Be Prepared
15 May, 2008 Gentlemen, Please pardon the interruption. I would not ask now for your attention if the need were not great. Few of us today pay much attention to politics. It is too dirty. Too scandalous. Too complex. Our various governments seem so enormous, and so fixed on one path, that there is very little a man alone can do. Our public political discourse is puerile if not futile. To concern oneself too much with politics has become disreputable. An occupation suitable only for charlatans and thieves. I pray that you will find me both reasonable, and civil. For discuss these things we must. Our homes, our families, our very lives depend on it. Most of us have noticed the slow and gradual erosion of our natural and fundamental rights. I say most of us have noticed, and yet, most of the things we see and speak of are not presented to us as tyranny and the abrogation of ancient rights and liberties, but as a series of necessary nuisances . Along with these nuisances has risen a veritable army of bureaucrats whose powers of search, seizure, and amercement are far greater even than those of the police. Do you have a wife? A child? A dog or unregistered poultry are all these new tyrants require for a warrant-less search. We must be protected, or so we are told, from the dangers of unpasteurised cheese, incandescent light bulbs, and beer sold in pints. These my friends are the harbingers of much worse things, and we must heed them. A barkeep today may be fined -- ruined, in fact -- for smoking or allowing others to smoke tobacco at his own bar. This while tobacco may be lawfully possessed and used, not least in the roads and other places which (unlike the bar) are the property and proper domain of the Crown. More than once now, a man has been fined, thrown in jail, or in some other way destroyed because he refused to pay for a second home, so that his wife may better entertain her lover there. Even in the presence of their children. Others have suffered similar fates for refusing to pay for children who are not theirs; whom they may not raise up or even visit without permission. Marriage and divorce laws ostensibly intended to protect women have left millions of them to raise children alone, many of them in poverty. These are our women. Our wives. Our sisters. Our aunts. Our daughters. Our mothers. Is it right for us to leave them to the tender mercies of would-be tyrants? Law-abiding men have been disarmed by the thousands. Countless historic artefacts have been destroyed, as even ancient black-powder pistols have been prohibited or taxed and subjected to such onerous licensing requirements that few will bother to keep them. Good men have been ruined for speaking their minds. Not for slander, or fraud, or for uttering threats, or for any other thing that causes immediate and measurable harm, but simply for voicing their own opinions on matters of public interest. A restauranteur has been ruined for evicting a drug smoker from his own doorway; another fined and publicly rebuked for requiring cooks to wash their hands. There have been many other injuries which have been brought to my attention. More than I care to list here. What is next? We do not know. But one thing is certain: these things are no accident. The arbitrary and unreasonable nature of these little nuisances has a purpose. To inure us to their stupidity. To make us fearful, flat broke, and obedient. These new tyrants wish to break us with little things first, so that they might get away with greater things later. Some of us have already broken. Paid up. Capitulated, or worse. Some have taken up the various causes of those who would make us slaves. There are now thousands among us who have been brought to desperate poverty, and made wholly dependent on the state. These have been taught, and many believe against all evidence, that they owe their present circumstances to the actions of free men such as ourselves, and not to their own vices; nor to those tyrants who wish us all to become and to remain utterly dependent upon themselves. These are tyranny's most obedient foot-soldiers, and its most unfortunate victims, for these are the voluntarily enslaved. These do not serve God, or Mammon, but have made a God of Man. They sincerely believe that they are acting in our own best interests. Some of us have already chosen death before slavery, fallen to despair at the destruction of our families, or been driven mad by the numerous and irrational contradictions of this new cult. How many of us know someone who has died by his own hand? How many reports have we had of men who took their wife and children with them to the grave? Oh! 