Danger Ahead: Pathfinders Wanted

As the American frontier was tamed, the job of pathfinder was lonely and dangerous – but absolutely vital to all those forging ahead into the wilderness. A pathfinder had to be sober and deliberate, while simultaneously bold and courageous. If he was timid, he could never find a path through the wilderness to begin with. If he was given to recklessness, he could lead people into some deadly situations because a path looked good to begin, but he had not explored it fully for hidden dangers. Once he chose a path, he was obliged to prepare people realistically for the challenges they would have to confront. He was very much a man set apart from the fellows he served, spending little time with them because he had to spend so much forging ahead to find the way to safety for them.

The confidence of the people he served and his dependence on God were what sustained the pathfinder. If he led those people into unexpected danger, that confidence was eroded. If he took too long to make a decision, that confidence was eroded. Sometimes, despite his best efforts, a faction would choose to go in a direction that looked easier, ignoring his warning of the dangers that lay that way. He either had to stand his ground and lead those who would follow in the safer path, or devise an effective way to deal with the hidden dangers the rebellious faction was set on in order to hold all the people together. Neither approach was optimal. If he did not have the capacity to choose between which was less dangerous, he was in trouble with God.

Beginning 11 years ago, I have told you true about the dangers that have suddenly risen all around us, dangers that threaten to capsize the American experiment entirely. Very soon I think we are going to be facing an entirely different – and largely unexpected sort of danger.

I speak occasionally of the “invasion of Poland” moment. At the cusp of the full outbreak of World War II, Winston Churchill was a back bencher in Parliament, derided by all factions and held in particular contempt by the ruling class for his constant warnings of the real danger Hitler’s Germany presented. People desperately wanted for there to be an easier way, and hated Churchill for constantly telling them there was not – and that they must gird their loins. He was a pathfinder who told them true. Opinion surveys at the time suggested that a good 70% of the British population considered Churchill an alarmist clown.

Then came Hitler’s invasion of Poland, after having solemnly declaring he would do no such thing. Over the course of the next 48 hours, the most spectacular turnabout of public opinion in history took hold in England. Across the nation, hand-painted signs declaring, “We need Churchill” and “Churchill Now!” sprung up. Suddenly, the people who just hours before had held him in contempt knew that Churchill was the indispensable man because he, unlike the ruling class, had told them true for a decade regardless of the contempt and derision it drew him.

Oh, the ruling class continued their contempt for him, but grudgingly brought him into the government because public opinion demanded it. Truth was, the smug establishment class was already a dead man walking, for the ordinary Brits would bear no more of their “peace in our time” cant. Meantime, France was quickly occupied by the Nazis because it dithered, still pathetically hoping things would work out.

I think the biggest surprise we will have in the next few months will be the utter collapse of the “woke” project in America. Like the invasion of Poland was for Britain, I suspect we will have an event that will fully expose it for the dangerous folly it is. Oh, there will still be a good faction of wokesters out there, but they will be looked at with even deeper contempt than they have showered their opponents with up to this time. They will be blown away like so much chaff in the wind this change will bring.

It will immediately become much less disorderly in this country, but it will usher in the singularly most dangerous period of this Storm, a period that, by design, is forged to ensnare even the most pious.

First, the slow-burning flame of armed conflict around the world is likely to erupt into full conflagration – at a point where we are badly hobbled by all the absurd fantasies we have indulged for so long.

Second, most of the local petty tyrants who revealed themselves during the Covid scare will not change their ambitions, only their methods. They will pretend to be pious and claim they have the answers if you just do what they say, answers they have never had and do not care about anyway.

Third, there are many people on our side who, having gotten comfortable being dissident leaders, will want to set up shop permanently for themselves, directing you on what you must do to be acceptable to Christ. If you are following any that seek to direct your conscience rather than help you form it, you are following diabolical frauds. But oh, they will sound so pious that they will even deceive the elect for a time.

I am in the home stretch of completing the CORAC Organizational Handbook and Manual on Forming Functional Communities in Difficult Times. It is the largest, most complicated task I have ever taken on. How to be comprehensive while also being concise and accessible is always the most difficult task. It relies on you to be a moral and religious people to build in your home town. It relies on CORAC being the primary support system for what you create, rather than a source of remote decrees. It relies on you becoming pathfinders, turning neither to the right out of anger nor to the left out of fear, but walking in a plain path before God and man.

We must not be delivered from the insane chaos around us just to get into a contest over who shall rule. That contest always brings with it the seeds of its own destruction. Rather, we are called to care for each other as loving brothers and sisters, offering our talents and respecting the expertise of others in the endeavor to build each other up in harmony with God, rather than trying to dominate or tear each other down.

It is a lonely job, fraught with peril. But I call on you to find a path through this wilderness, blaze a trail to God that cuts through all the undergrowth. Do it the simple, sure way. Help those around you build the skills they need. Respect their free will and dignity, given by God, even as you protect each other from efforts to coerce your conscience or undermine your community. Authentic Christianity is not for wimps. It is simple, but not easy. Let your triple lodestar be: acknowledge God, take the next right step, and be a sign of hope to those around you. Do this, and you will be a profitable pathfinder.