The Pete Quiñones Show - Reading Ivan Ilyin's 'On Resistance to Evil by Force' w/ Dr. Matthew Raphael Johnson - Pt. 13

Episode Date: June 27, 2026

46 MinutesPG-13Dr. Matthew Raphael Johnson is a researcher, writer, and former professor of history and political science, specializing in Russian history and political ideology.Pete and Dr. Johnson continue a reading and commentary of Ivan Ilyin's 1925 book, "On Resistance to Evil by Force."Tolstoy's "What is a Jew?"The Lies of Leftism: Ivan Ilyin, Atheism and the Death of Reason in the East and West by Dr. Matthew Raphael JohnsonDr Johnson's PatreonDr Johnson's CashApp - $Raphael71RusJournal.orgTHE ORTHODOX NATIONALISTDr. Johnson's Radio Albion PageDr. Johnson's Books on AmazonJohnson's Law in Action: Venezuela and the Foreign Policy of Mass PresumptionDr. Johnson's Pogroms ArticleThe Orthodox Nationalist: Karl Marx “On the Jewish Question” (1844)Article: Karl Marx’s Theses on the Jews and the Necessity of Free Trade: Zur Judenfrage (1844) by Matthew Raphael JohnsonPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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I appreciate all of you. Head on over to p.cena show.com. You can get the show early and ad free over there. If not, here's a show. I want to welcome everyone back to our reading of On Resistance to Evil by Force by Ivan Eileen, Dr. Johnson. What's happening? today. I can't wait to bring the kitten into, he has his first appointment tomorrow with the

vet. And they say, is cocaine totalitarian here? My wife wouldn't do it, so I had to make the appointment. It's my vet. I've known her for a long time. And they misspelled the name already. So, you know, it's something I'm looking forward to. It's little things that keep me going. Yeah, sometimes making people just a little bit uncomfortable in public keeps them on their toes. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's a long story. You're going to get crazier as the years go on, too. He's got a persistent cough.

The cough won't go away. It's very intermittent, but it's been two weeks now. And you have a cough that won't go away. I'm regular men. There's no other symptoms. He's fine. but I'm a little paranoid now. So I'm going to bring them in tomorrow.

Really, I just want to hear them say that in the waiting room, to be honest. See if they even pronounce it right. They're going to try and shorten it to CT, and you're going to be like, oh, I'm sorry. What was that? What's the name again? I don't know what CT is. Yeah. We call them Koking.

but that's what my wife is good. If she made the appointment, that's what she was going to say. I said, no, that's not his name. He's name. I'll call then. Cocaine totalitarian. Someone's going to ask me, what the hell is the background here for this name? All right.

Let's get going. Ready? All right. Yes, sir. Picking up where we left off last time. At the center of all of Tolstoy's philosophical quest stands the question of man's moral perfection. Everything else depends on the resolution of this question and is determined by it. It is in the answer to this question that the original fear of death is drowned.

It was precisely the experience of moral perfection that revealed to him both the meaning of his whole life and the possibility of filling the desolation of the modern soul, which had initially horrified him. strictly speaking Tolstoy's entire worldview was nurtured by him from a moral experience that rose above everything judged and condemned everything replaced and displaced everything religious experience the thirst for knowledge the power of artistic and self-righteous vision legal consciousness and love for the homeland morality became the highest self-sufficient and sole value before which everything else was devalued his entire teaching is nothing other than morality, and in this lies and by this determines everything that follows.

This is both a critique in the true sense. It's both positive and negative. I've been reading a told story for a long time. Somehow he got the impression that because he's a big writer, he can now start thinking and writing about theology and political science. But when you're reading Tolstoy, outside of this question, you find yourself agreeing with him quite a bit. You know, especially when he talks about the modern state, he's not talking about the Russian state. You know, all of that. You know, he's he talks about capitalism.

I mean, he's not, he's not wrong about a lot of things. he's very naive about a lot of things. But ultimately, morality came, well, that's the expense of everything else, including spirituality. We know who his God was. His God was the Jews. His God was, you know,

Christian teaching, as we said before, came down to five or six lines in the Old Testament, easily understood, easily repeated, easily remembered, line from the, sorry, the New Testament. But that's no way to interpret anything. He found what he wanted to find.

