Trenchant analysis, and a good reminder to buy your book. The simple act of calling lies out is immensely powerful as Solzhenitsyn so memorably pointed out in his statement, "Live Not by Lies", issued on the eve of his deportation from the Soviet Union.
“As Solzhenitsyn has indisputably established, the ideological Lie deceives at a very …
Trenchant analysis, and a good reminder to buy your book. The simple act of calling lies out is immensely powerful as Solzhenitsyn so memorably pointed out in his statement, "Live Not by Lies", issued on the eve of his deportation from the Soviet Union.
“As Solzhenitsyn has indisputably established, the ideological Lie deceives at a very fundamental level. Those who perceive themselves as “innocent victims,” bereft of sin and any capacity for wrongdoing, or as agents of historical “progress,” become puffed up with hubris and feel themselves to be infallible. They become oppressors with little or no sense of limits or moral restraint. In Albert Camus’s memorable words, we must instead aim to be “neither victims nor executioners.” That is the path of moral sanity and political decency recommended by both the Christian Solzhenitsyn and the unbelieving Camus.”
The Left in all forms is quick to condemn him -they make him out to be a cross between Gogol and Dostoevsky - a sort of God-soaked madman.
Distraction: they never actually answer the charges he laid in his Harvard speech. I presume that he was accurate even in their own self-understanding, and that they are aware of this on some level.
I don't respect the Left for this - I recall disliking Soviet ideology no small bit - and admitting readily that they were not at all wrong about everything! I have been there - I was a vigorous cold-warrior - and even still I admitted as much .
Trenchant analysis, and a good reminder to buy your book. The simple act of calling lies out is immensely powerful as Solzhenitsyn so memorably pointed out in his statement, "Live Not by Lies", issued on the eve of his deportation from the Soviet Union.
“As Solzhenitsyn has indisputably established, the ideological Lie deceives at a very fundamental level. Those who perceive themselves as “innocent victims,” bereft of sin and any capacity for wrongdoing, or as agents of historical “progress,” become puffed up with hubris and feel themselves to be infallible. They become oppressors with little or no sense of limits or moral restraint. In Albert Camus’s memorable words, we must instead aim to be “neither victims nor executioners.” That is the path of moral sanity and political decency recommended by both the Christian Solzhenitsyn and the unbelieving Camus.”
— Daniel J. Mahoney, Solzhenitsyn scholar
Solzhenitsyn was one of the greats.
The Left in all forms is quick to condemn him -they make him out to be a cross between Gogol and Dostoevsky - a sort of God-soaked madman.
Distraction: they never actually answer the charges he laid in his Harvard speech. I presume that he was accurate even in their own self-understanding, and that they are aware of this on some level.
I don't respect the Left for this - I recall disliking Soviet ideology no small bit - and admitting readily that they were not at all wrong about everything! I have been there - I was a vigorous cold-warrior - and even still I admitted as much .
Lying is lying, and so with self-deception.