You may think my humor is not quite there, but there is a dark underbelly to all this. When the government takes over private business, you see, it tends to destroy, corrupt and confound that business. And I am talking about any business run by any government.
Kung Fu, to name one example, been around for thousands of years, has been spreading long life, health, good physical conditioning, and some of the best darned self-defense imaginable. Then along came Chairman Mao, and Kung Fu was put to the torch. The method utilized for the destruction of the one of the greatest arts the world has ever known was called The Cultural Revolution.
During the Cultural Revolution Mao decided to purge society of elements that he deemed dangerous, or corruptive, or whatever. Thus, the population was carted off wholesale and killed, 70,000,000 of them. If you were intelligent, talented, or stood out in any manner, you were dead.
If you were a school teacher, hard of hearing, or had written a book, you were murdered. If you spoke contrary to communistic principles or played the violin, you were murdered. If you knew Kung Fu, you were murdered.
Once the Revolution was over, the country began to rebuild, in the image of Chairman Mao. Funny thing, as China tried to catch up with a world that was still possessed of talent and intelligence, it discovered that there was money to be made in this thing called Kung Fu. Unfortunately, they had murdered Kung Fu.
So, what does a government do when it has murdered an entire art, and then found that it needs it? Simple, you tell a few coaches to make up some Kung Fu. So they gathered a bunch of coaches, the ones who hadn't known enough Kung Fu to be murdered during the revolution, read any manuals that survived the book burnings, and made up some Kung Fu!
And they were intent on making sure that the Kung Fu didn't have anything harmful in it. You don't want people able to actually the thing for self defense. Heck, you don't want them having a real Great Revolution! - 31373
About the Author:
Al Case has practiced martial arts for 40 years. He has written hundreds of articles and had his own column in Inside Karate. He has developed the science of Matrixing, which enables an artist to de-corrupt his art and return it to original workability. You can get a free ebook about his method at Monster Martial Arts.