But he was driven indeed by a moral concern. I mean, modernism had already slaughtered, God knows, how many millions in wars at this point. And this is before, you know, the whole story wasn't around for World War I. And God knows what he would have said at that point. But, you know, he didn't trust the modern world. He didn't trust the scientific establishment in any country. He was no materialist, but he was a moralist of his own making. He, you know, he was a little bit like Rousseau.

And sometimes when I want a good, solid anti-modernist critique, I go to him. don't accept everything, but he has some very good criticisms of what we call the modern world. So that's why he's here, he's half positive, half negative. Tolstoy's morality is a philosophical teaching as two sources. Firstly, a living feeling of compassionate sympathy which he calls love and conscience, and secondly, the doctrinaire understanding, which he calls reason. These two forces appear in his view separately and self-sufficient, without entering into any higher correcting or deepening combinations and by no means merging with

each other. Compassion supplies this teaching with immediate material. Understanding formally theorizes and develops this material into a worldview doctrine. Any other material is rejected as imaginary and false. Wherever it originates, any deviation from the rational deductive sequence is dismissed as a dishonest trick or sophism. His entire worldview can be reduced to this thesis. Quote, one must love pity, accustomed oneself to this,

abstain and labor for this, find bliss in this, and reject everything else, end quote. Tolstoy's entire teaching is the rational development of this thesis. Well, what I was trying to say,

in that particular translation is that it's not loving pity, but that he defines love as pity. and which of course is far from, you know, the fullness of that term. You know, any philosopher worth anything suffers with this word love. It's used every day, sometimes in the stupidest ways, to the point where, like so many words, it has no meaning whatsoever. And, but there is a philosophical conception that you see even in the church fathers.

And there it actually gets defined, believe it or not. So, and but he's not wrong here. The living feeling of compassionate sympathy, that's what he means. That's what he means by love. And then that very typical doctrinaireal understanding, and he's absolutely right, he speaks as if he is a, the counsel of Trent, which is extremely irritating in his theological works. It's almost like he's convincing himself of things. And they are separate, and there is no connective tissue there.

There's a little bit. I mean, here, he kind of contradicts himself a little bit later, as his material creates a worldview. There are really two separate things for him. But the line, any deviation from the irrational deductive sequence is dismissed as dishonesty. We talked already about Tolstoy's dealing with his critics, and my religion has a whole section on responding to my critics on the question of resisting evil by force. And he doesn't really get to the issue. He does a lot of deflecting.

and I know I mentioned it before in more detail but sometimes he has a tough he didn't have a philosophical mind he had a literary mind and when he wrote philosophical works and God knows theological works he went off the rails but his

but he's absolutely right in terms of he had two tracks two two mentalities that generally speaking didn't meet. But you can picture Tolstoy thinking that, you know, okay, I'm a theologian. I know what Christ meant in the New Testament. There can be no violence against evil. And that derives from our love from our fellow man.

I mean, I could picture that. So they do connect at some point. But there certainly is no third thing that unifies them. He's not, you know, being Higilian, Of course, Elyan knows that. He knows you have to have a third thing, being a Higalian especially, and he knows that, being a philosopher. I'm Tolstoy didn't know that. So they kind of just float together in his writing.

But we'll get in more detail here in a little bit. It is precisely the form of rational morality that imparts to his teaching the trait of a divided self-perception, constantly mindful of one's sin and opposing oneself to one's evil lust. The moralist is always internally divided. He is terrified of his own sinfulness, looks back at it suspiciously, pedantically watches it, intimidates it, and remains intimidated by it, always ready to compel himself and incapable of a single, powerful heroic impulse, but precisely such integrity and such impulse are necessary for the external suppression of evil. Furthermore, the form of rational morality gives his teaching the features

of an all equalizing severity, recognizing only the full unattainable ideal, only one criterion in a straight line at that with no deviations. If you go to any anarchist library or a big name anarchist page, they have Tolstoy. But, you know, they're iffy about him. briefly about him because he was a landowner he had he had uh employees and all that but because he was so concerned with his own sin they have no conception of sin

um but more importantly um so yeah he you know he didn't he didn't really fit there uh he was certainly an anarchist um he was a a sort of a semi-nostic christian and you know focused on the Jews, apparently, as, you know, they can resist evil by force. Now, I get that impression distinctly from what we wrote, what we read weeks ago, whenever that was.

There doesn't seem to be a problem there. But the concept of sin in the Christian sense, anarchists aren't really that interested in. So they list him on pages. They like some of this stuff, but he's not, he's not front page news. But, But that's the big issue.

So he can't make the connection. And this is what Eileen is really driving at here. Tolstoring is spending a lot of time suppressing drives and passions in himself, lust of all kinds. And yet he can't see the state has to do that with groups of people who represent those same passion. He can't make that connection. It's not the same thing to him.

and he really doesn't have the philosophical acumen to connect that anyway. He is constantly at war with himself. There's another thing that anarchists hate about. He's constantly at war with himself. He was a neurotic man, but sometimes for good reason. He saw the modern world as unleashing passions and lusts that should never have been unleashed. And that's a good part of Tolstoy.

That's a part of Tolstoy that the left doesn't really want to deal with. very often. And of course, anarchists tend to be pretty violent and having, I don't care how many lines in the New Testament that told us, they don't want the New Testament there at all. So, still, they treat him like an elder statesman that we can occasionally make reference to. And that's about it. But the war he made, and legitimately, I mean, he was very concerned with his own sin. He made war on himself concerning those sins. He couldn't connect that with anyone else or any other body, including the state, making war on the sins of the body of politics. For reason, everything is clear and simple.

It does not see the complexity of inner and outer life. It knows no tragic contradictions. Its job is to simplify complexity to clarity and reduce clarity to systematic unity. It is blind to reality and deals only with abstract concepts. In morality, it will provide a single criterion, a scheme, a template, a cliche, and discard that which does not submit to it. It is a rigorous, drawn to universally affirmative and universally negative judgments. Everything is either X or not X. Every X is approved. Every not X is condemned, and everything else provokes its wrath as an invention of self-interest and bad faith. Hence,

the inability of the minds to discern the complexity and depth of life's situations and relationships. Hence, its inability to resolve questions of life's purposefulness, which for it become questions of moral fidelity. But it is precisely this vision of the complexity and purposefulness of life's relationships that is necessary for physical resistance to evil. Well, you could see the Hagle coming out in Ilin here, especially in the first part. There's nothing simple about reason. There's nothing. There's not. nothing simple about abstract concepts. Clearly, they have to be connected to the people you're talking about. You know, political theory is one thing. You know, my two fields in grad school were political

philosophy and comparative politics. They go together. You can't have political theory floating in the air, you know, a Kantian scheme, for example. No, it has to connect to a group of people who are actually living it and functioning this way. And that's where Russia's came from Russia and Ukraine came from. And those two things went together very, very well in a way that really no one else was talking about. But he also know, I mean, he's not talking about reason as such. He's talking about Tolstoy's conception of reason. We all know from Hegel that either extranotic, he knows that's not true. He's talking about and negatively talking about Tolstoring as taking

a very simple conception of reason, not the true Higilian sense, which actually is extremely complex, conceptually or otherwise. But for Tostoy, you know, when you read his works on political theory, you know, sometimes he's right, sometimes he's wrong, but it is quite simple. You could blow through it. And I don't know, I think he was at that point in his life, he was too sheltered. He lived in a fairly healthy society. He wasn't threatened by war or anything else.

And I know I've said this before. I keep harping on it, but I think it matters. So I like the fact that Ilene is bringing out certain positive aspects of Tolstoy. He says it's just, you know, he's not just dumping on him. Tolstoy hated the modern world. And one of the things he hates about the modern world is the fact that it's created so many different ways to slaughter people. and little did he know what was going to happen later. So, but his concept of reason is sort of like the positivist of the empiricist.

