Our Greatest Threat Today According to Os Guinness

"The supreme global menace of our day is unprincipled, unbounded power."
--Os Guinness

This weekend I listened to a talk titled 84-yr-old Philosopher Os Guinness Has 3 Warnings for the West. In his talk Guinness reflects on the decline of Western civilization, drawing parallels to Ernest Hemingway's description of bankruptcy as happening "gradually and then suddenly."

The liquidation of a company's assets doesn't come about overnight. Like many disastrous endings, whether used cars or broken marriages, things can limp along far longer than imagined, until suddenly the anticipated collapse occurs, to no one's surprise. It was not an overnight disaster, just as The Beatles were not an overnight success.

At the same time, Guinness acknowledges--even demands--that we fight for a needed cultural renewal rooted in foundational values of human dignity, freedom, and faith. He highlights the significance of the Jewish contributions to Western civilization, the dangers of unprincipled power, and the importance of confession and cultural renewal driven by faith. 

His speech warns of the potential negative consequences of authoritarianism and AI, advocating for a globally inclusive, human-friendly future with a focus on returning to foundational truths and values.

Guinness began by talking about his personal experiences as a youth during the Chinese Revolution and compares them to the Russian Revolution, two events that shaped the 20th century. (His parents were missionaries in China.) He used this as a springboard into a discussion on the role of the English-speaking world in defending freedom and a critique of the current state of Western society, including rising anti-Semitism.

Essentially he spoke as an advocate for a "global, human-friendly future" that upholds the sanctity of life, individual dignity, and justice for all, urging a shift from national discussions to a focus on global humanity while emphasizing the importance of foundational ideas for sustaining human rights.

Happy endings are never guaranteed, he said while using the Titanic's fate as a metaphor for complacency about the endurance of civilization. He followed this with the Russian fable of the scorpion and the frog, illustrating the intrinsic nature of destructive ideologies.

From here he jumped to a Persian parable. "Someone is down on his knees searching desperately for something, and a policeman comes by and says, what are you looking for? My keys, he says. So the policeman gets down on his knees and searches furiously, and after a few minutes, they can't find anything. And the policeman said to him, are you sure you lost it here? And the man said, no, it was over there. And the policeman said, why were you looking here? Well, there's more light here." The point here being that a lot of the human search and discussion goes to the easy, the convenient, the fashionable, and the comfortable. When we're discussion the renewal of a civilization, it ain't gonna be easy. 

For Guinness, faith is the foundation of culture and civilization, with Western civilization deeply rooted in Judeo-Christian values. To ignore or dismiss contributions from Jewish culture to Western ideas is both evil and ignorant. The role of confession and acknowledging mistakes is a strength rather than a weakness in cultural renewal.

Guinness also states that cultural change is a byproduct of living certain values collectively, rather than an isolated goal. All people should be encouraged to contribute to society's improvement.

The potential for restoration within Western culture must emphasize a return to foundational truths.

His address concluded with a call to action against escalating authoritarianism and technology misuse, advocating for a future that prioritizes human dignity, equality, and justice, efforts that aim to create a "human-friendly future" amidst current global challenges.

* * * 

I found his talk thought provoking. In listening to Guinness I hear echoes of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's famous "Men Have Forgotten God speech. The origin of this sentiment was something he heard from older Russian peasants when he was a child, recalling that they blamed the tragedies of their country on the fact that "men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened."

Feel free to comment below.

Why Do Russia's Wars Always Start with Disaster?

 

Unherd, a publication whose mission is to push back against herd mentality, today featured a story titled "How Putin enabled the Wagner revolt." The article begins with the following opening paragraph:

"Why do Russia’s wars always start with disaster? The answer is straightforward: because the autocrats who rule Russia — be they Tsars (with the exception of Napoleon’s nemesis Alexander I), Joseph Stalin or Vladimir Putin — appoint obedient toadies sadly lacking in military talent to command their forces."

According to the Unherd piece by Professor Edward Luttwak, "And none is more out-of-his-depth than Sergei Shoigu, Putin’s minister of defence."

Is  Prof. Luttwak suggestion that Putin's minister of defense is the worst Russian war leader ever or the world's worst ever? Solzhenitsyn's August 1914 goes into great detail describing the ridiculous unpreparedness of the Russian army at the outset of WWI. The lack of preparedness included inadequate equipment, outdated tactics and a lack of direction which all contributed to abysmal morale. 

What's more, Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich's military command structure suffered from massive inefficiencies and poor leadership. Decision-making processes were often slow and bureaucratic, hindering quick and effective responses to changing circumstances. As Solzhenitsyn discloses, the lack of clear strategic direction and coordination among the leadership contributed to disarray and ineffective operations. In the first month of the war the bumbling and blundering was so great that after a major loss in the Battle of Tannenberg General Samsanov took his own life. 

It isn't just Russia that is prone to this problem. G.J. Meyer's WWI overview, A World Undone, devotes a chapter to the incompetence of Britain's military leaders. When you see the consequences there's nothing funny about the tens of thousands of men whose blood was pointlessly spilt. (cf. The British Generals at the Dawn of World War One)

How ready are our U.S. troops should they be called into combat? Here are a few matters of concern.

