As techno-totalitarianism really gets into gear, it is up to each one of us to root our lives, our homes, our schools, and our parishes in the eternal values of the Christian faith and classical learning—and we need to do so with imagination and realism, avoiding the temptation to become nostalgic dreamers.
Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents, by Rod Dreher (256 pages, Sentinel, 2020)
When I lived in England, I discovered that one of the differences between the New World and the Old Country was advertising.
In America we were constantly told that a product was “New and Improved.” More scoops of raisins were forever being added to the raisin bran. The peanut butter was always crunchier than before. Every year the cars were sleeker, safer, more luxurious, had more gadgets, and were cheaper to buy. Nearly everything, from sandwiches to skyscrapers, was constantly being updated, improved, renovated, and re-styled. New was always better.
In the Old Country it was the reverse. Rather than advertising a product as “New and Improved,” advertisers were likely to bill it as “Old Fashioned.” Labels were printed in Ye Olde English style. Traditional British images of Big Ben, Tower Bridge, crowns, and coronets were everywhere. If you want to sell something in England, put it in an old tin box with a picture of a thatched cottage on the front.
One of the favorite advertising tricks was to get a royal warrant for your product. If Her Majesty the Queen would only purchase your waxed jacket, your marmalade, shoe polish, or pickles, you could print the royal coat of arms on your label, and (let’s say you produced axes) you could brag, “Purveyors of fine cutlery to the Royal Executioner since the reign of Henry VIII.”
The English addiction to nostalgia is a trait shared by most conservatives. By nature, we are inclined to look back with affection and look forward with fear. Rod Dreher’s recent book Live Not By Lies is a good example of looking forward with fear. His earlier volume The Benedict Option is a good example of looking back with affection. Both reactions to the modern world are understandable, but are they realistic?
In Live Not By Lies, Mr. Dreher quotes Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s words and warns us of the coming totalitarian state. In a typically well-researched book written in Mr. Dreher’s urgent style, we are told by survivors of the communist regimes how the current situation in the United States echoes the communist surveillance and police state. One of the most gripping pieces of experiential evidence Mr. Dreher offers is to ask us if we have ever been in a situation where we have had to bite our tongue—not out of good manners or the need not to offend Aunt Betty, but because we were afraid.
Perhaps we were afraid to say what we really think about supporting “Pride Month” at work. Maybe we were afraid to express support for President Trump. After big tech’s recent censorship campaign and the concern that “they know more than we think they know and they’re going to use it,” anybody can admit to have some second thoughts about speaking up.
But hasn’t this always been the case? Sure, the technology for surveillance is awesome, and no doubt there are some on both the left and the right who would wish to violate privacy and gather information for law enforcement and security. It is also true that there have always been checks and balances between the need for security and personal freedom. Are they really disappearing?
In the first four chapters Mr. Dreher outlines the problem of what he terms “soft totalitarianism.” This is totalitarianism in Birkenstocks and T-shirts instead of jack boots and brown shirts. It is the totalitarianism of the woke young things who dream the impossible dream of socialism. When the techno-tyrants hold hands with the government spies, so the theory goes, all things are not only possible, but probable.
In Live Not By Lies, Mr. Dreher plays his usual part of Paul Revere on his midnight ride crying, “The techies are coming! The techies are coming!” There is clearly a market for this sort of thing among conservatives, and I am inclined to buy into this mentality myself. However, I also try to check my instincts and correct them with common sense lest I go into the downward spin of conspiracy think.
Maybe Mr. Dreher overstates his case and throws fuel on the fire of right-wing paranoia. In a heightened atmosphere of QAnon conspiracy theories, this doesn’t help. On the other hand, we’d better get our heads out of the sand, our noses out of the trough, and our backsides off our La-Z-Boys and take notice of the Brave New World which is approaching. Maybe the techie-totalitarians really are coming.
In the second part of the book Mr. Dreher sets out a plan for dissent. This is not an underground army as much as a re-working of the Benedict Option—stressing the solidarity of family, faith, friendship, and the need to build strong alliances that run not so much against the prevailing atheistic culture as alternative to it. My only beef with the book is that Rod Dreher’s recommendations may lead readers to fall into the nostalgia trap.
We spend too much time looking back with affection and nostalgia. Yes, things were lovely in the past when the kids played touch football until sundown and Mom called them all in for a home-cooked supper. Tony Esolen’s Out of the Ashes also sounds the conservative trumpet with a long lament about how bad things are and how good things used to be. John Senior’s delightful rant, The Restoration of Christian Culture, is another book in the same vein.
