Remember Solzhenitsyn’s Warning
In his autobiography, The Oak and the Calf, he said (emphasis mine throughout), “At last I was beginning to see revealed the higher and hidden meaning of that suffering for which I had been unable to find a justification, that sharp reminder from the Supreme Reason which no mere mortal can at first understand. This was why my murderous misfortunes had been sent to me—to deny me all possibility, snatch from me any chance of lying low and keeping quiet, to make me desperate enough to speak and act.” In June of 1978, Harvard, America’s most prestigious educational institution, invited him to give its commencement address. His Harvard speech sent shock waves throughout the West. Most politicians, educational institutions and the media turned bitterly against him!
Solzhenitsyn said in that speech at Harvard: “The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals. It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations. On the other hand, destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society has turned out to have scarce defense against the abyss of human decadence, for example against the misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, such as motion pictures full of pornography, crime and horror. This is all considered to be part of freedom.” Are we free if we are in bondage to consumer products?, pornography? drugs? alcohol? sleazy, violent, mind-bending television and movies?
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