Sheldon Richman

Oft Evil Will Shall Evil Mar

There are certain English sentences which explain a plot, and there are sentences which, having explained the plot, proceed rather impertinently to explain half of human history. I believe Tolkien possessed a peculiar gift for the latter. “Oft evil will shall evil mar,” Theoden remarks in The Two Towers, somewhere towards the latter end of […]

Jordan Peterson’s Forward to the 50th Anniversary of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Epic ‘The Gulag Archipelago’

The three volumes of The Gulag Archipelago — one continuous, extended scream of outrage — are, paradoxically, brilliant, bitter, disbelieving and infused with awe: awe at the strength characterising the best among us, in the worst of all situations. In that monumental text, published in 1973, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn conducted “an experiment in literary investigation” — a hybrid […]

Our Treacherous Enemy!

In order to successfully get a population of human beings to hunger for waging a brutal, unprovoked war against other human souls, you must first make your enemy completely inhuman. Make them into monsters. Barbarians. They must be evil! Galvanize righteous hatred and religious zeal against them! Explain that Jesus loves those who hate the […]