Live Not by Lies

in

I remember the night the Berlin Wall fell and the world seemed to change overnight. The bogeyman of so many stories ceased to be quite so real as in the Soviet Union dissolved in the following years.  It seemed like a significant phase of history, if not history itself, had ended by declaring Western capitalistic democracy the victory.

However, I met a Ukrainian exchange student while I was at college who told me that things weren’t quite as simple as they seemed. And then, when listening to a missionary speak in the early 2000’s, I learned that portions of the former Eastern Bloc were still “pink”—the formal police state may have ended, but many of the Communist thought processes were still in place under new leadership.

Then, in more recent years we’ve seen the increasing popularity of Che Guevara t-shirts in the U.S.—an amazing ploy to market the image of a Communist thug using capitalist principles. There have also been an increasing number of people that are willing to declare that the First Amendment should be abolished, full on Communism is desirable, and mass murderers like Stalin and Lenin are to be preferred over America’s founders. Add to that the weird logic by which anyone who doesn’t agree with racially based discrimination against whites is racist and we find ourselves in a topsy turvy world in which it is not hard to imagine attempts to force orthodox Christians underground.

Live not By Lies

Rod Dreher’s recent book, Live Not by Lies, is a warning of the possibility of “soft totalitarianism” in our future. As Progressives celebrate the latest invention of alternate reality in the pursuit of the deconstruction of humanity, there are an increasing number of people on the political left calling for the punishment of those who disagree with their orthodoxy. Do you affirm the innateness of sex within biology? Then you must not be allowed to work in a public-facing job. Do you still hold to the fundamental human understanding of marriage as a union (romantic or not) between people who are of biologically distinct sexes? Then you should be hounded from the public square and humiliated, if you are not physically harmed. There is an ever-thinning wall of civilization between reality and the coming storm. Anyone who denies the possibility of soft totalitarianism is not paying attention.

Dreher’s book takes its title for an Alexander Solzhenitsyn essay. Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago is a masterpiece that traces the evil of Soviet socialism through the experiences of many people who passed into, if not through, the grinder of the Gulag system. That larger work was intended to expose the horrors of the hard totalitarianism of the Soviets to a world that had frequently glamourized it. Solzhenitsyn’s essay speaks to those who are being called to deny truth to live at peace. In other words, to those who are facing a soft totalitarianism. The essay is a call to live in truth and not to succumb to lies for the sake of comfort.

What Solzhenitsyn warns against in his essay, and Dreher discusses, is a soft totalitarianism. This is a term defined more clearly by Vaclav Havel, a dissident poet who because a longstanding president of Czechoslovakia after the people peacefully ousted the Communist regime. As Havel documents it, particularly in essays like his “Power of the Powerless,” the Communist rule in much of the Eastern Bloc countries was driven by internal social pressure rather than by tanks, guns and dogs. There was a real threat of police enforcement, in some cases, but the deeper threat was through social ostracization and removal from the marketplace based on non-conformity to the untruth of the Communist platform.

Soft totalitarianism is the condition in which someone who refuses to affirm the preferred worldview of the dominant social order can be effectively marginalized within society without formal coercion. Do you decline to wear a rainbow pin at work for pride month? There go your promotion opportunities. Does your business decline to post a Black Lives Matter poster for any of a number of valid reasons? Prepare for the fake, negative reviews, belligerent activists coming in to harass your employees and customers, and, perhaps, having your business set alight by “protesters” fighting against “fascism.” Did you post online about a political candidate disfavored by the “right” crowd? Be ready to be denied admission to a university or to have your children denied admission.

live not by lies.jpg

In hard totalitarianism conformity to the external constraints is generally sufficient. One need not believe or state that Communism is good to get by. One needs only avoid getting caught with more goods than allotted, show the right papers when required, and not actively and openly declaim the controlling regime.

Soft totalitarianism is much more insidious because it demands not mere conformity but expression of support for something that violates the conscience. This is what Dreher describes in Live Not by Lies as a possible near-future for the West, including the United States, and there is reason to believe he is at least partially correct. We may be nearer or farther from the point where certain beliefs—common among humans for millennia—are ruled entirely out of bounds in polite company. What cannot be denied is that such a soft totalitarianism is the overt goal of an increasing number of people, especially those on the political left. It also cannot be denied that technology is making it easier to enforce soft totalitarianism through corporate and governmental means.

