When we think of the collapse of the Soviet Union, several names come to mind: Gorbachev, Reagan, Pope John Paul II, Lech Walesa, Margaret Thatcher, Vaclav Havel.  But one name is missing: Alexander Solzhenitsyn.  It was Solzhenitsyn’s great corpus of work, beginning with One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and continuing through The Gulag Archipelago, that opened the eyes of the West to the magnitude of the crimes of Soviet totalitarianism.  Marxist-style regimes now survive only in isolated pockets: Cuba, North Korea, and in a qualified sense China.

Today it is impossible to deny that Solzhenitsyn was correct about the “evil empire,” and his role in exposing it and bringing it down.  But there is another side to Solzhenitsyn that has been largely ignored, and this is his critique of certain trends in Western civilization.  Solzhenitsyn raised this subject, no less controversial and for us closer to home, in his famous 1978 Harvard address.

Even though he was second to none in his denunciation of totalitarian socialism, Solzhenitsyn said, "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." The whole address is worth reading, but here are some highlights.

On the lack of courage in facing a totalitarian enemy: "The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country...and of course in the United Nations....Such a decline is especially notable among ruling groups and the intellectual elite....They get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists."

On how materialism makes a nation soft: "Every citizen has been granted the desired freedom and material goods in such quantity and of such quality as to guarantee in theory the pursuit of happiness...So why and for what should one risk one's precious life in defense of common values and particularly in such nebulous cases when the security of one's nation must be defended in a distant country?"

On what has happened to the rule of law: "People in the West has acquired considerable skill in using, interpreting and manipulating law....If one is right from a legal point of view, nothing more is required, nobody might mention that one could still not be entirely right and urge a willingness to show restraint or sacrifice. Everybody operates at the extreme limits of those legal frames....A society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed, but a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either."

On the rights of criminals: "Legal frames especially in the United States are broad enough to encourage not only individual freedom but also certain individual crimes. The culprit can go unpunished or obtain undeserved leniency with the support of legions of public defenders. When a government starts an earnest fight against terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorists' civil rights. There are many such cases."

On the abuses of freedom: "Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime and horror...Such a tilt of freedom in the direction of evil has come about gradually but it was evidently born out of a humanistic concept according to which there is no evil inherent to human nature."

On freedom of the press: "The press, too, enjoys the widest freedom. But what use does it make of this freedom? The press has become the greatest power within the Western countries, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. One would then like to ask: by what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible? How many hasty, immature, superficial and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, and without any verification? Thus we see terrorists made into heroes, or secret matters pertaining to the national defense publicly revealed, or shameful intrusion into the privacy of people under the false slogan: everyone has the right to know everything."

On the atrophy of the spiritual life: "Mere freedom does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and it even adds some new ones....We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life."

Thirty years ago, the very chattering classes mentioned in Solzhenitsyn's address ridiculed the man as a reactionary and a crank. The literary critic Susan Sontag wrote about Manhattan cocktail parties at which the cultural left would laugh at Solzhenitsyn. No one--certainly not liberals and libertarians--wanted to hear what the New York Times called Solzhenitsyn's "hectoring jeremiads."

But today when you go to Asia you hear everywhere the slogan, "Modernization, yes; Westernization, no." Throughout the Muslim world there is a reaction--exploited of course by the Islamic radicals--against what is perceived as the shamelessness and decadence of Western values and culture. Even in the West there is deep ambivalence about what has happened to cherished notions of liberty, the rule of law, freedom of the press, and the pursuit of happiness.

Theologian and writer John Piper reflects on the recent death of Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Solzhenitsyn inspired me because of the suffering he endured and the effect it had on him. Here is the quote that I have not forgotten. It moves me deeply to this day. After his imprisonment in the Russian gulag of Joseph Stalin’s “corrective labor camps” Solzhenitsyn wrote:

It was granted to me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good. In the intoxication of youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer and an oppressor. In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments. It was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.... That is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me: “Bless you, prison!” I...have served enough time there. I nourished my soul there, and I say without hesitation: “Bless you, prison, for having been in my life!”

The Gulag Archipelago:
1918-1956 Vol. 2, 615-617

China Banishes Pastor from Beijing Prior to Games

BEIJING -- "As U.S. President George W. Bush attends Olympic events in Beijing this week and a church service in the capital next Sunday, Chinese authorities have banished house church pastor Zhang Mingxuan from the city for the duration of the Games."

"Compass Direct News said that Zhang, a Christian for 22 years, traveled as an itinerant evangelist throughout China before moving to Beijing in 1998. He is co-founder and president of the China House Church Alliance, established in April 2005 to defend the rights of house church Christians.

In 2005, CDN reported, President Bush invited Zhang to a meeting during an official visit to China. The meeting never took place, however, as officials detained Zhang before he could attend.

crosswalk.com

Bush Challenges China to Let its People Speak, Pray Freely

US President George W Bush stepped up the pressure on China to guarantee full religious freedom following a visit to a state-sanctioned church in Beijing on Sunday.

Bush said in a statement that his visit to Kuanjie Church had shown “that God is universal, God is love and no state, no man, or woman should fear the influence of loving religion”.

According to Dennis Wilder, a White House National Security official, President Bush pressed the case of religious freedom later in a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao.

"President Hu seemed to indicate that the door is open to religious freedom in China and that in the future there will be more room for religious believers," Wilder told reporters.

Bush is in China on an official visit that has so far struck a careful balance between diplomacy and fun at the Olympics, which opened in Beijing last Friday.

There were some media reports that Chinese activist Hua Huiqi had been arrested by police whilst on his way to the Kuanjie Church on Sunday, where Bush was taking part in a service.

christiantoday.com

Rick Warren's Southern California megachurch announced today it will host the first joint campaign appearance of Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama.

Warren will moderate the event with the presumed Republican and Democratic presidential nominees Aug.16 at Saddleback Church's Civil Forum on Leadership and Compassion.

"This is a critical time for our nation and the American people deserve to hear both candidates speak from the heart – without interruption – in a civil and thoughtful format absent the partisan 'gotcha' questions that typically produce heat instead of light," Warren said in a statement.

Warren, founding pastor of the 22,000-member church, said the primaries "proved that Americans care deeply about the faith, values, character and leadership convictions of candidates as much as they do about the issues."

"While I know both men as friends, and they recognize I will be frank, but fair, they also know I will be raising questions in these four areas beyond what political reporters typically ask," Warren said. "This includes pressing issues that are bridging divides in our nation, such as poverty, HIV/AIDS, climate and human rights."

WorldNetDaily.com

"The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even to excess, but man's sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer. Must one point out that from ancient times a decline in courage has been considered the first symptom of the end?"

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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