Author Rod Dreher, of “Live Not By Lies,” believes that our fear of pain and struggle has been exploited by the elite class and created a soft totalitarianism in America and much of the West. He warns that we are at a critical point and must push back against it to stop the hard totalitarianism from taking hold. “They’re terrified of anything that makes them anxious, any struggle they have,” Dreher told the host of “American Thought Leaders,” Jan Jekielek, during a recent interview. “This is the source of the tyranny. We are so afraid to be poor, … we’re afraid to be anxious, to be unhappy, that so many of us will do just about anything to avoid trouble and to protect our middle-class comfort.” Before beginning his book, Dreher interviewed many people who emigrated from countries like Soviet Russia, China, Czechoslovakia, Nazi Germany, Italy, etc., and dissidents in …