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Miami Herald
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Miami Herald
‘Sound of Freedom' Studio Releases New Films Taking on Woke Culture
Angel Studios, the distributor behind the surprise 2023 summer hit Sound of Freedom, has released a new documentary series that argues the impact of woke culture on parts of the West amounts to a "soft totalitarianism" which is comparable to, but distinct from, the "hard totalitarianism" of the Soviet Union. The film Live Not By Lies! is based on the 2020 New York Times bestselling book of the same name written by conservative commentator Rod Dreher, who described himself as an "old friend" of Vice President JD Vance. Split into four parts, it had its U.K. premiere in London's swanky Belgravia district on June 30, where Dreher told Newsweek he believes Vance "could be the new Reagan." Live Not By Lies! fleshes out the argument made by Vance at the Munich Security Conference in February, when he shocked European audiences by arguing Western European nations face a bigger threat from "within," including perceived attacks on free speech, than from traditional rivals like Russia and China. This shows a powerful current within American conservative thinking which believes political freedoms are being weakened in Western Europe, and in particular the United Kingdom, in an attempt to accommodate "woke" ideology and multiculturalism. Live Not By Lies! was released by Angel Studios on its streaming platform on a weekly basis over April in four parts. The first episode, which was played at the London premiere on June 30, focused on dissidents who opposed what Dreher calls the "hard totalitarianism" of the Soviet Union from behind the Iron Curtain. A number of prominent British conservatives attended the event, including Mark Francois, a Tory MP and former minister, and ex-Mumford & Sons guitarist Winston Marshall, along with Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster, who co-host the popular Triggernometry YouTube channel which has 1.4 million subscribers. The U.S. premier took place in Washington and was addressed by Vance. Subsequent episodes argue parts of the West are now in the grip of a "soft totalitarianism," which has seen restrictions placed on free speech to avoid causing offense. Speaking to Newsweek, Dreher said: "The main message of the film is that we're living now in Western civilization in a time of soft totalitarianism which is to say it's not like the Soviet version which has a police state, nevertheless people are very oppressed by speech codes, by fear of saying what they really think, against the left frankly. "The message of the film is that it is important to find the courage to speak up to it for the sake of liberty and of the values that have been at the core of what it means to be a man or woman of the west for a very long time." The U.K. is held up as an "extreme example" of this, with Dreher saying: "As an American we look to Britain as our mother country, as the founding place of democracy and that this is happening in Britain is of course a horror to us but it should not happen." A promotional poster for Live Not By Lies! provocatively features CCTV cameras and communist flags emblazoned over British landmarks like Tower Bridge, St. Paul's Cathedral and the Houses of Parliament. U.K.-based cases featured in the series include that of Adam Smith-Connor, a former British soldier who in 2024 was criminally convicted after silently praying within a council designated "safe zone" outside an abortion clinic in Bournemouth, on England's south coast, and refusing requests to move. Smith-Conner was ordered to pay more than £9,000 in costs and handed a two-year conditional discharge, which he is appealing. Speaking to Newsweek at the premiere, Smith-Connor said: "I think our soft totalitarianism is a very comfortable one, but I think as more and more lies seep into our society and this culture of death with abortion up to birth and assisted suicide coming in, I think it's going to start encroaching into more and more fields of our life." In 2023 Angel Studios, a Christian film distributing company based in Utah, released Sound of Freedom, an action movie telling the story of Tim Ballard, who launched missions to rescue children from sex trafficking in Columbia. The film became widely popular, particularly with conservative audiences, bringing in more than $250 million worldwide against a budget of just $14.5 million. Speaking to Newsweek, Smallman said that "no mainstream elements" would touch his proposal for Live Not By Lies! "with a 10-foot poll," but that Angel Studios expressed interest. The company submitted the documentary series to what it calls its "Guild," made up of its customers, who green-lit the project and allowed him to raise "about $1.5 million from 3,000 people online who sent us money because they believed in the project." Dreher told Newsweek he is an "old friend" of Vance, whom he described as "a serious intellectual Christian and a man of great stability." The writer went on to predict Vance "could be the new Reagan" adding: "I think if everything goes generally well with the rest of the Trump administration, we will have a President Vance because JD Vance has proved himself loyal to President Trump and his agenda." Referring to Vance's speech at the Munich Security Conference, Dreher said: "When JD gave that speech in Munich, my smartphone lit up with texts from conservative friends from Bucharest, across Europe to London, saying, 'thank God somebody finally said it.' "Europeans who love their country, who love their culture and who love freedom of speech are looking to the American vice president as their defender. It's an incredible moment in history." Live Not By Lies! is available for streaming on the Angel Studios website. Related Articles Supreme Court to Hear JD Vance CaseJD Vance Is Being Proven Right About Europe's Free Speech ProblemSupreme Court Justice Samuel Alito Quotes Himself in New OpinionBen Cohen: I Was Arrested at Senate Hearing Because I Protested for Justice | Opinion 2025 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC.
