Full war declaration statement from DPRK (via KCNA):

Reuters ^ | 3/28/13

[Jeff Head]

Likewise, in my opinion, it's not necessarily the best use of your time and money to maintain a stocked shelter where you can take refuge if the government decides to hunt you down

Fine. Others feel differently. Great country we live in, eh? Great thing, freedom.

That's their right nand perogative.

My point is that the vast majority are not a bunch of wild eyed crazies who have given up on the country and are putting their head in the sand. And a general judgement about them like that should not be made. not only is it just wrong to judge others that way whom you do not know or have never met, it is a mis-representation of the majority of them, and a sever underestimation of them too.

There may well be some who are that way. Too bad for them.

But, there will be many, many others who will be taking that opportunity, should the SHTF, to get ready to fight back, resist, and try and restore America. And that is nothing but good.

And if it never comes down? So what? Who is hurt by them being ready? No one except those who may fear them being ready.

As you say, in your opinion it's not a good use of their time or resource. But it is their time, and their resource and really none of your or my business how they choose to use it. They can do with their stuff whatever they will as long as they are not hurting anyone. And storing food, water, ammo, etc., or having their own cabin or place in the woods hurts no one.

[Yardstick]

Yes, people are free to do what they want. If this were just about that, the whole thing wouldn't have come up.

The problem is when they post obnoxious stuff like this on an open forum where not everyone is a prepper. I was happy to ignore the preppers until I saw that. That article crossed a line and deserved some pushback, I think.

Since then I've occasionally responded to prepper postings that reflected the same vindictive mindset expressed in that article. The one by BobL is a pretty good example. I think any reasonable observer would agree there was a rather heavy overtone of revenge there.

And yeah, I don't think the wild eyed stuff is all of you. But I know that that stuff is out there, and I don't particularly want to see it dragged into FreeRepublic. To me the prepper community resembles a target, with a wild eyed center surrounded by what are for the most part good and well meaning people. (In fact I would say that even the center is well meaning, just very misguided, to the point of being truly toxic.)

I do believe that as you approach the hard core you will find an increasing acceptance of the premise that the country is lost. I also think you'll find that they are indeed "hoping for it". Both to prove themselves right against the naysayers -- a very human impulse -- and because they've adopted a perspective towards the country similar to that of the exasperated family of an addict, where they hope for him to hit bottom so that he'll finally turn the corner towards recovery. The hope is for a "healing crisis" to restore things, because they see no other hope.

We all know how the left feels a sense of patriotism only towards their imagined "progressive" America of the future. I think this tendency is mirrored in an inverted way in the prepper community. There is no doubt that the basic impulse of preppers is patriotic -- they are fully loyal to historical, constitutional America, the "Republic" -- but I think they are quite conflicted about the imperfect post-constitutional America that actually exists now.