For armed, prepared citizens, for martialists, the dark times are comprised of any period in which the political, social, and cultural pendulum swings towards control – control of arms, control of training, control of individual lives. For what is self-defense without the self? The right to defend yourself and the legal freedom necessary to own the tools and take the actions necessary to accomplish this goal are aspects of your self-ownership, the concept that you own you. Your are nobody’s slave and you are nobody’s property. You don’t owe anyone anything to which you’ve not agreed. You have the inalienable, unquestioned natural right to yourself – and to the products of your labors. To protect those rights, you have the right to defend yourself. More importantly, you have the right, in a free society, to be free of burdensome, invasive legislation that infringes on your right to self-protection or otherwise unjustly deprives you of your property, your time, or your life.

For example, the most recent dark times for men and women of action -- the people who are reading The Martialist, for the most part – were the eight years of the Clinton Presidency – eight years of abuse by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms punctuated by the Clintons' contempt for gun owners and anyone to the right of their political leftism. These were dark times that saw the burning to death of the Branch Davidians, for example -- people whose crimes certainly included being deluded religious nutjobs, but whose crimes certainly did not merit an horrific death sentence. These were dark times that saw a young boy, whose mother died to free him from the socialist dictatorship of Cuba, stolen at gunpoint by jackbooted stormtroopers -- a boy stolen from an American home in an American city by black-clad federal ninja wielding submachineguns. (Thanks to President Clinton, Elian Gonzales was returned to the prison-state that is modern-day Cuba, where is the property of the state.)

These were dark times that saw a marked decrease in Federal Firearms Licenses, as the government did its best to harass legal gun dealers and put them out of business. These were dark times that saw what was, at the time, the largest tax increase in history, accompanied by ever-greater government control on the liberties, lives, and livelihoods of those living and working in the United States.

For today's armed and prepared citizens, the dark time remains the Orwellian thought policing of that which is considered politically correct, coupled with the increasing pacifism and passivism of American popular culture. Ours is a culture that would rather see a woman raped than allow her to carry a gun. Ours is a culture that would bring that woman up on charges if she shot a would-be rapist. Ours is a culture that, increasingly, equates weaponry and even martial arts training with vice, with the desire to do unprovoked violence to others.

The Centers for Disease Control, as politicized a public agency as ever one could want, treat firearms like a disease. Schoolchildren, increasingly brainwashed in government schools, are indoctrinated to view all use of force as evil -- sometimes even being asked to inform on their parents’ firearms ownership, if news accounts can be believed --and come home to their horrified parents spewing politically correct clichés and revisionist history with the wide-eyed innocence of true believers (all while failing miserably to understand everything from math and reading to simple weights and measures, to say nothing of mysteries like grammar).

The coming dark times have, on occasion, seemed more distant. In post-Clinton America, it seemed -- beginning with the Republican "take-over" of Congress during Clinton's time in office -- that the tide was turning. Americans who believe in being prepared, in living life actively and dynamically, in defending themselves and their families, breathed premature sighs of relief. These American anti-pacifists -- whom I call martialists -- even saw the expiration of the national "Assault Weapons Ban." (Lest you think that this is a polemic against a specific political party, it is not. Both Republicans and Democrats pose a threat to your liberty and have engaged in the war on self-defense. For example, George Pataki, nominally a Republican, did more harm to legal gun ownership in New York State than the infamous Governmor Mario Cuomo ever managed before him. Pataki signed into law what was, at the time, the strictest gun control in the United States.)

For a brief moment in time, the American future -- which seemed inexorably to be moving towards greater tyranny, greater statism, greater and more invasive government control, greater socialism – seemed bright. Conservative radio hosts starting arrogantly proclaiming (while ignoring their own political functionaries’ infringements on personal liberty and failures to secure national security and individual rights) that those on the political left simply couldn’t win elections, that their ideology had been rejected by the American people, that their party or parties were dying. It was, apparently, a good time to be a martialist in the United States. It was, many thought, a good time to be an armed and law-abiding American. It was, so many hoped, a good time to be a free woman, a free man – a free citizen.

The future has gone dark.

In truth, the future always was dark. It is remarkably stupid, given the lessons of history, to rejoice when Republicans take power, for they have wrought as much damage to individual liberty as have their Democrat rivals. Substitute “right-wing” for Republicans and “left-wing” for Democrat in that sentence and the truth is only slightly different. While I do believe right and wrong exist -- and I believe ardently that what is true and morally correct is far more often characterized as “right wing” than as “left wing” -- the fact is that our society is moving inexorably towards totalitarian statism.

Recently the Supreme Court of the United States ruled -- legislating from the bench as it so often does -- that your government may take your property for almost any "public good," in what is surely the most gruesome abuse of Emminent Domain ever to be handed down by our robed masters. This is only the beginning. When your government can take anything you own for almost any reason, private property does not exist. When private property does not exist, de facto socialism has been implemented. The dark times are coming – and they have always been coming.

When I first got the idea to write this editorial, the dust was just clearing from the 2005 off-year elections. At that time, in San Fancisco, all guns were banned. It was illegal to make guns, sell guns, or own guns. You couldn’t carry a gun in the city; you could not even have a gun in your home or your business. San Francisco was thus destined to join Chicago and Washington, DC, as one the most violent cities in the nation, torn by the lawlessness that is always the result of disarming law-abiding citizens.

While it seems the law has been successfully challenged in court since that time, the passing of the San Francisco ban was not an isolated incident. Republican ballot initiatives in California were roundly voted down. Left-leaning politicians, primarily Democrats, swept the most consequential of the off-year elections nationwide in the wake of the political scandals plaguing the second Bush administration. On the opposite coast, Hillary Clinton was (and is, as of this writing) the front-runner for her party's presidential nomination in 2008 – and notoriously anti-gun Elliot Spitzer, now an Attorney General eager to sue firearm manufacturers out of existence, is poised to become the next Governor of New York State. The national and local news media are already trumpeting the "political nightmare" George Bush will face in 2006 when Democrats sweep the elections in two weeks' time. Polls across the country indicate that the Democrats will likely seize control of Congress.

Never a particularly strong president, George W. Bush has proven to be his party's worst enemy. As political conservatives have lost ground, so, too, have armed citizens lost ground. Say what you will about the other politics of the right wing in this country; complain, rightly, as much as you like about "theocracy" and other issues associated with the G.O.P. that are less than libertarian. For all the party's faults, however, it did one thing reasonably well, if at times with mediocrity: it stood up for firearms rights. The party's legitimately conservative members stood up for self-defense in the face of crime. They stood up for martialism in the face of popular culture's pacifist mantra of appeasement, self-destruction, and self-delusion.

Of course, they did this while society continued to close in around its members. They did this while, at times, aiding and abetting the very forces of “big government” they claimed to oppose. In a day and age when Congress and the President create and sign into being not tens, not scores, but hundreds of laws – from a pool of bills created in the Senate and the House that numbers in the thousands – it’s safe to say that all the really important and necessary laws (such as not murdering our neighbors or stealing their property) have been covered at some point in our more than two hundred year history. That means that with each of the thousands of possible laws your federal government tries to foist on you as an American citizen, another piece of your life is cordoned off, boxed in, and tied up.

There are now more laws on the books at the federal and state levels in the United States -- not counting the nearly limitless regulations imposed by various and sundry federal and state agencies and their faceless bureaucratic functionaries -- than any human being could possibly comprehend. No single person could keep in his or her head all of the laws he or she must follow in order to engage in any endeavor in his or her personal or business life. It simply isn’t possible. As the web of laws continues to tighten, the war on your freedom -- the war on you, your individuality, your right to self-defense -- continues apace. The war on freedom starts with the war on self-defense because a human being who can fight back is a human being who can oppose all other forms of government control, government intervention, and government theft.

