Scar

I didn't go looking for a fight story. I was minding my own business when the fight story came my way. Just a few days ago I wrote a seemingly opaque comment at Covenent Zone in which I argued that it is better to fight and suffer the consequences than to suffer from the pangs of cowardice forever. And today, sure enough, there is a story about the very sort of thing I wrote about, except that it's not exactly what I meant at all.

"Why we fight" Adam McDowell, National Post Published: Monday, January 14, 2008

For John Wayne - or at least John Wayne's character in 1976's The Shootist - the rules were simple. "I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, I won't be laid a hand on," he said. "I don't do these things to others, and I require the same from them."

[....]

Why should you put up with being pushed around or insulted, or allow this to happen to those who can't defend themselves? Nowadays we are told violence never solved anything. This is nonsense. We may have our reasons for choosing not to hit someone: ethics, fear of arrest, a hand modelling contract, cowardice.

But it is a lie to suggest that the employment of gentlemanly fisticuffs can't help when dealing with the hooligans, ruffians and rogues who infect our streets. Herewith are five reasons you should at least consider putting up your dukes the next time a fellow is asking for it.

1. Ungentlemanly behaviour must be corrected

What are you supposed to do when a guy spits on you?

Jericho is the name of the obnoxious hippie Chris Jones dragged out of a quiet neighbourhood pub and beat up last year. "These f---ing guys were being so loud," he explains over the phone from his home in Ottawa. Jones asked the Biblically named patron and his friends to quiet down; when Jericho "loosed a throat pony" on Jones's face, Jones pulled him outside by the beard and punched him out.

"I definitely think spitting in someone's face is provocation," Jones says.

Jones happens to be a staff writer for Esquire magazine. He recounted his bar bout in the November issue in a piece called "Why I Started Punching Jerks Again" (retitled "In Defense of the Fistfight" for the online edition).

"Believe it or not, there was a rational process leading to this point," he says. "The fact is, more and more people are acting, like I say in the story, like they're above being edited. No one has ever challenged them."

Nowadays, Jones reluctantly provides that challenge if provoked. "The fact is, I'm not a violent person. I would rather there not be any fights. But that would necessitate that there not be any a--holes."

2. Fighting could make you a real-life Tyler Durden

The moral of Jones's story - that, like it or not, standing up to the Jerichos of this world means being willing to punch them [in the] face - resonated with readers. He says he's had more feedback for that one short piece than for any other he's written, overwhelmingly from men. Like the narrator of Fight Club (a 1996 novel and 1999 film), fighting made Jones the subject of unexpected admiration.

[....]

3. Fighting could make you a star on YouTube

If men don't have the opportunity to get into a real-life fist fight, they'll watch one.

"I really don't know why this video got so big. If you really think about it, it's just a fight on a bus," says Anthony Bloch of Thornhill, Ont., whose camera captured the video that became the online hit "Drunk Bus Fight on the Vomit Comet."

The video depicts a rider fighting off three other young men on a late-night bus in Toronto. Bloch had a good view from his seat when the fight went down last fall. "The guy who's standing on top, I think these guys said something to his girlfriend," he says. "He was definitely protecting his girlfriend. He was holding her in place in that little corner while he was fighting off all these people."

While violence is everywhere in the media, examples of real-life chivalry are rare. Grainy footage of a bus fight is irresistible viewing to men, especially when the hero wins a three-against-one donnybrook in defence of his lady's honour. Drunk Bus Fight's hit count ballooned to nearly 60,000 after it appeared on the local TV news.

4. Knocking a guy out is easier than you think

"The great myth of the bar fight is that it's 20 minutes long, if you watch these movie fights. The fact is that if you catch someone squarely in the face, the fight's over," says Jones, who is five-foot-10 and has a little boxing training. "There shouldn't be a lot of windup. It should be quick."

[....]

5. Fighting actually feels good

The old, non-violent Jones failed to intervene one day when a pair of young men slapped a beer out of a homeless man's hand. The incident ate at him for years. "I was carrying these burdens from fights I didn't fight far longer than any bruises would have taken to heal," Jones says. Punching the grin off Jericho's face made him feel much better.

Exchanging blows can make you feel like a million bucks even if you get hurt. "The feeling of the fight - you never really feel more alive," says Hominick, though he still recommends keeping a cool head.

When it comes to dealing with people with a bully mentality, Jones says most of the time you won't even need to throw a punch. Bullies rely on intimidation; when they see you're willing to fight, they typically back down.

"What's amazing is how often it doesn't actually get to a fight," he says. "You still get the good feeling about standing up for yourself or for someone else." http://www.nationalpost.com/life/story.html?id=237409

My comment at covenant Zone is about Islam and Left Dhimmi Fascism. I used some local examples to make a broader point: that when America is attacked, we must rely on our government and its legitimate armed forces to do our violence for us in a rational and laawful way; but that if that fails us, then we must act on our own, outside the bounds of our lands, and then, if and when captured, we must willingly submit to the punishment that comes of our actions.

If, as above, a foreign nation spits on us, we should punch that nation in the face and ensure no other nation treats us that way again. Harsh? Violent? Disproportionate? Of course it is, and it must be so. It is the nature of Nature that the weak are beaten for no other reason than that they are weak. It is the nature of our Modernity that we do not beat others simply because we can; we are rational and moving ever further toward justice in our laws. But we have missed a point of interest: that we must not be rational to the extent that we are irrational. A nation hurts us? We must stomp it and its innocent civilians into the bloody ground to ensure no other nation does the same to us again or to any other nation. It is rational, it is just, and it is beyond me why there is widening rationalizations for the unjust. America and the West as pitiful weaklings brings out disgust and hatred in many non-Modern people. We either to learn to deal with them as they are rather than as how we think they are or how we think they should be, or we die or become enslaved from sheer ugly cowardice.

But the fact is that men are men and men can only put up with so much shit before nothing else matters but being a full-blown man. Then all the years of schooling and office-politicking and being Mr Nice-guy trying to get laid come to a full stop. Then comes out the man and the fight gets nasty.

Jihadi-bent Moslems? Left Dhimmi Fascists? Our Sensitive New Age CIA? Roll over, boys. Men are coming to town soon enough.