{"id":94,"date":"2008-08-15T22:06:12","date_gmt":"2008-08-16T02:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/anglicansamizdat.wordpress.com\/?p=94"},"modified":"2008-08-15T22:06:12","modified_gmt":"2008-08-16T02:06:12","slug":"solzhenitsyns-warning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/solzhenitsyns-warning\/","title":{"rendered":"Solzhenitsyn's Warning"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Chuck Colson<\/a><\/p>\n

The faculty of Harvard University admired Alexandr Solzhenitsyn for his literary achievements, so they were thrilled that he agreed to deliver the university\u2019s 1978 commencement address. But almost as soon as he began to speak, the professors changed their minds: too late. As I wrote \"\"this month in Christianity Today<\/em>, they realized that Solzhenitsyn was charging them with complicity in the West\u2019s surrender to liberal secularism, the abandonment of its Christian heritage, and of all the moral horrors that followed.<\/p>\n

For example, describing the Western worldview as \u201crationalistic humanism,\u201d Solzhenitsyn decried the loss of \u201cour concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility.\u201d Man has become \u201cthe master of this world . . . who bears no evil within himself,\u201d he announced. \u201cSo all the defects of life\u201d are attributed to \u201cwrong social systems.\u201d<\/p>\n

Solzhenitsyn argued that this moral impoverishment had led to a debased definition of freedom, which makes no distinction between \u201cfreedoms for good\u201d or \u201cfreedoms for evil.\u201d Our founders, he reminded us, would scarcely have countenanced \u201call this freedom with no purpose\u201d but for the \u201csatisfaction of one\u2019s whims;\u201d they demanded freedom be granted conditionally upon the individual\u2019s constant exercise of his religious responsibilities.<\/p>\n

Solzhenitsyn could hardly have imagined that, just 14 years later, the U.S. Supreme Court would enshrine this radical definition of freedom: \u201cAt the heart of liberty is the right to define one\u2019s own concept of existence, of meaning of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Solzhenitsyn also foresaw the rise of political correctness. \u201cFashionable trends of thoughts and ideas,\u201d he said, \u201care fastidiously separated from those that are not fashionable.\u201d He predicted this would lead to \u201cstrong mass prejudices\u201d with people being \u201chemmed in by the idols of the prevailing fad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Could even Solzhenitsyn have imagined that sexual rights would in 30 years triumph over free expression, that academia would impose rigid speech codes, or that churches would be threatened with the loss of their tax-exempt status for opposing the homosexual agenda?<\/p>\n

On that June day, 30 years ago, Solzhenistsyn predicted that, in time, we would become more concerned with the civil rights of terrorists than with our own national security. Could he have imagined that 30 years later to the week, the Supreme Court, in the case of Boumediene<\/em> v. Bush<\/em>, would uphold the civil rights of enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Bay?<\/p>\n

Solzhenitsyn also charged the West with losing its \u201ccivic courage . . . particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites.\u201d After all, he said, with \u201cunlimited freedom on the choice of pleasures,\u201d why should one risk one\u2019s precious life in defense of the common good?<\/p>\n

Three decades after Solzhenitsyn\u2019s speech, Americans find themselves in the grip of violent and pornographic \u201centertainment,\u201d growing censorship of unfashionable ideas, a new wave of isolationism, and a spiritually exhausted citizenry.<\/p>\n

The solution Solzhenitsyn offered at the Harvard commencement was for a \u201cspiritual blaze.\u201d The question is, have we listened? Do we see signs of awakening? And is there still time to renew ourselves out of our \u201cspiritual exhaustion\u201d?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Chuck Colson The faculty of Harvard University admired Alexandr Solzhenitsyn for his literary achievements, so they were thrilled that he agreed to deliver the university\u2019s 1978 commencement address. But almost as soon as he began to speak, the professors … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[307],"tags":[2080,1622],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-fall-of-the-west","tag-christianity","tag-western-civilisation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}