Technological vulnerabilities with regard to emerging threats include cybersecurity vulnerabilities, potential disruption of satellite communications, and reliance on outdated systems in certain areas should concern us. Maintaining readiness across all branches of the military can be challenging. Aging equipment, insufficient training resources, and personnel shortages can impact the military's ability to respond promptly and effectively to threats.

The appalling amount of red tape in all levels of government will have an impact on our capacity to respond should there be a time of need. The acquisition and procurement process of new military equipment and systems can be lengthy, bureaucratic, and prone to cost overruns. Delays and inefficiencies in acquiring cutting-edge technology will hinder military readiness and modernization efforts.

It's true that Russia has been tested and found wanting. In this country, it waits to be seen how capable and effective we'll be until we're tested. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

Read: How Putin enabled the Wagner revolt

 

Photo Credit: Photo by Dominik Sostmann on Unsplash

An Observation from Solzhenitsyn's Warning to the West

Photo: Gary Firstenberg

The following was penned in the mid-Seventies. In what way was this visionary Nobel Prize-winning author right on and in what ways off the mark? How much of this description would be accurate for today? 

Russia Before the Revolution: Today, the West Follows in Her Ways.

"And what we see is always the same as it was then: adults deferring to the opinions of their children; the younger generation carried away by shallow, worthless ideas; professors scared of being unfashionable; journalists refusing to take responsibility for the words they squander so easily; universal sympathy for revolutionary extremists; people with serious objections unable or unwilling to voice them; the majority passively obsessed with a feeling of doom; feeble governments; societies whose defensive reactions have become paralyzed; spiritual confusion leading to political upheaval."

A. Solzhenitsyn--Warning to the West, p. 130

* * * * *

Related Links

Remembering Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: A Profile in Courage

Solzhenitsyn Indictment of the West Still Stands

Staying Human Is What's Important

"It's not enough to stay alive. It's staying human that is important."
--Winston, in Orwell's 1984

"It is beyond dispute that the state exercises very great power over human life  and it always shows a tendency to go beyond the limits laid down for it."
--Nicolas Berdyaev, Slavery and Freedom

"All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do."
--Leo Tolstoy, The Law of Love and the Law of Violence

"Can a man who's warm understand one who's freezing?"
--Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

So many roads, so much at stake
Too many dead ends, I'm at the edge of the lake
Sometimes I wonder what it's gonna take
To find dignity
--Bob Dylan, Dignity

For with much wisdom comes much sorrow;
    the more knowledge, the more grief.
--Ecclesiastes 1:18

Leon Trotsky and the Russian Revolution

Here are some interesting passages from Leon Trotsky's The Russian Revolution. (Originally published in 1939 by Simon & Schuster.)

The history of a revolution, like every other history, ought first of all to tell what happened and how.

But at those crucial moments when the old order, because it’s no longer endurable to the masses, they break over the barriers excluding them from the political arena, sweep aside their traditional representatives, and create by their own interference the initial groundwork for a new regime.

The history of a revolution is for us first of all a history of the forcible entrance of the masses into the realm of rulership over their own destiny

These words are found in the introduction to Trotsky's book.

The first sentence is what this 450 page account is about. The second explains the motivation for revolution. The "situation" is no longer endurable. Hence, the powerless masses erupt, and take control by force.

* * * *
Most Americans have little understanding of the situation in Russia at the time of the revolution. Nor do they know what really happened. I'd be curious how many people know there were actually two revolutions in 1917. The first took place in February/March. The Tsar was brought down and the whole structure of government around the Monarch system of rulership. Then in the late fall Lenin and the Bolsheviks pushed out the first wave of revolutionaries and crafted a Totalitarian-ruled Soviet Union.

These things didn't happen overnight. Solzhenitsyn's August 1914 was written to show the history that preceded these revolutions and set them up.

Leon Trotsky

Trotsky adds:

The dynamic of revolutionary events is directly determined by swift, intense and passionate changes in the psychology of classes which are already formed themselves before the revolution. (Emphasis mine)

The masses go into a revolution not with a prepared plan of social reconstruction, but with a sharp feeling that they cannot endure the old regime.

* * * *
Under Lenin's administration, Russia and then the wider Soviet Union became a one-party Marxist-Leninist state governed by the Russian Communist Party. Ideologically a communist, he developed a variant of Marxism known as Leninism.

Regarding Trotsky's role in all these things Vladimir Cherniaev, a leading Russian historian, summarized it in this manner:

Trotsky bears a great deal of responsibility both for the victory of the Red Army in the civil war, and for the establishment of a one-party authoritarian state with its apparatus for ruthlessly suppressing dissent... He was an ideologist and practitioner of the Red Terror. He despised 'bourgeois democracy'; he believed that spinelessness and soft-heartedness would destroy the revolution, and that the suppression of the propertied classes and political opponents would clear the historical arena for socialism. He was the initiator of concentration camps, compulsory 'labour camps,' and the militarization of labour, and the state takeover of trade unions. Trotsky was implicated in many practices which would become standard in the Stalin era, including summary executions.

Despite all this, Trotsky overstepped and made enemies. As a result, by 1929 he found himself exiled from the State he helped create. He first went to Turkey, then Italy, then France. When France signed an alliance with the Soviet Union in 1935, Trotsky was no longer welcome there either, in part because of his rabble-rousing writings and the encouragement of mass strikes.

