The Corruption of Democracy

In early democracies all individual human rights were granted on the ground that man is God's creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. It would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual be granted boundless freedom with no purpose, simply for the satisfaction of his whims.

Subsequently, however, a total emancipation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even excess, but man's sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer. All the celebrated technological achievements of progress do not redeem the twentieth century's moral poverty.

If, as claimed by humanism, man were born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. We have placed too much hope in politics and social reforms, only to find out that we are being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life.

—Alexander Solzhenitsyn's commencement address, Harvard University, 1978, quoted in The Wall Street Journal, 8/6/2010.