Solzhenitsyn & Peterson

I was really hoping it wasn’t a bad omen, but it probably was. Since I don’t listen to anything political and avoid radio, computers, and all sources of news on Election Day, especially when it’s a presidential year, I strapped on my snowshoes and set out on the trail behind my house and listened to a podcast. For a few weeks leading up to the election all I listened to were various conservative political podcasters, but not now. I don’t like the emotional ups and downs when hearing continuous coverage. Time enough later at night to see how it’s shaking down. I noticed that a few days earlier Jordan Peterson uploaded a new podcast after apparently posting little new material for most of the past year due to illness (I had recently just finished listening to his Maps of Meaning lectures). It turned out to be about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and the 50th anniversary of The Gulag Archipelago, in which Peterson was asked to write the introduction to the Penguin edition. So here I was, packing down our eventual ski trail trying to avoid politics and doing a miserable job of it. Peterson said that being asked to write the introduction may have been his single greatest honor. It turns out that he has a long background studying Solzhenitsyn, and the clinical psychologist and professor minced no words describing the failures and horrors of Marxist ideology.

Of course, I couldn’t help but think of it in regards to the election and the American ideological and culture wars today. The Biden/Harris ticket promises to continue - and no doubt expand - the attacks on conservatives and people of faith begun during the Obama/Biden years should they win or steal the White House. They’ve promised as much and I have no doubt they will wage this war. Look at what Kamala Harris did as the California Attorney General to David Daleiden of The Center for Medical Progress. Instead of investigating Planned Parenthood for the illegal selling of baby body parts, she held a secret meeting with PP executives and targeted the man who exposed them. Biden himself has promised to persecute, once again, the Little Sisters of the Poor and absolutely crush nuns who only care about helping the elderly, poor, and needy. No one is allowed to be exempt from supplying contraceptives and abortifacients to their employees. No one…unless, of course, you are currying favor with powerful unions. In that case they get a pass. After President Trump eliminated the individual mandate the Little Sisters case against the federal government disappeared…only to have four attorney generals from liberal states decided to attack the nuns where Obama left off. This time reprieve eventually came from the Supreme Court. And good ‘ol Catholic Joe Biden plans to resurrect this devil. Given his clear mental deterioration of late, one could hope that he would forget about it, but unfortunately there will be plenty of left wing radicals to help him stay the course. If he is at some point replaced by his vice president we can be assured the heavy artillery will come out against us sooner than later.

As I write this three days after the election, in which the media is trying to push Biden over the finish line and the president is claiming fraud and litigating in several states, I am amazed at our unlikely hero. The worldly multi-millionaire who has been married three times and has a checkered moral past has been an incredible defender of religious freedom, the right to life, and conservative principals. Everyone is quick to point out his flaws, but I have never seen someone fight for these causes with such unwavering strength, day after day, under a relentless sea of vitriol and hate. What would snap others in days or weeks he was subjected to for four-and-a-half years, beginning on the campaign trail.

I found it a little strange to hear Michael Matt of The Remnant describe the president as “a father figure” in a recent video. Over the years I have thought about Trump in several different ways (particularly as a bull in a china shop) but not fatherly. This morning before we got out of bed, my wife - who didn’t see Michael Matt’s video but did see a speech by the president the night before - said she saw Trump as a father trying to protect his children. I think they’re both right. Underneath the bravado, exaggerations, and ill-advised tweets is a Washington outsider who has fought hard for the common man and his family, and in doing so has developed true paternal instincts to keep his ‘children’ from being devoured by the secular dogs always circling to find the weak spot.  

Trump does not believe that our country is unjustly built upon the backs of slaves and that there is systemic racism. His, and our, opponents do. Because of this they increasingly think the entire system needs to be uprooted. Equality is called for, but not the equality of opportunity but of results. This always ends badly. Very badly. As a matter of fact Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has written about it from first hand experience. A year after this great anti-communist fighter died, The Russian government made it mandatory to read in every high school the Gulag Archipelago. They do not want to repeat these horrors. Conversely, in the United States universities promote the ideas of Marx and high schools advance the leveling of sexuality and sexual differences. When Jordan Peterson asks why the hell we aren’t reading the Gulag Archipelago in our schools it’s a good question. Perhaps space can be made next to the books on Nazi’s and the Holocaust or, if there’s no room there, next to the books on coming of age after homosexual rape (see Battle Plans - Other Letters - School Board and LGBT Reading List).