The title is Rod Dreher's, this morning, but the contents are basically Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's. Here Dreher introduces Solzhenitsyn's essay excerpts:
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in a 1970s essay collection called From Under The Rubble, wrote that the worst thing about the Soviet system was not its material oppression. “A man can live in such conditions without harm to his spiritual essence,” said Solzhenitsyn. Rather, the Soviet system is “unique in world history” because it compels everyone to participate “in the general, conscious lie.” He went on to say that the most essential task is not achieving political freedom, but winning one’s “inner freedom” from entanglement in the lie. Those who “voluntarily run with the hounds of falsehood” will not be able to justify themselves to the living, to history, to their friends, or to their children.
Again, this is the dilemma so many of us and those we know and love find ourselves in. And this is Solzhenitsyn's advice. The question is as old as Plato or older--as old as the human nature that liberalism denies:
