From the Back Story

"After encountering a massive and at times organized opposition to what I had thought to be an innocuous newspaper article, I wanted to put into print (the very word now perhaps quaint) something that I hoped would outlast the digital frenzy. Without expecting to make the slightest headway with the keyboard gunners, my appeal was to a future sobered by the painful failures that digital culture as it exists today is sure to bring.

"Would it have been stupid while living in Russia in the 1920s to have written about the sanctity of the individual and the dangers of collectivism? Perhaps. Would it have been suicidal? Most likely. Would it have accomplished anything? Probably not. Would it have been right? Yes ."