The One True Path

I've been spending more of my 'pooter time surfing previously unfamiliar "survival" and "prepper" forums. They come in various flavors - some concentrate on where to buy the best camo backpacks and wind-up radios, some on guns, some on (what I consider) more serious considerations like how to cook storable food so a child would actually want to eat it. But they all seem to make the same basic assumption, that the one true path to freedom (or possibly survival, if TEOTWAWKI happens next week) is them forty acres, them stored preps, them stacked arms.

Of course, as a devotee of the acres, preps and arms, I'm not going to knock it. I'm living the dream, Myrtle, and the dream works. But...

The way I live would absolutely not be for everyone. I'm never going to be one of those keyboard commandos who insist that if you're not getting ready to head for the hills, you're not serious about finding freedom. But there are folks who say such things (note carefully where and how they live) and people who are arguably more honest with themselves find these folks quite off-putting.

I don't blame them. One of the amusing contradictions of the freedom movement is the common assumption that you are somehow obligated to turn your life upside-down in the quest for freedom. Who gets to make that rule? Ask yourself that, you who enjoy a nightlife and restaurant food that can come right to your door, the next time some internet Captain Liberty starts telling you what you should or should not be doing with your life. The whole point of the exercise is that it's your life, remember?