Your GPS Is Wrong — Turn Around
On the Anniversary of Solzhenitsyn’s Lament for the False Prophets of Government Reform
I like to take walks through town; it’s good for my health to get outside and move around a bit.
This summer, I made a point to find some of the roads I still haven’t strolled upon in all the years I’ve lived here. One such road I wandered this past week made me laugh.
The long, straight avenue tapered off, the pavement crudely dissolving into the more natural terrain, at some farm fields and what appeared to be a private drive. Theoretically, the road could’ve continued, but a sign posted on a pole explained the practical reality: “YOUR GPS IS WRONG — TURN AROUND.”
It’s not difficult to imagine what necessitated such a sign to be posted. And considering how many signs of that wording can be found at online retailers, it’s apparently a popular piece of outdoor decor.
People think they’re making progress, dutifully obeying their GPS. But they’ve been led down a road that not only fails to get them where they wish to go, it also presents new problems!
‘Liberty, equality, fraternity’
Today, Sep. 25, is the anniversary of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s 1993 speech in the Vendee region of France. Two hundred years earlier, residents of Vendee tried unsuccessfully to resist the government-fueled terror of the French Revolution.
Solzhenitsyn’s address at the dedication of the memorial to the victims, offered insights into the tragic conflict:
… that the peasants of a hard-working region, driven to the extremes of oppression and humiliation by a revolution supposedly carried out for their sake — that these peasants had risen up against the revolution!
When I first encountered Solzhenitsyn’s speech about a decade ago, I was struck by its insights into both the French disaster and the even more deadly, longer-term tragedy of Solzhenitsyn’s Russian homeland.
Solzhenitsyn had been an officer in the Soviet army during World War II, but criticized Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in private correspondence in 1945. Such an offense got him sent to the Gulag, a system of harsh prisons in the Russian territory. After surviving his prison sentence, he became a writer. The publication of his work, The Gulag Archipelago, eventually got him exiled from the Soviet Union; it would take the collapse of that empire for him to return to Russia in the 1990s.
Solzhenitsyn’s Russia/USSR had succumbed to the same cruel irony that France had: a revolution supposedly to help the common people was even more oppressive of them.
At the center of each disastrous, mass movement was a socialist understanding — or, more accurately, misunderstanding — of humanity. There is perhaps no better example than the insane French slogan, “liberty, equality, fraternity.” As Solzhenitsyn explained:
But in the life of society, liberty and equality are mutually exclusive, even hostile concepts. Liberty, by its very nature, undermines social equality, and equality suppresses liberty — for how else could it be attained? Fraternity, meanwhile, is of entirely different stock; in this instance it is merely a catchy addition to the slogan. True fraternity is achieved by means not social, but spiritual. Furthermore, the ominous words “or death!” were added to the threefold slogan, thereby effectively destroying its meaning.
False prophets
Anarchists/voluntarists know that collectivism downplays human dignity, and all imposed, hierarchical social orders mangle the essence of the human experience into a mess of cognitive dissonance.
Christians, too, have been implored to beware of deceptions and those who would carry out these hoaxes, often called “false prophets.” Jesus Himself gives two illuminating warnings in particular, both found in the Gospel according to Matthew.
The first event highlights the hypocritical element:
Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves. By their fruits you will know them. … A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit. (Matthew 7:15-18)
Do words align with actions? Do actions consistently align with each other? And, most importantly, do the words AND actions align with human dignity?
The second event implores vigilance against fearmongering and emotional appeals:
You will hear of wars and reports of wars; see that you are not alarmed[.] ... Many false prophets will arise and deceive many; and because of the increase of evildoing, the love of many will grow cold. (Matthew 24:3-14)
Jesus, of course, is no sensationalist. He invites people to the personal effort of developing one’s conscience; to humble, properly grounded relationships; and to deeper beliefs than the shallow fanaticism of “signs and wonders” (Matthew 24:24).
And while brutal wars are obvious instances of destruction, some less bloody deceptions can be equally devastating.
For example, we’re still living through four-and-a-half years of the #COVIDHoax. Recall the fear-driven hypocrisy done in the name of safety and protection: health-deteriorating home confinement, mask mandates, and gene therapy injections; wealth-deteriorating business lockdowns and inflationary policies.
Whether manifest in crazed revolutions like the ones Solzhenitsyn helped memorialize, or the more gradual bloodletting of the bureaucratic State, coercive civil authority is inherently, intrinsically evil. And compliant “good citizens” are part of the problem.
The promises of justice and human dignity achieved via monopoly-violence institutions (a.k.a. governments) never come true. The map doesn’t match the terrain. The turn-by-turn directions don’t reveal the right destination. Neither the way nor the guides are trustworthy.
Your GPS — Government-Praising Superstition — is wrong. Turn around.
Turn here for the Comments!
Ever have your GPS give you instructions that didn’t square with the real world?
Had you heard of the French Revolution and its foolishly socialist slogan? The ill-fated Vendee counterrevolution? Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and his speech at the Vendee memorial?
How do you handle hypocrisy? Are you good at spotting it? How do you handle attempts to scare and manipulate you?
Anything else on your mind after reading this?
Let me know in your thoughts below …
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Great one, Dom!
I only learned about the War in the Vendée maybe six or seven years ago. 250,000 killed! How could such knowledge not be taught?
Oh wait, I know—because the French Revolution was the viral crèche of the modern left and they do not want to admit that they were genocidal from the start.