Dreher begins with a story of a little-known man, Father Kolakovic, who worked to prepare the Slovak Christians for the coming Soviet invasion. After World War II, he knew that the Russians would replace the Germans as an occupying force and felt the need to shore up the Christians in advance.
Dreher feels a similar mission in America. Not that America will soon be subject to the hard totalitarianism of Soviet Communism, but that America will soon fall under another destructive force he calls "soft totalitarianism." Following Kolakovic's dictum, Dreher wants Christians to "See. Judge. Act. See meant to be awake to realities around you. Judge was a command to discern soberly the meaning of those realities in light of what you know to be true, especially from the teachings of the Christian faith. After you reach a conclusion, then you are to act to resist evil." (p. 5)
Dreher believes that America, with its therapeutic, atomized culture, is a prime breeding ground for the soft totalitarianism he sees coming. We, as a people, are more lonely and separated than ever before. Hannah Arendt warned about the dangers inherent in that type of a society in the 1950s. "What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world, is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience of the ever-growing masses of our century." (p. 31) As we have moved away from the original American dream of a virtuous citizen, informed by Scripture, free to live as he pleased within godly constraints towards a materialistic and individualistic view of happiness, we have also become exactly the type of society Arendt warned about. Our hyper-focus on our own, individualized experiences and our ability to interpret our own reality has fractured our society and left us vulnerable to totalitarianism.
This totalitarianism will not come from a gun, but from the tears of social justice warriors. These members of "ideological motivated moral communities" seek to enforce their sacrosanct beliefs, which give meaning and purpose to their own lives, onto the surrounding populace. (p. 60) As they see the world as a series of power struggles in the Marxian sense—oppressors vs. oppressed—they seek power to upend existing structures. Identity is the key to which camp one fits in. Various identities are definitionally oppressed while others are definitionally the oppressors. They do not seek actual justice; they seek power and domination. They have harnessed the most influential of social institutions in order to command the conversation and demand language reflect their point of view. Believing that words construct reality, and he who has power controls the language, they have latched onto language as a way to dominate. Say the wrong thing and it's labeled "violence." While actual violence is justified in the name of upending power structures.
Dreher sums up where we find ourselves today:
In the West today, we are living under decadent, pre-totalitarian conditions. Social atomization, widespread loneliness, the rise of ideology, widespread loss of faith in institutions, and other factors leave society vulnerable to the totalitarian temptation to which both Russia and Germany succumbed in the previous century.Furthermore, intellectual, cultural, academic, and corporate elites are under the sway of a left-wing political cult built around social justice. It is a militantly illiberal ideology that shares alarm ing commonalities with Bolshevism, including dividing humanity between the Good and the Evil. This pseudoreligion appears to meet a need for meaning and moral purpose in a post-Christian society and seeks to build a just society by demonizing, excluding, and even persecuting all who resist its harsh dogmas. (p. 93)
However, Dreher is not writing to send the reader into despair. He spends countless hours interviewing those who lived in the times of Soviet totalitarianism to glean hope and way to stand athwart the coming onslaught. One dissident states, "You will be surrounded by lies—you don't have a choice...If you want to live in fear, or if you want to live in freedom of the soul. If your soul is free, then your thoughts are free, and your words are going to be free."
First, we are to immerse ourselves in history. Not knowing history is a perfect way to atomize an individual. The person who does not know where he came from and what came before is isolated and vulnerable to lies. Religion is also necessary to connect individuals to one another so that a person is not left to fend for themselves in a world bent on lies. Truth in Scripture can be used to counter the deception propagated by a system bent on destruction. Faith, not reason, may be the only thing onto which a person can cling. Families are also indispensable in grounding individuals and passing on a heritage. Within a family, truth can be spoken free of fear. "It's no accident that every dictatorship always tries to break down the family, because it's in the family that you get the strength to be able to fight." (p. 148) Finally, an education, backed by and infused with Christianity and historical knowledge is the best way to prepare students for the coming darkness. People can survive the leftist totalitarianism only if surrounded by those who will hold him to truth and push out the lies.
Like in his book, The Benedict Option, Dreher recommends small, like-minded communities to harbor and shelter people from soft totalitarianism we are seeing today. He's not sure pastors will be up to the challenge. It's in small groups—families, schools, Bible study groups—that people will find the strength to stand up. "We desperately need to throw off the chains of solitude and find the freedom that awaits us in fellowship...Only in solidarity with others can we find the spiritual an communal strength to resist." (p. 181)
Spurn fear. We are free. Our souls can remain free if we choose to Live Not By Lies. Suffering and persecution can be withstood by a solid faith in God and in the Truth. We have no choice.
