The "Freeness" of Speech
Many folks don't seem to understand that the First Amendment only prevents the government from punishing people for expressing their opinions and views.
It doesn't prevent businesses from censoring you... and it certainly doesn't prevent people from scoring a little social justice.
For example, here's a Nazi that strayed too far from his parade.
Again, there's nothing illegal about that guy wearing a swastika... but it does make the return trip to his parent's basement considerably more perilous.
Again, you don't have freedom of speech on Facebook. You don't even have freedom of speech in the Fight Smart comment section. I will rigorously approve or deny every comment until I lose interest and just start writing another newsletter.
This dummy made the mistake of Zeig Heiling with his eyes closed... a rookie mistake!
By the way, this is a terribly common punching error...The guy is making contact with the wrong subset of knuckles:
He should be using these:
That wrist needs to be pitched forward...
This is a mistake commonly made by folks who only punch with their hands wrapped, in 16 ounce gloves, and on a squishy heavy bag...
In any state of 'uber hand protection', you don't have to worry about poor wrist alignment causing painful impingements.
You're prevented from crushing your hand closed.
You probably can't even tell if you're striking with your pinky knuckle.
You DO have to worry about the fact that punching with this set of knuckles allows your hand to be compressed... and that adds a damage-reducing SHOCK ABSORBER to your damn punch, even with a glove on.
Punch placement... arguably more important than punch power.
(Training with some cowhide gardening gloves can cure a lot of bad habits, but you unfortunately have to hurt yourself in order to learn.)
To be very clear I do NOT endorse punching a bag with cowhide gloves... I'm just pointing out that in my experience, developing 'punch placement' was a skill that I only managed to learn the 'hard way'.
Again... don't do it. I'm not responsible for you hurting yourself, which you 100% will.
Clearly I'm not even free to speaking about hypothetical training recommendations that I never made... without consequences inflicted by my fellow peers.
Freedom of speech...
Now you might be thinking, "Hey Trav... punching Nazis is illegal." And you would be right. I'm sure that the police will also investigate that crime about as hard as they investigate themselves.
To be perfectly honest, I'm not completely opposed to breaking the law. I am what they call an a**hole.
This is not a 100% "self defense blog". True 'self defense' guys will tell you to never intervene in a conflict. Never take risks. I didn't spend the majority of my life building one single marketable skill just to never use it.
That said, I DO prefer situations in which there is some legal grey area.
For example, a crowd of bikers in Bethel, Ohio were recently told that Antifa were going to invade their town, in protest of police brutality.
Instead, one single girl walked down the street with an anti-police brutality sign...
You know, freedom of speech.
...until they tore it out of her hands and smacked her upside the head a little.
When I first watched that video, I immediately started doing the math on surviving a fight against 50 soft bikers.
On one hand, if you drop 2 or 3 of them very quickly, the rest would probably poop their pants like the pudgy posers that they are.
On the other hand, 50 is a lot of angry bikers.
In short, I'm an a**hole. Not only do I support hitting people who express freedom of speech that I don't agree with (read Nazis)... I also support the hitting of people who hit the people expressing the speech that they don't agree with... provided that I agree with the people who got hit, and that I could get away with it legally.
But I'm proud to be this kind of a**hole.
Perhaps most of us support the first amendment as long as we don't rrrreally disagree with what's being said.
The moral of the story is that, when you're saying something that goes significantly against the grain, you should probably be prepared to fight for it.
This has been my socially relevant newsletter.
Have a fantastic weekend.
-Trav