'An act of senseless violence!' I would that it were so. Who among us has not heard their stories, known what weakness drove them to mortal sin, and yet remained silent? Now, gentlemen, I must beg of you: do not think me a rebel. I am a law-abiding man. I have sworn an oath of loyalty to the Queen and I will keep it. But all the same, the time has come when we must stand -- while we are still able -- against this new tyranny. Make no mistake: I do not ask you to take up arms against our governments. In fact, I must ask you not to, except, as is just, in defence of your lives and the lives of others. But I do ask you, indeed I beg of you, to buy arms. To build arms. To hide them away in safe and secret places. To stockpile whatever food, fuel, munitions, and other necessaries of war you can. Put them away and pray to God that they may remain in their hiding places forever. Like it or not, we may soon be at war, or worse, enslaved. Get your firearms ticket. Join a gun club. Stock up. Choose for yourself the weapons and supplies which will best suit your needs. These may be quite different from one place and one person to the next. Whatever you may choose for yourself, I must ask that you buy extras for others who may not see the need for such things until that need is upon them. Most of the weapons issued to police use 9mm pistol ammunition, as does the old Sten gun, which has a simple design and may easily be made by anyone with access to a machine shop. Commercially available .308 Winchester and .223 Remington ammunition may be used in some military grade weapons and hunting rifles. I am not asking, and cannot recommend, that you break the law, unjust as it may be. That said, where our natural and customary right to bear arms and to defend our own lives has in any way been violated, I will, for myself, hold any man blameless who obtains or manufactures a reliable means of self-defence, provided that these are stored safely and are not used in a manner which violates our natural and common law. These new tyrants will say and do whatever they can to convince us that we do not have a natural right to bear arms. We have a natural right to self-defence. In this, a right to bear arms is implicit. It must be. Our laws and constitution are customary. How many guns did your father have? Your grandfather? Your great-grandfather? Can your natural rights be "grandfathered?" I have seen nine pound cannon -- artillery, in its day -- in private hands. To keep and bear arms is our ancient right, one confirmed in the 1689 Petition of Right and elsewhere. All of our other rights rely on this one. All of our other rights are now also threatened by tyranny. Stock up on preserved foods, medicines, bandages, and fuel for heating, cooking, and vehicles. Check your water supply and store some if necessary. Assume that normal trade may be disrupted, through war, natural or man-made disaster, and that you may need to make do with what you have. I know that I am asking a lot of you. I know the very idea that we should have need of such things repels you, as it does me. Some will say that what I am asking of you is a waste of time. So, my friends, is a fire-drill when nothing is burning. Our new tyrants, and the poor slaves who support them have shown themselves many times over to be violent, unreasonable, and unworthy of our trust. They are doing their damndest to enslave us now with ballots; with lawless show trials and rigged elections. Be sure that these will turn to bullets if ballets don't work. They have done so at many times and places. They will do so here. I know I have asked a lot of you, and now I ask for something more. Do not act alone. Join the gun club. Join the Legion. Join the volunteer fire-fighters. Take your industrial first aid. Go to public meetings. Join in and serve your community. Act in concert with your fellows. The lone gunman is a fool; a danger to himself and others. You have a natural right to free assembly. Use it. One month from today, on the 15th of June, those few of us who care to remember it will gather to celebrate the Magna Carta, to which King John attached his Great Seal at Runnymede 793 years ago. I invite you to do the same. Map out your towns, your neighbourhoods, and plan for their defence. Find an open piece of ground where you may muster. Count your able-bodied men who might bear arms, and celebrate with a feast. Hold a public meeting. Discuss those things which your community will need to provide for its own security, and make plans to obtain them. I will leave you, gentlemen, with something I wish you to consider. It is a doctrine of the Christian faith. A doctrine which tells us when it is and is not just for good men to take up arms against tyranny. Most of us are familiar with our natural right to self-defence. Few of us have yet had need to consider armed defence against our own governments. Here then are the rules as I have received them: Armed resistance to Her Majesty's governments is unjust and must be condemned unless all of the following conditions are met:
15 May, 2008 Gentlemen, Please pardon the interruption. I would not ask now for your attention if the need were not great. Few of us today pay much attention to politics. It is too dirty. Too scandalous. Too complex. Our various governments seem so enormous, and so fixed on one path, that there is very little a man alone can do. Our public political discourse is puerile if not futile. To concern oneself too much with politics has become disreputable. An occupation suitable only for charlatans and thieves. I pray that you will find me both reasonable, and civil. For discuss these things we must. Our homes, our families, our very lives depend on it. Most of us have noticed the slow and gradual erosion of our natural and fundamental rights. I say most of us have noticed, and yet, most of the things we see and speak of are not presented to us as tyranny and the abrogation of ancient rights and liberties, but as a series of necessary nuisances . Along with these nuisances has risen a veritable army of bureaucrats whose powers of search, seizure, and amercement are far greater even than those of the police. Do you have a wife? A child? A dog or unregistered poultry are all these new tyrants require for a warrant-less search. We must be protected, or so we are told, from the dangers of unpasteurised cheese, incandescent light bulbs, and beer sold in pints. These my friends are the harbingers of much worse things, and we must heed them. A barkeep today may be fined -- ruined, in fact -- for smoking or allowing others to smoke tobacco at his own bar. This while tobacco may be lawfully possessed and used, not least in the roads and other places which (unlike the bar) are the property and proper domain of the Crown. More than once now, a man has been fined, thrown in jail, or in some other way destroyed because he refused to pay for a second home, so that his wife may better entertain her lover there. Even in the presence of their children. Others have suffered similar fates for refusing to pay for children who are not theirs; whom they may not raise up or even visit without permission. Marriage and divorce laws ostensibly intended to protect women have left millions of them to raise children alone, many of them in poverty. These are our women. Our wives. Our sisters. Our aunts. Our daughters. Our mothers. Is it right for us to leave them to the tender mercies of would-be tyrants? Law-abiding men have been disarmed by the thousands. Countless historic artefacts have been destroyed, as even ancient black-powder pistols have been prohibited or taxed and subjected to such onerous licensing requirements that few will bother to keep them. Good men have been ruined for speaking their minds. Not for slander, or fraud, or for uttering threats, or for any other thing that causes immediate and measurable harm, but simply for voicing their own opinions on matters of public interest. A restauranteur has been ruined for evicting a drug smoker from his own doorway; another fined and publicly rebuked for requiring cooks to wash their hands. There have been many other injuries which have been brought to my attention. More than I care to list here. What is next? We do not know. But one thing is certain: these things are no accident. The arbitrary and unreasonable nature of these little nuisances has a purpose. To inure us to their stupidity. To make us fearful, flat broke, and obedient. These new tyrants wish to break us with little things first, so that they might get away with greater things later. Some of us have already broken. Paid up. Capitulated, or worse. Some have taken up the various causes of those who would make us slaves. There are now thousands among us who have been brought to desperate poverty, and made wholly dependent on the state. These have been taught, and many believe against all evidence, that they owe their present circumstances to the actions of free men such as ourselves, and not to their own vices; nor to those tyrants who wish us all to become and to remain utterly dependent upon themselves. These are tyranny's most obedient foot-soldiers, and its most unfortunate victims, for these are the voluntarily enslaved. These do not serve God, or Mammon, but have made a God of Man. They sincerely believe that they are acting in our own best interests. Some of us have already chosen death before slavery, fallen to despair at the destruction of our families, or been driven mad by the numerous and irrational contradictions of this new cult. How many of us know someone who has died by his own hand? How many reports have we had of men who took their wife and children with them to the grave? Oh! 