Newsweek
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Newsweek
'Sound of Freedom' Studio Releases New Films Taking on Woke Culture
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Angel Studios, the distributor behind the surprise 2023 summer hit Sound of Freedom, has released a new documentary series that argues the impact of woke culture on parts of the West amounts to a "soft totalitarianism" which is comparable to, but distinct from, the "hard totalitarianism" of the Soviet Union. The film Live Not By Lies! is based on the 2020 New York Times bestselling book of the same name written by conservative commentator Rod Dreher, who described himself as an "old friend" of Vice President JD Vance. Split into four parts, it had its U.K. premiere in London's swanky Belgravia district on June 30, where Dreher told Newsweek he believes Vance "could be the new Reagan." Why It Matters Live Not By Lies! fleshes out the argument made by Vance at the Munich Security Conference in February, when he shocked European audiences by arguing Western European nations face a bigger threat from "within," including perceived attacks on free speech, than from traditional rivals like Russia and China. This shows a powerful current within American conservative thinking which believes political freedoms are being weakened in Western Europe, and in particular the United Kingdom, in an attempt to accommodate "woke" ideology and multiculturalism. What To Know Live Not By Lies! was released by Angel Studios on its streaming platform on a weekly basis over April in four parts. The first episode, which was played at the London premiere on June 30, focused on dissidents who opposed what Dreher calls the "hard totalitarianism" of the Soviet Union from behind the Iron Curtain. A number of prominent British conservatives attended the event, including Mark Francois, a Tory MP and former minister, and ex-Mumford & Sons guitarist Winston Marshall, along with Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster, who co-host the popular Triggernometry YouTube channel which has 1.4 million subscribers. The U.S. premier took place in Washington and was addressed by Vance. A promotional poster for Angel Studios' documentary series "Live Not By Lies!" A promotional poster for Angel Studios' documentary series "Live Not By Lies!" Angel Studios Subsequent episodes argue parts of the West are now in the grip of a "soft totalitarianism," which has seen restrictions placed on free speech to avoid causing offense. Speaking to Newsweek, Dreher said: "The main message of the film is that we're living now in Western civilization in a time of soft totalitarianism which is to say it's not like the Soviet version which has a police state, nevertheless people are very oppressed by speech codes, by fear of saying what they really think, against the left frankly. "The message of the film is that it is important to find the courage to speak up to it for the sake of liberty and of the values that have been at the core of what it means to be a man or woman of the west for a very long time." The U.K. is held up as an "extreme example" of this, with Dreher saying: "As an American we look to Britain as our mother country, as the founding place of democracy and that this is happening in Britain is of course a horror to us but it should not happen." A promotional poster for Live Not By Lies! provocatively features CCTV cameras and communist flags emblazoned over British landmarks like Tower Bridge, St. Paul's Cathedral and the Houses of Parliament. Comedian Konstantin Kisin speaking at the London premier of "Live Not By Lies!" Comedian Konstantin Kisin speaking at the London premier of "Live Not By Lies!" James Bickerton/Newsweek U.K.-based cases featured in the series include that of Adam Smith-Connor, a former British soldier who in 2024 was criminally convicted after silently praying within a council designated "safe zone" outside an abortion clinic in Bournemouth, on England's south coast, and refusing requests to move. Smith-Conner was ordered to pay more than £9,000 in costs and handed a two-year conditional discharge, which he is appealing. Speaking to Newsweek at the premiere, Smith-Connor said: "I think our soft totalitarianism is a very comfortable one, but I think as more and more lies seep into our society and this culture of death with abortion up to birth and assisted suicide coming in, I think it's going to start encroaching into more and more fields of our life." Angel Studios In 2023 Angel Studios, a Christian film distributing company based in Utah, released Sound of Freedom, an action movie telling the story of Tim Ballard, who launched missions to rescue children from sex trafficking in Columbia. The film became widely popular, particularly with conservative audiences, bringing in more than $250 million worldwide against a budget of just $14.5 million. Speaking to Newsweek, Smallman said that "no mainstream elements" would touch his proposal for Live Not By Lies! "with a 10-foot poll," but that Angel Studios expressed interest. The company submitted the documentary series to what it calls its "Guild," made up of its customers, who green-lit the project and allowed him to raise "about $1.5 million from 3,000 people online who sent us money because they believed in the project." Vice President Vance Dreher told Newsweek he is an "old friend" of Vance, whom he described as "a serious intellectual Christian and a man of great stability." The writer went on to predict Vance "could be the new Reagan" adding: "I think if everything goes generally well with the rest of the Trump administration, we will have a President Vance because JD Vance has proved himself loyal to President Trump and his agenda." Referring to Vance's speech at the Munich Security Conference, Dreher said: "When JD gave that speech in Munich, my smartphone lit up with texts from conservative friends from Bucharest, across Europe to London, saying, 'thank God somebody finally said it.' "Europeans who love their country, who love their culture and who love freedom of speech are looking to the American vice president as their defender. It's an incredible moment in history." What Happens Next Live Not By Lies! is available for streaming on the Angel Studios website.