X equals X, which every Hegelian knows is not true. Furthermore, the form of rational morality imparts to Tolstoy's teaching a peculiar egotocentrism and subjectivism. Intimidated by his sinful desires and the need to subject them to the judgment of a single direct criterion, the moralist begins to experience the evil of his soul as the true main and only evil, and his internal moral struggle is a central event of the world. Morality always teaches not about good and evil, but about personal goodness and personal depravity. It is occupied with the atom, the human individual, and the scope of its attention is limited. The moralist is usually

averted from everything except the immediate state of the personal soul. This is explained by the fact that morality, although generally necessary, is a primary lower stage of the ascent to moral perfection. Again, he's not talking about what he believes morality is. He's talking about what Tolstoy thinks morality is. And the basic thrust here is very simple, that Tolstoy's concern with his own sinfulness was so overwhelming at times that he couldn't even see any other body, any other institution, any other person for that matter. You know, the immediate state of the personal soul. And that might be positive in, you know, I mean, so many of us have suffered with sins

and passions and struggles. We know what he's talking about here. And the church fathers talk about it all the time. They were brilliant psychologists. So it got to the point where, again, you've got to be a little neurotic here. But I think Tolstoy was extremely neurotic and that he got to a point where he just simply couldn't see or comprehend anyone else. So obsessed was he with his own moral failings. It's almost as if his writings were a way to almost like a therapy, a form of therapy to deal with his own sin.

I wouldn't know anything about that, of course, you know. at this stage, the initial instinctive attitude of self-love, inherent in the self-preserving individual, has not yet been overcome. The direction and intention of personal will and attention has already been renewed and has entered the spiritual stage. For man seeks some objectively meaningful perfection, but the objective scope of attention is delimited by the boundaries of the personality, and the previous instinctive egoism has given way to moral, egocentrism. The moralist is a man withdrawn and focused on his own states and experiences, his inclinations, and merits. For him, it is more important and valuable to refrain from

some evil deed than to contribute to a whole life-giving stream to social, ecclesiastical, national, or community, life. This concentration on his own internal and precisely from a moral point of view, is often so strong in him that he actually believes in the reality of his personal mood and does not really believe in the reality of other people's mental states and external actions. He says, quote, life is only what I am conscious of in myself. Man's true knowledge ends with the knowledge of his personality, his animal nature. The animal nature, man knows quite especially from the knowledge of everything that is not his personality. Man does not know everything that is outside this self, but can only observe and determine an external conventional way.

About other people, man has some external idea, but does not know them. We fully know only for our, only our life, our striving for good, and the reason that points us to this good. Yeah, I translated that myself. I know it's a little rough. there are actually parts in his writings where he just comes out and says that. Now, the implication here is that reason is completely clear.

And it's not. Apparently, he doesn't believe in the subconscious. I mean, the concept really wasn't around. Although, again, the church fathers had it didn't call it that, but they had a conception of it. making even the self a difficult thing to contend with. The nature of man's drives go way back.

We don't know where they start, personally or collectively. Because we have to deal with the subconscious. I mean, you really can't deal with the subconsciousness. You know, Hegel's whole thing was to bring that that was the subconscious to consciousness. That's what the development of a rational person is. And also clearly rejects any kind of ethnicity because one of the central core ideas of nationalism is that you see yourself and others.

You've been through the same things. Let's say, you know, foreign occupation or a famine or something like that. You've suffered, even if you don't know them, you've suffered together. You see this like with fans of the same band. You know, they see each other on the street, you know, Harley, Harley, writers you see that but you know this is you know the the highest level which is the national level that makes any sense you've been through the same kind of things so but to take from what he said that we only fully know our life or struggling for that's that's extremely arrogant thing to say this suggests that he knows himself perfectly and again later on psychology would you know tear that concept apart, I think he was aware of the fact that the word fully should not be used here. Somehow he is incapable of bad faith. He is incapable of irrationalizing, which is something that humans do all of the time.