'An act of senseless violence!' I would that it were so. Who among us has not heard their stories, known what weakness drove them to mortal sin, and yet remained silent? Now, gentlemen, I must beg of you: do not think me a rebel. I am a law-abiding man. I have sworn an oath of loyalty to the Queen and I will keep it. But all the same, the time has come when we must stand -- while we are still able -- against this new tyranny. Make no mistake: I do not ask you to take up arms against our governments. In fact, I must ask you not to, except, as is just, in defence of your lives and the lives of others. But I do ask you, indeed I beg of you, to buy arms. To build arms. To hide them away in safe and secret places. To stockpile whatever food, fuel, munitions, and other necessaries of war you can. Put them away and pray to God that they may remain in their hiding places forever. Like it or not, we may soon be at war, or worse, enslaved. Get your firearms ticket. Join a gun club. Stock up. Choose for yourself the weapons and supplies which will best suit your needs. These may be quite different from one place and one person to the next. Whatever you may choose for yourself, I must ask that you buy extras for others who may not see the need for such things until that need is upon them. Most of the weapons issued to police use 9mm pistol ammunition, as does the old Sten gun, which has a simple design and may easily be made by anyone with access to a machine shop. Commercially available .308 Winchester and .223 Remington ammunition may be used in some military grade weapons and hunting rifles. I am not asking, and cannot recommend, that you break the law, unjust as it may be. That said, where our natural and customary right to bear arms and to defend our own lives has in any way been violated, I will, for myself, hold any man blameless who obtains or manufactures a reliable means of self-defence, provided that these are stored safely and are not used in a manner which violates our natural and common law. These new tyrants will say and do whatever they can to convince us that we do not have a natural right to bear arms. We have a natural right to self-defence. In this, a right to bear arms is implicit. It must be. Our laws and constitution are customary. How many guns did your father have? Your grandfather? Your great-grandfather? Can your natural rights be "grandfathered?" I have seen nine pound cannon -- artillery, in its day -- in private hands. To keep and bear arms is our ancient right, one confirmed in the 1689 Petition of Right and elsewhere. All of our other rights rely on this one. All of our other rights are now also threatened by tyranny. Stock up on preserved foods, medicines, bandages, and fuel for heating, cooking, and vehicles. Check your water supply and store some if necessary. Assume that normal trade may be disrupted, through war, natural or man-made disaster, and that you may need to make do with what you have. I know that I am asking a lot of you. I know the very idea that we should have need of such things repels you, as it does me. Some will say that what I am asking of you is a waste of time. So, my friends, is a fire-drill when nothing is burning. Our new tyrants, and the poor slaves who support them have shown themselves many times over to be violent, unreasonable, and unworthy of our trust. They are doing their damndest to enslave us now with ballots; with lawless show trials and rigged elections. Be sure that these will turn to bullets if ballets don't work. They have done so at many times and places. They will do so here. I know I have asked a lot of you, and now I ask for something more. Do not act alone. Join the gun club. Join the Legion. Join the volunteer fire-fighters. Take your industrial first aid. Go to public meetings. Join in and serve your community. Act in concert with your fellows. The lone gunman is a fool; a danger to himself and others. You have a natural right to free assembly. Use it. One month from today, on the 15th of June, those few of us who care to remember it will gather to celebrate the Magna Carta, to which King John attached his Great Seal at Runnymede 793 years ago. I invite you to do the same. Map out your towns, your neighbourhoods, and plan for their defence. Find an open piece of ground where you may muster. Count your able-bodied men who might bear arms, and celebrate with a feast. Hold a public meeting. Discuss those things which your community will need to provide for its own security, and make plans to obtain them. I will leave you, gentlemen, with something I wish you to consider. It is a doctrine of the Christian faith. A doctrine which tells us when it is and is not just for good men to take up arms against tyranny. Most of us are familiar with our natural right to self-defence. Few of us have yet had need to consider armed defence against our own governments. Here then are the rules as I have received them: Armed resistance to Her Majesty's governments is unjust and must be condemned unless all of the following conditions are met:
- * There is certain, grave, and prolonged violation of our natural rights;
* All other means of redress have been exhausted;
* That such resistance will not provoke worse disorders;
* That there is a well founded hope of success; and
* That we cannot reasonably forsee any better solution.