When Solzhenitsyn took the podium at Harvard in 1978 to offer the commencement address he was dearly loved by the media and America’s elite.
When he finished he knew he would be an outcast for life.
Here’s what he said. 🧵
1) Socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death.
2) Should one point out that from ancient times declining courage has been considered the beginning of the end?
3) A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days.
4) Even biology knows that habitual, extreme safety and well-being are not advantageous for a living organism. Today, well-being in the life of Western society has begun to reveal its pernicious mask.
5) The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals.
6) Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic disease of the 20th century and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.
7) I have received letters in America from highly intelligent persons, maybe a teacher in a faraway small college who could do much for the renewal and salvation of his country, but his country cannot hear him because the media are not interested in him.
8) But should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society in its present state as an ideal for the transformation of ours.
9) A fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human beings in the West while in the East they are becoming firmer and stronger.
10) There are meaningful warnings which history gives a threatened or perishing society. Such are, for instance, the decadence of art, or a lack of great statesmen.
11) Only moral criteria can help the West against communism's well planned world strategy. There are no other criteria.
12) In spite of the abundance of information, or maybe because of it, the West has difficulties in understanding reality such as it is.
13) And yet -- no weapons, no matter how powerful, can help the West until it overcomes its loss of willpower. In a state of psychological weakness, weapons become a burden for the capitulating side.
14) In the American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted because man is God's creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility.
15) All the glorified technological achievements of Progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the 20th century's moral poverty which no one could imagine even as late as in the 19th Century.
16) Not by coincidence all of communism's meaningless pledges and oaths are about Man, with a capital M, and his earthly happiness. At first glance it seems an ugly parallel: common traits in the thinking and way of life of today's West and today's East?
17) Liberalism was inevitably displaced by radicalism; radicalism had to surrender to socialism; and socialism could never resist communism.
18) In our Eastern countries, communism has suffered a complete ideological defeat; it is zero and less than zero. But Western intellectuals still look at it with interest and with empathy.
19) Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction.
20) If the world has not come to its end, it has approached a major turn in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.
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The Christmas Truce of 1914 is one of the most heartwarming events in recent history.
In the midst of a brutal conflict, British and German soldiers laid down their weapons for a brief moment of peace, showing the power of humanity even in the darkest of times… (thread) 🧵
As Christmas approached in 1914, soldiers who had spent months entrenched in a savage war found common ground in the spirit of the season.
As chaos raged, their desire for peace and connection transcended the violence.
On Christmas Eve, along the Western Front, something extraordinary happened.
German soldiers began singing carols, their familiar tunes drifting across "no man's land" toward the British trenches.
The sound of peace stirred hearts in the unlikeliest of places.
Every year, from 1920 to 1943, the Tolkien children received letters from Father Christmas hilmself.
They came with tales and illustrations of Santa Claus and his helpers — each with a North Pole stamp designed by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Here’s the story behind them... (thread)🧵
In 1920, Tolkien’s first Father Christmas letter arrived at the Oxford home of his three-year-old son, John.
It was hand-painted and carried a whimsical North Pole stamp priced at "2 kisses."
The card depicted a red-coated white-bearded figure walking through snow, alongside a snow-covered yurt tucked behind pine trees, captioned "Me" and "My House."
It was the start of a heartwarming family tradition that lasted 23 years.
Here are 20 powerful lessons from the most quoted Christian author of the 20th century 🧵
1. "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."
2. Lewis viewed faith as a spiritual commitment.
In Mere Christianity, he wrote: "Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods."
True faith perseveres, even when emotions and circumstances waver.
3. "Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the universe has no meaning we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning."