A Prophet Passes

Today sees the going-out of one of the few bright lights in the dark century that was the twentieth. As is the case with most such lights, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was not appreciated as such by many, and ultimately cast off by the mainstream as irrelevant. This was and is to their detriment, as another bright light gone from our presence – Mr. William F. Buckley – pointed out in his 1976 defense of Mr. Solzhenitsyn’s declaration that the world, and in particular the West, is “in an advanced stage of decomposition”; making of itself a soft-touch for Soviet domination.

Fortuitously, there were Reagan, and Thatcher, and John Paul II to rouse us from that particular flirtation with suicide. But what is to become of us today; for the parallels between then and now are profound, and the disease diagnosed by Mr. Solzhenitsyn remains.

Cheers,

Charlie