Senior waxes Chestertonian in passages with cutting satire, sharp witticisms, and the perfect acidic bon mots. So his comment on fast food:
I have to have lunch once a week at the local Hamburger King. You know, of course, that millions of Americans now regularly eat French Fried potatoes with their fingers. We have sunk, anthropologically speaking, beneath the cultural level of a fork.
Senior is all for smashing the TV and, after a hard day weeding the turnip patch, sitting by the fire to read Treasure Island to the kids before standing around the piano to sing Stephen Foster songs, then up to the wooden hill by nine so you can hit the floor at five to milk the cows before gathering to recite Matins in Latin… and don’t forget the cold shower!
Senior’s book is a terrific read, and, like other conservative jeremiads, the condemnation of the present feels good and the alternative offering is a romantic and lovely dream that feels even better.
However, once we get our noses out of books and unglue our eyes from the omnipresent and omnipotent screen, what’s to be done? I think the ideas Mr. Dreher sets out in the second half of Live Not By Lies at least have the simplicity and practicality of principles, not specifics. As techno-totalitarianism really gets into gear, it is up to each one of us to root our lives, our homes, our schools, and our parishes in the eternal values of the Christian faith and classical learning—and we need to do so with imagination and realism, avoiding the temptation to become nostalgic dreamers.
This is where I connect with Mr. Dreher and Senior’s emphasis on the example of St. Benedict. Facing the disintegration of the Roman Empire, Benedict simply did what he could with what he had where he was. If we look to his example and the enduring witness of monasticism, we will be doing our part. History shows that eventually every atheistic system crumbles under its burden of lies. Then having laid a foundation for the future, our progeny may see how our sowing of seeds blossomed into a new Christendom.
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It seems to me that there are nostalgic elements to American culture and advertising too. Look at the old-fashioned rural scenes that are used to advertise certain products. Try the Vermont Country Store catalog.
In re John Senior’s point about eating French fries with your fingers: Belgians have been doing this for centuries. Are they uncivilized?
I appreciate Fr. Longenecker’s point about the nostalgia trap, but at the same time I wonder, if the present-day culture around you has nothing distinctive about it, what else is there to do but look to the past? Is it allowable for some individuals to devote themselves to nostalgia, if this is what happens to interest them? Can’t nostalgia be a creative force for good?
Hello Father Dwight,
“Facing the disintegration of the Roman Empire, Benedict simply did what he could with what he had where he was.” This insightful sentence got me thinking about what I could do with what I have where I am. I believe every street in our country should become a monastic cell. One person on every street should knock on the doors of every house or drop a flyer in every mailbox on his street and invite neighbors to form a basic Christian community or “monastic” cell. One or two nights a week, this community could meet for prayer and fellowship. St. Benedict’s monasteries saved Western culture during the Dark Ages, and basic Christian communities on every street can save our culture during the New Dark Ages.
Why must nostalgia always be referred to as a trap? In today’s grim, ideological and iconoclastic wilderness, it can often feel like a kind of prayer.
Good comments about the benefits of nostalgia. The past should be a mine from which we dig the ore from which we fashion a modern civilized culture. I think this is an apt metaphor for the conservative approach.
Great writer Father! I lived in Greenville from 1978- 1980, went to Furman University, received a degree in Classical Languages and Philosophy. Loved living there.
Fr.Longnecker,
I appreciate your point of view. My wife and I are of age and now living between Highlands,NC and Mount Pleasant,SC. (Currently in Mouint Pleasant) I am seeking to advance liberty in 2021. Do you have suggestions for me?
Will you be in Charleston any time soon? I would welcome the opportunity to visit in person.
Thank you for your good work.
Dear Father Longenecker, I am very familiar with Rod Dreher’s writing and his warnings in Live Not By Lies and tend to agree with your critique of the book. I also think the analogy in this essay to the decline of the Roman Empire and St. Benedict’s response are especially valuable. Additionally, I am very intrigued by this phrase: “As techno-totalitarianism really gets into gear, it is up to each one of us to root our lives, our homes, our schools, and our parishes in the eternal values of the Christian faith and classical learning—and we need to do so with imagination and realism …” and I would look forward to further specifics on practical integration of this wisdom. Thank you!
