The Pete Quiñones Show - Reading Ivan Ilyin's 'On Resistance to Evil by Force' w/ Dr. Matthew Raphael Johnson - Pt. 27
Episode Date: August 19, 202648 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 c...ontinue 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 want to welcome everyone back to our reading of On Resistance to Evil by Force by Avoniline.
Dr. Johnson.
How are you today?
I'm really not looking forward to doing the lawn later.
You know, my old place, when I was married, my first wife, we were on, you know, an acre and I had a ride on.
And it was the, it was, I look forward to it.
I'd mow the lawn every day.
It was like a little go cart.
It was fast.
And it had the sticks, not the, not the steering wheel.
And the sticks, I immediately intuitively knew how to use those.
I really miss it.
you know, I don't have that much. It doesn't, I couldn't justify a huge investment like that.
So, so we got in a battery powered one that has some assist on it.
And I think I've said this before, but that's how I know that my symptoms are being kept at bay.
When I could go through the lawn cutting and not feel totally out of it and exhausted.
That's my, you know, canary in the coal mine test.
So, but it's hot today and it's humid.
and I'm going to come up with numerous excuses,
but I know it has to get done.
Yeah, I have to put the deck back on my riding mower tonight,
so that'll be fun.
The deck?
It's where the blades are.
Oh, you like those sharpened.
Yeah, just, yeah, Adam's sharpened
and replacing the belt and everything.
And, yeah, so I just got to replace that tonight.
So I'm waiting until the, where I have the mower is in the sun right now.
I'm waiting until the sun gets on the other side of the house so I can go out there and do it in the shade.
Yeah, yeah, and do it when it's slightly cooler.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's 84 here and a little humid.
And I'm meant for colder climates.
I meant for, you know, North Dakota.
Definitely not Alabama.
I don't know how you do it.
Well, you know, air conditioning is a modern marvel.
It is one of the great inventions of all time.
That in caller ID.
All right.
Picking up where we left off last time.
I changed my life.
Yeah.
We're probably going to end the chapter today.
So I'll start.
However, man cannot admit and will never admit that the villain has the privilege of freedom to commit evil, either internally or externally,
for they are connected to each other, not only by.
similarity, but also by reciprocity and community. People mutually send each other their achievements
and goodness and their falls into evil. They mutually perceive what is sent and mutually answer for
their own, even unconscious influences. In essence, they are called to send each other no harm at all
and to receive from others to do nothing but good, but not the opposite. You know, this is a bit of a
mysterious paragraph and it's going to be unpacked in the paragraphs to come.
But I've always been interested in the fact that, you know,
let's just take, you know, law enforcement has this laundry list of things that they
have to do the law, that they have to follow, they have to maintain.
And criminals do not.
They have no, the Italian mafia may be one exception to that, but everyone else,
It doesn't matter.
The Italian mafia actually had standards.
They wouldn't kill cops.
They don't go after families.
But they were the only ones who were like that.
But, you know, it's kind of like going up against a sociopath.
You're always going to lose.
The sociopath will just do whatever is in his interest immediately without thought.
Normal people had to think about it and go through this moral inventory before we do anything.
We're always at a disadvantage in that respect, as law enforcement is today.
However, next paragraph, excuse me, they rarely succeed in living up to this calling,
and so some of them try to secure for themselves the privilege of sending pure evil to others
and not accepting the good sense in return in the form of coercive influence.
Reciprocity and justice abhor such a privilege.
anyone who sends evil must always be prepared for and agree to others being able to stop their
evil deed and compel them to qualitatively reconsider the evil they send.
For those who haven't heard previous discussions,
Eileen has made the argument several times that in the commission of an evil deed,
it creates an energy.
it has a tremendous influence, a ripple effect, so to speak,
that affects everyone around.
And this has really been, this has been the Christian position about the fall from grace in the garden.
It didn't just affect their Adamany's moral standing, but it affected all of nature.
Nature at one point was a friend.
Animals, you know, no problem came up and pet them on.
after the fall
animals hid from
from man
this was
the origin of the monastics that
don't eat
don't eat meat
trying to imitate that kind of a
life now I'm on a
special diet that actually includes meat
because it is good for you
so
fasting can be difficult for me
but
you know
translating this stuff
certainly makes up for it.
