Too Many Answers Or Not Enough Questions?, by Old Bobbert

This is Bobbert’’s piece on “how to do success” in the creation of our new society. Remembering that not everything we need to do as preppers is a physical or procedural item, I am endeavoring to speak to the post-SHTF issues of the new society’s lifestyles and some related covenants, specifically those enduring agreements between peoples and the special agreements between persons and God.

Preppers Owing Much to Nation’s Founders

We are the preppers! We are the folks who are working now so as to have an acceptable future for ourselves and possibly some others. We call ourselves the preppers, and most of us may well be lacking a sound basic understanding of the trials, the errors, the blood, the anger, and the sorrows that were combined to create the free nation envisioned by the founding fathers, mothers, aunts and uncles, and especially the teenaged soldiers of what would become the United States.

We owe so much to the few who dared to even conceive that it would be possible to revolt against an uncaring, passive, overbearing government. They dared to fight against what was then the single most powerful nation on the entire planet.

British Colonialism

In 1776 the sun never set on British colonies and war torn passions. Our enemy was an island named England and a king who ruled by right of military might and family. A selfish man wearing a kings crown and living in a castle across an ocean ruled by his war ships and his chosen governors and his appointed judges.

Preppers Preparing To Survive Collapse

And now we, preppers, are preparing to isolate ourselves and a few others from an inevitable collapse of the very systems we are using to finance and support our purpose and our intent to be survivors. Our goal seems to be “simply outliving “ the problems we see in effect as we read these simple words.

Q&As

Now is an excellent time for us to process just a few seldom discussed Q&As. We need to address who we are and what are our responsibilities as preppers to the future and to the children who will live there with us.

These Questions and Answers are designed to enable that element of identity and loving purpose now being denied to us by the very systems we are using to live on past the systemic collapse.

Today’s sorry record of the governmental neglect and abuse, that has been allowed to manipulate our reality and transform our freedoms into our shackles, is a record of moral failure. It is the legacy of a people that has forgotten that freedom is a principle, that freedom is a way of life, and that our freedom is a gift from our God. Freedom will be our heritage only so long as it is cherished and loved and is taught to our youth. When it is not protected and taught to the youth, it will be taken from us, and from them, by evil ambitions and evil people.

Are Our Four Generations Preparing Our Youth?

I have asked myself this question concerning our four generation family. Have we, as individuals, as caring family members, as a patriotic people, and especially as active members of a specific and somewhat peculiar class of citizens taught the youth to be the leaders of tomorrow? We, who are self-named “The Preppers”, have made ourselves fully aware of the sound principles of wise self government. We should, and must, bring with us into that professed survivalists community a much better future. Are we preparing it in our youth? If not then why not? We must because we can.

That is sufficient cause for preparedness in its most simple format. We must because we can.

Reasons We Do Not

Often, the reason why we do not include the principles of self government among the many items so very necessary to our lives is because, while we heard about and briefly thought about these intangible factors, they just didn’t make it to the top of the list. Perhaps we were just too busy putting food on the table and scratching for cash for extra medical supplies and a few more boxes of 223’s. Perhaps we have never thought of these principles just because we didn’t know what we didn’t know. It happens a lot to good folks doing good things because that is what good people do. We weren’t lazy, not lazy at all; we were too busy with just living from day to day in a tough everyday world.

Single Concept For Personal and National Success

As a well considered academic response, let me simply state that throughout the annuals of written history, there is a single concept that has always been available, always been consistent, always been a powerful agent of personal freedoms and national success. There has long been the singular element of purpose that I propose must be carried with us into the new world we are preparing for. We will be a successful people as long as this one simple concept is always made known first to the children and then supported in the homes and families of the many good people found in every time and every place. Our purpose must be to be a better person today than we were yesterday. We must believe that we can change the world one person at a time.

In the history of a few hundred years ago a self-taught, local community leader was asked how he was able to create within their community such a strong bond among the many different types and social levels of people in such a peaceful manner. His answer was both simplistic and powerful. He said, “In both the schools and in the homes, we teach by word and by example proper principles, and the children then grow up to be self governed and responsible young adults, young adults who look after the training of the youth and who care about and care for the elderly.

They are the young adults who hold themselves to be responsible and fully accountable to others and to God.” He said it this way, “We teach them correct principles and they govern themselves well.” That covers it all in one sentence. And this must be the type of character and integrity we survivalists must carry into our future. If not, then our past will rise up from the grave to rule us, and we too will have failed.

Individual Non-Participation Leads to Corrupt Government

We must know, and we must teach, that the individual’s non-participation in local and state governments has been the foundation of the dominance and corruption of the upper levels of our present government. One “I didn’t vote” at a time has become the grave yard of freedom and free people.

