Someone is threatening your Christian family, but you don’t know if you’re allowed to destroy them with your mighty and righteous Christian hands. Are there laws against Christian kicks? Christian sword murder? One author set out to answer these questions and then got so, so distracted.
Fucking behold it: HANDS TO WAR: FIGHTING, WEAPONS, AND SELF-DEFENSE FOR CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. Published in 2009, it is a 308 page adaptation of three pages worth of stray thoughts from a paranoid orange belt. And once again, fucking behold it:
It’s glorious. One brave Christian soldier, out of ammo and down to his last two kids, making a final stand against an army of wild dogs. It’s what every karate book author sees while he’s sleepwalking after his wife with a knife.
So let me explain what I mean by the author getting distracted. The stated goal of the book is to create a comprehensive guide to defending yourself and your home, but from a Christian perspective. You already know what that means: specifics on when you’re allowed to kill a man (probably not very white) on your property. But a book like that would require research and legal expertise, so this is mostly a beginner’s guide to traditional wild dog karate. A huge part of it is this list of commonly owned body parts.
You see a lot of types of crazy in karate books, but I’ve never seen anyone break the human neck up into five sections and include each bullet point in the table of contents, all leading to the same page. You or I might call that “Neck punching stuff…. page 234,” but Daniel E. Loeb has never wasted a keystroke or a stray thought. He will write a paragraph fifty different ways and leave them all in. This is the author, by the way:
The back of this book claims “Daniel E. Loeb is a non-denominational Christian. He has a Masters Degree in Homeland Security,” but when he’s not writing Christian karate books or training police commandos, he’s also a freelance Jewish wizard and tarot prophet. So it’s possible some of this material may not have been properly tested on “reality.” Unfortunately, Daniel E. Loeb isn’t as crazy as he sounds on paper. And the most frustrating part of this book is how his ninja imagination is always clashing with his normal brain’s reasonable expectations. Let me show you one of the paragraphs he wrote and rewrote twenty different ways:
Imagine you have an intruder in your home. Now imagine your keen soldier senses heard him coming and you’re setting up an ambush. Now imagine he faces your deadly Nunchaka, its chains oiled for Oriental silence. Wait, go back one. You’re probably not going to have your martial arts weapons handy; that’s silly. You’re going to have to kill another home intruder with a regular old kitchen knife.
This is ninja edging, Daniel. Give us our Sai and Katana! It’s all imaginary anyway. There’s no reason not to sever his spine with throwing stars and take our animal form. Speaking of murder, let’s go over some of the Christian basics of murder.
Daniel stabs his victims like a seventh grader kicked out of debate club for not being good at debate. He rewrites “um, technically not all killing is murder” for twenty pages and the second time he does he literally uses the words “The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines murder as…” This is the entire thesis of his book, and it sounds like the world’s dumbest nun strangler representing himself in court. It’s not helpful to anyone. It’s something you pant at a mirror just after mistaking your family for wild dogs.
A big part of the problem is Daniel writes like most authors with no expertise, research skills, or curiosity– he has to imagine a reader who knows fucking nothing in order for his surface-level thoughts to be wisdom. For instance, as he’s inventing and re-inventing the advice “tell kids to stay away from strangers,” he finally lands on a way to help you understand it.
You know how you tell kids to not get in a van when a stranger offers them candy? It’s not because of the sugar content of the candy. It may seem so, but the candy isn’t the most dangerous part. You still believe it’s the candy; however, it’s not. You fool. You’re sitting there thinking, “Candy isn’t good for you, and that must be why they don’t take the candy,” and yet you’re wrong. Ah, to be you when I reveal to you and your child what the true danger is in this situation. Ah, what a world of safety awareness I have to show you!
Daniel E. Loeb is something I call a “buffet genius” named after the man next to you at buffets offering tips on how to outsmart capitalism. They’re not “stupid” exactly, but they mistake their recognition of the plainly obvious for insight. “Two opponents exchange blows until one of them is no longer able to” is such a hilariously infantile way to explain street fights. The secret of combat is to do more bonks until the enemies are asleep, which is a kind of not awakeness! It’s like Daniel is writing only for a being of pure innocence born into our world from an orb.
I clipped a lot of examples of Daniel describing a thing it’s impossible to not know dozens, sometimes hundreds of different ways, but let’s move on. There’s a section where Daniel encourages the reader to imagine what they would do in famous tragedies. He thinks it’s healthy to spend hours, every day, picturing how you would have solved 9/11 if you and your Nunchaka were on those planes. And then, maybe to inspire you, he just describes his favorite horrific crimes, one after another, for an entire chapter. Don’t read this clipping, I only included it for anyone concerned I was exaggerating.
I want to be clear that this man asking us to relive these atrocities every day in our imagination never offers any solutions or advice. All that Rambo meditation, and he never came up with a single usable idea. I would almost respect a martial artist who wrote a book on which moves he would have used against the Holocaust. But no: Daniel E. Loeb wrote an entire chapter on stopping school shootings with karate and he left out the stopping and the karate. Maybe this helps you protect your Christian family, but it is literally a dumb man reading us the Wikipedia entries for famous massacres and nothing else.
One of Daniel’s first actionable pieces of advice is to escape an attack by getting punched in the face. Maybe you’re immune to punches? If so, it could really deescalate things. Daniel’s theory that punches cause no harm and are easily ignored seem to be based on his own punches, shown here:
As Daniel explains, The Reverse Punch is like a normal punch, but hits with the power of a punch and the speed of a punch. I think even the most casual of combat sport hobbyists would have some notes on Daniel’s form and his decision to drop both hands in a street fight, but let’s not split hairs. This punch is easily powerful enough for a tarot card reader to win an imaginary battle. But what if he was fighting a 9/11 one foot further away? In that case, you need:
As Daniel explains, Lunge Punch is pretty basic and not very practical in a fight. He doesn’t have much more of a point than that, and it’s weird he taught it to us. Let’s move on to some kicks.
Daniel Roundhouse-kicks like he’s trying not to tear his hernia stitches. This is how an elderly man unsticks a ball from his leg in an antique store. This is how you would paint a sunset if a vacuum cleaner ate your hands and left foot. You could casually kidnap Daniel’s entire family before you noticed he was hitting you with Roundhouse-kicks. Daniel says you can deliver this kick from a jump, but if you perform this movement in the air it’s Sharp-tailed Grouse for “Fertile suitors: ovulation, ovulation.”
We’ve been done with the Christian stuff for a while, by the way. The book is now a beginner’s survey of all basic martial arts. Unless Daniel thinks fencing etiquette is an important part of killing the wild dogs invading your Christian home? It might be, this isn’t my area of expertise. I know where I’m from a licensed fencer can poke any home intruder with an epee salutelessly after an audible en garde, but it’s probably different in every county.
Daniel’s bio claims he is “a Black Belt in Jujitsu,” which he probably hopes you’ll misread as a “black belt in jiu-jitsu.” You might know this, but one is a very skilled master of grappling and the other one teaches wrist locks to small town cops in the 1960s. Daniel shares some of his powerful fighting arts like the Groin Come-along, where you sacrifice your arm to touch a stranger’s penis. Again, he fully admits this sucks, and it’s weird he taught it to us. Speaking of weird, this would be a strange spot to explain the Geneva Convention rules concerning poisoned weapons and prison camps. And yet:
I think this was to help us understand our rights and limitations as sword-wielding homeowners, but I doubt saying any of these words will make the dead body on your porch less suspicious. “Officer, I know my rights, and by the rules of engagement, I cannot be held accountable for what happens to a POW during an escape attempt! Unless my knives are poisoned, all Uber Eats drivers are legitimate targets!” This section feels like it’s two paragraphs away from complaining about the tyranny of age of consent laws. Let’s skip ahead to some more karate moves.
Oh hell yeah. Daniel included this move just in case his readers have never seen a single movie.
If you’d like to turn The Reverse Punch into a Lethal Strike, you simply open up your fist and punch with your fingers. This is going to sound crazy, but I’m starting to think the guy telling us to take punches with our face and shatter our fingers against skulls might not know what he’s doing. Is his goal to turn himself into shrapnel and trust Jesus to guide it into his enemy’s weak spots? His Christian family will cheer, “Father, your karate has saved us from the first fist fight you’ve ever been in! Father? Father? Father? Father?”
In this section, Daniel also teaches the Edge-of-Hand Strike, or what “non martial artists” would refer to as a “chop.” Which is a little embarrassing since this section is called Chops and Lethal Strikes. Anyway, sweet fucking move, Daniel. I’ll use this if my family is ever confronted by a group of first graders demanding a game of Kim Possible. Now let’s learn how to incorporate a “knife” into our “karate chop,” for a move I imagine a non martial artist might call “Some-Kind of Knife Chop.”