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Members of the MAGA Elite Have a New Favorite Slur for Each Other. It's Tearing Them Apart.
Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Last week, while the Republican Party reeled from a bitter and loud falling-out between the two most powerful men in U.S. politics, a much quieter dispute was playing out among the intellectual leaders of the right. This feud would have been easy to miss, even without the Trump–Musk showdown overshadowing everything else. It involved impenetrable jargon, long-winded blog posts, hard-to-parse political factions, and a set of characters known more for quoting philosophers than for authoring the kinds of punchy, lib-owning posts that typify the right's most popular internet figures. But those inside that world who followed the conversation witnessed something significant: a sign that some of the intellectual leaders of the modern MAGA movement are becoming disturbed by parts of the movement they created. The controversy began on Sunday, when the prominent conservative writer Rod Dreher, a close friend of J.D. Vance's, published an essay in the Free Press, the publication founded by Bari Weiss, titled 'The Woke Right Is Coming for Your Sons.' In the essay, Dreher argued that many on the right were displaying what he believed to be ugly qualities that define the modern left: language policing (see: Trump's renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the 'Gulf of America'); rewriting history (see: a MAGA podcaster's description of Winston Churchill as the 'chief villain' of World War II); and, above all, identity-based politics. Dreher wrote that he saw white Christian men feeling disempowered and advocating for their own racial, gender, and religious interests; he was most disturbed by how often this form of 'identity politics' seemed to manifest as aggressive antisemitism. This essay infuriated some people on the right, who complained that Dreher was slandering normal conservatives by calling them 'woke.' His mistake had been in using a term that some more-centrist conservatives have invoked to describe people such as Christopher Rufo, the man often credited with driving the campaign against 'critical race theory' in schools. Worse, the terminology seemed to imply that there was a power equivalence between the 'woke left' and 'woke right,' when, conservatives argued, the 'woke left' was much more powerful than whatever its right-wing counterpart was. The next day, Dreher published an apology to his readers. In a 4,700-word blog post (Dreher is always prolix), he admitted that he had erred by not being 'online enough.' The term 'woke right' was excised from the piece, and the headline was changed to warn of the dangers of 'the radical right.' The incident was not the first time the term had been the center of controversy in debates around modern conservative politics. But the episode marks a particularly heated moment for the digital elites of the MAGA movement, as Dreher's miscalculation comes at a time when the right, wielding greater political power than it has held in years, has begun to show fractures in its coalition. The term 'woke right' has been circulating for a few years now; one of the first significant uses was in 2022, in a critical essay from a Reformed Presbyterian pastor reviewing a Christian nationalist book. The review, titled 'The Rise of Right-Wing Wokeism,' argued that the Christian nationalist book was 'woke' because it argued that 'oppression is everywhere, extreme measures are necessary, and the regime must be overthrown.' Since then, some conservatives have used the term to describe right-wing victimhood complexes (as when supposed 'woke' right-wingers characterize the Jan. 6 defendants as martyrs) and disruptive, burn-down-the-system ideologies. Tucker Carlson and Matt Walsh are often pointed to as leading figures of this 'woke right.' But the discussion of the term has grown in the past couple of months. In late March, the Quillette podcast hosted a guest to discuss how 'the enemies of wokeness have created their own cultish ideology, complete with right-wing purity spirals and mobbings.' On May 12, the Christian Post published an op-ed arguing that 'woke right' social media users were complaining that 'straight white men are oppressed'; 'society is ruled by women'; ' 'normies' are blind to this reality'; and 'the only solution is a Protestant Franco or a Christian prince.' The term has yet to develop a consensus definition. The psychologist Jordan Peterson, who was one of the main figures popularizing the term, told Joe Rogan in April that the 'woke right' was really a matter of 'psychopaths' on social media who care mostly about being inflammatory and publicly antisemitic and only pretend to care about the conservative movement. Peterson and those like him see this phenomenon as the bile of the internet, rather than a matter for real political analysis. That differs from the views of James Lindsay, the term's biggest enthusiast. Lindsay is a provocateur known for a 2018 stunt in which he successfully published a number of ridiculous papers in 'grievance studies' in peer-reviewed academic journals. For people who knew Lindsay only for that episode, his current actions would seem surprising: He is now on a crusade against certain elements of the modern GOP, including techno-fascists, Christian nationalists, and national conservatives. Last year, in a sign of that pivot, he tricked a conservative Christian publication into running portions of The Communist Manifesto. It's his use that has made the term most controversial. Lindsay's version of the 'woke right' is defined by identity-based politics in which everything can be viewed through the lens of power dynamics. The 'woke right' seeks to destroy the left to order society by its cultural values—through any necessary means. In other words, while Dreher and Peterson used the word woke to describe, essentially, expressions of aggressive racism, antisemitism, and misogyny, Lindsay uses it to describe a larger political faction with fascist-leaning politics that he believes is taking over the elites of the MAGA movement. He is using the term against the New Right. He has even used it against Vance. It's easy to feel lost when trying to wade through this discussion, in large part because members of the right-wing online commentariat speak their own insular language. (The term longhouse, for example, often surfaces in this debate. That one term, which, to boil it down, refers to 'female' styles of governance, warrants its own separate explainer.) But it's not necessary to understand the nuanced differences between the uses of the 'woke right' to see the underlying friction. It's clear, from all this, that some on the right are becoming so uneasy about the more militant elements of their new coalition that they are feeling the need to speak up, knowing they will give ammunition to their enemies on the left. 'I am now witnessing the deep inroads, in such a short period, that right-wing totalitarianism, expressed most often as antisemitism, has made, especially among a growing segment of right-wing males,' Dreher wrote in his essay. Dreher is no moderate centrist. He opposes gay marriage, has been vocally critical of Islam, and has described immigration from nonwhite countries as undermining Western civilization. He is so enthusiastic about the authoritarian president of Hungary that he moved to the country to enjoy what he believes to be its postwoke society. So it's notable that, in his essay, he describes being disturbed by the amount of white nationalism, Holocaust denial, and conspiracy theories, as well as other forms of extremism he has observed among young white conservative men. And it's even more notable that he rejects the notion that it was only fringe. 'When popular online figures offering crackpot takes … find their way onto mainstream podcasts like Joe Rogan's and Tucker Carlson's, you know something massive is happening,' he wrote. Dreher did not go so far as to equate the left and the right. He was insistent that the 'woke right' had only a fraction of the power the 'woke left' wielded. (He broke hard from Lindsay here, accusing him in his apology blog post of 'vile slander' and speculating that Lindsay was autistic.) He also expressed some empathy for the budding fascists. 'So many young men like him—white, heterosexual, and Christian—have grown up in a culture that has told them they are the source of most of the world's evils, simply by virtue of their unchosen identity,' he wrote in the original essay. 'Right-wing radicalism, including antisemitism, because some of their perceived persecutors are Jewish intellectual and cultural figures, speaks to their anger and trauma, and validates their rage.' Still, as cautious as the critique may seem, it pointed to some fundamental tensions in the right's coalition. He wasn't alone in expressing his anxiety about extremism either. The writer Robby Soave disagreed with Dreher's use of the term but wrote on X that the 'underlying phenomenon (increased anti-Semitism, tribalism, Tate-ism etc. in some corners of the young, male online right) is real.' Rufo, similarly, wrote that 'what you're describing is a real phenomenon that needs to be dealt with,' offering that he substitute 'antisemitism, right-wing racialism, etc.,' for the word woke. The term 'woke right' may or may not survive as a political insult past this moment. It's possible that some will continue to use it to label the group that many have, at other times, called the 'dissident right' or 'alt-right' or any number of terms to describe ugly, racist, and provocative nationalist conservatism. It's also possible it will fade away. But this small conflict, played out mostly among a tiny group of right-wing elites, reveals the natural inward turn that comes from cultural and political dominance. The right has routed the left; its individual factions do not, at this moment, need their allies as they once did. The time is right instead for them to advocate for their own political projects. The Musk–Trump feud made it clear that the tech right doesn't always fit well within the populist MAGA movement. Nor can the libertarians, the Christian nationalists, the bigoted edgelords, the Israel hawks, the MAHA antivaxxers, and the doomsday conspiracists all be expected to get along. But with the 'woke right' fight, we saw a different kind of splintering, even among those who share political end goals: one between those who are concerned about the radicalization of young white men, and those who see it as an asset. 'Imagine you're stuck in LA today, facing certain death from the Hamas Marxist army,' one major right-wing account wrote on X on Saturday. 'Who do you want fighting next to you, the people crying about 'woke right' or the people who have been called 'woke right.' Everyone knows the answer.' The answer, of course, was the group known for its anger and resentment. Thanks to the changes Musk has made to X, it's easier than ever to observe the swamp of far-right hatred on social media. Dreher and the others saw it themselves: Any of the posts discussing the problem of 'wokeism' in MAGA will be flooded with comments about Jews. Now that the right has room to breathe, MAGA leaders can finally turn to the issues in their own movement. And some of them are starting to become disturbed by what they've created.