So that's what he's talking about here,
if you haven't been following.
So again, this is going to be unpacked
in the next few paragraphs.
Let me see where we go.
Okay.
He who receiving one's evil message
draws another's attention to its evil quality
does not offend me,
but renders me a service.
And he who puts a stop in my embittered rampage,
preventing it from spreading and forcing me
to come to my sense,
fulfills his duty and becomes my benefactor.
This is the mutual obligation of men in society.
Each of us, in rendering this service and benefits to others,
must desire the same service and benefit from them for ourselves.
Let each one, indeed, do for others only what he wishes for himself,
but at the same time, he must also desire for himself the compulsion and restraint from others
in the moment of his own evil doing.
this a lot of this comes straight out of plato both in republic and the gorges um socrates argues the point
that um to do evil especially to do evil and get away with it is worse than suffering evil
doing evil and getting away with it slowly especially do it over time will destroy the soul
suffering evil
well you know
it doesn't destroy the soul
in fact it may make us even stronger
for the evil doer
he is not helping himself
evil doers
disintegrate
over a long period of time
again sociopaths being
some sort of an exception
but
and I remember first you first read it
it was very odd to hear this
that doing evil is
is worse than suffering it than being the victim of it.
But being the victim of evil doesn't destroy the soul necessarily.
Doing evil does, especially over a long period of time.
Therefore, it is our obligation to do whatever we can to stop it.
Using the same criteria that we've talked about in episodes past,
this list of things you start from here and you only
end with physical violence at the very, very end, the last resort.
So when we are harsh towards someone who's doing something wrong, we're their best friend.
It doesn't feel that way at the time.
Or even simply telling somebody, you know, stop acting this way.
You're a friend, you know, who's being a little, um, he's doing something stupid.
You stop it.
Not just going along with it so you don't want to offend them.
That does nothing for him.
Pointing out something like that, even at the criminal level,
it's the best thing anyone can do for the evildoer.
The only friends that evil doer can have are those who pointed out and want to stop it.
However, in the creation of good and the struggle against evil,
men in society are connected to each other not only by reciprocity,
but also by community.
For they have one single common goal,
a common good that will either become immediately available to all or not.
This is peace on earth blossoming from human goodwill.
It is precisely the unity and commonality of this goal that compels men to combine their forces
and bring a unified organization to the struggle against evil.
Every criminal prevents all others from being criminals,
and each one undermines and poisons the entire general level of spiritual existence.
Therefore, every evildoer in committing criminal acts,
must meet with all who unite in their resistance to him.
This resistance is waged by a few in the name of all
and on behalf of a single common goal.
Such is the meaning of any spiritually meaningful social organization.
A sense of mutual connection and mutual responsibility, as it matures,
points out to people their common spiritual goal
and compels them to create a single common authority to serve it.
I've said for so many years, and I'll keep saying it,
every society has one choice to make.
either a monarchy, which is based on the common good, or a very strong central government and military government, or oligarchy, which comes from republicanism, will eventually become that.
The anti-federalists in early America said it's going to become an oligarchy.
In fact, everything the anti-federalists said about the Constitution, everything came true.
It was absolutely extraordinary.
when I first came across them many years ago.
It always made me laugh that in the ghetto,
why don't blacks, for all of their protesting against cops and all this stuff,
why don't they protest against the crack dealers and the meth dealers and everything else?
You know, that's not a problem for them.
Clearly, it brings nothing but trouble to them.
Some of them make some money off it, but that's about it.
No, but when, you know, the media tells them,
and to organize against a white cop that is just doing this job, they immediately come out in huge numbers.
And so, of course, that kind of behavior is going to continue.
For whether it be just a villain and criminal, anyone like that, their worst nightmare is to have an entire society as one man come out and confront them and saying, you're going to stop this.
And if you don't listen, we're going to exile you or we're going to unalive you.
you know, organized crimes sometimes has local support.
I know the Italian mafia had local support in the neighborhoods where they're first developed.
You know, they're the most peaceful and crime-free neighborhoods in the world.
