Daniel J. Mahoney, one of the great living conservative men of letters, has compiled a new work of essays with a laser focus on the deadly consequences of enabling and therefore empowering “ideological fanaticism.”
Mahoney has long trumpeted the works of past thinkers who revolted against “ideological despotism,” like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Vaclav Havel, or who have warned against its rise, like philosophers Roger Scruton and Raymond Aron. Mahoney is one of the modern trumpeters, and his extensive work has placed him at the forefront of the intellectual battlefield. His latest work, “The Persistence of the Ideological Lie: The Totalitarian Impulse Then and Now,” ventures through the past 200-plus years of revolutionary upheavals.
The author clearly indicates the singular reason why modern revolutions, which promised liberty and prosperity, delivered neither, but rather decreased both. In the instances of the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the rise of communism in Cambodia and China, and the rise of Nazism in Germany, and others, the singular reason was an “ideological lie.” It was the unnatural idea that the nature of humanity could be changed.
Allowing the Lie
The most potent danger, though, is not so much the lie itself. An ideological lie is nothing if it is not believed. It is merely a fool’s method of inheriting the wind. Throughout the essays, it becomes obvious that the threat to society comes from people’s belief motivated by political or social gain. Additionally—and this tends to be the linchpin—a lie spreads when those who do not believe it say nothing against it. Abiding by a lie while not believing it was the source of much pain and death during the 20th century in places like Germany and the Soviet Union.
Combatting the Lie
Mahoney pinpoints how during the past decade, America has been inundated with ideological lies. Lies so preposterous that one would think that even Joseph Stalin would chuckle at these American ideologues’ incredulity. As Mahoney makes clear early in his book, fighting the ideological lie cannot be fought with “an ‘ideological’ response.” It takes “practical reason and applied political philosophy” to combat it, and the author recommends we learn from “the best critics of the totalitarian Lie, especially those from behind the Iron Curtain, who saw in ideology a mendacious assault on decent politics and the human soul.”The destruction of the human soul is what is at stake because once that goes, then goes society at large, and there is nothing that will keep us from becoming “victims and executioners” and descending into the chaos so clearly exemplified in those aforementioned revolutionary upheavals.
Mahoney notes how America’s major institutions, from the media to education to the federal government, have been swallowed up by ideology. The last and most powerful line of resistance is “every decent American.” As one so inspired by the intellectual honesty and moral bravery of Solzhenitsyn, Mahoney too requests to “live not by lies.” What must be remembered, despite the “Lie” that suggests otherwise, is that “human beings have a nature,” and as Mahoney states, “we forget that elementary truth at our peril.”
The Consequence of Believing the Lie
“The willful denials of truth and falsehood, good and evil, virtue and vice, understood as fundamental distinctions rooted in the structure of reality,” writes Mahoney, “inevitably lead to a comprehensive subversion of all the goods of human life: of liberty, the life of the mind, sound politics, and moral judgment. Human beings are moral as well as political animals, and the denial of these basic truths does not abolish moral phenomena as much as distort them or cause them to live a diminished and zombie-like existence.”Indeed, to willfully deny the truth will result in a repeat of the worst moments of the 19th and 20th centuries. Just as many, these past 200 years, ignored the words of men like Edmund Burke, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and C.S. Lewis (all of whom appear in the book), we ignore them, and Mahoney, at our own peril.
“The Persistence of the Ideological Lie” is a short course in the history of living under totalitarianism, and the slow, methodical, yet courageous method to swivel out from under such a crushing social and political burden. Along with that history, Mahoney provides a brief history of our own experience with the ideological lie, primarily pushed by elites on the far left, who have weaponized race and gender to great effect, despite the preposterousness of their claims. The battle for “liberty, the life of the mind, sound politics, and moral judgment” is hardly over. It is a struggle against “the totalitarian impulse” that will ebb and flow over the generations in its various and terrible forms, just as it always has. “We must,” as Mahoney warns, “resist but not emulate.” It would be prudent that we keep Mahoney’s words, along with those aforementioned, alive and well.
