← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · wild_bill
Thread ID: 11719 | Posts: 16 | Started: 2004-01-03
2004-01-03 01:52 | User Profile
[Good article]
Revisiting Solzhenitsyn After September 11
Solzhenitsyn warned that the West was drifting towards a philosophical materialism of its own. Western man had "forgotten God." By forgetting God, the West faced a "calamity of a despiritualized and irreligious humanistic consciousness" that weakened it towards external military threats and made it vulnerable to decay and collapse from within. Only by turning back to God from the self-centered humanism where "man is the touchstone in judging and evaluating everything on earth" would the West be able to escape the destruction toward which it inexorably moves.
[url]http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/JacSolz.htm[/url]
2004-01-03 03:36 | User Profile
Sally Supermarket: "Oh, forget God. His name has oppressed homosexuals and women. Just carry a copy of the book 'All Humans Are Equal Except In Israel' by Ira Steinfeinweinbergfeldwitznik, and a copy of 'America: That Diverse Democracy and Melting Pot' by Linda Goldsilverdiamondruby, and, sister, you don't need God! Oh, yes, and also, put your kids into a day-care center so that you can work in an office building with some cute lawyer [giggle]."
Do you know a Sally? I do.....and.....Sally votes! Way cool.
2004-01-03 18:25 | User Profile
[QUOTE=wild_bill][Good article]
Revisiting Solzhenitsyn After September 11
Solzhenitsyn warned that the West was drifting towards a philosophical materialism of its own. Western man had "forgotten God." By forgetting God, the West faced a "calamity of a despiritualized and irreligious humanistic consciousness" that weakened it towards external military threats and made it vulnerable to decay and collapse from within. Only by turning back to God from the self-centered humanism where "man is the touchstone in judging and evaluating everything on earth" would the West be able to escape the destruction toward which it inexorably moves.
[url]http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/JacSolz.htm[/url][/QUOTE]
Speaking of Solzhenitsyn - that just reminds me that we've never really resolved the disposition of his last book - pointedly on the jewish question in Russia. As I recall, the book was having some problems even being published in the west.
2004-01-03 18:36 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Franco]Sally Supermarket: "Oh, forget God. His name has oppressed homosexuals and women. Just carry a copy of the book 'All Humans Are Equal Except In Israel' by Ira Steinfeinweinbergfeldwitznik, and a copy of 'America: That Diverse Democracy and Melting Pot' by Linda Goldsilverdiamondruby, and, sister, you don't need God! Oh, yes, and also, put your kids into a day-care center so that you can work in an office building with some cute lawyer [giggle]."
Do you know a Sally? I do.....and.....Sally votes! Way cool.[/QUOTE]Wait a minute though! Doesn't Sally's sister Suzy still go to Church and reads Left-Behind books, in wait for the reestablishment of the temple in Jerusalem and the victory of Israel over her enemies, which might be bad except that all the faithful will be raptured from the earth anyway - etc. etc.?
In America its really superflous to talk about whether either belief or unbelief is jewish dominated. Originating in a jewish dominated culture and system, the most culturally influential strains of both belief and unbelief naturally turn out to be judeocentric of course. But neither one of these tendencies is natural at all. Both Western science and western religion are naturally judeoskeptic, and still would be, except for jewish dominance in our country.
2004-01-03 19:37 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Okiereddust]Speaking of Solzhenitsyn - that just reminds me that we've never really resolved the disposition of his last book - pointedly on the jewish question in Russia. As I recall, the book was having some problems even being published in the west.[/QUOTE]
I don't think the book has found a translator yet.
2004-01-03 20:20 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Bardamu]I don't think the book has found a translator yet.[/QUOTE] :lol:. That reminds me of some odd story I read once about why some books in the USSR weren't available. The soviet gov't claimed there was "a paper shortage." If there wasn't some other problem with this book, getting a translator I'd think would be a small problem.
For that matter, Solzhenitsyn to my knowledge would seem to be perfectly capable of writing at least a passable book in English himself - all that it would need I suppose would be a little proofreading. He lived in the US after all for 20 years.
The fact that he seemed to write a book in Russian for an explicitely Russian audience, knowing I suspect there would be resistance to it elsewhere.
2004-01-03 20:58 | User Profile
I don't think Solzhenitsyn learned any English during his stay in Vermont. He lived like a hermit, and didn't consider the US his new home.
On Solzhenitsyn's return to Russia he visited several locations in Russia and gave speeches critical of Yeltsin and describing his vision for Russia. I know that BBC shot a documentary about this. I wonder what happened to that.
2004-01-03 21:03 | User Profile
On the subject of paper shortages, classic literature was published in enormous quantities in the Soviet Union, a print of several million volumes was typical. The more obvious dissident voices wouldn't have been printed, for sure, but many classic works were dangerous for the regime too. So to work around that, the interpretation was left to the marxists.
2004-01-03 21:39 | User Profile
[QUOTE=madrussian]I don't think Solzhenitsyn learned any English during his stay in Vermont. He lived like a hermit, and didn't consider the US his new home.