Special pleading, all that stuff. Everything that we do, all that's going to be removed at the judgment in front of God. But now we use it as some kind of an escape. We rationalize anything. It's very, it's almost frightening. He, however, is not susceptible to that. And again, the typical arrogance of him deeming with either psychological or theological things is evident. Constantly sorting out his soul and pedantically striving for correct knowledge of it, he does not learn to correctly perceive other people's moods and gets used to considering other people's souls a dark, unknown,

imperceptible sphere about which neither he nor anyone else, quote, has the right to judge, end quote. The work of internal self-improvement necessary for every person gradually acquires an overwhelming exceptional significance in his life, sometimes reaching the point of moral suspicion. He becomes a prisoner, a slave to his own virtue, and if he, at the same time, he dismisses all other spiritual dimensions and constructive past. and his life takes on a shade, takes on a shade of self-emptying pedantry. I'm not so sure Tolstoy was aware of this. I think he would deny it if you were to confront him with this.

But logically speaking, that's where his point of view would go. Ultimately, it is absurdly egocentric. You know, it's like saying, I'm so humble. more humble than all you people. You know, and what a contradiction that is. You know, don't even, you know, don't even come close to me on bragging about your humility. That's an example of what he, of what he means here. But what he forgets, of course, and what he's being challenged here is that he is part of a larger society.

That's where his language comes from. That's where his, that's what he was raised. That's, you know, the upbringing, his basic moral goods, that's where it comes from. And at the time in Russia, it was quite unified, especially where he was from. And but he forgot all about that or rejected all of that. You need that for development. Aristotle was very clear, you know, there's no such thing as this, you know, the idiotists, those who are either so brilliant that don't need society.

or so stupid that they can't be in society. So they live outside of it. No, normal people need society. We are dependent in almost every way. And in terms of virtue, absolutely. Sometimes we need to hear from others that we're doing something wrong. We don't like it, but sometimes they're right.

Again, he seems to suggest that he's above that, that he doesn't need that. It's understandable that such a person naturally calls for moral self-improvement and sees it as a spiritual penacea, while it's unnatural to educate others in combat socially objectified evil. At a time of familial, national, and universal catastrophe caused by the victorious explosion of evil, they will continue to cautiously reflect on their own inner moral infallibility and righteousness and invite others to the same non-resistance, reminiscent of those who, during the plague, allowed the contagion to

and cared only about their own personal immunity. These are the people who say that the church shouldn't be political. They refuse to define that term. I certainly agree if you define politics as campaigns, elections, and voting, yeah, that might be a problem. Cyprus accepted. But if you define it as matters of justice, totally different story. He's saying both of them.

And that's a classic example. You see it all the time in fairly liberal, at least in my case, fairly liberal Orthodox groups, oh, we don't talk about that here. You don't deal with that here. Well, except for Jewish stuff, but we don't talk about that here. You don't want the church to be political. We don't want anyone being divided. We don't want that kind of fighting that may divide the parish or whatever it might be.

and and we just function we just look at ourselves and what you're saying here of course is that it's very unhealthy especially at a time of universal evil you know Ilin of course he's talking about the takeover the Soviets

but God if you were alive today you know he said oh my God the Soviets took over the whole world so you know that mentality took over the whole world you know that mentality took over the whole world so even more so we can't just be we do have to focus on our on our inner morality that's extremely important remember the word hypocrisy and I say this all the time doesn't mean you're inconsistent everybody's inconsistent what hypocrisy means is that you don't believe the things

that you're preaching you don't believe the moral goals that you claim to be pursuing. Like a politician, you know, he says one, you know, different things, different people. It's not a matter of simple inconsistency. And I hate the idea. I've said this before. Those with no standards condemning us for failing to achieve our very high standard. So the two things go together very well.

The whole point of Plade of the Republic was to show that the soul is manifest in the state, just writ large. And as a 17-year-old or 18-year-old reading this for the first time, I was blown away. I had never heard anything like this before. I never heard or read anything, any proofs of the spiritual life before and how it's absurd not to believe in the spiritual world. I couldn't believe it. And think, you know, Plato's a very good writer.

so I was, you know, precocious and I read very quickly, but I got the gist of it, and I was totally blown away by it. Part of the reason why I'm doing what I'm doing today. I was going to save this for the end, but this whole thing that we're talking about here, this phenomena is, it's present in every church now. You'll find it pretty much in every denomination, and everywhere, including orthodoxy and Catholicism. But it's no bigger than what they call, what they term big evangelicalism. If you talk about what Francisco Franco had to do

or you talk about any kind of using politics to stop evil in society, these people will condemn you as heretics and say you're outside of the faith, all the while, if you logically and consistently say, well, we need to apply this to Israel too.

