Holding the High Ground

Hills are such a strategic advantage in battle that an army will do nearly anything to keep them.

Holding high ground not only gives you a superior view, but your enemies have an uphill exercise to dislodge you. It’s no wonder so many pivotal battles took place on hills: Bunker Hill, Hamburger Hill, San Juan Hill.

In the middle of the American Civil War, a decisive action at Gettysburg reached a conclusion on a hill. From the summit of the undefended Little Round Top, there was a perfect view to the west, where the enemy waited. The 20th Maine Volunteers, under the command of Joshua Chamberlain, were hastily placed on the flank of the unguarded hill, with the orders, “You are to hold this ground at all costs.”

When the enemy finally smashed into the Union defenders the Maine boys exhausted all their ammo, even what they could recover from the dead and wounded on the ground. In a last-ditch attempt to hold the hill, they fixed bayonets for a charge downhill into heavy fire. Bayonets had last been effective weapons in the previous century, so those Maine men charged down the hill with what amounted to tent stakes. The shock of the foolhardy move scattered the Confederates and stopped the advance.

In the end, it did not require the life of every man to hold the hill. But without the willingness to commit unconditionally, the last-hope bayonet charge would never have been made.

When governments want to force “a needle in every arm,” despite medical conditions, morals, autonomy, and common sense; when they actively suppress reports of deaths and injuries and ban social media accounts for mentioning the same, people should be more than uneasy.

When freedom fighters of 2021 declare that the vax is their hill, they are likewise committing to hold at all costs. They know that their sacrifice will determine a monumental outcome, shaping the lives of their children and grandchildren. They know their own futures may be limited.

Freedom fighters speak out at school board meetings and city councils, gather crowds for protests, mobilize the flagging legal system to uphold the Constitution and maybe it will be enough to turn the tide. But if not, we must possess the conviction of the 20th Maine, to hold the hill at all costs, for the sake of our children and for the preservation of goodness in a world convulsed by evil.

This is our Little Round Top, and it is mid-afternoon. Things could go either way.

The abdication of clergy, the corruption of civil leaders, the craven surrender of medical professionals, leave us with few obvious leaders. The volunteers of an army may be willing, but it takes commanders to order bayonets and charge downhill. We need new leaders who understand that there is something worth dying for here, people who see an opportunity to defend what is most valuable in the fading American experience.

Presently, our hill is unguarded, save for a very few courageous medics, bishops and whistleblowers willing to suffer the loss of their futures. We need more troops on the hill. As the unsavory coalition of big government, media, and tech plots ahead to restrictive vaccine passports and the resulting loss of individual privacy and autonomy, it is we who must anchor the line and hold the Union together.

We may be small in number, but the actions of a few can have colossal results when we drive forward in apparently hopeless conditions, to the very last man. We have to mean it when we say it’s the hill we will die on.

We are fighting for liberty, for the free will that has been given by God Himself. We are fighting for our children to inherit the goodness of what was once America.

You can read Sheryl Collmer’s article, The Hill You Die On, published in Crises Magazine, at the link provided.

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