As the coming dark times close in, it will become even more difficult for American martialists. Already under assault from every side in a culture that values victims over victors, defensively-minded critical thinkers are becoming increasingly rare among Americans. Think about the other gun owners you know -- and among them, think of the hardcore "tactical" enthusiasts, the ones who post in online discussion sites devoted to self-defense, the ones who spend hundreds of dollars to train with people and at institutions like Gabe Suarez, Massad Ayoob, Gunsite, Thunder Ranch, and MDTS, and Progressive F.o.R.C.E. Concepts, the ones who’ve studied or are studying martial arts and who do more than wander through life blissfully ignorant of life’s potential dangers. How many of them consider themselves, quite rightly, members of an increasingly shrinking minority? How many of them will tell you, quite honestly, that they must live in the “tactical closet” for fear that coworkers and family members will consider them paranoid, dangerous, or otherwise mentally "odd" (at best) if their beliefs about self-defense, weapons, and realistic martial arts training became known?

As bad as it has been, it's going to become much worse. Martialists -- martial artists, self-defense and combatives exponents, gun owners, survivalists, and others who believe in basic preparedness and objective reality over wishful thinking and utopian political correctness -- will become an increasingly persecuted minority. The fiction that seemed so far-fetched even during the Clinton Years will become chillingly relevant. Across this nation, martialists and like-minded armed citizens will reread Jerry Ahern's The Survivalist, The Freeman, and The Defender. They will pick up and read with shaking hands their copies of Unintended Consequences, Enemies Foreign and Domestic, and Out of the Gray Zone. They will realize with horror that there are classics of English-language literature predating these more contemporary offerings, classics that warned us of the coming dark times in voices and images that are only too clear in our 20/20 hindsight. The communist dystopia of Orwell’s Animal Farm will only too chillingly embody the attitudes of the men and women in power who presume to write laws telling us what we may and may not do. The alarmingly prescient depiction of an oppressed citizenry under constant video surveillance by a manipulative and brutal government will no longer be confined to the pages of Orwell’s 1984. Martialists will delve into a cornucopia of libertarian short fiction, the most famous examples of which involve everything from the smuggling of illicit dairy products to costumed vigilantes waging ceaseless war against the well-oiled machines of restrictive, pitiless autocracy.

If all of this sounds far-fetched, if all of its sounds like alarmism and pessimism, if none of this seems likely to occur… well, congratulations. You’re in the majority of people who think it can’t happen to them. You remember the famous condemnation of apathy in the face of oppression, don’t you? It goes something like, “When they came for the Jews, I did nothing because I wasn't a Jew. When they came for the [place persecuted minority here] I did nothing because I wasn’t a member of that persecuted minority. When they came for me, there was nobody left to stop them.”

The Martialist (and its online forum, Pax Baculum) is and are more than a means to discuss weaponry, chat with like-minded individuals, and entertain you with martial theory and application. They are an attempt to give you the inspiration, the strategies, and methods for living in, coping with, and preparing for a society that hates your right to self-defense. In some ways it’s a self-help 'zine, for The Martialist gives you the means to cope -- mentally as well as physically -- with life as a persecuted minority. Specifically, it teaches you how to conduct yourself as an armed, prepared citizen in a community, state, and nation that despise you for being (or wanting to be) what you are. It teaches you what steps to take while you still can and while there are options available to you before the dark times close in. It enables you to build mental (and perhaps physical) fortifications against the onslaught of the politically correct, the passive, the power-hungry, and the pitiless.

The Martialist and Pax Baculum represent material that I have wanted to read, and failed to find, so many times. I have wanted to read it whenever I became depressed, despondent, or dispirited. I have wanted to read it whenever I contemplated planning for the future -- a future I was not sure I was happy about meeting. I have wanted to read it for comfort, for information, and for affirmation whenever I questioned just why I was different from so many of society’s apathetic, passive, and pacifist sheep.

The Martialist and Pax Baculum are the source material I have wanted to read whenever I was worried about the coming dark times.