I’ve occasionally been asked, in light of the woke threat that we face, “what do we do?” I’ve attempted to give some guidance here, here, here, here, and here. Lately I’ve been feeling more urgency about being more vocal because it’s not getting any easier. True, conservatives have had an impact on Bud Lite and Fox News in recent weeks (let’s call them “Fox Lite”), but those are minor victories and they aren’t by themselves diverting the flow of the cultural revolution we’re currently facing. More will be needed, and it is needed now.

I’ve referenced James Lindsay before here, and in that post I encouraged all of us to adopt a “you’re not the boss of me” attitude toward our woke superiors. For many of us, that may mean we risk losing our job, which Lindsay acknowledges is one of the most common responses he gets from people who are wondering what they can do to resist the cultural revolution.

He has a newer podcast out which I encourage you to listen to, and he also suggests that now is the time to speak up. He claims the fight against Marxism is not going to get easier and uses the Maoist take over in China as an example. As I’ve also covered, following Doug Wilson (here and here) Lindsay tells us not to take the bait. We need to “resist without over-reacting.”

Here’s the podcast, and below I’ve pulled a couple of quotes that I think are important for this moment.

The way that a cultural revolution unfolds is that it gets worse the longer you wait. The longer you wait to resist, the harder it gets. The things you’re afraid of now, in a year, are going to look like no big deal.

This is where urgency comes in. Time is of the essence, because it won’t get any easier to take a stand and, while we wait, the Left continues to set up the surveillance state and put in place the mechanisms for controlling the people. If we wait too long, it becomes too late and even more dangerous and risky to speak up.

You actually have two choices right now. You can either listen and start to speak up, or you can live through it and hope you can speak up. Those are your only two choices. What’s happening is a cultural revolution. Therefore you can either listen to people who are telling you, “now is the time to get involved, now is the time to start educating people, now is the time to start sharing ideas, now is the time to resist, now is the time to say you won’t go along with it.” Or, you can live through it and maybe if you’re lucky, you can do something. You’re not really going to have very many places to run.

That quote follows from a conversation he had with two Chinese women who lived through the Maoist revolution but were able to flee to America. Many of us notice what is going on, but feel a little insecure about whether we’re the only ones who are seeing it. If we’re to take a stand, we may have to do it on our own, and that feels more risky than standing with a group. But whether you are alone or with a group doesn’t change your two choices.

People want to know what to do. There are lots of things that are going to involve lawsuits … depending on whether you’ve been wronged, there are lots of things that may involve legislation, there are lots of things that are going to involve taking back, especially, local institutions, getting on county boards, county commissions, getting elected, getting appointed, filling out prosecutor roles, depending on if you’re an attorney … running for office, helping political campaigns, all the things that we think are going to be the solution. But there’s also a lot of stuff that you need to be doing, much more simply and much more close to home, which is educating yourself and educating others on this so that the base of people who understand the problem, recognize what it means, and are willing to stand up, increases and increases rapidly. The more people that stand up the easier it gets for everybody to stand up. The fewer people that stand up, the harder it is for everybody to stand up. The more people who are aware of the problem, the more people who are going to weigh out the risks and decide it’s worth standing up.

Standing up takes courage. Not to make an example of myself, but I’m out here taking a stand on the world wide web under my own name. I know it’s a risk. As I’ve taught my kids, the internet is forever.

But if not me, who? If not now, when? I couldn’t not say anything anymore, so I bought myself space on the internet and have been adding my opinion to the voices out there for the last three years, trying to educate and encourage readers to recognize what’s happening in our country, and to do so through the lens of Christian faith.

Standing up for your family, making sure you have a connection to your family. Getting to know your kids again, really well. Getting to know your kids’ friends. Spending intentional time with your children and their friends. Helping them understand the world and the values. Helping them understand communism … Nourishing what’s at home is a big way to stand up. They have to break the family. They’re doing a great job of damaging families. That’s something that you can do.

If we survive this cultural revolution, the next generation needs to know what happened and be prepared to guard against it happening again.

You may remember this oft-quoted confession of Martin Niemöller:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

The time for speaking up is now. As Carl Trueman said about protecting women and children,

The time for evangelical leaders and institutions to speak is now. The moment to use the platforms we have to protect women and children has come. If J.K. Rowling has the courage to stand for the truth and to call for the protection of children and women, then so should we. Silence in the face of this evil is culpable and, make no mistake, will be noted by future generations.

The same is true for all of us on the side of truth.