Dreher’s book is a call for Christians to hold fast to truth, but also to be prepared to go underground to avoid what he views as an inevitable and near-at-hand persecution. He combines research from sources like Havel and Solzhenitsyn with contemporary interviews with those that survived under Communist regimes to create a very readable, journalistic volume that may be helpful in preparing for the storm to come.

Analysis

If one approaches Dreher’s work primarily through his books, the content of them appears quite different than if one follows Dreher’s blog. Being fair in reading Dreher’s books requires reading them as a distinct genre from his online work.

I have not seen Dreher describe his work this way, but his three most recent books form something of a trilogy. If readers begin with Crunchy Cons, followed by The Benedict Option, and then come to Live Not by Lies then you will find a helpful, cogent, and perfectly reasonable stream of thought that is quite helpful. In fact, reading the books together might be the simplest way to avoid seeing Dreher as excessively reactionary.

Though the books span more than a decade of a rapidly shifting culture, they all tie together to form one consistent message: there is an objective reality that explains the order of the world and we should seek to live in a way that honors that. To the extent that cultural forces demand that we deny the objective reality of the world, we must be prepared to resist and hold fast to our witness to the truth.

Critiques of Dreher’s work are generally muddled because part of his vocation is to put out content for The American Conservative on a regular basis. He has a blog to feed to stay relevant and employed. He also is very engaged with his readers, who through their networks have access to some of the worst examples of progressive thought and social abuses. As a result, Dreher’s primary public discourse is often reactionary and colored by the conduits through which he gets his material. Because he is publishing in the moment, there are times when his takes turn out to be factually incorrect or unhelpful as part on an ongoing public conversation. Immediacy can be detrimental to nuance. That is the nature of a journalistic blog and Dreher does not escape that.

Dreher’s books are much more carefully constructed than his blog posts. In much of the discussion of The Benedict Option after its publication, it became clear that many critics had not read that book, but were instead responding to what Dreher had blogged about. I expect the same to be true of Live Not by Lies. It really is helpful to keep the two genres of Dreher’s work separate, because his books are much more consistently balanced and carefully argued than his blogs.

Time will tell whether Dreher is right or wrong about the oncoming soft totalitarianism. I tend to think that he is right that we are trending that direction, but that it may take longer than he thinks to get there. However, the power of algorithms, the ubiquity of social media to be engaged as a citizen, and the lack of catechesis among Christians may turn out to make Dreher’s concerns nearer than I suspect.

Whether the timing is right or not, the central message of Dreher’s most recent book is correct: Christians need to improve the way we live in the world, but not of the world. All signs point to an increasingly progressive shift in the anti-culture that surrounds us, which is largely alien to reality. The Church will increasingly need to find ways to live in ways consistent with truth, in a society that considers truth repugnant.

A Concluding Caution

There is no question that we live in a polarized world that is becoming increasingly hostile to a Christian worldview. However, within that context there is a strong tendency to seek allies in the fight. So, if the progressivism of the Left is bad, then we align our selves with the political and social forces on the Right. Or, if the xenophobia of the Right is bad, then we align our selves with the “inclusivism” of the Left. If one side is wrong, then the temptation is to default to the opposite extreme, or at least to tolerate extreme views on one’s own side.

Truth is not the property of Right nor Left. Neither is it something that is “centrist.” Approaching questions of truth from a primarily political angle, rather than one driven by ontology and epistemology is reactionary and unhelpful.

Even as we join coalitions in resisting soft totalitarianism, we have to be careful that we do not allow their different conceptions of truth to sway us from the True Truth of Christianity. Being a Christian dissident is like being an Ent: We are not really on anyone else’s side, because no one else is really on our side. That is to say, while we may share a common goal of resisting a creeping soft totalitarianism, our ultimate goal is to the spread of the gospel to every tribe and tongue and nation. In the first goal we may find ourselves in agreement with nationalists or atheists. Regarding the ultimate goal, we will find ourselves alone. There is a strong temptation when we find a point of alliance on an important goal to neglect the ultimate goal and to fail to see points at which pursuit of the ultimate goal may cause us to compromise on other significant objectives.

