Daily Verse | Joshua 11:23
So Joshua took the entire land, just as the Lord had directed Moses, and he gave it as an inheritance to Israel
according to their tribal divisions.

Happy Monday and off we go into the second week of March. I have a confession to make—it was me. I let the dogs out.

I recognize that my writing has come back again and again to the danger we face as a country. I don’t particularly like writing about scary things or to be pessimistic or gloomy or despairing. What I do want to do is be realistic and tell it like it is (as I see it). To me it does no one any good to hide their head in the sand or wish things were different. Things are what they are and we need to have a spine to face them. I’m trying to build spine.

As we think about where we are as a country and where we go from here, you know that I believe we need to arm ourselves. No one, least of all me, wants to engage in a shooting war. But I’m afraid that the trajectory of developments in our society, as I’ve been pointing out for a few years now, is leading us toward one.

If it comes to a violent confrontation—and, again, I don’t want a violent confrontation—we need to think through the justification for why we might engage in such a fight. It does no good to put life on the line for something that we don’t understand or don’t believe in or grasp the right-ness of the cause.

One of the things we need to get clear on is why we fight back at all. I said in my last Broadside that it doesn’t matter how we got to where we are now; what matters is where we go from here. One of the things I’m clear on is that we are no longer dealing with rational arguments or rational people.

It is not rational to prosecute the Capitol Hill rioters and let BLM rioters walk away with no charges.

It is not rational to ignore the clear quid-pro-quo statement of a former vice-president while impeaching a current president for allegedly making a quid-pro-quo deal in asking for the former to be investigated.

It is not rational to claim that only white people can be racist.

It is not rational to confirm Merrick Garland who claims he has never thought about whether illegal entry into the United States should continue to be a crime.

It is not rational to free violent convicts from prison because of Covid-19 while stuffing nursing homes full of people sick with Covid-19.

It is not rational for James Comey to remain unprosecuted for his crimes.

It is not rational to insist that a man can be a woman if he claims that he is or that a woman can be a man if she claims that she is.

It is not rational to suggest that people who did not own slaves pay “reparations” to people who were not slaves in an effort to somehow make amends for atrocities committed long in the past.

It is not rational for Adam Schiff to remain in Congress for his egregious lies about Russia and president Trump.

It is not rational to print a lie and not retract it when it’s proven false.

It is not rational for three men to be listed as the parents on a baby’s birth certificate.

It is not rational to rejoin the Paris Accords when the U.S. is reducing its carbon emissions more than any other country and the deal will transfer trillions of dollars to other countries while killing our own economy.

It is not rational to allow young adult males to compete in sports against young adult females.

It is not rational to believe that there was no voter fraud during the 2020 election.

“I am not out of my mind, most excellent Festus, but I am speaking true and rational words.”

— The Apostle Paul, speaking before governor Porcius Festus and King Agrippa in Acts 26:25

When people are being rational, you can have a discussion—you can make arguments, you can analyze data and you can appeal to common sense. But we don’t live in a society that agrees on what’s “reasonable.” Decisions are now made out of ideological or political expediency, not on rational, orderly reflection.

Once rationality breaks down, there are few options for getting to agreement. In essence, whoever has the greater power to enforce—or oppose—what is rational, “wins.”

Knowing there is no hope for negotiating a reasonable solution will help justify the fight if and when it comes.

[Image: Screengrab from the movie, The Shining, 1980]