The Principle of Pursuit, the Trump Reprieve, and the Place of New St. Andrews in All of This

Introduction

In the history of warfare, many a victory has been thrown away through a failure to pursue. Sometimes the victory has been thrown away entirely and other times the victor has settled for an okay victory instead of an overwhelming one.

Pursuit is one of the basic principles of war—with principles here being distinguished from methods. Methods of warfare would include destroyers or triremes, arrows or bullets, howitzers or trebuchets. But principles would be things like surprise, mobility, concentration . . . and pursuit. Principles apply in every age, while methods vary according to age and circumstance.

Moreover, principles apply in every kind of conflict—physical war, business competition, athletics, cultural war, and spiritual war. And one of those principles is pursuit. Nothing can be done about it. There it is. It will either be obeyed or neglected.

How Pursuit is Neglected

After their victory at Gettysburg, the Union forces prolonged the war unnecessarily through their failure to pursue. And such a failure is at least understandable, is it not? The two armies have faced off, and you didn’t know who was going to hold the field at the end of the three days. When you are the one who emerged from that battle victorious, and the enemy has retreated, and left you in possession of the field, that is undeniably a victory. At such a point, there is real pressure on a general to just call it good. His troops are both bloody and weary. They are ready to rest, exulting in their victory. It takes real wisdom and insight (and charisma) for a general to be able to say, “And now we will march all night.”

We can see Gideon observing this principle in his great challenge to the Midianites. He had already routed them completely, but he was not content with having routed them completely. He wanted much more than that.

Not only was he observing the principle of pursuit, he was doing it when it was really difficult to do—faint, yet pursuing them. On the verge of the initial battle, the pressure was on, and it was obviously on. And once you have achieved your initial victory, it can feel like the pressure is off. But it only feels like the pressure is off. That is an understandable illusion, but an illusion nonetheless.

The Trump Reprieve

For many conservative Americans, the fact that Donald Trump has been once more inaugurated feels like a real victory. And as far that goes, it really is. It does feel like the fever broke. For example, it is now the policy of the United States that there are only two genders, male and female. Somebody in charge is saying that.

The secular experiment was always unstable at the foundational level, but the last six years were really something. We were all stuck at the circus, and we had gotten to the point where all we could see in every direction were clowns on unicycles.

Everything had really gone nuts with COVID and the lockdowns, followed by the George Floyd hysterics, and then the tranny madness, and then the vaccine tyranny. There was just one “hold my beer” moment after another.

Now during this meltdown time, New St. Andrews College enjoyed enormous growth. We stayed open. We were vocal about our opposition to the cavalcade of nonsense. We ran that resplendent bathroom ad, which mysteriously has not yet won any awards. And conservative Christian parents all over the country saw us as a safe haven. And we really were a safe haven . . . but only in the sense that a paratrooper training facility would be a safe haven in the opening months of a war.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a port in a storm. That is what ports are for. But you don’t want your Navy hiding in port throughout a war, tucked away from the enemy. That is not what a Navy is for.

Subverting the Dominant Paradigm

The mission of New St. Andrews is to graduate leaders and shapers of culture—to “graduate leaders who shape culture living faithfully under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.” But given the state of our existing culture—both with regard to its structure and its corruption—an essential part of the task faced by our graduates is that of subverting the dominant paradigm. Some of that dominant paradigm is falling apart all by itself, true enough, but much of it still must be deconstructed.

Before Gideon led his 300 into victorious battle against the Midianites, he had earlier toppled the Baal at his father’s house (Judg. 6:25-26). He had done this while following the explicit instructions of Jehovah, who had commanded him to tear down the one altar and to replace it with another. He was not allowed to just leave the altar to Baal there, and go off to battle. Neither was he permitted to build an altar to Yahweh alongside that altar to Baal—as a sort of testament to religious pluralism and ecumenical dialog. No, the altar to Baal had to go, and it needed to be replaced with an altar to Yahweh.

This means that an essential part of the task we are assigning to our graduates is the responsibility of a godly iconoclasm.

That dominant paradigm (that we want to equip them to subvert) contains erroneous assumptions about the chief end of man, about the purpose of higher education, about the role of the liberal arts, about the relationship of masculine to feminine, and about the correspondence view of truth. All of that must go down.

This is the central point of Christian nationalism, incidentally. If Baal is god, follow him. If Yahweh is, then follow Him.

In short, we want our graduates to be educated to a level—rare these days—where they understand that a person cannot suck and blow at the same time.

True Independence and Originality

We also want what seems to many a real paradox. We want fiercely independent thinkers, but we recognize that the only way for a creature to attain to true independence is through being anchored to the Word of the transcendent Absolute. When creatures cut themselves off from His Word, seeking a faux-autonomy, the only thing they can achieve is group think, or Hive Mind. As a recent article put it wonderfully, “Consensus is their tether.” If you want a good detailed summary of what NSA is up to, and what we are after, the link is here.

Chesterton once said that the purpose of an open mind was the same as the purpose of an open mouth—it was designed to close on something. Perpetual open-mindedness is synonymous with being permanently blinkered. A genuine liberal arts education equips the student to close his hands on the truth, which in turn enables him to open his eyes to the world.

And when you open your eyes to the world, one of the things that happens is that you know what is going on.

Bringing It All Down the Practical Decision-Making Level

What I have to say here might only apply to half a dozen people, but it illustrates the principle nicely—and there’s that word again.

Let us say that we have a family with a graduating high school senior. In the middle of all the woke frenzy, these parents and student were all thinking seriously about completing the application to New St. Andrews, and it was number one on their list of prospects. But since Trump was elected in November, and now that he has been sworn in and is signing one executive order after another, a whole slew of them, the thinking of this family has shifted somewhat, so slowly they scarcely notice. They are now contemplating a return to an earlier idea, which is that of their student attending Leviathan State, just forty-five minutes from home, in order to major in sports medicine.

And I hasten to add that I have nothing against sports medicine, and I acknowledge that somebody needs to do it.

But I will also say that if we had ten situations just like this one, in about seven of them this kind of thinking would constitute a true failure to understand the importance of pursuit. What? Do we really think that the existential threat that just whistled by our collective head was the very last time it will happen? Do we really think that five years from now we will have more than enough young people who have been equipped in a biblical worldview? We are now running a surplus? Of course not, and so for those who might be among the seven . . . I would urge completing the application.