Taking Advantage of Freedom: Solzhenitsyn on What to Do with Liberty When You Have It

While political, economic, and intellectual freedom is a precious gift to humans, our long history shows that we are ready to give it away. Why? One answer comes from the Nobel Prize–winning Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008): When people don’t understand and use the freedom they have, they will throw it away to the detriment of themselves and their loved ones. This lecture will give a brief introduction to the life and career of Solzhenitsyn and then outline the four enemies to freedom he identified, along with ways to rightly understand and preserve it while flourishing as individuals and societies.