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Aleksander Solzhenitsyn’s Powerful Advice for a Broken Canada
 
 
The past few weeks have been a ‘wild ride’. We witnessed media hype over supposed UFO sightings and shootdowns, media silence on catastrophic train derailments, and obfuscation from those in positions of leadership, including on the topic of foreign interference in our elections. That was rounded out yesterday when an ostensibly neutral commission, ignoring glaring evidence, brought in the anticipated ruling of ‘no harm, no foul’ regarding the invoking of the Emergencies Act.

As if these were not enough, a parliamentary committee decided that killing citizens with taxpayer dollars shouldn’t be limited to adults, the Canadian government wants to help end minors’ lives as well. One of the baseline thresholds for a civilized democracy is the protection of her weak and innocent. Apparently not the case in Canada, circa 2023.
In the face of crumbling foundations, Canada needs grounded leaders able to foresee pitfalls, discern lies and recognize true danger, and who continue to walk with steadfast resolve through the emergent chaos.
Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, the courageously principled author and dissident, was asked to address Harvard in 1978 after he was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974. We’ve heard much about rights and freedoms this past year (I’ve said plenty myself), but freedom is not an end in itself.

I recommend you read the entire address, but the excerpt below was highly prescient, piercing to the core of our current national crisis:
“In early democracies, all individual human rights were granted on the ground that man is God’s creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding one thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual be granted boundless freedom with no purpose, simply for the satisfaction of his whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were eroded everywhere in the West; a total emancipation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice.
The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even to excess, but man’s sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistic selfishness of the Western approach to the world has reached its peak and the world has found itself in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the celebrated technological achievements of progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the twentieth century’s moral poverty, which no one could have imagined even as late as the nineteenth century.”
Our loss of a collective moral rudder has the good ship Canada drifting toward rocky shores. It’s why we’ve focused lately on the work to be done closer to home, daily; connecting locally for support and spiritual grounding; being the best spouse, friend, or parent we can; raising children grounded in truth, aware of a danger-filled world, but who’ve been taught resilience and courage; speaking the truth, in love, even when it sacrifices our peace, reputation or career.
If the past weeks confirmed one thing, it’s that hope is not found in political leaders (or those waiting in the wings), lawyers, commissions or similar. They can be peripheral means to various ends, but more often than not, they’re making things worse, and rapidly so. As Jordan Peterson said recently “I don’t see how we could be stupider here in the West if we actually took courses in stupidity and tried as hard as we could. We seem to be doing everything we can to break everything as rapidly as possible”.

Don’t sell yourselves short on your ability to discern right from wrong, smart from stupid, and to act in ways that greatly impact your spheres of influence. We may desire freedom, but without taking on the immense responsibility it requires, we simply join the race for a version that is little more than self-centered hedonism. That responsibility may mean boldly speaking truth in the face of lies. Other times, it may require refusing to comply when compelled by an authority to act in ways harmful to those around us or which violate our conscience. Heed that conscience. Be the steadfast, calm leaders our nation so desperately needs.
   Greg

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33