Dreher’s book does not displace True Truth with resistance to soft totalitarianism as the ultimate goal. However, because it is a book about the second and not the first, incautious readers may find themselves driven toward that extreme. Our duty as Christians is to the True Truth, which should always remain our ultimate goal in whatever political circumstances we find ourselves.

NOTE: I received a gratis copy of this volume with no expectation of a positive review.

Why Should Christians Practice Creation Care?

in ,

One of the most basic questions that we must wrestle with when engaging in any activism, political or otherwise, is why it matters. I firmly believe that Christians should be engaged in positively caring for creation, but that belief is meaningless unless built on a solid foundation. This post will explore some reasons Christians should work to care for the environment.

Creation Belongs to God

Perhaps the most important reason to participate in creation care is that all of creation belongs to God. Psalm 24:1 states, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein.” When we care for creation, we are showing that we value something that belongs to God. Just as we might honor a parent by caring for the car we were loaned, we should honor God by caring for his creation that we are privileged to live in.

One of the most prevalent defenses of poor environmental stewardship is the idea that humans have a right to use their resources in a way that pleases them. Private property rights are vital to a healthy, economically just society. However, Christians should understand that property is always a stewardship under God’s ownership of creation. Humans have been given a very special place in the created order, but that does not permit us to be wasteful of God’s resources or intentionally harm what God has made.

In fact, beyond simply ensuring that we do not harm God’s creation, we should also encourage others not to harm God’s creation. Since creation belongs to God, the proper use of it is a duty for Christians and a means that we can show that we live under an authority other than our own.

Part of Dominion Over Creation

A second reason for Christian engagement in creation care is that Christians are uniquely equipped to strike the balance on the proper utilization of creation because they more properly know the Creator. The balance between use and abuse of creation is important. It is what keeps populations from turning a forest into a desert on one hand or preventing human flourishing on the other.

Creation care is one way of giving evidence of human dominion over creation. In Genesis 1:26 and 28, God gives humans authority over creation. Psalm 8:5–8 explains that the dominion God has given to humans is quite an honor; it includes authority over the rest of creation. Humans have been given authority over creation that is subordinate to, but representative of God’s authority.

If Christians really believe that God has given humans as special place in creation as rulers, then that place includes both the rights and duties of authority. Humans have the right to utilize creation to survive and to flourish. However, good rulers also take the welfare of their subjects into consideration. Thus, the same mandate that gives humans license to use creation for their benefit also requires humans to take the good of creation into account.

Restoration Reflects the Gospel

6213329133_cc3a823e12_z.jpg

A third reason for Christians to participate in creation care is that improving the environment can represent the restoration of the gospel. It is important to be precise on this point. The gospel is not primarily concerned with people picking up trash, but the act of picking up trash is a microcosm of what the gospel does. In one sense, when Christians care for creation, we show what the gospel looks like in the physical world.

In Pollution and the Death of Man, Francis Schaeffer writes, “The church ought to be a ‘pilot plant,’ where men can see in our congregations and missions a substantial healing of all the divisions, the alienations which man’s rebellion has produced.”[1] As he describes it, local congregations and denominations should be showing what it looks like for the gospel to be worked out practically, so that the God-human division, the human-human division, and the human-nature division are shown to be healed.

Christians have a unique contribution to the restoration of the proper relationship between humans and the created order because we recognize the value of it without worshiping it. The church should be an example of what the New Heavens and New Earth will be, to the best it can be achieved.

Seeking the Common Good

A fourth reason Christians should engage in creation care is that a healthy environment is universally recognized as a sign of the common good. Novels and movies use scenes of environmental degradation to indicate political and social blight. In Cormac McCarthy’s book, The Road, the landscape is depicted as a burnt-out wasteland, which gives readers a sense of the hopelessness of the whole story.[2] In the story of Israel’s exodus from Egypt and journey to the promised land, there is a strong contrast between the desolation of the wilderness and the richness of the promised land.

Jeremiah 29:7 points toward God’s vision for his people’s pursuit of the common good: “But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” It is not too much of a stretch to shift from the “good of the city” to the “well-being of the environment in which people live.” Just like Israel during their exile into Babylon, Christians are called to seek the good of their communities in multiple ways, including pursuing creation care.

