Happy birthday to Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918 –2008). In 17978, the Harvard grads expected warm commencement fuzzies and got an Old Testament prophet! Here are a few portions of that tough-minded message: • “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.” ~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 1978 speech to the graduating class at Harvard). • A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations.” ~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918 –2008), Harvard, June 8, 1978. • “It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations” ~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Harvard University, 1978 As a critic of Soviet communism, Solzhenitsyn was imprisoned, stripped of his citizenship and exiled by the Soviet government. He came to live in the United States in 1976 where he also found much to criticize culturally but was not punished for his free speech. A true model for rising to fight in the so-called culture wars in reasonable and highly intelligent ways.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 17:28:37 +0000
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