UPDATE:
09/22 – For the 3 people who read this or anyone else who comes along…my opinion below hasn’t changed. We’ve just decided to go down fighting.
To The Hills, and beyond…
This is probably not a good business decision. Strategically, if our goal is to reach and help the most people in our community, it’s probably stupid.
I don’t care. We’re done using BookFace, the Gram, Tweeter, and any other Big Social platform.
Awareness
One of our principles of personal defense, awareness does not stop with your immediate surroundings. So climb to 10k feet and look around you, folks. Check the news, then “check” the news. Listen to your peers, then listen to your opposition. Listen to government officials, then listen to the critics. Listen to those you agree with, and those you don’t. Most importantly, watch what people are actually doing. Awareness. Now collate, analyze, filter, interpret, and decide.
At the 10,000 foot view, there’s too much going on that all seems to lead to the same place. Watching governments all over the world handle the current situation – what they say, what they do – is instructive. Watching the medical professions and industry. The media. The general public. Watching the money move around. What’s happening with crypto, religion, infrastructure, education, national politics, tradition, local politics, elections, technology, natural rights, the military, urban/rural dynamics, social media, the culture….it’s all leading to the same place.
We’re not going there
So-called Big Tech is a bus on the road headed there, so we are getting off at this stop and walking home. Whatever benefits we received from being part of that machine are outweighed by the risks and the moral implications of being a cog. Not that anyone at BookFace cares, but we’re not giving them any more money to “boost” posts that they probably weren’t really boosting given the nature of what we do and stand for. Neither are we going to give them the infinitesimal amount of traffic we attract.
We train citizens in self-defense and firearms. How to protect themselves and others. How to not be vulnerable and victimized. And sometimes violence is required. This is all predicated on the idea that every person has a natural right (and thus civil liberty) to defend themselves, a corollary being that we also have the right to protect those who cannot do so themselves. And we currently live in a country that recognizes our natural right to bear such tools as we deem necessary for that protection.
This protection is not limited to our persons, however. We also have a right to worship as we see fit, and to speak our minds in the public places; criticizing, calling-out, protesting, discussing, debating, arguing, disagreeing, asserting and defending with as much verbal aggressiveness as we each find necessary.
We also endeavor to protect our right to gather as peaceable citizens, whether to worship, protest, celebrate, or simply enjoy the gifts of Creation.
To be simple, we call all of this “freedom.”
The “place” we’re headed is not free. The people who run the show in that place (I now call them “othermen”) will not allow you the tools, knowledge and skill to protect yourself or others – doing so would put them at risk. In that place, The Forge does not exist because the othermen do not want you to learn and improve yourself, physically or mentally. They want you compliant and productive to their benefit, or dead.
So I, we, The Forge, as a business, as a community member, as a group of people, defy this path, that place, and the othermen. We stand for freedom.
So what?
You’re reading this and possibly wondering why you should care. In my opinion you should care for the same reasons we care: the things you participate in, support, and fund from this point forward help shape the future. What you choose to spend your time doing now will have huge implications for your place in that future.
I challenge you to consider what is truly important to you in your life, what you can and can’t live without, what you can and cannot abide, and choose your path wisely.