Personal Benefits from Environmental Health

A fifth reason to engage in creation care is that it often leads to personal benefits either directly or indirectly. A healthy environment is good for everyone but many of the practical ways that humans can reduce their impact on the environment also return benefits to the individual seeking the reduction.

For example, since we know that driving produces pollutants that can build up and harm the environment, reducing excess driving is one way of caring for creation. At the same time the driver reduces the number of miles she drives, she also reduces the money that she spends on fuel and car maintenance leading to a personal benefit. Even more directly, if the driver decides to walk or bike to destinations, then she gains the benefit of exercise. Similarly, when a household commits to putting on an additional layer of clothing in the winter and turning the heat down a few degrees, they both reduce the pollution emitted to the environment for their heating needs and reduce their expenses.

Many of the environmental problems in the West are tied to overconsumption, excessive travel, and a focus on convenience. By curtailing some of these extras, individuals have the potential to benefit their financial and physical well-being, as well as reduce their impact on the environment.

Topic of Cultural Concern

A sixth significant reason for Christians to engage in creation care is that it is a topic of significant concern in the surrounding culture. The church is not called to respond to every fad in the surrounding culture. However, the continued concerns in the world about the health of the environment seem to warrant a response.

The primary mission of every Christian and the local church should always be the gospel of Jesus Christ. As discussed above, creation care provides a means for Christians to show what the gospel looks like. Care for the environment can be a vital part of contextualizing the gospel message.

Tim Keller defines contextualization as “giving people the Bible’s answers, which they may not at all want to hear, to questions about life that people in their particular time and place are asking, in language and forms they can comprehend, and through appeals and argument with force they can fell, even if they reject them.”[3] The world is asking questions about how to deal with damage done to nature in the past and in the present.

Christianity has answers, through the gospel message of Scripture, to explain what the desired goal of environmentalism should be. Therefore, Christians are missing an excellent opportunity to demonstrate gospel-fueled restoration to the surrounding culture when they ignore creation care.

Topic of Concern for Christian Youth

A seventh reason to engage in creation care is to show children growing up in the church that Christianity offers a sufficient, comprehensive worldview. Periodically, Christian news outlets publish articles exploring why so many young people who were raised in the church walk away from their faith when they gain some level of independence. This is a legitimate concern for many parents and church leaders. It raises questions about how effective the church has been in communicating the gospel to the next generation when they seem to be walking away from Christianity in large numbers.

One possible cause for this trend is that Christian parents and the church have not been effective in demonstrating the plausibility of the Christian worldview.[4] The dominant thinking of culture has shifted to emphasize the importance of individualistic choice of a religious tradition. Young adults are even less likely to hold to traditional family beliefs unless they have adopted them on their own merits.[5] It weakens the plausibility of Christianity in the eyes of young people when believers do not appear to have an answer to major issues within the culture. As the church seeks to reach its own children, it shows young people the sufficiency of Scripture and the all-encompassing nature of the gospel.

Opportunities for Evangelism

An eighth reason to participate in creation care is that it may provide opportunities to cooperate with non-Christians in a common cause. For many Christians, one of the biggest challenges to sharing our faith is that we do not spend enough time around non-Christians in social settings. Our opportunities for evangelism are often limited to the grocery store line, the sidelines of a kid’s soccer game, and water-cooler conversations. Christians should be grateful for these forms of contact, but we should also seek deeper engagement with our neighbors that can allow for casual conversations that turn into evangelistic conversations.

The relative absence of gospel-centered Christians from environmental movements, as well as the overt hostility of some environmental movements toward Christianity, has allowed organizations primarily concerned with care for the environment to be dominated by non-Christians. One reaction is to see the organizations and their adherents as enemy agents. That strategy has been implemented by many conservative, orthodox Christians for the past century in the West.[6]

Instead of resulting in a purified church, showing the pure gospel light to the world around, attempts to separate from non-Christian organizations has largely led to Christians losing an opportunity to influence the trajectory of culture. It has also led to fewer interactions between believers and non-believers, which has allowed sub-cultures to flourish that fundamentally misunderstand the gospel or be ignorant of its meaning.[7] Environmental activism is a field that has been largely dominated by non-Christian influences, which makes it a primary place for Christians to engage with the lost, verbally proclaim the gospel, and provide a small-scale demonstration of what gospel restoration looks like.