From there he went to a farm in Norway, then left for Mexico where he worked for a while with painter and muralist Diego Rivera. Together with Andre Breton he helped write the Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art.

Trotsky continued to write and agitate, and became such a burr in Stalin's butt that Stalin sent an NKVD hit squad to eliminate him. The first attempt in May 24, 1940 failed. The second attempt was more successful, by means of a mountaineer's ice axe in August. Even so, he survived the initial blow for a day before succumbing under surgery.

* * * *
TRIVIA
I probably first noticed and took interest in Leon Trotsky in sixth grade because his name was Leon. (My birth name is Leon Edward. I later took interest in Leon Russell for the same reason.) I believe it was while reading about Rasputin's assassination, which Trotsky covers somewhat in The Russian Revolution.

When my wife and I prepared to go to Mexico in 1980 to work at an orphanage we studied some of the history of that nation South of the Border. I learned that after the Communists failed in the Spanish Civil War more than 40,000 found refuge in Mexico. Hence, we occasionally saw graffiti featuring the hammer and sickle, international symbol of the Party.

Three Seeds from the Diaries of Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy at 20 in 1848.

Beautiful sunny day here. Re-connected with a friend over coffee. Shared stories from the past couple years of our life journeys. Feeling laid back, reflective.

My recent months of reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn brought me back in touch with Tolstoy, the pre-eminent literary light of the previous century. An aim of Solzhenitsyn's was to become the Tolstoy of Russian literature for the 20th century.

Because I've never read War and Peace and get stymied each time I threaten to begin it, I decided to watch one of the movies based on the classic, which I am in the middle of, despite it being a poor substitute. And even though the movie is but a shadow of the book, I see glimmers of Solzhenitsyn's massive story The Red Wheel, which begins with August 1914.

What follows here are three excerpts from the diaries of Leo Tolstoy.

* * * *
OUR PLACE IN THE GRAND SCHEME OF THINGS
How good it is to remember one's insignificance: that of a man among billions of men, of an animal amid billions of animals; and one's abode, the earth, a little grain of sand in comparison with Sirius and others, and one's life span in comparison with billions on billions of ages. There is only one significance, you are a worker. The assignment is inscribed in your reason and heart and expressed clearly and comprehensibly by the best among the beings similar to you. The reward for doing the assignment is immediately within you. But what the significance of the assignment is or of its completion, that you are not given to know, nor do you need to know it. It is good enough as it is. What else could you desire?

* * * *

Tolstoy in 1897

A MID-LIFE CRISIS
Today or tomorrow sickness and death will come (they had come already) to those I love or to me; nothing will remain but stench and worms. Sooner or later my affairs, whatever they may be, will be forgotten, and I shall not exist. Then why go on making any effort? . . . How can man fail to see this? And how go on living? That is what is surprising! One can only live while one is intoxicated with life; as soon as one is sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere fraud and a stupid fraud! That is precisely what it is: there is nothing either amusing or witty about it, it is simply cruel and stupid.

* * * *
IMPORTANT QUESTIONS
My question … was the simplest of questions, lying in the soul of every man from the foolish child to the wisest elder: it was a question without an answer to which one cannot live, as I had found by experience. It was: “What will come of what I am doing today or shall do tomorrow? What will come of my whole life?” Differently expressed, the question is: “Why should I live, why wish for anything, or do anything?” It can also be expressed thus: “Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?”

* * * *
Related Link
Tolstoy Asks Us To Address One Question: How Should We Then Live

More Thoughts on Murder Most Foul: Most Foul Indeed

Zürich. I shall never forget, President Kennedy was assassinated, the pain we felt for America and the bewilderment and disillusionment experienced by the many former soldiers in World War II and former inmates in Soviet camps in prison. The failure of the US judicial authorities to uncover the real assassins of Kennedy was all the worse because of the inability or the lack of desire by the American judicial authorities to uncover the assassins and clear up the crime.. 

We had the feeling that powerful, openhanded and generous America, so boundlessly partial to freedom, had been smeared in the face with dirt, and the feeling persisted. Something more than respect was shaken--it was our faith.
--Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

So begins an essay on Henry Kissinger in a book of Solzhenitsyn's selected writings titled World Communism: A Critical Review. That's quite a quote when you consider the Nobel laureate who said it.

How interesting that I stumbled upon this passage (above) while listening to Dylan's latest album Rough And Rowdy Ways, which culminates in the explosive epic 17-minute lament "Murder Most Foul."

It takes but a glance to see what this song is about. The photo of JFK fills the back panel of RARW, with the Old English lettering Murder Most Foul beneath. The lyrics begin with a matter-of-fact alliteration: "It was a dark day in Dallas, November 1963"

So much has been written about the assassination that you'd think it difficult to add anything, yet Dylan adds much, in the manner only Dylan can. Really. Assemble a thousand songwriters with a thousand typewriters for a thousand days and how many would have come up with something like "Murder Most Foul"?