Daniel insists this is not a karate chop with a knife. Don’t call it that. If you are a Non-Denominational Christian Martial Artist this is an “Edge-of-Hand Strike (With Knife)” or, if you must, a “Knife Hand Strike.” If you speak Knife Fighting, the terminology you’re used to is “a slash,” but in Christian Martial Arts, “The Slash” is actually not a slash, but a karate chop with a rifle:
Listen, I know all these terms are complicated, but it’s easy if you remember the Two H’s of Christian Martial Arts: 1) Hi. 2) Hit them with your weapon like you’re an ape seeing it for the first time. Let’s move on to ways you can use these moves to disable an opponent under the watchful eyes of God.
I don’t have anything to add to that. Attacking the Muscular, Respiratory, Cardiovascular, Nervous, or Eyeball Systems is pretty good advice. Daniel gets pretty technical here, but he may be right that if you remove your enemy’s eyes, they will have difficulty seeing you, making their attacks less accurate, which in turn makes them less likely to injure you, a type of medical harm, or as it’s known in the chop community, “Karate-harm.” Hey, have you heard of Head? Let me show you the Head section in its entirety.
The head is a favorite of bullets and knives and finds itself home to some of the top face and brain parts. Christians, you may know this as the Jesus-Balloon, but the basic rules remain the same: one hat at a time, and feed it mice, three a day. The Head is immune to punches, it is immune to punches.
You might remember Fingers from Chops and Lethal Strikes when you used them to Finger-drive your enemy in the Head (see section Head). What you may not have considered is how the fingers of others break very easily, which can reduce the effectiveness of their Fingerquarters of-Operation, or what non martial artists call “hand.” Now let’s talk about some of the karate targets that don’t work.
Testicles. We’ve all heard of them, and how effective they can be as a target for punchers and drainers. But Daniel has discovered the testicles, or “Testicles” in Christian Martial Arts, are unaffected by kicks unless he’s targeting a groin in very tight or no pants. This was a shocking take on Testicle attacks until I remembered Daniel’s Roundhouse-kick.
Yeah, if that kick hits a cushion of air contained in loose-fitting jeans, it gets deflected right off. Daniel’s Roundhouse-kick is how you smooth the fondant on a fancy cake. Which brings us into the very next section where Daniel is a real expert: What does not work. Some it may sound familiar.
After many maneuvers dedicated to poking our opponent in the eyes with Fingers (see Fingers), Daniel informs us that poking people in the eyes with Fingers doesn’t work. Knives and bullets work, though; because scrambling the brain with knives and bullets is an effective attack. Sorry if this is getting complicated. Hey, remember Testicles (see Testicles)? Don’t bother kicking those unless your enemy’s pants are real tight.
So now you know how to chop, knife chop, and gun chop and how to keep all those attacks away from the enemy dick. But what do you do if they have you at gunpoint? I’m glad you asked, because Daniel’s plan for this rules:
Just fucking charge! And after you get to him, kill him! If you’re shot, you should still be able to find time to kill them before you die. Plus, most police officers miss 80% of the time during a firefight, so there’s some of a 20% chance you won’t get shot at all. Oh, I guess you’re charging and killing a cop in this scenario.
Daniel cites this “cops miss 80% of the time” statistic a few times, but that’s a worrisome amount of loose bullets flying around and I couldn’t find his source. I Googled “police 80%” and got nothing. Maybe Daniel is exaggerating? I’ll cut the number in half and Google “police 40%” to see if ma– oh. Oh no, this statistic is even more troubling.
Daniel, the Jewish horoscope wizard, forgot about the Christian part of his home self-defense book about 200 pages ago, but I haven’t. So let’s arm up with some of Christ’s favorite weapons.
Maglites are flashlights that are heavy, but they’re also flashlights. I’m not sure what else you could say about Maglites other than exactly the same thing a couple more times, so that’s what Daniel does.
Most people writing a comprehensive guide on imprisoning and killing burglars try to keep the tone light, and Daniel is no exception. It’s nunchucks time.
Like he did with Lunge Punch, Groin Come-along, Testicle attacks, and Testicle attacks, Daniel warns us the Nunchaka is an ineffective weapon. But he also mentions it’s both a fun weapon and a fun weapon, so he spends three pages talking about all the rad ways you can spin them. It’s awesome. If you get the opportunity, it definitely seems worth the loss of a few family members to wild dogs, known to non martial artists as a type of Karate-horse which can also be used as a flashlight and acts similar to a Flashlight. Head and Fingers, everyone. Head.
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Daniel Sloane, who is several Karate-horses in a trenchcoat enacting an elaborate kibble heist.