Much has been written about the histories, in the last century, of Nazi Germany and the former Soviet Union.  We are all aware of the atrocities that took place under these regimes.  We have also heard of similar examples of inhuman behavior in other places, such as Communist China under Mao, and more regional, localized examples, such as Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and Shining Path in Peru.

All of these examples are usually defined by one or more “-isms”:  Communism, Socialism, Fascism, etc., and the manifestations of each of these events are widely acknowledged.  However, as well-developed as the histories and the visible manifestations of each of these social or cultural events are, we still struggle to understand just how they develop and what invisible catalysts enable their development.  I say invisible because, surely if people could see such terrible events coming, they would do whatever they could to prevent them, wouldn’t they?

And yet, we still struggle to identify the reasons these cancers in our histories as human beings begin, mutate, grow, and metastasize.  Even the great writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn struggled to explain how it happened to his own country, Russia.  In the end, he arrived at the following simple conclusion.

Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”  ( Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn; “The Templeton Address”)

For some, that explanation provides reason enough.  For others, they are still left with a gnawing question and the mental vexation produced by, what still seems to be, a truth obscured.

We continue to ask, how are we to achieve early detection of these cultural malignancies that lead to such complete social breakdown, revolt, and mass psychosis?  And, once detected, how do we adequately manage them?  It is not simply the existence of tyrants or those who may be inherently most adept at accumulating power, and then most capable of exploiting it.  These “power brokers” require huge sections of the populace to serve as willing accomplices.  Without such significant support, their power, and the effects thereof, is greatly limited.  No, there needs to be some other factor at work – something within the population itself that has already germinated, has been cultivated within it’s institutions, has been transplanted within it’s communities, and allowed to ripen – long before any such power broker(s) arrive on the historical scene.

We may have a few clues that reveal, at least to some extent, just what these phenomena could be.

For one clue, C. S. Lewis, in a commencement speech he once delivered, describes to his audience an invisible social development that he warns is susceptible to terrible corruption, if not diligently guarded against.  This phenomenon is what he calls the temptation of “the inner ring”.  I will not repeat his description of this phenomenon here (I most strongly urge you to look it up and read it for yourself); only to say that, 1) he regarded that this temptation was “one of the great permanent mainsprings of human action”, and 2)  he further asserts that, “of all the passions, the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things”.

Secondly, we have this from G. K. Chesterton:  “When men stop believing in God they don’t believe in nothing; they believe in anything.”

From these great thinkers, and many others, we can conclude that all men and women yearn for some kind of meaning, something that will counteract an otherwise nihilistic existence, leading to sadness, emptiness, and despair.  Where they go to find that meaning, however, is not unimportant, because where one finds meaning, there they also cultivate, what may be called, their “faith”.  And if that faith is misspent on something so likely susceptible to corruptibility and leading to a powerful, dominant, deep, and terrible evil, we will soon realize yet another great atrocity in our world.

Is this the path that we, here in America, are on today?  I don’t know, but if so, I’m certain that future historians will examine, study, and analyze all the causes and effects in great detail.  In the end, much will be written, but I believe that nothing will be more succinct in its assessment of our past, than to say, “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”