Being led to the slaughter like a sacrificial lamb
He said, "Wait a minute, boys, you know who I am?"
   (I automatically hear in my mind, "Wait a minute boys, this one's not dead" from Hurricane.)
"Of course we do, we know who you are"
Then they blew off his head while he was still in the car
* * * *
Now here's an interesting aside. While editing this I have been listening to Murder Most Foul on YouTube and as YouTube usually does, they follow up with related videos. After two or three cuts from RARW the next song in the playlist is Hurricane. What are the odds that this is a coincidence?

* * * *
Earlier this week I came across Eyold Østrem's "Murder Most Foul (2020) – An American Litany" at Expecting Rain and was wholly into it, an excellent breakdown on this song. Østrem first breaks down the song's structure, provides a musical analysis of the verses in order to set up the discussion of the lyrics.

In the first “great verse” Dylan sets down the historical framework, the storyteller holding the microphone, like a news commentator.

In the second verse, writes Østrem, "The narrator has put on a different hat: it is no longer the storyteller speaking, but the tutor, the 'wise old owl' who observes the events cooly and communicates to us children what he sees, in short sentences, clichés, commands."

Hard to believe that it's already nearly four months's since the song went viral on Twitter in late March. That Friday morning I listened to it three times before doing anything else that day and it was the second verse that said "listen up" from the very first time I listened. The middle of this verse hit me with graphic force on a couple levels. First the visual, which all who have seen the Zapruder film will agree was disturbing enough. Second, the comparison to a great magic trick.

This is where the Solzhenitsyn quote comes to mind. I still remember the first magic show I attended. "How did he do that?" is what a child's mind will ask. Solzhenitsyn raises the question, "Why this lack of desire, lack of curiosity to know how they did it?"

The day they blew out the brains of the king
Thousands were watching, no one saw a thing
It happened so quickly, so quick, by surprise
Right there in front of everyone's eyes
Greatest magic trick ever under the sun
Perfectly executed, skillfully done

"Play it for Houdini spinning around in his grave."

I've mentioned it before that Dylan was a great fan of magic, especially the masterful magician and showman Harry Houdini. When Dylan was asked what historical moment he'd like to go back and see he replied that he'd like to have been there when Houdini was shackled, chained, trussed, nailed into a box and thrown into the East River off Governor’s Island.

The song is so dense that one can easily miss many of its features, but Østrem places a spotlight on this unique aspect of the Dylan account of the assassination.

"The third 'great verse' is mindblowing, both metaphorically and literally," Østrem writes. "We are inside the head of the President while it is being blown to pieces – a unique insider perspective from a dying man, and we witness his surprised hallucinations while he observes his own death, partly as a very close observer ('Ridin’ in the back seat next to my wife, … leaning to the left, I got my head in her lap'), partly as a detached soul, hovering over the scene, following the events depicted in the Zapruder film closely, before leaving it at 2:38 when the president’s dead and Johnson is sworn in."

There are songs and movies in which the impact is strong at first, but diminishes after time. I think that is the difference between good and great. Dylan's Nobel Prize was no fluke. The more you listen to this incredibly painful reminiscence, the deeper it penetrates the deep places in your soul.

Tommy, can you hear me? I'm the Acid Queen
I'm riding in a long, black Lincoln limousine
Ridin' in the back seat next to my wife 
Headed straight on in to the afterlife
I'm leaning to the left, I got my head in her lap
Hold on, I've been led into some kind of a trap
Where we ask no quarter, and no quarter do we give
We're right down the street, from the street where you live
They mutilated his body and they took out his brain

This song is no joke, even when he says rub-a-dub-dub. Just as the album begins with "I Contain Multitudes" so does this song contain an incredible multitude of references that will reverberate beyond whatever you think you understand. Just as a garden of perennials continues to produce riches year after year, so will this song as does the rest of the Dylan catalogue.

* * * *
If I manage to get you to listen more attentively to "Murder Most Foul" and read Eyolf Østrem's Murder Most Foul (2020) – An American Litany, then I've accomplished my purpose here. You can find my first response in March here: Dylan Dishes Up A New Meal with a Feast of References: Murder Most Foul.

Dylan's brilliance has never been simply the writing, but the entire experience, the evocative manner in which we encounter him through his delivery and the supporting musical accompaniment.

* * * *
For what it's worth, if you are Dylan fan and don't own Rough and Rowdy Ways, what are you waiting for? I'm serious. Like nearly every Dylan album I've every owned the more you listen, the more you appreciate everything you find here.

* * * *
You can find the complete lyrics for this song at www.bobdylan.com/songs/murder-most-foul/

Solzhenitsyn Re-Affirms My Low Opinion of Henry Kissinger

My low regard for Henry Kissinger began when I was waking up to what was happening in the world in my later youth. Kissinger was an insider in the Nixon White House, end of story. I was biased, no doubt influenced by a strong feeling that Vietnam was an injustice, and that Nixon corruption was real.

Still, I knew little of the depth of Kissinger's badness. The movie Missing--Jack Lemmon, Sissy Spacek--gives a glimpse of the dark side of our State Department in Central and South America during the 50s and 60s. Kissinger was a major player in the Chile debacle.

Years later, reading Sy Hersh's autobiography Reporter added new dimensions to the kind of malodorous influence Kissinger was. The press seemed to love him, seduced perhaps by his sonorous accent. Yes, he projected something, much like our fascination with British accents and Irish brogue.