On Solzhenitsyn's return to Russia he visited several locations in Russia and gave speeches critical of Yeltsin and describing his vision for Russia. I know that BBC shot a documentary about this. I wonder what happened to that.[/QUOTE]
I am trying to figure out what it general seems to have happened to Solzhenitsyn. At one time, when I was in high school in the early 70's, it seemed like Solzhenitsyn had achieved virtual celebrity status of sorts (at least that granted to literary figures) in the United States. I read his books in school, and he was discussed reguarly in the news. And not just among conservatives. Walter Cronkite even gave this seemingly serious account of how Brezhnev would be described by history teachers in the future re:
question: Who was Brehznev? answer: Oh son- he was a Russian politician who lived in the Solzhenitsyn era
There is an enormous untold story of how Brezhnev disappeared from the public eye in America and the west in general. I think in retrospect it was an early indicator of the rise of the neocons - Solzhenitsyn was quietly criticized for his slavophic, eastern-oriented, mystical, modernoskeptic viewpoints and quietly exiled to Vermont to work a few manuscripts of his.
It is amazing in retrospect that for a man who was as famous as he once was I actually have been told so little about personally since he left Russia in 1974. Even the matter of his english. I'd always assumed he spoke good english since he gave a number of famous speeches in the US, but to tell the truth I really know little of him personally, such as the actual mechanics of his public dealings.
I know enough to know something is working rather powerfully behind the scenes against him. The BBC documentary probably just fel in the same black hole everything in the last 25 years seems to have fallen concerning him.
2004-01-03 21:47 | User Profile
[QUOTE=madrussian]On the subject of paper shortages, classic literature was published in enormous quantities in the Soviet Union, a print of several million volumes was typical. The more obvious dissident voices wouldn't have been printed, for sure, but many classic works were dangerous for the regime too. So to work around that, the interpretation was left to the marxists.[/QUOTE]I remembered basically that some author (the Christian activist Richard Wurmbrand) had once asked the Soviet gov't about the printing of several books that you'd think they'd want to print. (Actually dozens of unpublished works of Karl Marx) and had received some typical russian type answer I don't know if it was the paper shortage, funds, "lack of time" etc.
Wurmbrand incidentally advanced a theory of some secret occultish affiliations being related to the origins of Communism.
2004-01-03 22:00 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Okiereddust]I am trying to figure out what it general seems to have happened to Solzhenitsyn. [/QUOTE]
That is funny. You of all people not knowing what the problem is: Solzhenitsyn is the penultimate paleo-con.
2004-01-03 22:47 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Bardamu]That is funny. You of all people not knowing what the problem is: Solzhenitsyn is the penultimate paleo-con.[/QUOTE]I was saying it was tied into the neocons. I am just curious how the mechanics of his de facto exile from American public life could have escaped me so completely, and for that matter the other paleocons. I've never heard of him referred to much in the paleocon press or heard Solzhenitsyn tied in with them.
2004-01-04 00:58 | User Profile
I guess paleoconservatives never knew how to process the Orthodoxy and nationalism of Solzhenitsyn.
2004-01-04 03:38 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Bardamu]I guess paleoconservatives never knew how to process the Orthodoxy and nationalism of Solzhenitsyn.[/QUOTE] Well it depends what you mean by paleoconservatives. In a broad sense there always have been a "paleoconservative" movement in the sense of referring to all the sections of the right the mainstreamers/neo's couldn't completely assimilate, (but which were still conservative) and a narrow paleo movement centered around the Fleming/Chronicles/Chapel Hill faction.
One needs to know the individual history of all the various groups to really know why they never developed a working relationship. Otherwise, its ony speculation.
Although one really doesn't need to speculate too much to anticipate a few difficulties between two presonalities as notoriously cantankerous as Fleming and Solzhenitsyn.
Realistically though, ther have been so many inviting targets presented by the neocon takeover that its quite a challenge even for the best political/ideological leader to incorporate and unify them a really substantial portion of them.
Say imagine harmonizing a political council composed of Triskelion, Todd Brendan Fahey, Weisbrot, and Polish Noble. :lol:
2004-01-04 04:50 | User Profile
When I say paleocon I mean old fashioned, as opposed to neo. It would seem that traditional conservative periodicals would celebrate the career of Solzhenitsyn, instead of ignoring him, simply out of the good public relations it would generate. It's not everyday that your political school has a living world historic genius to blow trumpets over. These days, considering the verboten subject of Solzhenitsyn's latest work, it is understandable why no one in the press reports on him: pusillanimity. God bless the man. Can you think of one living person who has more stature than Solzhenitsyn? I can't.
2004-01-04 05:51 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Bardamu]When I say paleocon I mean old fashioned, as opposed to neo. It would seem that traditional conservative periodicals would celebrate the career of Solzhenitsyn, instead of ignoring him, simply out of the good public relations it would generate. It's not everyday that your political school has a living world historic genius to blow trumpets over.
For whatever reason, the only place I've ever read Solzhenitsyn is in National Review, where of course it mainly defended him against the anti-semtitism charge. For NR that's pretty good.
Chronicles, TAC, or New American I don't know. Maybe someone here should submit an article for them.
These days, considering the verboten subject of Solzhenitsyn's latest work, it is understandable why no one in the press reports on him: pusillanimity. God bless the man. Can you think of one living person who has more stature than Solzhenitsyn? I can't.[/QUOTE] Surely you must have overlooked Bill Kristol :disgust: :dung: