Great review of Rod’s Magnum Dopus
christiansocialism.com

I desperately wish that we lived in a world in which nobody had to pay any attention to Rod Dreher. Technically we do live in such a world: it is neither ontologically nor morally necessary either that his writings exist or that anybody afford them press coverage. But in American publishing vox denarii vox Dei is the rule, and Dreher’s considerable personal charm will always afford him a warm reception in a media landscape that anoints conservative intellectuals primarily on the basis of their ability to avoid overt racial slurs during fifteen minute television appearances. In the interest of sparing the reader’s time and blood pressure, I will state my conclusion at the outset: Rod Dreher’s Live Not By Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents is not worth your time or anyone else’s, because it contains nothing that has not already been said by a thousand other forgettable mediocrities, all citing the same books for the past six decades, all working each other into hysterics as brain fevers and libido remunerandi erode the ordinarily obvious distinction between social opprobrium and show trials. In light of the intellectual vacuity and the vicious spiritual poison that have animated Dreher’s political projects over the past five or so years, a reader who values their conscience should give this book as wide a berth as a firm underhand throw and deep water will allow.

For those stubborn or foolhardy enough to persevere with me, I promise nothing but lengthy discussion of a tedious book that does not meet basic standards of readability or intellectual integrity but that will be bought and read by the sort of person whose middle-class anxieties demand that their hatred for racial and sexual minorities be cloaked in cultural concerns that they imagine get discussed at cocktail parties to which they are not invited. Dreher’s main concern in writing this book is “soft totalitarianism,” which he is quick to point out does not actually exist yet, but which he is absolutely certain poses a civilization-scale threat to the United States. It is important to note that at no point does he actually define “soft totalitarianism” or tell us how we would know it had arrived. Its function is atmospheric: it hangs in the air of his book, an eschatological photonegative to the kingdom of God that Christ has made present among us. Always lurking somewhere in the future, soft totalitarianism is supposed to instill the atmospheric dread of an old episode of The Twilight Zone, assuring us that the book’s litany of interviews with Eastern Bloc dissidents has something to teach contemporary Christians about the coming persecution—even though it will supposedly be very different from anything they experienced.

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