The manner in which Hersh was ambushed by Ted Koppel when his book on Kissinger, was released is eye-opening. The establishment, and mainstream media, still loved the guy, decades after the Nixon-Ford era. It's pretty revealing that neither Koppel nor either of the guests who lacerated Hersh in front of a national audience had read Hersh's The Price of Power, the topic of discussion. Hersh had dared to criticize this iconic figure and had to be publicly flogged for it.

More recently I found myself absorbed by Paul Thomas Chamberlin's The Cold War's Killing Fields and who should come up again repeatedly as a scoundrel? Yes, Henry K. When Bangladesh was suffering after a devastating cyclone, and West Pakistan did nothing, Kissinger advised that Nixon and the U.S. do nothing to alleviate the suffering because it would "make the Pakistan government look bad."

And because their government did nothing to help the traumatized East Pakistanis after the monsoons and flooding that caused so much death and destruction, the East Pakistani people voted for the opposition party in nearly every voting district. This pissed off the ruling party, so they sent in the army and slaughtered the masses using U.S. supplied armaments. Millions fled to India.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Kissinger's response to the behavior of West Pakistan toward its Bengali brethren.

Kissinger sneered at people who "bleed" for "the dying Bengalis" and ignored the first telegram from the United States consul general in East Pakistan, Archer K. Blood, and 20 members of his staff, which informed the US that their allies West Pakistan were undertaking, in Blood's words, "a selective genocide" targeting the Bengali intelligentsia, supporters of independence for East Pakistan, and the Hindu minority. In the second, more famous, Blood Telegram the word genocide was again used to describe the events, and further that with its continuing support for West Pakistan the US government had "evidenced [...] moral bankruptcy".

Makes one ill to think about it, but Kissinger was the influencer who again moved the hand of power.

* * * *

And so... As I was last night reading the Writings of Aleksandr Solzenitsyn, edited by Michael Loyd Chadwick, and once again came across some barb comments regarding this man. A chapter titled Henry Kissinger begins on page 75. It's not pretty, and only confirms what I have previously only sensed.

The style of this book is somewhat different. Solzhenitsyn divides each thought into a headline and then a little text, like a news story with more details. I am going to share here only the headlines from this four page article.

Failure of U.S. Judicial Authorities to Uncover the Real Assassins of Kennedy*
Need to Speak Bluntly about the Activities of Kissinger
Kissinger's Policy of Unending Concessions to World Communism Demonstrate THat He Is Anything But a Diplomat
Kissinger Attempts to Put Diplomacy at Its Lowest Level
The Art of Diplomacy Has a Wide Spectrum of Possibilities
The Great Diplomats of the Past
Kissinger's Endless Obscuring of Facts
Kissinger's Opponents Are Always Winning and He Is Always Yielding
Should the U.S. Surrender Its Position to the World?
Kissinger Does Not Possess the High Diplomatic Intellect Ascribed to Him
It Is Not Diplomacy to Negotiate Continual Concessions
The Vietnam Peace Agreement Prepared the Way for the Quiet Surrender of Three Countries in Indo-China
Kissinger's Nobel Peace Prize Was the Ultimate in Political Pornography
Disregard By Israeli Leaders of Kissinger's Shuttle Diplomacy in the Middle East
The Real Goal of Future Convergence of the U.S with the USSR Is Kept Hidden from the American People
Surrender of the West Approaches an Avalanche Stage
The U.S. Government Will have No Emergency Exit
Genocide In Cambodia And Vietnamese Prison Camps Is Not Peace
The Peace Aimed At by Kissinger and His Associates Has No Moral Loftiness

In short, Solzhenitsyn had a pretty low opinion of this "Golden Boy" who loved the spotlight in his time, and the Nobel laureate doesn't mince words.

* * * *
The title of this book of Solzhenitsyn's writing is World Communism: A Critical Review. It begins with an intro by Michael Loyd Chadwick, who edited this volume.

In 1975, a year after Solzhenitsyn had been exiled from the Soviet Union, the author had been invited to Washington D.C. to speak to the AFL-CIO. The became a grave problem for then sitting president Gerald Ford. Shouldn't this great advocate for freedom be invited to the White House? Should we not welcome the man who put his life on the line to reveal to all the cold brutality of Soviet totalitarianism?

But no, Henry Kissinger stepped in and beseeched President Ford to not do such a thing. Why? Because befriending Solzhenitsyn would be bad for detente, and evidently Detente was Kissinger's life force.

Not only did Kissinger interfere with (ultimately blocking) the White House visit, he also said it would be "diplomatically inadvisable" for the president to attend the banquet at which Solhenitsyn was speaking. Members of the State Department and NSC whom had been invited were quietly pulled away and did not attend either.

Much more can be said, but I think you get the picture. It's only a small section of the book but when I entered into it, the story leaped off the page.

Related Links
George Harrison & Friends: The 1971 Concert for Bangladesh 
Reporter by Seymour Hersh is a Must Read for all young journalists
*Murder Most Foul: Dylan Dishes Up a New Meal with a Feast of References
Solzhenitsyn Indictment of the West Still Stands

Solzhenitsyn's August 1914: How Fiction Enables Us to Get Closer to the Truth

Soltzhenitsyn

I've been reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's August 1914, a historical novel about events on the Eastern Front during World War I. For American readers it's a perspective on the war less familiar than the horrorshow of trench warfare's perpetual stalemate on the Western Front.

