It’s time for all of us to join Joshua’s Army

Joshua destroyed Jericho’s walls with the sound of righteousness. By using truth against leftism, we can be Joshua’s Army in America.

And the Lord said unto Joshua, See, I have given into thine hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valour.

And ye shall compass the city, all ye men of war, and go round about the city once. Thus shalt thou do six days.

And seven priests shall bear before the ark seven trumpets of rams’ horns: and the seventh day ye shall compass the city seven times, and the priests shall blow with the trumpets.

And it shall come to pass, that when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, and when ye hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city shall fall down flat, and the people shall ascend up every man straight before him.

[snip]

15 And it came to pass on the seventh day, that they rose early about the dawning of the day, and compassed the city after the same manner seven times: only on that day they compassed the city seven times.

16 And it came to pass at the seventh time, when the priests blew with the trumpets, Joshua said unto the people, Shout; for the Lord hath given you the city.

[snip]

20 So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets: and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city.

The above text, of course, comes from the Book of Joshua. It shows that, with right on their side, the Israelites were able to bring down Jericho’s walls through sound alone: Music and the shouts of the righteous. The battle wasn’t over then, but it was a foregone conclusion.

Cancel culture has been very effective at silencing conservatives. Because we think of ourselves as nice people, we pause when people accuse us of racism or homophobia. Because we need jobs to support ourselves and our families, we fall silent when workplace conversations boil down to “Kyle Rittenhouse is a white supremacist” or “those effing unvaxxed people are going to kill us and we’re going to have supply chain problems until they get the shots.”

And of course, we’ve noticed that the FBI is not only going after conservatives but, as happened in Michigan and many believe happened in D.C. on January 6, they’re entrapping conservatives. Indeed, when you look back on the FBI’s “successes” over past few the years, you discover that the bulk of them occurred with the FBI finding some stupid schlub, inveigling him into acting stupid, plotting the stupid act for him, and then arresting him. Message to conservatives: DON’T BE STUPID. It’s likely the FBI is setting you up.

However, it’s time for conservatives to push back — only not stupidly, of course. Pushing back doesn’t mean engaging in illegal conduct. Pushing back means being like Joshua and the Israelites and making a noise. It’s time we stop getting along by going along with all the casual leftism that affects every aspect of our lives.

It means that, when you go into the children’s section of your public library with your kids in tow, and you find Gender Queer on the bookshelf, you don’t just fulminate quietly to yourself or complain (politely) to the librarian. It also means that you look around the room at the other moms and dads and say, “Am I the only one bothered that there’s a book in the children’s room showing a child giving a blowjob to an adult?”

And it means that, if you’re in the library when some other parent asks that question, you raise your hand and say, “It bothers me.”

Speaking out means that, when someone accused you of being racist because you said that you hope Kyle Rittenhouse gets a fair trial, you look past the insult and politely challenge them: “Why are you saying it’s racist to support Kyle Rittenhouse?” You know, of course, that there are no facts supporting that. As they start going on about his white supremacy, ask them why they’re saying that. Just keep politely pinning them down.

Here’s the thing about blowing our horns: We don’t have to be obscene, angry, threatening, insulting, or anything else. We must be curious. We need to get people to explain themselves. If we’re armed with facts, respectful, outspoken, and truthful, we are Joshua’s Army. We are the trumpets.

The thing is that people find safety in numbers, but they won’t know the numbers are there unless we start blowing our horns. My little Bookworm, who has been studiously apolitical and always kept her mouth shut, told me the other day that she’s starting to speak up. The trigger for her realizing that she can no longer be quiet was a run-in she had with a black “non-binary” person.

Little Bookworm knows that the “non-binary” person is just an ordinary woman who gets her power from parading her victim status as a black, a woman, and a non-binary person. She uses this identity to shirk work obligations and engage in vendettas against those she doesn’t like.

“I’m worried,” Little Bookworm said. “We can’t go on this way. This is a con.” So she’s speaking out, very politely, very respectfully, but in little ways, challenging the death-grip that the leftist victim movement on the HR departments of corporate America. And my Little Bookworm is discovering with her gentle, respectful forays into the truth that others agree with her. She’ll never be a firebrand — that’s not her nature — but she’s discovering the power of truth.

And really, the most important thing we can do today in fighting the left is to speak the truth. I started this post with a quote from the Bible. I’ll end it with Natan Sharansky’s important words saying, in effect, that truth is the nuclear bomb that makes totalitarian regimes implode:

In any place where dissent is banned, society fractures into three groups. One group is composed of those who remain committed to the prevailing order because they agree with it — the true believers. Another group is made up of those who are willing to defy the prevailing order despite the risk of punishment — the dissidents. For members of these two groups, there will be little or no gap between their private thoughts and public statements. Unlike true believers and dissidents, members of the third group do not say what they think. This group is comprised of people who no longer believe in the prevailing ideology, but who are afraid to accept the risks associated with dissent. They are the “doublethinkers.”

[snip]

Doublethinkers live in constant tension from the gap between their thoughts and words. They always avoid saying what is not permitted but also try to avoid saying what they do not believe. But fear societies generally do not leave their doublethinkers such a luxury. They demand from their “cogs” constant expressions of loyalty. In kindergartens, schools, universities, workplaces, religious institutions, public meetings, and elsewhere, doublethinkers must parrot the ideology of the regime and hide their true beliefs. This constant self-censorship can be such an inseparable part of a doublethinker’s existence that it becomes so habitual that the tension between thoughts and words is almost no longer felt. Indeed, only when doublethinkers are free are they fully aware of the extent of their previous self-imposed intellectual servitude.  (pp. 43-46.)

(Natan Sharansky, The Case For Democracy: The Power Of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny And Terror.)

You can be a paralyzed doublethinker or you can be a liberated truth-speaker. And again, you don’t have to speak the truth in such a way that you feel compelled to put your affairs in order and prepare for the FBI to knock down your door. Be honest, be polite, be respectful, be legal — and make the leftists in your world defend their positions, even while letting the doublethinkers around you know that (a) truth exists and (b) they’re not alone. By doing that, you will be a member of Joshua’s Army.

Image: Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794-1872), The Battle of Jericho.