But society really, you know, I'm thinking about John Gotti here.
The society as one man did not rise up.
People were fascinated by the guy.
and the movies
romanticize them
and the movies romanticize them
to an extent
but of course
they'll end up
getting killed
or end up in prison
or turning states evidence
but at least the life
seems to be much better
than the lives
that your typical American is leading
so
any kind of a crime
it seems
doesn't have the society
as one man
rising up and saying
you're going to stop
where essentially
they're turning
you into a freak for doing the things that are against the law or even against basic morality.
And it's very rare that you see that anymore.
It's very rare that a society, especially in the West, is capable of doing that, or even knowing
what the common good would be, even asking the right questions, let alone answering them.
The authority, this authority, church or state, affirms in itself the living organ of the common
sacred purpose, the organ of good, the organ of sanctity, and therefore performs,
all its service in its name and on its behalf. The coercing and suppressing representative of such a
social union does not act on his own initiative, not according to personal whim, not according to arbitrary
will. Rather, he acts as a servant of the common sanctity called and obligated to coerce and
suppress on its behalf. He is a living organ of that force which is composed of all individual
spiritual forces, united by a solitary and a relationship to the common sanctity.
The force is the force of the sanctity itself, and he is its living manifestation and its living sword.
This is why natural law is so important.
Protestants did everything they could to do away with it, claiming that there was no natural law.
There was nothing good in the human mind, not to mention being nominalist, there's no such thing as human nature.
anyway
but you do something because God tells you
you don't do something because God forbids it
and that is it and that's a very simplistic way of going about it
I became a Christian I was first of Platonist
I first read the Republic
I became a Catholic
and then I converted to Orthodox many years later
because they were amenable to reason
it made sense these weren't arbitrary inventions
you have to start from the beginning you have to understand
where all this stuff comes from but
and that it's built into creation
natural law is absolutely essential this is
this is part of what the common sanctity is we have a human nature
and when you fight it when you deny it really bad things happen
we live in a society that not only deny
human nature, but in the postmodern mentality
denies you in the existence of itself.
It's actually been, you know, fashionable postmodernism for
a couple of decades now.
Maybe more.
The best of conditions,
policemen or a priest
giving a certain penance.
It doesn't do this in his own name.
They do these things as a,
as it says, manifestation of
the living sword.
But that sort isn't just, you know, it wouldn't be a good thing if it was just some, you know, power.
He uses the word authority.
And I went, I spent a huge amount of time in Russian, the distinction between power and authority is not as clear as it is in English.
So I kind of forced it here, because I know what he meant.
But this is one of these areas where translation is interpretation.
power is simply the ability to force someone to do something they wouldn't otherwise do.
You know, biker gang tanks over a town.
That's power.
But they have no authority.
Authority is the right to exercise power.
And ultimately, it finds its origin in natural law, which essentially is human nature.
Again, this is something that Hegel spends a very long time.
unpacking in his work over the years.
He starts, you know, with psychology and builds society from that.
We don't necessarily have to do that.
But, again, you can't be anomalous and say that a policeman is a manifestation of the law.
That wouldn't make any sense to them.
That would imply universal and they reject universal.
So law and everything else, you know, you take nominalism to its conclusion.
Everything is arbitrary.
You do something, and actually William Vakum said this.
You do something because God tells you, not because it's reasonable, rational,
or there's any good who come out of it.
You do it just because God says it.
But he made us rational creatures.
We know that what he's done in the past has been done in a way that we can understand it rationally.
not like he understands it, obviously, but in our small way, understand it rationally.
So that's what's going on here, and this has been going on in the last few paragraphs.
It is precisely because a spiritually conceived social authority derives its rights from its relationship to a common goal
and its strength from shared solidarity that the will of each individual member merges with this authority,
voluntarily recognizes it, and, by submitting to it, preserves their spiritual freedom.
Moreover, legal consciousness binds each individual to the common and united authority in its service,
so that each participates with his own will and strength in its acts,
even in those in which he himself does not directly participate.
As a result, an organization is formed in which the common element of a single good and a single goal
receives a single and common volitional drive, to a certain extent relieving individuals of the task and burden of directly
coercing and suppressing evildoers?