As a young writer Solzhenitsyn made no secret of his desire to become his generation's Tolstoy, hence his novels of monumental scope like this one which is actually the first of four massive volumes in a series about the birth of the Soviet Union. August 1914 was the first of this series which he called The Red Wheel.

He conceived the book while himself a soldier entering Prussia from the East during World War II, echoing the movements of the First World War. This first volume is over 800 pages. The second, November 1916, is two volumes in length. The third, March 1917, is four volumes and April 1917, the last, is not yet translated.

While reading chapter 42--I'm halfway through the book now--I was reminded again what it is that so thrills me about great literature. It's the manner in which the author orchestrates situations which reveal deeper insights into human motivation and the human situation. In this case, three men are in a bar drinking beer. One is an old man who has seen much and lived long, whose perspective on the emerging war is very different from the two youth who have recently finished school and volunteered to join the army in a wave of national enthusiasm.  Over a series of beers the characters relax and become increasingly engaged. The reader is that proverbial fly on the wall observing and listening in.

The old man here is Varsonofiev. The youths are Kotya and Sanya, friends from school. Early on, as the three get to know one another, the more extroverted Kotya explains who they are by expressing their worldviews:

“Yes indeed, a pure Hegelian,” Kotya proudly and uncompromisingly confirmed. “And he—" poking Sanya’s chest—"is a Tolstoyian.”

“A Tolstoyian?” The old man looked sideways in amazement, sizing up Kotya's shy and diffident companion. "Great heavens! Why then are you going to war?"

He saw, however, that Sanya was excruciatingly aware of the muddle in his mind. Sanya looked pitifully at Varsonofiev, smoothing the soft corn-colored hair back from his forehead.

"I'm not a pure Tolstoyan anymore."

Sanya apologetically attempts to explain.

This brief sequence signals to the reader that some serious fun is about to emerge along with a deeper penetration into the heart of the matter. Why are we here? And what is our role in the midst of it all?

As every Russian knew, Tolstoy had been born into aristocracy -- privilege that enabled him to become an influential writer  (War and Peace, Anna Kareninina and many other volumes). Later in life he experienced a profound moral/spiritual crisis and became a Christian anarchist and pacifist. His ideas on non-violent resistance later influenced Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

This is why Varsonofiev raised his eyebrows regarding Sanya being a Tolstoyan. How is it that you are in uniform heading to the front then?

Varsonofiev proceeds to toy with and challenge both of his drinking companions in the pages that follow. At one point Varsonofiev asks how Sanya and Tolstoy came to part company. Kotya answers for his friend after Sanya demurs.

"It was the cart!"

Sanya thought a bit and nodded. “Yes… some literate person wrote to Tolstoy. The Russian state, he said, was like an overturned cart, and it was very hard going, very awkward dragging along – how long, he wondered, would working people have to go on doing it? Wasn’t it time to get it back on its wheels? And Tolstoy answered: “Get it back on its wheels and those who turned it over will jump in and make you pull them, and you’ll be no better off.” Well what Tolstoy told them was: “Let the wretched cart look after itself! Just ignore it altogether! Unharness yourselves, go each his own way, in freedom. Then your lives will be easier.“

That conversation continues until a little further on the old man begins to challenge Kotya's own claim to be a follower of Hegel.

Vasonofiev settled down to enjoy himself, fingers interlaced on the table. “But if you are a Hegelian you must take a positive view of the state.” 

“Well, I… I suppose I do,” Kotya agreed with some hesitation. 

“The state does not like sharp breaks with the past. Gradualness is what it likes. Sudden breaks, leaps, are fatal to it,” the old man said. 

As they talk and drink, Varsonofiev continues to zero in on the implications of what these young people are really saying.

Russian army, WWI. Public domain.

“Words get worn out and often obscure meaning. What does it mean nowadays—being a populist?” 

Sanya concentrated… “A populist is someone who loves the people. Believes in their spiritual strength. Puts their eternal interests higher than his own petty short-term advantage. Lives not for himself, but for the people and their happiness.” 

“Happiness?” Varsonofiev asks. 

“Why yes, their happiness.” 

Varsonofiev’s eyes bored into him like searchlights from under the protective covering of his sweeping eyebrows. “For the majority of people happiness means being well fed, well clad, generally well off, the full satisfaction of their needs, doesn’t it? But if you think of it, it will take a whole century to feed and clothe everybody. A century before you think of their eternal interests—because poverty, slavery, ignorance and inefficient government stand in the way. To abolish or reform all these things, all this, will take how many—three generations of populists?” 

“Well… it might, I suppose.” 

 Varsonofiev continued: “And all these populists—for whom nothing will do but to save the whole people all at once—will do nothing to save themselves in the meantime. And they feel compelled, don’t they, to dismiss as worthless anyone who does not sacrifice himself for the people—anyone, that is, who practices one of the arts, or inquires into the ultimate meaning of life, or, worse still, turns to religion and the salvation of his own soul?” 

* * * *

Yes, novels like War and Peace or August 1914 and others appear to be massive mountains of words, but as the saying goes, "There's gold in them there hills."

