some men will take charge of the destiny of the others. They will be simply men; none perfect; some greedy, cruel and dishonest. The more completely we are planned the more powerful they will be. Have we discovered some new reason why, this time, power should not corrupt as it has done before?”
“The question about progress has become the question whether we can discover any way of submitting to the worldwide paternalism of a technocracy without losing all personal privacy and independence. Is there any possibility of getting the super Welfare State’s honey and avoiding the sting?”
— C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), British novelist
Source: Willing Slaves of the Welfare State, first published in The Observer on July 20, 1958
“Aren’t you preppers motivated by fear?”
The best answer we have is to answer with a question; “What kind of fear, Rational or Irrational fear?”
- Rational fear is a healthy and natural survival instinct.
- Only infants and idiots are free from fear.
- Fear is a healthy natural response to danger and the unknown.
- Fear teaches us to be cautious and not repeatedly make the same mistakes.
- Fear is a natural consequence of unpleasant experiences, or as an old saying goes; “A burnt child is afraid of fire”.
An irrational fear is a type of fear an individual experiences that does not necessarily have any basis behind it. Many individuals suffer from irrational fear of many different sources, including heights, clowns, insects, failure, fear to leave the house to name just a few.
Fear can be a motivator or it can be debilitating. We can’t live in fear and let fear get an emotional strangle hold on us.
Switch off emotion and switch on calm rational thought and sound logic and rationally appraise the facts as they are and move forward decisively.
If we perceive there is a threat this could motivate us into taking decisive action like attending prepper/survivalists meetings, stocking up on food, water, ammo and survival items. We rationally evaluate the risks and ask ourselves:
- Is it possible? Could this really happen?
- Is it probable? What is the likelihood of this happening?
- Am I prepared just in case it happens?
Living in Missouri, we are sitting on a potential time bomb called the New Madrid Fault. The largest earthquake recorded in the mid-west occurred New Madrid, MO in 1811 and then twice in 1812. The quakes were so severe that there were reports of church bell ringing and plaster cracking in New York and Boston from the tremors.
When are we due for another quake? Who can tell? But the facts are, should that happen, all everyday life in the mid-west would be seriously interrupted. But this is just one of the possible disasters that might happen. Not only do we live in the tornado zone but we live in a very dangerous world where civil unrest could disrupt our routine life at any time.
The Congressman Who Went Off the Grid
Roscoe Bartlett spent 20 years on Capitol Hill. Now he lives in a remote cabin in the woods, prepping for doomsday.
When Roscoe Bartlett was in Congress, he latched onto a particularly apocalyptic issue, one almost no one else ever seemed to talk about: America’s dangerously vulnerable power grid. In speech after late-night speech on the House floor, Bartlett hectored the nearly empty chamber: If the United States doesn’t do something to protect the grid, and soon, a terrorist or an act of nature will put an end to life as we know it. Read more …
EPA’s Wood-Burning Stove Ban Has Chilling Consequences For Many Rural People
It seems that even wood isn’t green or renewable enough anymore. The EPA has recently banned the production and sale of 80 percent of America’s current wood-burning stoves, the oldest heating method known to mankind and mainstay of rural homes and many of our nation’s poorest residents. The agency’s stringent one-size-fits-all rules apply equally to heavily air-polluted cities and far cleaner plus typically colder off-grid wilderness areas such as large regions of Alaska and the American West. Continue reading
Heads up! Stay Alert! Stay Informed! Don’t trust the Main Stream Media! Do your own homework!
Cultivate Situational Awareness and a Prepper Mindset
Self-Reliance Group 