Environmental Problems are Worse for the Poor

A ninth reason for Christians to be engaged in creation care is that it provides a means for caring for the poor indirectly.[8] When Paul summarizes the decision of the Jerusalem council about his ministry and the gospel he was preaching, he notes that they urged him to “remember the poor.” (Gal 2:10) While social ministries cannot replace the gospel, they are a key part of showing what gospel redemption looks like in the world. Creation care is beneficial to the poor because the impact of environmental degradation is typically hardest on those with the least economic resources.

Images of poverty often coincide with environmental squalor. For example, entire communities exist in many countries to live near and dig through landfills. The Recycled Orchestra, made up of impoverished children from Cateura, Paraguay brought this reality to the public eye several years ago. Clean water, clean food, and clean air are problems for poor communities that are often pushed to the least healthy areas on the edges of cities. As environmental conditions get better, so do the lives of the poor.

Christians Have Been Blamed for Environmental Degradation

A tenth reason for Christians to pursue creation care is that Western Christianity has frequently been blamed for environmental degradation. The most famous proponent of this myth is Lynne White, whose essay, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” form the basic foundation for the understanding of many non-Christians about the relationship between Christianity and creation.[9]

 White’s thesis is that the Christian doctrine of creation, which he represents as being dualistic, has shaped Western Civilization. He argues that western Christian theology devalues creation, and that the idea of dominion, as presented in Genesis has enabled the abuse of the environment through the rise of modern science and the Industrial Revolution.

White’s argument does not stand up to careful scrutiny. However, one of the best ways Christians can counter White’s anti-Christian thesis, which is popularly believed by many environmentalists, is to demonstrate the Christianity has the best answer to contemporary environmental problems.

Summary

There are likely many more reasons for Christians to be concerned about creation care. However, these ten reasons should be enough to set aside concerns that caring for the environment is an extra that Christians can ignore if it is not convenient. These reasons should also help show that opposition from non-Christians or improper pursuit of environmental health should not be a roadblock to engagement in creation care for the common good.

[1] Francis Schaeffer, Pollution and the Death of Man in The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer (Downers Grove: Crossway, 1982), 5:47.

[2] Cormac McCarthy, The Road (New York: Knopf, 2001).

[3] Tim Keller, Center Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012), 89. Emphasis original.

[4] Barna Group. “Six Reasons Young Christians Leave Church.” Barna.com. https://www.barna.com/research/six-reasons-young-christians-leave-church/ (accessed 1/13/19).

[5] Alan Noble, Disruptive Witness (Downers Grove, IL.: InterVarsity Press, 2018), 36–41.

[6] For example, James Wanliss, Resisting the Green Dragon: Dominion, not Death (Burke, VA: Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, 2010), 25–79.

[7] For example, Corinna Nicolaou, A None’s Story: Searching for Meaning Inside Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 3.

[8] Michael Rhodes and Robby Holt, Practicing the King’s Economy: Honoring Jesus in How We Work, Earn, Spend, Save, and Give (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2018), 220–30.

[9] Lynn White, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” in Ecology and Religion in History (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), 15–31.

Animal Farm, Economic Freedom, and Human Flourishing

in ,

George Orwell’s Animal Farm is an important piece of literature for our age.

9780452277502.jpg

Though the main target of the satire no longer exists, this is a book that should find its way back into the curricula of upper elementary, middle, and high schools. There are a whole lot of young adults that are living in a fairy tale, hoping for communism, that would benefit from reading it seriously, too.

Based on history, however, I think that the importance of Animal Farm is greater than when Orwell wrote it and that it is useful in understanding human nature and why we should be very careful how we view each other and the role of the government.

There are several reasons why Animal Farm deserves a more prominent place in American curricula.

Why is it Important?

First, it is simply a good story, written well, and entertaining. The book is satire, but the characters are sufficiently plausible that most readers will acknowledge they’ve met that person before. It helps that the story is about animals. One of the reasons Animal Farm should be more broadly read is because it is a masterpiece.

Second, it is a brilliant example of how imaginative fiction is much more effective at carrying ideas than essays. Those meager writers who mainly write in the world of non-fiction should be blown away at how powerful Orwell’s depiction of communism captures the absurdities of that political and economic system. I have read some of Orwell’s non-fiction essays (he is an excellent essayist, too), but his 1984 and Animal Farm are much more compelling.

