JD Vance would not have become what he is today were it not for conservative author and Orthodox Christian Rod Dreher.
That’s from the Vice President of the United States himself, who addressed those gathered April 1 at the Heritage Foundation’s Washington, D.C. premiere of Episode One of Dreher’s documentary “Live Not By Lies.”
Reflecting on Dreher’s book and film, Vance said that we, as a nation, cannot “reclaim our civilization,” or “rebuild prosperity and opportunity,” or “teach children the important virtues and skills to thrive,” without “the courage to speak the truth” and “the courage to live the truth.”
“I will say, Rod, that you are a true friend, and I wouldn’t be standing here were it not for Rod Dreher,” Vance said warmly to Dreher at the event. “I think a lot of people don’t realize how important he was in the formative years of what became this massive, best-selling book, which, of course, launched me into a public career, launched me into a political career from there, and helped me become the vice president United States.”
Vance explained how his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” with just a so-so start, eventually became a best-seller and a film because Dreher, “an author I knew a little bit,” asked him to do a written interview about the book.
During one of the nights of the 2016 RNC convention, Vance recalled he sent Dreher his responses to the questions he asked, hoping that, if he published them, they might “lead some more people to the book and some of the ideas that I care about.”
He was not prepared, however, for just how much of a difference Dreher’s interview would make.
Within a day or two, Vance said his book – which had been “like number 1000 on the Amazon list,” was suddenly “number 16.”
“And I had all these emails from Rod Dreher, saying ‘The interview has gone so mega-viral that you have crashed the website multiple times,’” the vice president recalled. “And, of course, that launched ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ into the book that became, like I said, this massive best-seller, and really changed my life forever.”
“I’ll say, of course, I owe that success to Rod, I think, more than any person in American media or in American writing,” the vice president said. Vance then explained how Dreher continued to help him in his formation.
“But it’s not just that, because when the book took off, I also needed a friend, because … all of a sudden, I was doing TV interviews,” he explained. “I had no idea what I was doing. I was talking about big ideas in front of sometimes very hostile audiences. Again, I had no idea what I was doing, and it was the friend that I made, the friendship that I made with Rod Dreher, that gave me this sense of confidence that – yeah, I could stand up before audiences like this, speak my mind and have something worthwhile to say.”
Vance’s address, and gratitude, clearly touched Dreher’s heart.
“It was a great, great gift my friend gave me,” he wrote in a Substack column the next day. “He left after his speech. When we embraced on-stage, we told each other that we loved each other, which is true. That man is the future of America, I believe. I’m so grateful to God that He let me play a small but meaningful part in his rise.”
In “Live Not By Lies,” released by Angel Studios and based on Dreher’s book “Live Not By Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents,” viewers are introduced to Christian survivors of Soviet Communism who warn of current-day totalitarian regimes that lure the fearful with the promise of an idyllic world as they ratchet up their own power and control over people’s daily lives.
The topic is close to Vance’s heart, as the world saw in February when the vice president addressed European leaders at the Munich Security Conference.
As CatholicVote reported, in what George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley described as a “truly Churchillian moment,” Vance told his listeners that the most fearsome threat to European security is not an enemy nation, but, instead, “the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values – values shared with the United States of America.”
“I think this is the most important book that Rod has ever written – because it’s the most prophetic,” Vance said at the premiere of Dreher’s documentary. “It’s the most prophetic about where Western civilization has gone, and in particular, some of the very founding ideas of the West, the Christian faith, on which all Western nations were, in some important respect, really, based on in their original charter.”
The vice president shot down those narratives that minimize the suppression of Christian ideas with the claim that the faith has simply lost popularity.
“What we’ve seen is that those ideas have become disfavored,” he asserted. “The ruling elite of the societies have become actively hostile to some of the very ideas that those countries were founded on in the first place, and I think Rod’s book was an incredibly prophetic insight into that.”
Still, the vice president said he refuses to become pessimistic or despairing as a result of this reality.
“One of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned from a dear friend of mine who helped me return to my own faith was that despair is a sin,” he shared. “And I think that the way to survive, the way to thrive when many of these ideas are attacked – when many of our most important values are criticized or even become justification for being thrown in prison – the way to respond to it is not to conform. And that’s the most important lesson of Rod’s book: the way to deal with this, the way to deal with being attacked by the ruling elites of a given society, is to speak the truth, is to live not by lies.”
Vance explained that while “living by lies” is often greatly incentivized by “financial rewards” and “social benefits,” Dreher has provided an important lesson: “that you’re going to sacrifice your soul, you’re going to sacrifice your civilization, you’re going to sacrifice your family, you’re going to sacrifice your country – if you give in to the easy pathway.”
Applying his worldview to the Trump administration, Vance said he is “proud” of President Donald Trump, who, he affirmed, “is not a person who is afraid by criticism from those in power.”
“This is a guy with incredible courage,” the vice president said. “He just doesn’t care what other people say about him. He doesn’t care what the media writes about him. He’s going to do what he thinks is right. And, I think, in so many important ways, that leadership and that example is … something that Rod previewed in many ways in this book. And, of course, now that book is an important documentary.”
“So, I guess my point is that part of living not by lies is to continue to maintain the optimism that I think is really at the root of the Judeo-Christian tradition in the United States of America and in the West,” the vice president concluded. “It’s that the promise … of the Christian faith is not that we’re always going to win on a short-term horizon, but that ultimately God calls the shots.”
“He is in control,” Vance concluded. “And if we keep on fighting and we keep on 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 – great things happen in the United States of America, and great things happen all across the West.”