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Vance says we can 'reclaim' society from totalitarian left if we ‘keep on fighting'
FIRST ON FOX: Vice President JD Vance said the message in a new docuseries echoed the direction of the Trump administration's recent actions – and the rest of the world would be wise to take notice. He offered remarks Tuesday night at an exclusive screening of the film adaptation of author Rod Dreher's "Live Not By Lies" – first-hand interviews with civilian figures throughout the postwar period who embraced Christian values to blunt totalitarian regimes and efforts from Great Britain to Czechoslovakia when it was part of the Soviet bloc Vance said he got to know Dreher after the writer asked to interview him about his book, "Hillbilly Elegy," before the now-vice president was a fixture on the political scene. Before boarding a flight back to the U.S. from a vacation in the United Kingdom, Vance submitted written answers to Dreher and hoped for the best – his book was hovering around No. 1,000 on the Amazon list. By the time he landed in the U.S., Dreher's write-up had propelled it to No. 16. "Hillbilly Elegy" later inspired a Ron Howard film, and helped launch Vance into the spotlight as a nationally recognized figure. He would go on to win a seat in the Senate and eventually become vice president. Trump Tariffs Lead Canadian Business To Offer 'Rage Room' For Trump, Musk, Vance Portraits Read On The Fox News App Dreher's book and film, which featured interviews with notable dissidents of communism and totalitarianism in the Soviet bloc and even in England today, is a lesson for people of Christian and democratic values not to lose hope and "never stop fighting," Vance said. He said that, without the courage to act in the face of government-compelled groupthink, the traditionalist West cannot "reclaim our civilization… rebuild prosperity and opportunity [or] rebuild the kind of society where we teach children the important virtues and skills to thrive; as opposed to trying to tear our kids down, which is what I think our education system does all too often." Without speaking up, people who seek liberty over tyranny cannot defeat the left-wing foreign policy groupthink that has become the "animating concept" in too many Western nations, the vice president added. "We're not going to solve any of these problems unless we have the courage to speak the truth, unless we have the courage to live the truth." One thing the traditionalist right struggles with is submitting to despair, Vance said. "This idea that because things were not going great in 2020, because things weren't always going in our way electorally, we would give into this sense that the country that we love, the civilization that we love was always on a negative trajectory," he said. "And I say that as not a criticism of Rod, because I, myself, have sometimes felt in the lowest moments of American politics that, maybe, this country is just not going in the right direction." "But I think that what we've learned over the last few months is that the American people, and I think Western peoples, are a hell of a lot more resilient than our elites give them credit for." Vance said "Live Not By Lies" – a phrase itself coined by Soviet exile Alexander Solzhenitsyn in one of his famous oratories – means to maintain the same optimism that is at the root of Judeo-Christian theology and therefore the root of American traditions. Vance Calls Out Leftist Hypocrisy Against Jill Stein, Saying Dems Contrarily Want Rfk Jr Off Ballot "You have Western peoples calling out their governments pushing back on issues like migration and religious freedom in a way that we haven't seen in 20 or 30 years – if we've ever seen it," he said. "If we keep on fighting and we keep working and we keep on having faith and we keep on pursuing the values that we know are right, I really do believe that we are going to see great things happen… all across the West. I know the president knows this." Vance said the message of "Live Not By Lies" has been proven in the first months of the fledgling Trump-Vance administration. "We've gone from a country where we would harass and threaten and investigate and even arrest pro-life protesters to one where we're encouraging pro-life activists to do what they can to persuade their fellow Americans," Vance said. The film and book show British pro-life leader Isabel Vaughan-Spruce recounting being arrested essentially for praying outside an abortion clinic, and feature video of London police interrogating her on the street to find out what she was praying about. "A couple of months ago, we had social media censorship run amok. We were threatening people's right of free expression for not saying the things that Silicon Valley technology companies told them to say," Vance went on. "Now I believe that we have more free speech on the internet today than we've probably had in 10 or 15 years. So we're making progress."Original article source: Vance says we can 'reclaim' society from totalitarian left if we 'keep on fighting'