Love Father Longenecker. It is Rod Dreher I can do without. His first book was an excuse for his conversion to Orthodox and his continued life there because it supported his social conservatism. He refused the grace of entering the Church founded by Jesus Christ because of some bad people still there. He is still too eager to be a slogan monger (Crunchy Cons) with himself as leader of the movement. Read Esolen and John Senior for authentic visionaries. And there are hundreds of classical education organizations, schools, teachers, and writers who can fill in the nostalgia-paralyzed with tips on how to embrace a classical liberal arts mind and life. They’ve been at it for decades. Actually for centuries, thanks to St. Augustine.
The problem with Dreher’s idea is that under totalitarianism, we’re not going to be left alone to our families and our communities like Benedict under the collapsing Roman Empire. We’re going to face relentless persecution and the superstate will do everything it can to try to indoctrinate our children and turn them against us. It’s not going to be possible to present an alternative to the propaganda that is not opposed to it. We are going to have to fight.
Yet Dreher consistently tears down anyone who actually tries to fight and smears them with epithets like “Christian Nationalist,” which is just another left-wing scare phrase to mean “racist,” which shows that Dreher himself is still beholden to the propaganda of the left-wing totalitarian juggernaut he claims to want to resist.
When Dreher became all deranged with his Anti-Trumper rantings, he lost my following. Now we get Biden, in part because of such venom. Ultimately, he is a collaborator with what has come to pass.
My heartfelt thanks to posters Ian Bibby and bender. You’ve captured Dreher in a nutshell. I once benefited greatly from his writings, particularly from his insights into– and sincere bemoaning of — the scandals in the Catholic Church. But his deranged hatred of Trump and dripping condescension toward those who voted for him pushed him off the deep end, blinding him to his own role in the election of the most anti-religious President and administration we have ever known.
Well said. Yes, the latest Trump Tweet often seemed to give the delicate Mr. Dreher the vapors. He simply couldn’t get past being so “appalled” by Mr. Trump’s words to see his many good actions.
Love you Father – I was a former Travelers Rest, SC. Resident who attended Furman University.
Q: What do Scripture, Shakespeare, Opera, Scotch whiskey, and Donald Trump have in common?
A. They are all acquired tastes.
Dreher, like many we all know, could not overcome his initial distaste of Trump to see the substantive accomplishments he made in advancing authentic and lasting Christian values in effective and useful policies.
There were many occasions when a Trump utterance did not go down easy, but given his starting point, it is hard to imagine how he could have done better than he did. Ronald Regan had far more charm, but we tend to forget how much he was vilified and opposed during his presidency.
Which was one lesson President Trump learned — he knew that charm did not buy peace.
Said differently, the substance of results matter, not form.
He also learned that the biggest mistake made by President Reagan was to trust Democrats on immigration — I know, I know, I could have stopped after “trust Democrats.” . . .
Christendom was a gift from God. He gave it to us out of his Love. He did not owe it to us then and He does not owe it to us now. That period of history is now and is not likely to come back, not as it was or that we imagine it was, but we have been promised from the lips of Our Lord Himself that He Himself is coming back to us. And that Return is what we must always be looking toward. That and nothing else. Orate et vigilate.
So, Mr Longenecker, you are aware and alarmed or not aware and not alarmed at the progress of collectivism/totalitarianism, at whatever degree or stage we are at now in America, and the striking similarities to all the ism’s of the last century, i.e. Socialism, Nazism, Fascism, Marxism/Communism?
All one has to do is read the stated goals of current leaders of progressivism in positions of influence and power as they merrily destroy Constitutional Law/Limited Government in our once great Republic.
We are primarily to glorify and honor our great God and Savior Jesus Christ no matter what happens here on earth in this temporary residence we live at but the problem with not seeing and raising the alarm about the certain approaching Totalatarianism is that human beings made in the Image of God will be starved, tortured, murdered by the thugs that end up ruling us.
I strongly advise reading Solzhenitsyn, Conquest, Tolstoy, and the very many that survived a murderous ism before so casually stating it’s a “downward spin of conspiracy talk”.
I’m certain the hundreds of millions of people starved and murdered under Nazism and Communism wouldn’t look at what’s happening and shrug it all off as a baseless conspiracy
“Rod Dreher’s recent book Live Not By Lies is a good example of looking forward with fear. His earlier volume The Benedict Option is a good example of looking back with affection.”
I don’t think this is a fair assessment. Dreher looks forward in both books, and offers suggestions/prescriptions for how to live in a post-Christian society where Christians are likely to experience an increasingly soft totalitarianism. Dreher does not promote fear, rather faith.