Third, Animal Farm provides a gateway for children to understand totalitarianism. As a child toward the end of the Cold War, I sometimes wondered how it was that the Communists could get and maintain control, if they made people so miserable. Orwell shows the way in a manner that even a child can understand.

It is interesting, however, that Orwell’s satire seems to have implications beyond his original intention.

Broadening Applicability

One of the more interesting facts about Orwell is that he was a socialist. The man lived in voluntary poverty in France for a time, had a deep sympathy for working class people in the U.K. (who were largely getting a raw economic deal), and as a result viewed socialism as the economic program most likely to help people out.

The intentions were good, but Orwell failed to account for the fact that whether socialism comes in through revolution (as with Animal Farm) or by popular vote, as he preferred, it tends to end in the same place: human misery.

One of the central tenets of socialism, perhaps the very core of it, is that the collective controls the means of production. There are, as proponents of socialism argue, multiple ways that this could happen. In the Soviet bloc, ownership was by the government. As the U.K. flirted with socialism, it was public ownership of certain industries while private ownership remained for others, under government scrutiny.

Although there are some Jacobin types on the far left who lobby for full on communism, most of the advocates for contemporary socialism view themselves as arguing for some sort of economic control by the people, funneled through a centralized planning system, but always being governed democratically.

Again, the intentions are (nearly) always to make life better. People that want socialism don’t want Venezuela, and they typically don’t believe they will get it.

Animal Farm, I think, helps show what the process of centralized control will always tend toward the abuses of the animals on Animal Farm and by the government in Venezuela.

Orwell wrote Animal Farm to mock the Soviet Union and, perhaps, to show that real socialism wouldn’t end up there, but there is little empirical evidence of a nation implementing broad economic socialism while maintaining both economic viability and a reasonable amount of personal freedom.

Those arguing that “real socialism” won’t end up like Animal Farm, are really just unthinkingly chanting, “Four legs good, two legs bad.”

Just like the sheep chanting against two legged humans, most of the advocates for socialism (or raw capitalism, for that matter) haven’t given enough thought to the system to deserve to comment. Additionally, they mistakenly believe that it is the number of legs that determines the goodness, rather than the way that power is structured. Their end goal is wrong.

Economic Freedom as a Goal

Economic freedom is important, but it should never be an end to itself. This is why so many of the arguments between contemporary socialists and capitalists is unhelpful. Economic freedom is always relative, always situated within a particular context and community, and should always remain a means to an end.

The end of economic freedom should be to enhance human flourishing.

As I understand it, human flourishing is the ability for individuals to flourish within the web of families and communities as we live out our calling to be the image of God. Others may want a more naturalistic description of that, but I’ll stick with my own worldview.

True human flourishing isn’t found in a universally level distribution of GDP across the community or in absolute personal autonomy. It must have the individual and community as complementary elements, with both playing a function.

Oddly, many of the contemporary conceptions of socialism in the United States believe they can get both absolute personal autonomy and total collective cooperation at the same time. One of the privileges of being a fringe idealist group with (so far) very little control of policy is that you can propose preposterous solutions without having to ask whether it is even possible for them to achieve the stated ends.

The trouble with popular forms of capitalism that put personal autonomy as the golden calf at the center of the platform is that capitalism requires a cooperative community to function, so the very end they pursue promises to undermine the ends they want to achieve. The trouble with socialistic proposals that see the collective as the solution is that the collective always concentrates power to a few who will use it undemocratically “for the common good” and that abuse of power inevitably demotivates the hard workers who are being deprived from the fruit of their labor for someone else’s vision of good. This is the inevitable end of socialism.

Animal Farm may have started with a revolution, but it shows the likely end of all collectivist economic systems. By using anthropomorphic animals, Orwell enables the reader to look beyond the caricatures and have sympathy or antipathy toward parties that would be impossible were they humans. The book enables important conversations as we consider the likely end of socialism, which makes it an important resource for having real discussions with a generation that seems to be lurching toward a false belief in the innocence of the collectivization of power.

Animal Farm
By George Orwell
Buy on Amazon