Her name is Melissa Soalt. She is, ostensibly, a teacher of self-defense for women. She is a feminist, a leftist, and occasionally a political pundit. She is also what’s wrong with the modern technology of self-defense.
Self-defense is the application of technology – both “hardware” and “software,” or weapons and instruction – to the problem of societal violence. There is no doubt that violence exists within society. Crime occurs anywhere and everywhere. While most of us are not under threat at any given moment, none of us can know when a self-defense scenario might occur.
It is this inability to predict with certainty the imminent need for self-defense that prompts us as conservatives and libertarians to equip ourselves with the technology of personal protection. We buy guns. We carry knives. We seek instruction in the martial arts and in the wielding of weapons. We fight, politically, for the constitutionally protected right to keep and bear these tools. In contrast to us, Democrats, liberals and leftists of every stripe are defined by their ravening desire to see you and your family disarmed and helpless.
Left-wingers despise self-defense. This is because they are weak, both mentally and emotionally. They project this weakness on all others, attributing to everyone the libs’ inability to behave responsibly. They want a cradle-to-grave totalitarian nanny state; it does not occur to them that any sane person could yearn for anything else. In their weakness, the libs may even elevate themselves falsely, believing that while they can be trusted to go armed, you, a mere mortal or, worse, a benighted conservative, cannot.
High-powered self-defense for women: “Stayin’ Alive: Armed and Female in an Unsafe World”
The individual, to the liberal, is subordinate to the community, possessing no rights and earning no wealth not grudgingly allowed him by committee. To defend yourself from crime and violence is the ultimate statement of individuality. This, the communitarians and “progressives” cannot abide. It is anathema to their belief system. It is an affront, an act of rebellion in the face of their presumed, preordained right to rule and control you.
Recently, talk-radio host Glenn Beck mentioned that Gavin de Becker (author of the groundbreaking self-defense book “The Gift of Fear”) handles Beck’s security. Mr. Beck has been forced to hire protection for his family because loving, tolerant libs adore making death threats against women and children (when they’re not threatening their political opponents to those opponents’ faces).
What caught my attention was my recollection that de Becker is virulently anti-gun. In “The Gift of Fear,” he makes several statements that I would consider condemnations of civilian gun ownership – access to the technology of self-defense. How does a man who would see his fellow citizens disarmed and helpless believe he may, with any credibility, teach others to succeed in self-defense? In interviews, de Becker has tried to distance himself from his writing on the topic, even directly contradicting his words in claiming, ” I don’t in any way advocate government gun control.” These claims, from someone so quick to voice concern over access to the “lethal” products he so fears, simply don’t ring true to me. Libs deny individuals’ natural rights and thus will always work at cross-purposes to the goal of self-defense. They cannot teach it with authority – which brings me back to Melissa Soalt.
Ms. Soalt is very impressed with her own work. She calls herself “Dr. Ruthless” and refers to her feminist-oriented curriculum as speaking directly to her “fierce, female endowment.” She is a curious figure, resembling no one so much as Yaddle from the “Star Wars” prequels and writing with a kind of giddy recklessness about how very, very “dark” and dangerous she is. She operates in social circles that include many people I know, like and respect, who presumably know, like and respect her. Most certainly I applaud her work to empower women and change public attitudes toward women’s self-defense; the most compelling argument I know concerning the need for firearms ownership is that a gun is the best means of preventing sexual assault. Despite the packaging of her identity as “Dr. Ruthless,” there is much, philosophically, that Melissa Soalt espouses with which I can agree.
Ms. Soalt, as I’ve said, is an unabashed leftist. She has a blog on the Huffington Post. On her Facebook page, this alleged feminist lauded her readers’ references to Sarah Palin as a “succubus.” While grudgingly admitting that, no, Palin did not “cause” the Arizona shootings the libs have tried so hard to pin falsely on “right-wing rhetoric,” she wrote, “[Palin’s] lack of humility and any regret for her vile everything is disgusting – especially at this time.” So, according to Soalt, “everything” about a woman who embodies the female empowerment Ms. Soalt ostensibly promulgates is “vile” – because Palin is a political conservative. This double standard, so common among liberal feminists (a woman with Palin’s politics is a “succubus,” an insult Soalt would surely find outrageous were it applied to a liberal female icon), is what robs such a “teacher” of credibility in the field of self-defense.
As a student of self-defense, I friended Ms. Soalt on Facebook based purely on her reputation as an instructor. What I found, in reading her updates, was a parade of left-leaning nonsense I could not tolerate. When she wasn’t fretting that Sega’s plans to install games in urinals was robbing the Third World of money that could be used to ensure clean drinking water supplies, she was posting links to the Daily Kos and applauding Keith Olbermann’s profane rebukes of Fox News. Eventually, I could take it no longer. I unfriended her and told her I could not stand her opinions. I did not, however, tell her then what I explain to you now.
How can a person whose ideology rests squarely with those hostile to your right to self-defense presume to teach self-defense? How can a woman whose votes most surely are cast with those who seek to take your guns, confiscate your earnings and control your every waking moment ever believe she upholds the individual in any real way?
She can’t.
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WND Staff