What makes reading great literature so satisfying and rewarding is seeing how the ancient themes have such relevance again in our current historical moments. Of this, much more can be said.

AFTERWORD
A longer, more fully developed version of this post can be found on Medium.
Why great literature is so satisfying to read.
Solzhenitsyn's August 1914: How Fiction Enables Us to Get Closer to the Truth

Notes from an Old Card Catalog

As I continue my assault on getting organized, I keep finding things I'd forgotten I had. The other day I decided to examine several small boxes containing 3'x 5" note cards, the kind we used to use in high school and college when doing research for a paper.

One such box from four decades ago had a lot of notes about cults, with one of these quoting a writer as saying cults are the biggest threat to America today. It's been a long time since cults were front page news.

Here are some quotes that I found intriguing from this another batch of note cards.

* * * *

"People judge us by what they see--our actions, our means--not our intentions."--Jacques Ellul

"A people which no longer remembers has lost its history and its soul."--Aleksandr Sozhenitsyn

"There is a powerful tendency to move from the conviction that one knows the public good to the use of (force) power to impose that good."--Jeanne Kirkpatriick

"Within the last decade there have been many references from varied sources to the fact that the Western world stands on the verge of a spiritual rebirth, that is, a fundamental change of attitude toward the value of life."--Cary F. Baynes, translator's preface to Jung's Modern Man in Search of a Soul (1933)

Solipsism: the view that there is no reality outside of the self; all things relate solely to the experiences of the observer.

"A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises, but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaninglessness of an individual existence."--Eric Hoffer, The True Believer

"Three things are to be looked to in a building: that it stand on the right spot; that it be securely founded; that it be successfully executed."--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"There is always inequity in life. Some men are killed in a war and some are wounded, and some men never leave the country."--John F. Kennedy, March 21, 1962 press conference

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."--George Orwell, Animal Farm

* * * * 

Remembering Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: A Profile in Courage

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1974 (Public Domain)

In 1970, the year I left home for college, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature." If you've ever read his works, then you know the force with which he wrote.

The Russian author was both in 1918, the year the "Great War" ended, a year after the Russian Revolution. In college he studied mathematics, which he later said saved his life while he was in the Gulag (the Soviet Union labor camp system). Again, later when he was free he taught math to support his family while continuing his work as a writer.

Though he had been writing since youth, he never publicly or privately shared what he was writing about because of the risk involved. It wasn't until he was 42, after Stalin was dead and Khruschev was in power, that he dared to publish One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, compelled by a desire to share his thoughts as well as to obtain some affirmation of his literary value and efforts.

The following anecdote illustrates the source of his reticence about sharing his work:

Nikita Khruschev was giving a speech that was quite critical of Stalin, and suddenly somebody hollered out from somewhere in the audience: "Why didn't you say anything while he was alive??"

Khrushchev slammed his fist down on the podium and hollered, "WHO SAID THAT?"

The room was quiet.

"Now you know why I didn't say anything while Stalin was alive." *

* * * *

During World War II, because of his knowledge of math, Solzhenitsyn served in an artillery-position-finding capacity until he was arrested in February 1945. The grounds for his arrest were some remarks in his private correspondence with a school friend. He was sentenced to eight years in the gulag labor camps. After four year he was moved to a special prison for engineers and mathematicians, which he states probably saved his life.

During his imprisonment he also had a bout with cancer. Two of his greatest works--Cancer Ward and The Gulag Archipelago--were direct out growths of these catalytic experiences.

After the publication of that first novella, he continued to write, but was ultimately expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974.

* * * *
What follows are excerpts and quotes from the Nobel Prize winner's writings and speeches.

You only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything he’s no longer in your power — he’s free again.--The First Circle

For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.--The First Circle

I can say without affectation that I belong to the Russian convict world no less … than I do to Russian literature. I got my education there, and it will last forever.--The Oak and the Calf

Can a man who's warm understand one who's freezing?--One Day in the Life...

Beat a dog once and you only have to show him the whip.--One Day in the Life...

It is almost always impossible to evaluate at the time events which you have already experienced, and to understand their meaning with the guidance of their effects. All the more unpredictable and surprising to us will be the course of future events. -- Autobiographical sketch, NobelPrize.org

Harvard's motto is "Veritas." Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate with total attention on its pursuit. And even while it eludes us, the illusion still lingers of knowing it and leads to many misunderstandings. Also, truth is seldom pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter. There is some bitterness in my speech today, too. But I want to stress that it comes not from an adversary but from a friend.---Harvard University address, 1978

Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day. There is no open violence such as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to match mass standards frequently prevent independent-minded people from giving their contribution to public life. There is a dangerous tendency to form a herd, shutting off successful development.--Harvard University speech

Should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society in its present state as an ideal for the transformation of ours.--Harvard University speech

In different places over the years I have had to prove that socialism, which to many western thinkers is a sort of kingdom of justice, was in fact full of coercion, of bureaucratic greed and corruption and avarice, and consistent within itself that socialism cannot be implemented without the aid of coercion. Communist propaganda would sometimes include statements such as "we include almost all the commandments of the Gospel in our ideology". The difference is that the Gospel asks all this to be achieved through love, through self-limitation, but socialism only uses coercion. This is one point. Untouched by the breath of God, unrestricted by human conscience, both capitalism and socialism are repulsive.--interview, St. Austin Review

* * * *

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was an awakened mind fashioned by his times. He dedicated his life to sharing he wisdom and insights revealed to him. His voice ought not be soon forgotten.

Related Links
The Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Literature Prize 
Solzhenitsyn's Indictment of the West Still Stands
Bio of Solzhenitsyn at the Nobel Prize Website

* Source: Lloyd Wagner, co-author of And There Shall Be Wars.

Solzhenitsyn Indictment of the West Still Stands

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

In sorting papers from my files I stumbled upon Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's 1978 Harvard Commencement Address titled "A World Split Apart." I remember at the time it created quite a stir as the great author, now four years into his exile from Soviet Russia, shone a fierce light on the status of our own Western culture.

I recall reading one review which stated that he would never get another speaking engagement. It was a harsh indictment of our way of life, through and through. His biggest concern is that we as Americans were not really ready to lead the world, in part because we have never understood the world and how it sees us.

Part of the problem is due to our arrogance, believing in the superiority of our Enlightenment foundations. States Solzhenitsyn:

Today it would be retrogressive to hold on to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Such social dogmatism leaves us helpless before the trials of our times.

Even if we are spared destruction by war, life will have to change in order not to perish on its own. We cannot avoid reassessing the fundamental definitions of human life and society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man's life and society's activities should be ruled by material expansion above all? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our integral spiritual life?

If the world has not approached its end, it has reached a major watershed in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will demand from us a spiritual blaze; we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life, where our physical nature will not be cursed, as in the Middle Ages, but even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon, as in the Modern Era.

The ascension is similar to climbing onto the next anthropological stage. No one on earth has any other way left but — upward.

But the author of these words appears pessimistic as he goes on to note our cowardice, our compromises and especially the loss of our moral compass which defines right and wrong as whether it is legal or not.

Western society has chosen for itself the organization best suited to its purposes and one I might call legalistic. The limits of human rights and rightness are determined by a system of laws; such limits are very broad. People in the West have acquired considerable skill in using, interpreting, and manipulating law (though laws tend to be too complicated for an average person to understand without the help of an expert). Every conflict is solved according to the letter of the law and this is considered to be the ultimate solution.

If one is risen from a legal point of view, nothing more is required, nobody may mention that one could still not be right, and urge self-restraint or a renunciation of these rights, call for sacrifice and selfless risk: this would simply sound absurd. Voluntary self-restraint is almost unheard of: everybody strives toward further expansion to the extreme limit of the legal frames. (An oil company is legally blameless when it buys up an invention of a new type of energy in order to prevent its use. A food product manufacturer is legally blameless when he poisons his produce to make it last longer: after all, people are free not to purchase it.)

I have spent all my life under a Communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society based on the letter of the law and never reaching any higher fails to take full advantage of the full range of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes man's noblest impulses.

And it will be simply impossible to bear up to the trials of this threatening century with nothing but the supports of a legalistic structure.

These words were written during the Cold War, just before Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the Western-propped Shah of Iran. The collapse of Communism gave us more years to feel self-confident, but the new challenges in our world are harder to fit into neat little explanations to comfort us.

Last night I watched a video about the collapse of our economy. Someone from Germany recently told me that the global economy is propped on our shoulders, but what if that gives? The speaker in this video stated that he anticipates 25 years of global anarchy, which sounds pretty darn scary to me.

When you read the speech in its entirety, it's sobering.

Meantime, "he not busy bein' born is busy dying."  

Cruel and Unusual

"When the truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie." ~ Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Three decades ago I picked up Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago and couldn't put it down. It's a fairly massive volume of story after story of the horrors committed in Soviet Russia under communism. Without a free press, a whole system of atrocity could exist. It was a horror, and not the way civilized peoples were meant to co-exist in "the good society."

Solzhenitsyn detailed a brutality limited only by the imaginations of men. These are the kinds of things one imagines Kurtz was referring to in Conrad's Heart of Darkness when he uttered that verdict on the nature of his heart: "The horror." Yet Kurtz himself simultaneously confides, "I had immense plans."

Conrad's story is a work of fiction, though often fiction can be a better mirror of reality than what passes for non-fiction sometimes.

The twentieth century has been filled with horror. Pol Pot in Cambodia, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the Ottoman Turks' efforts to eliminate the Armenians, Mao's starvation of 35 million Chinese peasants in the fifties. Much of what was going down occurred because in these dark places there was no free press. There was no light.

But when the lights were turned on at Abu Graib, it made us uncomfortable to discover that our country had been similarly making horror. When the pictures hit the Internet, Americans winced. That's because our Eighth Amendment to the Constitution states: Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. This kind of thing could not be condoned. Yet in other places, out of sight and out of mind, horrors will continue unabated.

On another front, the fighting continues in Gaza. The Israeli army has fired on aid trucks and a Red Cross ambulance trying to help the wounded. Innocents are starving, but who will intercede? The U.N. Security Council has called for a cease fire in a 14-0 vote (the U.S. abstained), but will there be any action taken? At least in this situation, there are cameras rolling, and people of conscience can at least see what is going on, if they would but look.

No wonder Dylan once wrote, "I've seen the kingdoms of this world, and it's making me feel afraid."