It's very obvious here that Elyne's a Hegelian.
We know he's a Hegelian.
I thought I was alone in terms of Orthodox Hegelianism,
but when I read his two-volume work on it,
I felt vindicated because, you know, I discovered that later on.
I don't think it's been translated.
I had to learn the language a little bit to,
In fact, I have it in hard copy.
And you see it here.
You start from the individual personality and you build society out of human nature.
Law could never be just an imposition.
It has to manifest the good.
And when it manifests the good, it manifests your own nature.
and if you see it as an alien imposition, there's something wrong with you.
It doesn't mean you like it all the time.
No one likes getting scolded or yelled at and everything else, but later on you realize that you deserved it.
And because Hegel was talking about nations, Elyne clearly, being a nationalist himself, is talking about nation.
none of this kind of talk would make any sense
unless you're dealing with a society
basically with one religion speaking the same language
with a common understanding of history
and basically common goals for the future
you know at a minimum
without that
this sort of thing doesn't make any sense
you imagine trying to
you know talking to politicians like this in America
they don't have the mental furniture to even understand any of it.
Oligarchs always try to address their self-interest and irrationality in the language of, you know, this is good for everybody.
I don't know if you know, I'm finishing up a paper on the U.S. bailout of Japan.
because Japan is on the verge of selling all of its debt, American debt.
And, you know, they don't call it a bailout anymore.
They call it an intervention.
And when Trump and his, you know, his secretary of the treasury is homosexual,
worked for George Soros for years.
I don't know where this guy came from.
Why Trump thought that he would be a good, you know, he's an ignorantist.
He doesn't, he has a, he has a green political science from Yale.
He's not an economist.
He was a member of these secret societies, you know.
But he says that this is good for everybody.
This is good for America.
He took no questions and, and, um, uh, and offered no follow up.
Yet again, a country without money is bailing out Japan because of the terror that Japan may start dumping American debt.
This is, this is a big deal.
I'm preoccupied with this recently.
Not a whole lot of people are talking about it.
Johnson's law definitely applies here.
So oligarchs, evildoers, when they take power,
they often try to convince why they need PR firms.
That's why they hide, you know, hide, you know,
they try to cloak their irrationality,
their self-interest in the language of the common good.
they know they're not telling the truth.
Mackey Valley's entire world
was based on the fact
that the people he was dealing with
knew that they had no right to rule anybody.
The oligarchy in Florence, for example.
And because they had no right to rule anybody,
they had to manipulate them.
In Florence, that became the Renaissance.
That was the bread and circuses of the...
of the...
at a time period we call the Renaissance
today.
But they're aware that they have no conception of the common good.
They're opposed to it.
The difference between an aristocrat and an oligarch, an aristocratic society is one
ruled by the best people, most educated, most experience, for the good of society, not
themselves.
An oligarch, again, same number of people, usually the wealthiest few.
rule society for their own good.
Aristocrats don't have to
hide anything. Aligarchs do.
They have to manipulate anyone. They need PR firms. They need
you know, mobs. They need mass migration
to organize against
people who knew better. They need to destroy
unions and everything, all this stuff. It's all,
nothing's changed over the century.
This is an extraordinary paragraph.
This is a Hegelian, a strongly nationalist
paragraph. And I regret
not in my translation, not bringing it out more.
But that's what he's, that's what he's, that's what he's saying here.
Binds an individual to the common and united authority.
In other words, they have the right to do this in its service.
And if he doesn't directly participate, because it comes from human nature and the nation
that he is a part of, he still represented therein.
And this is a very important paragraph.
Thanks to such an organization.
Every member of the union can and should feel that their will and strength are participating in the central authority's struggle against the origins of evil and its bearers.
This is expressed in the recognition of support for acts of this struggle, not only for fear, but also for conscience, in sympathy for them in active, proactive, proactive assistance.
The ruling center, waging this struggle, needs the sympathy and assistance and has the right to it.
Moreover, he can win this struggle and build a common life for a common good only when and only to the extent that public opinion in both its dispersed and concentrated states supports him with its sympathy and assistance.
The government and the people must agree in their understanding of good and evil and be united in their willful rejection of evil.
Without this, both sides head towards destruction.
This destruction occurs if one of the sides betrays the common goal or its correct understanding.
if the government begins to indulge evildoers or if the people begin to harbor them,
then socially organized resistance to evil ceases, giving way to a more or less
malicious non-resistance, and as a result, the victory of evil is assured.
I was in grad school, and then me right right after.
Some of my earliest papers have to deal with the connection between nation and state,
and they are distinct entities.
Now, Mussolini's conception of fascism was incorrect because he says the nation is the creation of the state.
This is why national socialism is not part of the fascist movement, certain elements that may have in common.
But, of course, you know, national socialism views the opposite being true.
The nation creates the state, not the other way around.
And I was very, very into the concept that the only justification for a state at all,
is that it represents and protects the nation.
Now, the minute the state starts having its own ideas,
they start getting less and less legitimate.
In other words, the autonomy of the state from the people
that's supposed to rule is the great evil.
You find this not only in Hegel, but in the Slavophiles in Russia as well.
and when he refers to the central authority here,
and on one hand, he can be talking about that in the abstract,
but he's referring to the monarchy.
Generally speaking, with the exception of the 18th century,
monarchs were popular figures.
People named their kids after them, you know.
Well, not really.
They named their kids when they were the saints' day,
they were baptized, but they were considered what we view,
celebrity. They had tremendous influence, a tremendous responsibility in this regard.
But the temptations of evil, temptations of having greater and greater money,
greater resources that everyone is expensive. We saw that in the Petersburg era,
where now the state and the nation didn't have a whole lot in common. There was an attempt to repair
that and a successful attempt to repair that in the 19th century but of course ended before it
was fully fully completed now he also says every member of the union he's not just talking about
he's talking about several things he's before remember he said church or state so but even that is
inculturated it is a russian orthodox church it's a greek orthodox church it's one of the great
aspects of orthodoxy, it's inherently
based on the nations, based on the common language
and all of this. And each one has its own
fire of saints, you know, each one has its own mission
within the broader church. The church is identical, of course.
But they have, the St. John Maximobo's citizens
say that they have different missions within it.
Depending on circumstances. How big or they are, how small
like Montenegro? Totally different world there.
That I've mentioned a few times before.
So the legitimacy of the state exists only when it protects the nation.
It doesn't have to be elected, it has to be representative, two very different things.
You notice how he says both sides are capable of this.
Government begins to indulge evil doers or becomes evil itself,
or the society becomes corrupted.
you see this in the late 19th century salon culture of Petersburg where the sexual revolution actually began
we got even infected the court of nicholas the second he struggled to keep his own court under control
at the end of the third could do that nicholas was a different sort of a man so um
and of course in the 19th century thanks to peter's revolution
and bringing in foreigners.
He deliberately tore the state away from the nation.
Moscow was the capital, not St. Petersburg.
So that's the issue here.
And unless the state is legitimately representative, it can't function.
And when it is representative, it has to have, and it will normally get the full popular support
in its fight against evil.
That's the absolute ideal circumstance. Evil has a really tough time in a society like that.
Just like Islam had a really tough time in Montenegro during the Tricotrata, another rule of the Turks.
This tiny little, kind of little place, very, very hard to conquer for that reason.
That was a devotion to the prince. Prince devoted to the nation.
They're Serbs, but their, you know, their topography is very different.
So, you know, that's really what he's going on here.
And to be able to elucidate the common good, what are we talking about here?
You're the stupidest things you ever hear when it comes to these debates over immigration and things like that.
European values.
We've all heard these European values.
Rarely do they get expressed.
It usually has something to do with inclusion, indulgence, democracy.
was just another word for liberal.
They think these are European values.
That's not what I'm talking about.
That's what an oligarchy does when they're asked to, you know.
It's nonsensical.
It's cynical.
But I have never changed from that period of time early on in my career where I spent,
I have paper after paper on it, that representation,
the state representative,
when it expresses the history, the will, the mentality of the nation
and protects it the way that's what a state's supposed to do.
Both sides could be corrupted. We know that.
But, you know, Russia had just a revolutionary schism in very late, well, early 18th century,
which took many, many years to heal.
And that's really when the old believers exploded in Russia after Peter the Great, because she really was acting like Antichrist.
Assuming that was really him who came back from the great embassy.
But nevertheless, that's what's going on here.
And without this connection, the fight against evil is, it can only be done in fits and starts, not institutionally.
The acceptance of authority and its struggle against evil is expressed not only in the individual's conscientious assistance in combating the crimes of others,
but also in their voluntary accepting coercion and suppression when it is directed against them.
This conclusion is natural and necessary, for it is the law of reciprocity and community.
Those who accept a common goal and a common authority also accept its correct action,
regardless of whether it is directed at others or them personally.
With a mature sense of justice, a man voluntarily participates in the exercise of their authority
even when they themselves are coerced and suppressed, punished, or even executed.
They then perceived just coercion as self-coercion, and just punishment carried out by a socially
distinguished and empowered spiritual will, is perceived as deserved self-punishment.
And even an unjust sentence of death he can survive through voluntary acceptance, like Socrates
and a great many Christian martyrs coming after him.
These are the consistent conclusions from the universal mutual connection of people in good and evil.
And that ends the paragraph, and he mentioned Socrates.
I knew, you know, I translated this.
I vaguely remember it.
I was probably exhausted at this point.
But it comes from that idea.
Socrates says, you know, I accepted the benefit of the state.
Therefore, I accept its sentence of death.
Now, it was a bit of an exaggeration under the circumstances.
But in broader terms, what he's talking about is if you accept, you believe that the state is legitimate and you get audited, say, well, you don't complain.
You know, it's not nice.
It's not fun.
But maybe I did do something wrong.
And if I did, I have to pay a penalty.
And that's okay.
Because I deserve it.
And I won't make that mistake again.
Maybe income tax is a bad example.
But you know what I mean.
Even something like a speeding ticket.
I had so many speeding tickets.
I had to go to driving school.
I was going to lose my license, which was actually a lot of fun.
But if, if,
If, you know, it's so bizarre for Americans to hear this kind of thing that you, you know, you get in trouble for something and you accept that you think it's good because it helps you?
You know, it's something you try to escape and get away from.
No.
When you think the state is legitimate and you have done something wrong, the best thing for you is for the state to come down on you.
And if not the state, then family members or society as a whole because not all evil is necessarily, you know, illegal.
The nation contains many institutions within it.
The church being one, very important one.
We realize that doing our penance is a good thing.
Sometimes we don't like it.
Going to confession is sometimes a very stressful thing,
but, well, we did these things,
so we have to take our medicine, so to speak.
And I think that is so foreign
to the modern mentality.
I think it's almost inconceivable.
But Eileen was born and raised in a society
more healthier than anything that we have ever experienced.
So Socrates had to die, right?
You know, I always thought that there was a prophetic element
in Socrates taking the hemlock.
He could have escaped.
He had a million ways to escape.
And of course, you know, Plato was writing this.
He had students, he had an army of people who, he said no.
He said, no, you know, I've accepted the state up until this point.
So now that they're doing something inconvenient to me,
I can't suddenly say I don't accept the state anymore.
You know, that's simplistic, but it's a long argument,
but that's pretty much what he says.
He says, no, I have to die, as you said, I have to.
Now, it's not quite the same thing as Christ being killed,
forcing the Jews, forcing the Romans to execute Christ.
That had to happen.
That's how Christ entered the, you know, Hades and set all the captives free.
And then eventually brought human nature and sat at the right hand of the Father.
You know, our human nature is part of the Trinity now because of the incarnation and, you know,
how we understand it through Chelsodon.
And if you want to read more about, you know, I've written about this, but Justin Martyr,
very early saint writes about this in great detail.
He was a full-scale platonist, and when I discovered him, I felt vindicated again.
I mean, most of the church fathers, you know, being Greek, especially early on.
You know, Christ was raised more or less in a Greek culture despite having his education at the temple.
But where he lived, the accomplice, or on the outskirts of the accomplice, was Greek.
That was his upbringing.
Of course, as God, he could, you know, language wasn't an issue.