Fox News
02-04-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Vance says we can 'reclaim' society from totalitarian left if we ‘keep on fighting'
Vice President JD Vance said the message in a new docuseries echoed the direction of the Trump administration's recent actions – and the rest of the world would be wise to take notice. He offered remarks Tuesday night at an exclusive screening of the film adaptation of author Rod Dreher's "Live Not By Lies" – first-hand interviews with civilian figures throughout the postwar period who embraced Christian values to blunt totalitarian regimes and efforts from Great Britain to Czechoslovakia when it was part of the Soviet bloc Vance said he got to know Dreher after the writer asked to interview him about his book, "Hillbilly Elegy," before the now-vice president was a fixture on the political scene. Before boarding a flight back to the U.S. from a vacation in the United Kingdom, Vance submitted written answers to Dreher and hoped for the best – his book was hovering around No. 1,000 on the Amazon list. By the time he landed in the U.S., Dreher's write-up had propelled it to No. 16. "Hillbilly Elegy" later inspired a Ron Howard film, and helped launch Vance into the spotlight as a nationally recognized figure. He would go on to win a seat in the Senate and eventually become vice president. Dreher's book and film, which featured interviews with notable dissidents of communism and totalitarianism in the Soviet bloc and even in England today, is a lesson for people of Christian and democratic values not to lose hope and "never stop fighting," Vance said. He said that, without the courage to act in the face of government-compelled groupthink, the traditionalist West cannot "reclaim our civilization… rebuild prosperity and opportunity [or] rebuild the kind of society where we teach children the important virtues and skills to thrive; as opposed to trying to tear our kids down, which is what I think our education system does all too often." Without speaking up, people who seek liberty over tyranny cannot defeat the left-wing foreign policy groupthink that has become the "animating concept" in too many Western nations, the vice president added. "We're not going to solve any of these problems unless we have the courage to speak the truth, unless we have the courage to live the truth." One thing the traditionalist right struggles with is submitting to despair, Vance said. "This idea that because things were not going great in 2020, because things weren't always going in our way electorally, we would give into this sense that the country that we love, the civilization that we love was always on a negative trajectory," he said. "And I say that as not a criticism of Rod, because I, myself, have sometimes felt in the lowest moments of American politics that, maybe, this country is just not going in the right direction." "But I think that what we've learned over the last few months is that the American people, and I think Western peoples, are a hell of a lot more resilient than our elites give them credit for." Vance said "Live Not By Lies" – a phrase itself coined by Soviet exile Alexander Solzhenitsyn in one of his famous oratories – means to maintain the same optimism that is at the root of Judeo-Christian theology and therefore the root of American traditions. "You have Western peoples calling out their governments pushing back on issues like migration and religious freedom in a way that we haven't seen in 20 or 30 years – if we've ever seen it," he said. "If we keep on fighting and we keep working and we keep on having faith and we keep on pursuing the values that we know are right, I really do believe that we are going to see great things happen… all across the West. I know the president knows this." Vance said the message of "Live Not By Lies" has been proven in the first months of the fledgling Trump-Vance administration. "We've gone from a country where we would harass and threaten and investigate and even arrest pro-life protesters to one where we're encouraging pro-life activists to do what they can to persuade their fellow Americans," Vance said. The film and book show British pro-life leader Isabel Vaughan-Spruce recounting being arrested essentially for praying outside an abortion clinic, and feature video of London police interrogating her on the street to find out what she was praying about. "A couple of months ago, we had social media censorship run amok. We were threatening people's right of free expression for not saying the things that Silicon Valley technology companies told them to say," Vance went on. "Now I believe that we have more free speech on the internet today than we've probably had in 10 or 15 years. So we're making progress."
