‘There has always been this fallacious belief: “It would not be
the same here; here such things are impossible.” Alas, all the evil of
the twentieth century is possible everywhere on earth.’ – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
‘In each one of us there lurks such a liberal, wheedling us with
the voice of common sense. The road to totalitarian domination leads
through many intermediate stages for which we can find numerous
analogues and precedents…What common sense and “normal people” refuse to
believe is that everything is possible.’ – Hannah Arendt
Rod Dreher’s newest book, Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents, widens
his focus from the Czechoslovakian resistance to the anti-Communist
resistance throughout the Soviet Bloc. In addition to studying the works
of world-famous dissidents like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (from whom the
title of the book is borrowed), Mr. Dreher traveled to the former Soviet
states of Russia and Georgia, as well as to the former Warsaw-Pact
states of Hungary, Poland, Romania, and – of course – the Czech Republic
and Slovakia[1]
to interview living survivors of Communism. Mr. Dreher believes that
these survivors of ‘hard totalitarianism’ (which wielded force to
deprive people of political liberty) can teach Americans how to survive
the ‘soft totalitarianism’ (which seduces people into surrendering their
political liberty for personal liberty) that is creeping through the
Western world. The Benedict Option teaches Christians how to resist passive assimilation, but Live Not by Lies teaches Christians how to resist active persecution.
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