This was an Amazon purchase done more asleep than awake. When I got the book and started it reading, I realized that it was a work from somebody not on our side of the issue of personal defense but it was an eye opener as how the other side’s mind operate. And although the book was published in 1992, one can see the same mentality still flowing around among academicians and anti gun pundits.

The author positively hates the idea of Stand Your Ground. But besides that, he hates American Exceptionalism and I think if pushed, he would admit we would be better under British rules. As the book “evolves” we see the concept of Stand Your Ground applied to just about every facet of America and all negative. This elastic conceptualization/exaggeration is common among the collegial intelligentsia and nothing more than word games trying to prop up the absurd and sound somehow smart.

But let’s get back to basics: It took me a couple of minutes or reading to have a chill crawl up and down my spine. On explaining where the concept of Duty to Retreat comes from, you will find the following: “The state- that is the Crown- insisted on monopolizing for itself the act of homicide.” Of course, never in the history of the world we have never seen what an out-of-control and all-powerful government abuse the authority it has to kill people, right? For the author, that seems to be OK or at least ignores it altogether. We know better.

The author then starts to wax philosophically about the goodness judicial intervention: “Any grievance that lingered would have to be settled not by the arbitrament of death or wound but by the judicious finding of a court of law” which is fine and dandy if the attacker is not intent on killing the other part right there and then without waiting for the “arbitrament.” In its twisted way, the author is telling us that defending oneself from death or grave bodily harm is obscene and that we must run no matter what in order to avoid it. Sure, he mentions that “situations in which flight from the scene was entirely blocked, and even in such cases one had to retreat ‘to the wall’ (the legal phrase) before one could without blame stand one’s ground and, if necessary kill.” But remember, you do not get to determine if you properly retreated all the ay to the wall, a prosecutor who was not present and had no idea of what happened made that determination….. and still does. Basically for Mr. Brown, the concept of defending oneself without having to go to engage in acrobatics is legally and morally more condemnable than the original intention of the criminal to kill us.

So what happened in the US that made us switch from the subservience one should observe and revere to the law to what we are now? Apparently in the 19th century, a nasty deviation some legal American authorities took place without permission from its British betters. We decided that Standing Our Ground in the face of an attacker was better than a state-imposed cowardice. Here is where the book, already a jaw-dropper, becomes a ride into amazing intellectual dishonesty and America-Sucks propaganda. Our fight for Independence? Stand Your Ground, a bad thing. The Civil War? Nothing more than Lincoln refusing to Retreat. We, the American Nation developed the concept of True Man, one that would not tolerate unfairness & aggression from anybody, but for the author that is a brutish way to be a country.

One example of the intellectual dishonesty in the book comes from the author’s take on the confrontation at the OK Corral. He makes no bones about disliking Wyatt Earp or the idea of the frontier man and according to Mr. Maxwell, The Earps could have easily retreated and avoid the bloodshed. But as he initially stated that the monopoly of homicide resides exclusively with the government, the contradiction that the Earps in their capacity as marshalls were enforcing the law and the McLaurys and the Clantons were the ones that should have retreated and surrendered. I know that I am just a guy who did not finish college, but even the dumbest of freshmen would catch that contradiction while recovering from the last keg party.

It gets even worse after. Professor emeritus Richard Maxwell Brown, goes on to bash moments in American history because he sees them under the ugly light of Stand Your Ground. Quotes like  “I have not yet begun to fight!” “Damn the torpedoes!” “Don’t give up the ship!” “Courage is a man who keeps coming up.” “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” and pretty much anything Ronald Reagan said against the Soviet Union were awful examples of that nasty American trait of No Duty To Retreat.

I think I can summarize the book (and the author) with the one word that kept popping in my brain while reading:

Pusillanimous: lacking courage and resolution : marked by contemptible timidity weak and afraid of danger.

And if that makes me a bad human, so be it. I will stand with what made America exceptional and also save my life.

Courage enlarges, cowardice diminishes resources. In desperate straits the fears of the timid aggravate the dangers that imperil the brave.
Christian Nestell Bovee