But as man, he knew Greek culture extremely well.
which is why in all the early documents of the church overwhelmingly were in Greek,
with a few exceptions.
And Greek was the language of the educated in that part of the world.
Middle East didn't look the same way today as it did then.
There were two very different planes within the part of the Roman Empire.
You know, now, if you don't accept the state and you have good reason for not accepting the state, you think the state is criminal, but no, you don't necessarily have an obligation to go along with it.
Sometimes it may just be easier.
You know, I have to pay, you know, my wife pays income taxes somehow.
I hate it. I hate where that money goes. But, you know, it's a hell of a lot better. But that's not the way you want a society to be. People doing things just so they don't get in trouble. No, you want people to be a society where I want to pay taxes to help the state and its war effort against our enemies. That's what you want. But of course, you know, we don't have that. It's almost, almost bizarre to even say it. So, um, um, um, um,
That's why he starts off his paragraphs, say, with a mature sense of justice.
A man voluntarily participates in the exercise, authority, even when they themselves are coerced and suppressed.
You know, even on a personal level.
You get yelled at by somebody because you did something stupid on the job, for example.
And, yeah, you hated at the time.
You're pissed off.
But as time goes on, you realize, yeah, I deserved it.
I could have hurt somebody.
And as more years go, you realized that you became a better person because of it.
I mentioned Willis Cardo many times here.
Willis Carto was a taskmaster.
He can be a very difficult man.
I love the guy, even, you know.
But he earned that role.
He created the nationalist movement in America in the 1950s.
Therefore, when he got angry at me, it was all right.
Even if I thought he was wrong, he had the right to be difficult, in other words.
Richie Blackmore from Rainbow actually made that statement once too.
You've seen the movie Whiplash.
Have I mentioned this before?
You've seen that movie, right?
I mean, I've seen it, yeah.
You've mentioned it once or twice.
Yeah, because I went to music school with my first.
semester of college. So I don't know what Fletcher did. He wasn't a big name. He wasn't a famous
guy. He didn't have the authority to act the way he did. No one has the authority to beat
the crap out of students. I'm not saying, I'm not saying that. But even being difficult, who
the hell was this guy? You know, when I went, it was Jackie McLean, who was the leader of the
Bob movement and played with Miles Davis and Art Blank.
Okay, he had a certain level of authority there.
You know, you listen, you just keep your ears open, your mouth shut.
But that guy, Fletcher, for those of you who's seen the movie, who the hell was he?
So, you know, in that case, getting chided or yelled at, you know, who is this guy?
This isn't from my benefit.
So all of this we've read in this particular set of passages here comes from Ilin's Higilianism and it even brought away from his Platonism.
And that's how I came up, intellectually speaking.
That's why Ilin is such an important guy to me.
And I don't know if you've noticed, but every once in a while there's an article like from the New Yorker that says,
This fascist lunatic is the first reading material of Vladimir Putin.
I don't even know if that's true.
It probably is, but they've never read the guy.
They call him all these names.
They couldn't possibly read this stuff.
They're reporters.
So he is a significant man today over there.
And that's why talking about him here is very important.
And I'm really glad we came to this conclusion to do this.
Oh, and I think I mentioned you before, too.
I translated his short work on national socialism.
It was written in 1933.
It was pretty early.
And he has something else on fascism, which I haven't gotten to yet.
I read it a long time ago.
I haven't gotten to yet.
So maybe at some point we could go over those two.
Sounds good.
Sounds good.
All right.
We'll come back for Chapter 18, justification of the resisting force in the next step.
episode. In the meantime, please go over to the show notes. Please go to the description of the video,
donate to Dr. Johnson's work. By his book on Ukraine, it is there. Links are there, and he will have
the updated or revised version of his book on Tsar Nicholas and the murderer of the royal family.
Do you have any idea when that's going to drop? I should have done it already.
I'm going to have to use another bank account that I never use.
But I think they'll accept it.
And once I get it done, it'll be ready.
It'll be very, very, very fast.
And you'll be the first to know.
All right.
So I'll see you in a couple days.
Thank you, Dr. Johnson.
All right, my friend.
Talk to you soon.
