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by
Rod Dreher
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November 13, 2020 - January 16, 2021
Will not say, write, affirm, or distribute anything that distorts the truth
Will not vote for a candidate or proposal he considers to be “dubious or unworthy”
Will walk out of an event “as soon as he hears the speaker utter a lie, ideological drivel, or shameless propaganda”
Will not support journalism that “distorts or hides the...
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Sociologist Émile Durkheim observed that many people who had been set free from the bonds of religion did not thrive in their liberty. In fact, they lost a shared sense of purpose, of meaning, and of community. A number of these despairing people committed suicide. According to Durkheim, what happened to individuals could also happen to societies.
fact something worthwhile in our political system seems to strike many members of elite institutions as faintly bizarre.8
though outside the mainstream, often has a similar effect on conservatives: affirming to them that what they believe about the world is true. For all users of social media—including the nearly three quarters of US adults who use Facebook and the 22 percent who use Twitter—reinforcement of prior political beliefs is built into the system. We are being conditioned to accept as true whatever feels right to us. As Arendt wrote about the pre-totalitarian masses:
Similar politically correct loyalty oaths are required at leading public and private schools.
Arendt warns that the twentieth-century totalitarian experience shows how a determined and skillful minority can come to rule over an indifferent and disengaged majority.
alienated from their own traditions, and desperate to identify with something, or someone, to give them a sense of wholeness and purpose. For them, the ideology