We have a constitution that many still cling to dearly and sincerely believe it to be a divine gift from God. That founding document of principles and covenants and empowerment of the individual has been the supreme example to all the world for more than two hundred years. We must renew our allegiance and our personal protection of that special divine concept of freedom. It is not broken, and it is not in need of repair.

Constitution To Govern Goodly People

Our founding patriots warned us that the constitution could only be used to govern a goodly people who followed the ten commandments and were a Godly people. And now we see that in this matter we have often failed in this requirement. Now is our time of suffering the unintended consequences of past negligence and errant ways.

Our people, as a generality, have allowed the principles and standards of honor and honesty to be cast side in the quest for more possessions and less responsibility as adults and parents of the future. We can, and we must, regain the forgotten principles of honesty in government, of integrity in our hearts and minds, of higher standards of personal character being taught in our schools, and we must cherish responsible citizenship as a way of life.

Adopt Simplistic Standards and Principles of Performance

Now is also the time to adopt stronger and more simplistic standards and principles of performance. We must agree among ourselves on the principles we will sustain and support and covenant with one another and with God “exactly how we will perform” in both good and hard times. We must agree and teach others that the principle of “the knowledgeable vote” is both an opportunity and a specific “obligation” of every citizen. We must practice in our daily lives, and require that our schools must teach, the principle that there are divine potential and divine elements to every human life, beginning at conception.

Family Single More Important Element of New Society

We will rue that day that we fail to teach that the family is the single most important element of our new society. Our schools must teach and enable our youth to be self reliant and responsible both for their actions and for their omissions. We must enable the youth of our nation to love their freedoms and to be fully capable of defending our new society. This will require that universal military training be a weekly event in every senior high school.

Expect Strong Opposition

After we have survived the SHTF incident and are well on the road to recovery and to our new society, there will be strong opposition. There will always be an effort to tear down our freedom flag and rule us once again by the powerful few who need power over us to justify their very existence.

We will never again allow the creation of valueless paper to be our money. We will never again allow ourselves to be taxed into poverty. Governments will never again be allowed to be in business with business. We will never again allow the elderly to be sloughed off to senior warehouses.

Magnificent Changes in How We Live

Yes, there are going to be some magnificent changes in how we live. That will be a supreme necessity of future survival. In this effort we will be blessed and strengthened. We must remember that these principles are non-denominational truths that have been made available to all of us by God.

The probable most important change we will need to make will be very difficult to start and to continue, but it must be done. You ask me, “What is the big one?” My answer is, “We must change who we are so as to then change what we do and what we allow to be done in our name.” This will, in many ways, actually be a spiritual process with spiritual benefits that in turn will provide the temporal and physical benefits we seek for ourselves and for our children.

As knowledgeable preppers, we must be strongly involved with local government and stop the growth of petty rules that are, strictly speaking, simple interference in our daily lives by folks who feel it necessary that they make rules to control others and to enhance their self importance.

List of “Never Again Will We” Principles

Let’s begin a consideration of values ever present in the list of “never again will we” principles that we must re-start in the conduct of our daily lives. We will never again:

1. Be an unarmed, untrained nation of uneducated sheep.

2. Allow anyone to create rules to disarm the population.

3. Dis-allow political discussions in “Houses of Worship”.

4. Allow any child to be malnourished or illiterate.

How Can We Do These Things?

You ask, ”How can we do these things when our financial system fails? When our transportation system has collapsed? When our manufacturing base has been sold to the highest foreign bidders? When our medical system is governed by politicians and insurance companies? When our politicians vote themselves benefits we pay for but we do not have?

My answer is, “The single strongest word in the entire world, in every language, in every people’s history is ‘No!’ That is the easiest and yet the strongest response to an unrighteous effort to take our freedoms from us. There is no better place to voice ‘our requirements’ of government that an honest ballot box.”

There is no better place to stand for freedom than at the firing line of the community range. There is no better place to foster freedoms for all than in the homes and further supported in the schools.

A Government-Dependent Education System Must Discontinue

Currently our education system is nearly completely dependent on government financing, government standards, government controls, and government mistruths. This can not be allowed to continue. We are, as preppers, obligated to stand up and say, “No more government controlled schools.”

Children Taught Honesty, Truths, Character, and to Question

When children have been taught honest history, honest character, moral truths, and they experience non-truths in the schools, they will be enabled to speak up for honesty and change. Students must be taught authenticated and verified history, correct civil government, and responsible citizenship, and especially expert marksmanship. They have a right to full and open integrity in their scholastic environments.

Students must be taught the value of a questioning open mind. Being a teen does not make them ignorant, only not yet educated. Being good does not make one right. Being right does not make one good.

Key to Successful Changes is Changing Ourselves

The real key to successful changes in the post-SHTF times is very simple, as most good things are. And the real key to successful changes in the post-SHTF times will be very difficult, as most good things are. The real key to successful changes, of every type, time, or place is the process of changing ourselves into new persons.

I am currently a volunteer leader (in my year six) in our local area Addiction Recovery Program support group. Like many others, we are sponsored by our church. Most denominations have information or actually sponsor addiction recovery groups. Many support groups have addict participants as young as fourteen or fifteen years old. In that volunteer environment, I have personally experienced the need and the ability to change who I was into the man I am now. I have been very privileged to see many others change themselves from being active addicts into non-user “Addicts in Recovery”. We have watched the miracles of change as people make better decisions and better commitments about who they are and who they can be.

Believing in Something Bigger and Better Than The Past

They are successful because they have come to believe in something bigger and better than they have experienced in the past. They are new in every way that counts, no matter if they are young and old (ages 15 to 82), men and women, religious and atheist. Those differences have not been allowed to interfere with their efforts to change themselves into a better person. We who call ourselves preppers will have a much better success probability than the others who have not learned yet to look ahead and to plan for a better life.

Our prepper goals should definitely include provisions for creating, in advance, the desired aspects of local and other government bodies. We can not limit our efforts to simply a goodly supply of beans, bullets, and band-aids. That is not enough. The same rules of problem-solving and the proven methods of success achievement are so readily available in any of the many “Internet search engines”, which will enable each of us, all of us, as individuals and as a member of a group, as a family, to do better in the future.

The key to post-SHTF family and community success is to start now, not tomorrow, and not next week. Start now! And surely don’t wait while the world around us is quickly falling part.

Start Now!

Start making notes on methods now. Start making that list of names and phone numbers now. Download those free “kindle” ebooks now. Begin to accumulate the thousands of available topics, and start by using the protected SurvivalBlog archives with the 12+ years of daily blog pages of thousands of success tips on the “how to do stuff”. Do it now.

Learn and Teach What You Know About Our Nation’s History

There is a simple rule of commonsense that says to all of us, “You can not teach that which you do not know.” Therefore, start reading the true history of our free nation.

Success without a written plan is generally referred to as “dumb luck”.

Thanks and good luck on your change efforts.

SurvivalBlog Writing Contest

This has been another entry for Round 73 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The nearly $11,000 worth of prizes for this round include:

First Prize:

1. A $3000 gift certificate towards a Sol-Ark Solar Generator from Veteran owned Portable Solar LLC. The only EMP Hardened Solar Generator System available to the public.
2. A Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate. This can be used for any one, two, or three day course (a $1,095 value),
3. A course certificate from onPoint Tactical for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses, excluding those restricted for military or government teams. Three day onPoint courses normally cost $795,
4. DRD Tactical is providing a 5.56 NATO QD Billet upper. These have hammer forged, chrome-lined barrels and a hard case, to go with your own AR lower. It will allow any standard AR-type rifle to have a quick change barrel. This can be assembled in less than one minute without the use of any tools. It also provides a compact carry capability in a hard case or in 3-day pack (an $1,100 value),
5. Two cases of Mountain House freeze-dried assorted entrees in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Made Resources (a $350 value),
6. A $250 gift certificate good for any product from Sunflower Ammo,
7. Two cases of Meals, Ready to Eat (MREs), courtesy of CampingSurvival.com (a $180 value), and
8. American Gunsmithing Institute (AGI) is providing a $300 certificate good towards any of their DVD training courses.

Second Prize:

1. A Model 175 Series Solar Generator provided by Quantum Harvest LLC (a $439 value),
2. A Glock form factor SIRT laser training pistol and a SIRT AR-15/M4 Laser Training Bolt, courtesy of Next Level Training, which have a combined retail value of $589,
3. A gift certificate for any two or three-day class from Max Velocity Tactical (a $600 value),
4. A transferable certificate for a two-day Ultimate Bug Out Course from Florida Firearms Training (a $400 value),
5. A Trekker IV™ Four-Person Emergency Kit from Emergency Essentials (a $250 value),
6. A $200 gift certificate good towards any books published by PrepperPress.com,
7. A pre-selected assortment of military surplus gear from CJL Enterprize (a $300 value), and
8. RepackBox is providing a $300 gift certificate to their site.

Third Prize:

1. A Royal Berkey water filter, courtesy of Directive 21 (a $275 value),
2. A large handmade clothes drying rack, a washboard, and a Homesteading for Beginners DVD, all courtesy of The Homestead Store, with a combined value of $206,
3. Expanded sets of both washable feminine pads and liners, donated by Naturally Cozy (a $185 retail value),
4. Two Super Survival Pack seed collections, a $150 value, courtesy of Seed for Security, LLC,
5. Mayflower Trading is donating a $200 gift certificate for homesteading appliances, and
6. Two 1,000-foot spools of full mil-spec U.S.-made 750 paracord (in-stock colors only) from www.TOUGHGRID.com (a $240 value).

Round 73 ends on November 30th, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.