They're killing 80% of the people they kill probably more innocence. They will call you a fascist and a Nazi because basically we're not allowed to do that, but Jews get a pass. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Yeah, thank God. Russians have

have a certain immunity to that, but other Orthodox denominations do not. Not denominations, but ethnic Greeks, New Calendar Greeks, etc. But I love how you mentioned Francisco Franco. What would have happened had he not taken action? What would have happened had he not invaded Spain from his base in North Africa?

What would have happened to the church? Christianity would have disappeared. I had a, when I was an undergraduate, you know, 18, 19 years old, I had a big picture of Franco in my dorm room. And, you know, I had to explain that, people, you know, visiting. And one of the reasons he's a great man is that he used quite, you know, measured violence, as measured as he could possibly do for victory against people that he knew would destroy the church. Christianity in general, wherever they went. So if I don't take action, I'm responsible for the destruction of the church. They were killing nuns. They were killing priests. We all know that.

That's why Francisco Franco was a great man. All the money that the West was pouring into the Republican state. One of the few good things Mussolini did was, was, you know, assist Franco material it to counter that. And It was extremely, you know, that's a tremendous example. And I think about him on a regular basis. I think you know that already. But you just think what would have happened to the church in Spain without Franco or someone like Franco. Not only the church in Spain, that would have given the Soviet Union a stronghold on the Mediterranean and in southern Europe.

And when World War II came along, they basically, it would have given them a better chance to win, which they did. did, thanks to the help of Judeo-America and Judeo-England, but also they probably would have gotten all of Europe. The implications of Franco not existing are extraordinary. I think some of our listeners know that, but I think if we thought about it, we could stretch that out. The implications would be tremendous for world history. Moving on.

Finally, this entire form of the entire form. of the question leads to the fact that in Tolstoy's teaching, the moral correctness of one state of mind emerges as the highest self-sufficient goal, the primary and only worthy focus of human endeavor and aspiration. If for a religious person, morality is a condition or stage leading to the vision of God and the assimilation of God. If for a scientist, morality is the existential minimum of true knowledge. If for a political patriot, morality signifies the quality of a soul, matured, for sovereign service, then here, morality is the ultimate value in itself, serving nothing higher. He who has attained that has attained something ultimate and unconditional, that which constitutes

the meaning of human life and which cannot be sacrificed, for it is above all, and there is nothing higher. Everything is subordinated to morality. Everything is judged by its criteria. It is the end of everything, and for it, everything is a means. Everything can and should be given for her and for her sake, but to sacrifice her even partially, even momentarily, is senseless, unnatural, blasphemous. Having attained his treasure, the stingy knight owns worlds and cannot give it up for anything else until he ceases to be a stingy knight. You notice that I use the surrealic word for, you know, moral, and it's just moral, you know, for us. it's a loan word because there is no conception of that kind of morality in the east

there's many other words but the kind of morality that you know in and of itself manual Kant again comes to mind that this goal is self-sufficient now but anyone who talks about morality in this way they're talking about a universal they're talking about a universal they're talking about a universal object and therefore they have to explain where it comes from where it was created how do we know anything about it and so you have to be led to God there's no there's no way out I sometimes I do wonder if Tolstory messed around with atheism I'm not 100% sure I think I think maybe on occasion not I don't think he fell on that but I think on occasion he did

this very reason. He did believe in free will. You can't believe in free will and be an atheist. That doesn't make any sense. Because free will implies a spirit, something that isn't matter, something that isn't subject to cause and effect. Well, you have to explain where the spirit comes from, or the soul. You know, what do you want to call it? Mind versus brain. And again, that will lead you to God. You know, did evolution create a spirit? You know, so, you know, this is almost a, and I think, I'm sure there are atheists out there that have this conception of, you know, we have a moral goal and that is absolutely it. We don't need anything else. We don't need any conception of God or even, even the state.

