Communism, the Opiate of the Innerlekshuls

We've referenced Alexander Solzhenitsyn a number of times on this blog, principally for his Harvard Address, which is worth re-reading annually.  As you might expect, Solzhenitsyn has a wide group of admirers, including Putin; one of them is a fellow named Egor Kholmogorov, who will publish a 16k-word essay on the man.

These snippets are taken from the preamble to that work.  They are noteworthy because they name and shame the ills we see today in the USA and in Western Europe.  (Not, mind you, EASTERN Europe, which has become 'woke' to the threat described below.)

...The Gulag Archipelago, published in the West, carried out a sweeping detoxification of Western elites from their poisoning by Communism, that “opiate for the intellectuals” (to quote Raymond Aron). However, this transformation gave them no antidote for militant atheism, the very force that had spawned Bolshevism. A liberal version of anti-Communism logically led to the triumph of Communism under the modernized and updated guise of Cultural Marxism – leftist feminism, totalitarian “tolerance”, racist “anti-racism”, the final victory of Homintern. Even this had already been envisioned by Solzhenitsyn. He theorized that, at a certain point in the future, a Russia liberated from Communist totalitarianism would gaze in horror at the triumph of a Liberal-built Western “Communism”....

"But, but," you say, "the US is a church-going country!!!"

Wrong, minority-breath.  The influence of Christianity prevails only in the South, and that influence is tenuous.  The centers of influence--New York, D.C., and the West Coast--are either blatantly atheistic or are 'practically' atheist:  religious-in-name-only.  They may go to church but they don't believe a word of it.

It cannot be stressed enough that Cult precedes Culture.  What you worship will determine how you behave, and atheism is the precursor of nihilism.  Nihilism can be shaped to resemble a Christianized humanism--but it is not humanistic at all.  It is the culture of Death, exactly as John Paul II called it.  It is the culture of mass-murderers, opiates, and suicide(s).

...Communism and Liberalism are two siblings spawned by the Enlightenment ideology that would put mankind on the disastrous road of worshiping Matter instead of Spirit, which would inevitably lea to the sullying and degradation of said Matter. Solzhenitsyn puts forward a detailed and consistent anti-Enlightenment doctrine: A return to God, voluntary self-restraint and self-restriction of humankind, emphasizing duties instead of ever-expanding “rights”, prioritizing inner freedom, and rejecting the sacrifice of national life not only to totalitarian utopia but also to the orgy of freedom....

(Shades of Patrick Deneen!!)

THIS is the battle, not some fabbledrabble over tax rates, drug-costs, or weapons.  THIS battle will be won on your knees praying, not under the Capitol dome.

Get to it!