Live Not by Lies
By Rod Dreher
Reviewed by TJ Pander, Crawford Media Group Writer/Producer
Ladies and gentlemen, it should first be said that this review was not solicited in any way by Rod Dreher or his publisher. Crawford Media Group (or myself) have not been compensated in any way by either.
This is such an important book for Christians and Conservatives (and everyone else for that matter) that I believe that it should be read by anyone who will be alive in the coming flood of totalitarianism. If you’d like to purchase a copy of this essential handbook, you can buy it here. (forgive me for not posting the obligatory Amazon link, opting for a small thrift book store, simply because it seems unwise to post a link to the behemoth Amazon, and you’ll see why in the coming words.)
Live Not by Lies is the 8th book by conservative christian Rod Dreher; published in 2020 this one flew under the radar as it’s timely release came as the pandemic scare was spreading through the US and conversations turned to mandates and eroding constitutional rights. Some other notable reads by Rod are The Benedictine Option and How Dante Can Save Your Life.
Rod’s books are refreshingly and unapologetically Christian, and Live Not by Lies is no exception; he stays firm in his conviction that Christ is Lord and that he works in and through humanity and should not take a backseat. A refreshing read, indeed.
Rod says that the book is ‘at once both darker and more hopeful than’ The Benedict Option — and ‘ruthlessly clear-eyed’ about threats and needed responses’, and this reviewer thoroughly agrees. We live in a time where some have blinders on as those of us who have learned valuable lessons from our history scream from the rooftops of Twitter (or….X?) about the coming totalitarianism not only in our wonderful U.S. of A., but with a more focused global economy and government than ever before, thanks to the technocratic liberal world governments who have subverted the status quo to take it upon themselves to be our de facto leaders despite us having no say in the matter. This book is a thorough clarion call to action for Christians who see this coming flood.
If you haven’t read the blog post from a few weeks ago about Father Kolakovic, please read it here. This review will only briefly touch on his massive contribution to resisting hard totalitarianism.
But enough belly-achin’, let’s get into it.
Something’s Rotten in the State of the Union
The timeliness of the book’s release is enough to give you goosebumps, and Dreher, channeling his inner Nostradamus, makes the point (even before knowing the fascist outcomes worldwide surrounding the pandemic) that more and more of our communications and gatherings are moving toward impossibly powerful online platforms like Zoom, Google Meet and Facebook. Under the guise of bringing us together, the technocracy has built a thicker firmament between us and convinced many people to actually prefer it. The effects of that are clear, as studies are showing skyrocketing depression and anxiety, spiraling church attendance and a generation of children unable to control their temperaments without the warm glow of an OLED display in their face. Matt Walsh is outspoken about the issue, watch his opinion here.
Faith in institutions, particularly government and church institutions has been decimated, and Dreher makes the connection that just as in the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, when faith in institutions was at an all-time low, and calls began to completely tear down and rebuild those institutions, the same calls can be heard echoed from the likes of the pro-marxist “activists” and politicians today on our senate floor.
All-in-all, the perception that our institutions and the foundations of our republic, including our constitution, are worthless and outdated is at record high. One reviewer for The Conciliar Post said “It is increasingly difficult to see how a flourishing society can be built on foundations that are rotten—or at least believed to be rotten by a large majority. Unless one accepts Ross Douthat’s recent argument that the current state of “decadence” can go on indefinitely, it certainly seems like something has to change.”
The Great Woke Hope or Social Justice War Cries
Dreher accounts how “activism for activism’s sake” has become a plague in the US. Virtue signaling is at a fever-pitch and generally the youth of our nation have placed empty cries on social media on par with actual activism. Dreher throws the pejorative term “Social Justice Warriors” or “SJWs” around quite a bit, something that would likely send all of the SJWs into a coma but puts this writer at ease in knowing that I am reading an author who shares my belief that this activism for activisms sake is not only worthless and shallow, but that it does nothing to solve the alleged problems that they perceive.
The author goes on to parse out 5 philosophical tenets which provide the structure for the ideology, and they neatly fit into the same categories of the Bolshevik “SJWs” of 1917:
1. The central fact of human existence is power and how it is used
2. There is no such thing as objective truth; there is only power
3. Identity politics sorts oppressed from oppressor
4. Intersectionality is social justice ecumenism
5. Language creates human realities
The movement largely rejects the class or caste system of Marxism (without the slightest realization that it is, as a matter of fact, not a tenet of Marxism but an EFFECT. It’s reliance on science seems admirable on it’s face, but in light of the claim that there is no such thing as objective truth science becomes subjective. Dreher examines a few examples of the piles of self-proclaimed “peer reviewed data” (a term that SJWs love to throw around…see any argument on ‘gender-affirming care’ and if you’re honest you’ll see the example) that is a priori based on flawed claims in the premise. Yet, just as Karl Marx and the elites who carried his message to the masses bent reality to meet his objectives, so do the brainless SJWs, who are so hungry for any type of change that they fail to see the good in front of them.
This pretend science then places every american in the predicament to tell the truth or claim virtue, but in the view of SJWs, you can’t do both, thus it becomes one’s duty to ‘stand on the right side of history’ and claim the virtuous high ground (which is, of course, defined by the only people in our republic who are virtuous: the perceived oppressed and marginalized groups; but certainly not white heterosexual Christian men.
Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death!
In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook data scandal, the truth began to come out about why social media companies were more profitable. “Big Tech” seemed somewhat innocuous, and as certain features launched on our laptops, phones and tablets, they seemed to be massive conveniences. “You mean I don’t have to type my whole address in a form? I can just hit a button and it enters itself?!? Righteous!”
Dreher draws on the astoundingly based work of Shoshana Zuboff, who’s 700-page analysis of big tech outlines the freedoms that we’ve freely given to big tech. Aside: In the wake of the Cambridge scandal if you remember, Apple updated their iOS with a new feature that would mask your data from any company trying to access it. In the days following the release of that single feature, Facebook stock lost $232 BILLION in value. The fact that they would no longer be able to harvest data from users (and only users of Apple devices!) was enough to take them to within 20% of their total valuation. That alone told the world what Meta was up to and anyone paying even a modest amount of attention could connect those dots, despite mainstream media outlets blaming it on Q1 revenue projections it didn’t take long for everyone to start noticing the two were related.
Dreher goes on with expert analysis of conservative content on the internet, showing a clear bias toward liberal ideologies. Google, who made their trillions by “organizing the internet” into pages and shaping what we search for, very clearly favors liberal sites over conservative sites. The rise of the Duck Duck Go platform was supposed to help curb that, but it really didn’t. Dreher uses the specific examples of Breitbart and other conservative outlets far superior that have fallen to the tenth page on a Google search. Big Tech has even gone so far as to slap the death-rattle “hate group” label on many organizations that we trust fully, such as the Family Research Council and the Alliance Defending Freedom (who just won a landmark SCOTUS case for 303 creative), effectively erasing them from any search on google that doesn’t include their exact name. Because we value convenience over truth so fully, this is censorship, despite the argument from Big Tech that they are still online. If it’s not indexed by Google, it might as well not be.
The author goes on to give a myriad of other examples, all right on the money, of how Big Tech uses seemingly innocuous ‘convenience’ moves in order to censor and shape society into a docile, institutionalized version of what our forefathers saw for the nation. What’s even more telling here is that all of these issues have gotten exponentially worse since the release of this book. Now we have PROOF that the White House had actual officers at Twitter and influenced the content they allowed. We now KNOW that Mark Zuckerberg was in constant contact with the DOJ and the FBI. We now KNOW that the White House actively propagated false information about Russian Collusion and the Hunter Biden laptop in order to influence the 2020 presidential election. Yet the political left continues to push for the new totalitarianism. That’s because it’s more than an ideology now; just like Marxism, it’s a new religion. Rod Dreher was spot on and his ‘rightness’ keeps unfolding each day that passes.
So we now have a population that is rife with unrest and sees activism (no matter the cause) as a virtue, leading to more unrest. A population that has a way to index us and censor us on a whim, instantly. And worst of all a population who wants to throw God in the trash in favor of “science” which is not very scientific, but more an ideology that is poised to take the place of religion and morals in our future generations. This is what Dreher calls the “soft totalitarianism”.
See. Judge. Act. – Actionable Steps to Resistance
The coming pages of the rest of this masterful work is why it hits so hard. The book’s subtitle is “A Manual for Christian Dissidents”, and my wife ribbed me as I was studying each paragraph with the fervor of a first-year med student; I said “well it’s literally a handbook…a manual. Dreher lays out in the last three-quarters of his work, steps that we can take to resist this soft totalitarianism; actionable ways that we can resist backed with commentary from Russians who lived through it in “the motherland”. Those who would ignore the warnings of this book are doing so in the face of the only people on earth who saw it happen first hand.
The latter half of the book is what makes it so strong, where it identifies those followers of Father Kolakovic and his underground church communities. It outlines the specific ways in which the people of Russia would “See. Judge. Act” in real life, and the punishments and harsh realities that they faced. Drehers research and interviews are the best I think I’ve ever read in any publication, searching out families who endured the totalitarian regime and his book is probably the last time any of those voices will ever be heard again, until the resistance is complete and the totalitarian west is won by strong conservatives and those who truly value liberty, truth, and the almighty GOD.
Dreher distills this resistance in a list, developed by the people whom he interviewed and spoke to face-to-face, which a blog post on an independent radio station could never do justice. These tenets should echo throughout history in the face of the Biden Crime Family and Klaus Schwab’s evil empire:
Have a clear concept of the truth and do not knowingly perpetuate falsehoods
Cultivate cultural memory, know, document and hold onto your own cultural and familial history
Understand the centrality of the family as an independent community
Remain faithful in religious observance – This above all else
Build small groups and alliances across old divides
If necessary, suffer in a spirit of forgiveness – the grace of God go with you
With that I will bring this short outline to a close, and pray above all else that you read the pages of this book. Use it as the name suggests, as a manual for Christian dissidents. Keep your home groups full and active, be involved and serve your church…God’s church…who is the higher authority which totalitarianism is directly at odds. There are those who believe that Dreher missed the mark in thinking that the church is the enemy of the state at this and in this soft totalitarianism, and I challenge that directly. It’s no secret to those of us who know He who is called I AM. And who see the enemy in full view. This is the same war, albeit with new tactics, which Christians have been fighting for 2000 years.
Stay Frosty, Christ-followers.
-TJ Pander
