Sunday, August 03, 2008

Solzhenitsyn died Sunday

"We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right to repress others. In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations. It is for this reason, and not because of the 'weakness of indoctrinational work,' that they are growing up 'indifferent.' Young people are acquiring the conviction that foul deeds are never punished on earth, that they always bring prosperity.

"It is going to be uncomfortable, horrible, to live in such a country!"

-"The Gulag Archipelago"
Excerpts from the works of writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn | Macleans.ca - Canada - Features

I just had a re-read of Solzhenitsyn's famous address to the Harvard Class of 1978, a curious form of Lincolnism

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

First Arthur C. Clarke, then George Carlin, and now Solzhenitsyn.


Quite a sad year for the arts and intellectual community.

And not nearly as sad if we were noticeably replacing them either. Where are the next generation of Solzhenitsyns?

Charles Henry said...

"Where are the next generation of Solzhenitsyns?"

Well, there's Bat Yeor, Hirsi Ali, Walid Shoebat...

They're around.

The Gulag Archipelago is one of those books that I've always wished I had read. (Well, the three books in the trilogy, I should say)

Anonymous said...

"Well, there's Bat Yeor, Hirsi Ali, Walid Shoebat..."


True....

But let's stick with the doom and gloom shall we? I enjoy a good old fashioned doomsday complex, especially on a Monday.

Dag said...

OK, I'm stepping up to the plate with the reminder that I am working away on my magnum opus, now with a new title, given that the old one wasn't getting much enthusiasm, "The Romance and Counter-Enlightenment Origins of Left Dhimmi Fascism." I thought it had tonnes of pizazz. Seems I'm the only one who held that opinion. Well, I can take a hint, so it's now title: "A Genealogy of Left Dhimmi Fascism."

As soon as this thing hits the bookshops I'll be rich! Why am I waiting? The world needs me.

truepeers said...

Well Dag, I wouldn't take my tastes as a good indicator of market value, not yet, but I kind of like the first title bettter...