Emergency Stove

This stove was made from 1- #10 can and 4-progresso soup cans. Insulated with kitty litter. It can boil water in a few minutes with twigs. It can be easily used in any type of emergency.

It is a good thing to have around just in case you need it. 

How-to Make A Simple Hand-washing Device or Tippy-tap

From The Internet Dark Ages

Hesperian.org is a great resource for primitive health and safety resources. Here you can find more than a dozen books on any type of health issue. Where there is no Doctor.  Where there is no Dentist. Sanitation and Water. are just some of the resources available on their website.

If you are looking for a library on how to care for yourself in an independent way or just wanting to be knowledgeable about your health and safety this is a must-have resource.

I made the above tippy-tap for my camp box. It is an easy way to keep everyone clean.

A Concealed-carry Walk-through

From The Internet Dark Ages

You’ve been through basic concealed-carry training. You’ve been told of the responsibilities of your decision to carry concealed. No doubt you’ve been told that you should review scenarios you might encounter that may pass your way as a concealed-carry permit holder. The purpose of this book is to first, to help you visualize scenarios that you may encounter and help you better prepare for the decision to draw your weapon and destroy the threat or not. And second to show you proper techniques of drawing your weapon.

Lets begin by reviewing proper weapon display so if you are ever in a life-threatening situation you are as prepared as you can be to keep you, your family and those around you as safe as you can be.

There are many factors involved in shooting a handgun—you grip, aiming, breathing known as breath control, hold known as hold control, when to put your finger on the trigger or trigger control as well as follow through after firing. Yet the stance, keeping both feet firmly on the ground, is the vital beginning. Crucial for accuracy, a good shooting stance provides a strong, stable platform.

It is important to develop proper techniques and respect of a handgun as to minimize personal injury and maximize the effectiveness of your weapon use. First we will go over the weapon draw position. This includes the stance, position 1 (draw weapon and ready off hand), position 2 (rotating weapon-point at target), position 3 (two-hand grip), position 4 (acquire site), and fire.

1. The Stance

Stand facing the target (if anything slightly pigeon-toed). Have your feet planted even with your shoulder width. Have one foot slightly forward of the other to maintain proper balance. Then bend the knees ever so slightly and lean ever so slightly forward. (See pic 1: The Stance. below)

Pic 1: The Stance

From The Internet Dark Ages

2. Position 1 (draw weapon and ready off hand) 
In this position you draw your weapon out of your holster with your dominate hand. Then you ready your second hand with the backside of your palm in the middle of your chest with your fingers pointing down at a 45º angle. (See Position 2 in animated .gif below)

There are a few reasons to place your off hand in this position. One is so you don’t get this hand in front of the weapon and accidentally harm yourself. It is a common accident. Another is that this hand can be used to engage the assailant if he is up close to you. This may be awkward at first but with regular practice you will see how this position puts this hand in a position to react in tight contact with an assailant. Another and most importantly this hand becomes your stabilizer when your gun is pointed at your target.

From The Internet Dark Ages

3. Position 2 (rotating weapon-point at target) 
This position readies you to engage your target. From position one, you rotate your weapon 45 degrees and point it at the target. You'll want to slightly canter weapon away from your body so the recoil of a semi-automatic handgun doesn't gouge your side. If needed, you can shoot from this position.

From The Internet Dark Ages

4. Position 3 (two-hand grip)
For this position, bring your weapon-hand to the hand that is in the middle of your chest. Wrap your ready off-hand around your hand holding the gun maintaining the 45º angle. Use your off-hand to grip about 80% of pressure on the weapon. The hand holding the gun bears the remaining 20% of the grip. Notice the proper position of the trigger finger. It is to remain straight and above the trigger at all times. Only lowering to the trigger when you’ve committed to destroy the target. On the backside, your grip should show your thumbs side by side below the barrel. From here you begin to extend to the target or acquire target position. Extend your weapon straight out towards target. (See Position 3 in animated .gif above)

From The Internet Dark Ages

5. Position 4 (acquire sight)For this position, extend out your weapon straight toward the target. As you do, first, look at target, then focus on the front sight or “acquire sight” is the correct terminology. Keep your focus on this front sight. Align line of sight across the top of the sights making sure the gap between the front sight is centered not off to the right or left and that they target area is just above these sights.

When extending your arms practice to extend straight out towards target. Be aware not to extend in a bowling maneuver or a casting maneuver as both will result in missing your target. Also be aware not to lock your arms/elbows and you extend. You want a little flex in your arms as to absorb the recoil of the gun as you fire.

After you have pulled the trigger reverse the steps. Pulling the gun back towards your chest, returning your gun to the holster if there is no more threats. You should practice this draw without bullets 20 times a day till you are comfortable with all aspects of drawing and aiming your weapon.

From The Internet Dark Ages

NOTE: This is a common shooting position. In future we will explore others.

Ban Guns. Ban Jawbones. Ban Shakespeare! That Will Fix All of Our Problems.

Following is a parody on Banning guns by author E. Merril Root from his book, America's Steadfast dream, that illustrates the folly of the debate of "gun control."

From The Internet Dark Ages

One mode of anti-frontier and anti-self-reliance propaganda is contemporary hysteria about gun control – a part of the materialistic determinism of the hour. To the superficial minds of “Liberals,” collectivists, Marxians, et al., instruments are supposed to act upon man, and men (no longer self-reliant) merely to be acted upon: to them, murder lies in the gun and not in the soul of man. So they think that to deprive men of guns would prevent man from murder!

What the Power Boys – the insiders – behind the gun controls really want, of course, is not to control guns but to control us. They want registration so that they can confiscate; they want to confiscate so that they will have power and we shall be powerless – even as we live today upon a wild frontier demanding ever more self-reliance.

On the old frontier, men had to rely upon themselves and had to be armed until there were sound laws and until law-enforcement officers could enforce the laws. Today laws against thieves, muggers, thugs, rapist, arsonists, looters, murderers (thanks largely to the “Liberal” majority on the Supreme Court) are diluted almost to the point of abolition; the Marshal Dillons of the world, thanks to the same Court, are disarmed or emasculated, they are told to respect the “rights” of thieves, muggers, thugs, rapists, arsonist, looters, muggers, above the right of good citizens to be secure from such felons.
   

Good citizens, deprived of the processes of the law or the protection of the police, are supposed to accept their lot as the passive happy victims of “the unfortunate,” sheep to be sheared of feed to the wolves bleating about  the loveliness of it all. It is “violence” if good citizens defend themselves; it is not “violent” but “protest” if they or their property are assaulted. So gun controls are the order of the day – gun controls that will disarm me of good will, but will not disarm the Mafia, the mobs out on a spree, the wolves on the prowl, the men of ill will.

This is a part of the “Liberal” sentimentality that does not see sin, evil, violence, as realities in the soul of man. To the “Liberal,” all we need is dialogue, discussion, compromise, co-existence, understanding – always in favor of the vicious and never in defense of the victim. The sentimental “Liberal,” fearful of self-reliant man, believes this to be a good thing; the cynical Power Boys pretend to believe it, and use it for their own ends.

Gun control is the new Prohibition. It will not work, as Prohibition did not work. But meanwhile it will be tried, as a sentimental cure-all, a new usurpation of the rights of a once thoroughly self-reliant people, another step on the march to 1984. It is only a symptom of our modern disease, but it is well worth examining at a little more length. And, as I recently made a trip to the land of Sentimentalia, and brought back a published account of  gun control there, I hope you will permit me to offer it as evidence speaking to our condition:

“A few hundred of the several hundred million citizens of Sentimentalia have in recent years been shot by criminals. The Congress of that land, led by Senators Tom Prodd and Jokey Hidings, and egged on by the President, responded with a law to first register, and eventually confiscate, all the wicked instruments known as ‘guns.’ The law was passed amid tears of joy.

“But, alas, when guns continued to be used by the happy thugs thus freed from the fear of being shot by self-reliant citizens, the Prohibitionists claimed that this meant that knives need to be forbidden… and then violence and murders would end. They already had laws against switchblades (quietly evaded); but now they claimed that any sort of knife was lethal; so they sent out teams of bureaucrats to register pocket-knives, letter openers, and straight-edged razors, and to register and license the owners of paring-knives and butcher-knives, and steak-knives and ice-picks...so nobody was supposed to be murdered any more. Some conforming, society hypnotized housewives even came marching into police stations with aprons full of knives, and sang “You Shall Overcome’ as they dumped them in heaps… presumably to be melted into plowshares. (Nobody was ever sure of this, and the cynical even suggested that they found their way to the underprivileged, for after all the underprivileged needed knives.”

“Even so, murder continued in Sentimentalia, and sporadic violence, so the Prohibitionists announced that it was because the controls hadn’t gone far enough. After all, murders were often committed with baseball bats, hammers, axes, hatchets, etc., etc., and how could you have a non-violent world until you did away with baseball bats, hammers, axes, and hatchets, etc., etc. Thereupon carpenters, bowed with a sense of guilty, paraded into public squares with hatchets and hammers by the gross, and dumped them before the melting pot. But houses were no longer built, and baseball ceased to be much of a game, and Paul Bunyon went for the tall timber and was never seen again because, as a self-reliant man, he wouldn’t register his ax.

“When murders still continued, the Prohibitionists found a wicked book called the Hebrew Bible, and discovered that Jael had killed the sleeping Sisera with a nail or a tent-peg, and Samson had slain a thousand with the jawbone of an ass – and so they registered and licensed all tent-pegs and nails, and searched out and confiscated the jawbone of every last ass. And when murders still took place, the Prohibitionists found that they were sometimes committed with women’s stocking, so now no woman was allowed to appear with stockings unless her legs were examined full length to assure that she had a license sewed into her nylons, and eventually they decided that women had no constitutional right to stockings anyway, and should keep them in a public repository while not wearing them, and call for them when needed. And the police went around stripping nylons off women’s legs, and everybody was sure that this was the end of murder.

“Next some ‘Liberal’ read a play by William Shakespeare and found that Othello murdered Desdemona with a pillow, so all pillows had to be licensed. Often the Prohibitionists came breaking into homes at night, and snatched pillows from under sleepy heads for failure to produce a license. When murders still continued, ‘Liberals’ discovered that desperate men used fingernails and teeth, and now going to extremes they extracted all teeth and abolished all fingernails. But even this wasn’t enough. They discovered that murders had been committed by kicking; so you had to have a license for a pair of shoes, and you had to register every pair of feet and some large, brutal-looking feet were amputated.

“By this time, people were so fed up with controls that they took out after the sentimentailists and the Power Boys with fists and fingers and frozen snowballs and rocks. Senators Prodd and Hidings and even the President took a refuge in bomb-shelters and managed to survive; but on the other side of their trauma they armed themselves with guns.”

Such is the account of something rotten in the State of Sentimentalia. But “Liberals” never learn, and the Prohibitionists still supposed that murder is in the gun and not in the soul of man!

______

 How would you propose we fix the problems we face? It truly is idiocy to be discussing a ban on weapons. The problem is in the soul of man.

Founding Father Trench Coxe said, "

"The power of the sword, say the minority of Pennsylvania, is in the hands of Congress. My friends and countrymen, it is not so, for THE POWERS OF THE SWORD ARE IN THE HANDS OF THE YEOMANRY OF AMERICA FROM SIXTEEN TO SIXTY. [82] The militia of these free commonwealths, entitled and accustomed to their arms, when compared with any possible army, must be tremendous and irresistible. Who are the militia? are they not ourselves. Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American. What clause in the state or federal constitution hath given away that important right.... The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people. " [83]

[83]. "A Pennsylvanian" (Tench Coxe), To The People of the United States, PA. GAZETTE, Feb. 20, 1788, at 2, reprinted in 2 DOCUMENTARY HISTORY, supra note 57, at 1778-80 (Microform Supp.). Other installments are in PA. GAZETTE, Feb. 6, 13, 27, 1788.

source: http://www.davekopel.com/2A/lawrev/hk-coxe.htm#FN;F82

America's Aristocracy

Most of us don't think that there is an aristocracy in America, but there is.

The following audio shows the difference between a leadership education and a conveyor-belt or public education. When we don't know we have such an educational choice we aren't able to do the things that are required to keep our country a place of freedom.


This audio excerpt if from a speech by Oliver DeMille called The Seven Keys Of Great Teaching available here >>.

A fascinating lecture discussing educational models in history. Some points of interest from this lecture are: Who Will Change The World?, Inspire not Require, Mentors Not Professors and Quality not Conformity.

What Definition of "Education" Do You Believe Will Get You What You Want?

EDUCA'TION, n. [L. educatio.]


1828 Definition: The bringing up, as of a child, instruction; formation of manners. Education comprehends all that series of instruction and discipline which is intended to enlighten the understanding, correct the temper, and form the manners and habits of youth, and fit them for usefulness in their future stations. To give children a good education in manners, arts and science, is important; to give them a religious education is indispensable; and an immense responsibility rests on parents and guardians who neglect these duties.

1913 Definition: The act or process of educating; the result of educating, as determined by the knowledge skill, or discipline of character, acquired; also, the act or process of training by a prescribed or customary course of study or discipline; as, an education for the bar or the pulpit; he has finished his education.

To prepare us for complete living is the function which education has to discharge.

Dictionary.com Definition:
1. the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life.
2. the act or process of imparting or acquiring particular knowledge or skills, as for a profession.
3. a degree, level, or kind of schooling: a university education.
4. the result produced by instruction, training, or study: to show one's education.

What you read is what you get!

My I suggest you get a dictionary that will do more help than harm.

Stop Stealing Dreams

"If you're running an institution based on compliance and obedience, you don't reach for motivation as a tool!" - SG

Motivation to learn should be one of the largest goals of our education system. But is it? The roll of the teacher should be to inspire and excite to learn. But do they? We should ever be learning and improving our individual abilities. But do we?

E. Merrill Root bluntly pokes the eye of political correctness when he said, ''No man has the 'right' to be wrong; all have the responsibility to be right." -e. Merrill Root. P. 85 American Steadfast Dream

Our education system is broken, everybody sees it but too few are willing to admit it because we don't have a plan unless you think that spending more money on "it" is a plan.

Politicians say that education is their number one priority and that they are going to get more funding to improve education. But what percent of a states budget is enough to "fix" education?

Following chart shows Utah state's budget for 2012. 65.7% of all expenditures is on education. Why can't the problem be repaired when nearly 2/3 of all spending is dedicated to education? What percent is enough to fix the problem? The only answer is money can't fix such a broken system!




From The Internet Dark Ages


I recommend that you start by reading Stop Stealing Dreams to get the conversation started.

An alternative must be found! Seth Godin, in Stop Stealing Dreams gives many good examples of both some of the issues and some good solutions. Home Educators are trying to provide an alternative to their children. Online resources like the Kahn academy are sharing alternatives as well. But what should be done? Join the conversation by reading Seth's book.

Read Stop Stealing Dreams: What Are Schools For? A Manifesto by Seth Godin. It is available in audio, print and a free downloadable .pdf at the above link.

What If By Judge Napolitano

What if everything you believed in was a lie? Would you change what you do and how you do it?

I found it interesting that after this video aired Judge Napolitano was fired. Is it because he endorsed Ron Paul or because he just exposed the reality of the two party system we have? Or is it just another hoax?

A Lesson From The Wise - Entry 4 - To Be Self-reliant

"The flabby generations, fed on the pap and treacle of 'Liberalism,' expect the easy answer and live in the syntax of the passive voice. They expect all to be done for them; they don't want to be free men, but freedmen. And that is why nothing is done for real to help our cities, and all that is falsely done undoes. But slums will be made homes, and work will be found for willing men, and a fairer world will be created, when men awake from the collective somnambulism and resolve to be — and become — self-reliant.

On the old frontier there were no subsidies, no governmental cushions, no social-air-conditioning. You faced the flood or the drought, the wolves amid the sheep or the cougars among the cattle, the wind and the snow and the sand, the failure of the crops or the fire in the night, as a man should. It was your responsibility. No one gave you a right to a living; you made a living or you accepted your dying. Your neighbors would help you, but they could not take your burdens wholly upon themselves. Your had to take, like Ulysses' men in Tennyson's poem, the thunder or the sunshine with a frolic welcome.

And, the self-reliant man of the old frontier did just that — he accepted the thunder or the sunshine with a frolic welcome — and he build from both the greatness which is America. He made his own house, he made his own living — and he made his own happiness. Instead of being 'bored' like the children of suburbia with affluence everywhere except in their own souls, he found always some new thing to do, to build, to invent, to create, to see and to know."

     - e. merrill root, America's Steadfast Dream , p. 3

For more than 80 years now we have been taught by the hands of government philosophy first proposed by Woodrow Wilson when he said, "We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific, difficult, manual tasks." Link for more >>

We, have become hollow generations of obedience to "societal opinions," passively following rather than leading. We don't know the weakness of specialization in education as compared to generalization. 

To break the chains, create something of use, build a business that helps, do things that inspire greatness in others, learn the lessons from history. Find the original meaning of freedom so you can see the yoke you are slaves to.

Increase your self-reliance and the self-reliance of your children. Increase your knowledge. Learn the importance of a library in your home and in your mind. Become what you were born to become.

A Lesson From The Wise - Entry 3 - To Be Governed

"To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality."

          - P. J. Proudhon

As Tacitus stated in Annals III-27, "the more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws." On the Tytler Cycle we are between dependence and bondage. We also know that most all great societies have fallen from corruption from within1. Those fractions that survive the collapse prepared for the fall.


What reinforces this is, the knowledge of history is the only way to avoid such catastrophes. But we are ignorant of history. We think, the new way of teaching history (modern public schooling), memorizing a name and a date is boring, and it is: by design (read Piaget, Dewey, Erickson, Vygotsky). So we have been lulled into ignorance.


The only way to avoid being governed out of existence is by self-education. You must choose and read the greatest minds from our past and be armed with knowledge to stand up t such corruption.






1 - See the 5,000 year leap, Skousen, p. 4