And as we've seen before, this morality is a personal achievement only. Last paragraph, and I think we should end right there. Yep. This is precisely why a moralist of this kind, if he is consistent, will inevitably be doomed to monstrous situations in life. For indeed, that will he answer to himself and to God if, present at the rape of a child by a brutal mob and armed with weapons, he chooses to persuade the savages, appealing to the obvious and to love, and then, allowing the crime to be committed, remains conscience of his own moral impeccability. Or will he allow an exception here? But in the name of what? In the name of what will he sacrifice his righteousness and commit evil by resisting it with violence? If this higher reality is accessible

to him and recognized by him, then it must be formulated. And if it is formulated, then what will remain to the entire notorious doctrine of non-resistance? And that is not something that Tolstoy ever did. Now, I know he uses an extreme example here, the rape of the child. But it's extreme. It gets people's attention, and it does illustrate the issue. Now, if it is a brutal mob and you're by yourself, well, persuasion is going to do anything, but you might not be able to do anything either.

You may actually have to go in and just sacrifice yourself. because you can never just, you know, walk away unless you have something else going on. You may just have to, you know, get, or, you know, get beaten up or get pushed out of the way or something like that. At least you can hold your head high afterwards. But he has no, you know, he never,

Tulsaul, he never talks about it. You know, you didn't have, you know, child trafficking in old Russia by any means. You'd have anything like this back then. but again that's the conception of the modern and the postmodern world you know walking away in the name of what you know what moral system is so monstrous that you would walk away what does it say it's one person we've mentioned this before let's say it's one person and you go in there and he's going to you know do this horrible thing and you sit there and you open your Bible and you start reasoning with it oh look it says

right here and Matthew you probably shouldn't be doing this you know what's going to happen um it's not going to work you're going to have to use every concept whatever you have around physically to get rid of them you smash them in the head you use a lamp you use whatever it whatever it takes only then can you at least you mean you'll never know you'll be probably traumatized forever by seeing that but at least you could be you could hold your head high and america get arrested for it but still prisoners be nice to you. You know, how they are with rapists.

Now, anti-rappists are pretty, you get killed every day. But say, no, no, I have to worry about my own moral impeccability, so I'm going to walk away and let this happen. He's showing the absurdity of Tolstoy's doctrine. And that Tolstoy doesn't deal with this question, has never had to deal with this question at all in his intellectually or, you know, in his life. what would he do? What would Tolstoy do in this very extreme situation?

He walks back into his house. He sees that happening. I guarantee you just instinctively he's going to grab whatever, whatever's around and beat the guy. And then, oh no, what happens to my non-resistance now falls apart. All righty. We'll leave it right there. Pick it up next time.

Chapter 10, Unsensimentality and Pleasure. I will encourage everyone, as I always do, go over to the show notes, go over to the description on the video, donate to Dr. Johnson's work, buy his new book on Ukraine and Russia, and, yeah, show him that you appreciate what he's doing here. Believe me, this is a lot harder for him. It's easier for me because I'm not pronouncing Russian names and doing a lot. This is a lot harder. Oh, yeah, thank God. This is a lot harder for Dr. Johnson because not only are we dealing with some people.

spiritual matters here, but he's also translating this. So, yeah, please show him that you love them and go donate to him. Yeah. You know, I'm using a machine translation, but often in these cases, it's not very good. So I have to go into it myself, different pieces. And you know, you know, it's Google Translate and the Index, they've gotten so much better. I remember when they first came out, how awful it was. But still, stuff like this, uh, it's, you know, it's, you know, it's it's you can't trust it and it makes some absurd statements that you know can't you know aren't original so uh I just and there's certain parts you could tell I've had to do myself and thank God I think it reads a lot better than the Schulzhenitin book

that that was purely I think a machine translation back then as far as I know it certainly reads like one an older one and yeah you're not having to do that read all these names sometimes long lists of names. That's it. That's mercy from God. But you know what? This is a labor of love. This is what I do. This is my life. This is my vocation. So there's no problem there whatsoever. And I appreciate the generosity of your listeners again. All right. So I'll see in a couple days. Thank you, Dr. Johnson. All right, man. See you.