James Rawles - Liberators

Joshua was sure that he had just put himself on the weirdo do-not-return-phone-calls list, but little did he know that Megan was very impressed with his “prepper indicators” and that his stock value had just gone way up with her.

As they entered Mona’s Gourmet Carry Out, Megan immediately noticed that they accepted only cash, a sign of a good place to eat. “Wow, everything looks great,” she said. “What did you order for me, by the way?”

“I ordered the Kimchi Bokkeumbap for you; it’s reliably very good.”

“What’s your favorite thing on the menu here?”

“I’m Korean by ethnicity, but I never grew up in the culture. I much prefer fried banana peanut butter sandwiches on account of my origins, but I do love the Beef Bulgogi and the Spicy Korean Beef Soup combo here.”

Megan was in full analyst mode. “I couldn’t help but notice your facial features.”

“You mean that I don’t look very Korean? You’re right. I did some study on this—all of us orphans are obsessive about our origins—and I concluded that my mother must have been Chinese, or perhaps my father and/or mother were ethnically Chinese, but somehow I ended up with a Korean surname.”

Joshua carried the tray back to the table, and they sat down. Megan did not want to waste any time during their lunch hour so she started out by asking, “I really want to hear more about you. So tell me, are you from Memphis?”

“Since I was raised in an orphanage, where I’m ‘from’ is quite relative, but I claim Tennessee as home. I’m an average guy, I live off of Haviland Mill Road near the Brighton Dam in a rented room above a garage, I name Christ as my Lord and Savior, and I can’t relate with anyone on the first ten pages of Details magazine.” Joshua paused for effect, arranged the items on his tray, then continued, “I was left on the doorstep of a Memphis Catholic church when I was a newborn. My birth parents were never identified. They only left a note with my name, ‘Joshua Kim,’ and I was raised in an orphanage in Nashville.”

Joshua pleasantly noticed that Megan was proficient with chopsticks as he continued, “I was raised to be Catholic and all in all I would say that my upbringing was pretty good. I had a lot of different exposure to other cultures, growing up. We had one nun from Ghana who taught us classical literature, a Jesuit priest from Bolivia who taught all of the math and physical sciences, as well as a nun from France. Eventually, I learned enough French to pass the CLEP for college credit when I was a junior enlisted airman.”

“ Vraiment? Tu parles le Français? Je suis Quebecois.”

“So you’re telling me that I’m winning back some cool points for the tin foil hat comment about my spare HEI distributor?”

“You’re all right with me, Officer Kim. We happen to believe in spare parts and putting things away for a rainy day at our house, too. Please continue with your story.”

“Well, if you’ve never been to an orphanage, it is rather hard to explain. The one thing that got me through was my best friend, Dustin. He and I were inseparable; we basically are brothers . He lives in Kentucky now, and we still talk all the time.”

He paused for a moment, and went on. “One summer we both earned a trip to a boys’ summer camp that the local Diocese puts on every year in southern Illinois. We were both pretty nervous about the new setting, but since we had few worldly possessions and we were also used to daily routine we adjusted quite well. The first afternoon we got our bunk assignments and there was this one shy boy prone on his stomach flipping through an off-road truck magazine. He was tall and skinny with red hair and was pretty much minding his own business when a few kids who were sent from a rough Chicago parish decided to raise their collective testosterone level and bully this kid reading his magazine. The boys reached over him, grabbed the blanket on the other side of the bed, folded it over to envelop him, and in one motion jerked him down onto the floor. Two kids held him while the other two had bars of soap in a sock and started to hit him. Well, these kids did not factor in Dustin or his high sense of justice—probably what makes him such a good sheriff’s deputy now. Anyway, Dustin swept the legs of the nearest kid and delivered a sound knee to the right side of his torso, taking the wind out of him. Without missing a beat he grabbed the back of the shirt collar of the other boy who was hitting the kid, who appeared to be the ringleader, and put him right down on the ground with his knee on his chest, and said, ‘Get!’ It was really something to see, at eleven years old.”

Joshua took a quick bite, and then continued. “Dustin does not suffer bullies or fools at all. The other two, who were holding the blanket, saw the trend and decided that they did not want any part of Bunkhouse Justice 101, and promptly left. Dustin and I helped the kid up and asked him if he was okay. His name was Ken Layton, and ever since he’s been one of my best long-distance friends. All three of us got to be great friends over those three weeks at camp. Ken told us all about drive trains and differential ratios, which started my long and expensive hobby of off roading. Turns out that Ken could also shoot pretty well, too. On the .22 range, he consistently took the top scores even with those old worn-out bolt action rifles. I’m getting long-winded here, but Ken went back to his house in Chicago and Dustin and I faithfully wrote back and forth with Ken for years, first by snail mail, and later by e-mail. Ken later met a guy named Todd Gray, who planted the seed with Dustin and me on preparedness.”

“Preparedness?” Megan was nearly finished with her lunch and Joshua had not really touched his, but she was enjoying his story.

“It’s the concept of redundant options. It’s like insurance.”

“I’ve heard of that.” Megan figured it was time to lay a marker on the table here. “I first realized that the world was not capable of growing exponentially ad infinitum when I came across a link on the website peakprosperity.com called The Crash Course by Chris Martenson.”

Joshua asked, “You like Chris Martenson, too?”

“Indeed,” Megan said. “He made too much sense to ignore. I just wish that I had started listening to him years ago. Eric was into guns, but not prepping. They are not coterminous.”

“I’ve got to say that the whole idea of one rifle and a backpack in the woods or a pallet of MREs and a box of ammo in Laurel, Maryland, are dangerous myths.”

“Guns are useful tools, but I figure that they truly solve very few problems in and of themselves. That’s why Malorie and I have been studying all we can with permaculture and how to produce nutrient-dense food reliably in quantity. You may want to add the ‘survival seed pack’ to that list of dangerous myths. You’ve seen how crazy it gets when Snowpocalypse hits the D.C. area every other winter.”

“When I-95 or I-70 closes, there aren’t enough supplies on the shelf, the trucks can’t get through to deliver more, and people panic. All of this happens in the good times when there is law and order present.”

Megan knew that Joshua was speaking honestly and even reluctantly about things that most people never got to hear about, so she was careful to sound empathetic. “You’re correct: Batteries, flashlights, camping gear, toilet paper, disposable diapers, and bottled water are all the first to go.”

“That’s right. In law enforcement we see this all the time, even if most cops never put all of these philosophical thoughts together into a coherent concept. We still see incrementally the best and worst in society.”

The conversation was moving at a brisk pace and Megan was fully engaged now. She asked, “That is what some would call the creep of ‘positive law.’ When the government becomes the guarantor of all things, then they must enforce law positively ; that is to say, ‘The Constitution is a living document, the law is whatever we say it is, subject to change at any time.’ When that happens, there is no other end result but that the haves are systematically robbed by degree until wealth redistribution becomes ‘economic justice’ and legitimate civil rights are exchanged for ‘social justice.’”