The Pete Quiñones Show - Reading Ivan Ilyin's 'On Resistance to Evil by Force' w/ Dr. Matthew Raphael Johnson - Pt. 38

Episode Date: October 7, 2026

60 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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If not, here's a show. I want to welcome everyone back to our reading of Unresistance to Evil by Force by Ivan Eileen. Dr. Johnson, how are you doing today? Well, I'm doing very well, and I'll tell you why specifically. The First Lady of American nationalism, my wife, that is, struggles, as you know, with psoriatic arthritis. And for the last month, she has been awful. Her normal pain, maybe five or six every day.

Now, on a new medication, she's at maybe a one. And she's outside. I caught her singing outside before. I couldn't believe it. Now, how long this is going to last? I don't know. But I know that there's a few people out there praying for her. and because, you know, having this illness so young is brutal.

She's been in pain most of her life, but she's never allowed it to dictate her moods or how she treats people, especially me. You're talking about a pain of five or six just sitting there, and she still was with me throughout my illnesses, didn't move an inch. That's extraordinary, and that's an extraordinary human being. And so when I do things for her, it's minimal compared to what she's done for me. And she really deserves to be pain-free as she is right now. She's out.

God knows she could be doing somersaults out there for all I know. But it's a wonderful day for that reason. Good to hear. Good to hear. Glad to hear it. All right. We're starting. I think this is the last chapter, isn't it?

It is. all righty yeah this one isn't nearly nearly as long as the this will be a third a third of the episodes that 200 years together was yeah and this was probably the most difficult to put together for me yeah probably i would say all righty chapter 22 on the purification of the soul a conscious intentional deviation from moral perfection does not always indicate the depravity of a human heart There are situations in which such a deviation reveals the depth of the heart's devotion and the mature strength of its decisions. This is precisely the spiritual compromise necessary in the fight against evildoers and achieved through a religiously conscious sense of justice. Eileen really doesn't know how to wrap something up.

I know they can be hard, but this is sort of like a summation. This is a conclusion being the last chapter. doesn't read like one but he's he's he's basically so we said this a little bit last time too

that fighting evil by force in whatever form it takes we have to make certain moral compromises there's no getting out of that we see it all the time in the Old Testament and making sure that that doesn't take a hold of us though

is the key to this. Spiritual compromise. We're not so much sinning when we compromise. We're being sinned against because we wouldn't even have to worry about this had there be no evildoers in the world. So it's a striking first line. Intentional deviation from moral perfection

or from the moral law doesn't necessarily mean you're a depraved person. It just means you're in the middle of the battle. and it's not something you know you think you'd hear but this is a man who has been through the russian civil war of course now there's an exile and he knows exactly what he's talking about in that regard spiritual compromise does not consist in one debunking falling out of love with or rejecting the idea of holiness and moral perfection but in one's decision to turn to force and embrace a sword knowing that the sword is not the highest, the most holy, or the most perfect,

yet one nevertheless embraces it, without debunking, falling out of love with, or rejecting the idea of moral perfection and holiness. Spiritual compromise by no means distinguishes the voice of conscience within the soul, calling for moral perfection. It does not distort or weaken it, indeed. It does not even sever the soul from it. What do you think of what espionage is?

espionize is inherently dishonest you have any kind of intelligence core outside of the country they can't go to their target and announce what they're doing you know it all has to be done secretly they have to lie that's alter their appearance and all that stuff

of course that's you know one huge lie and so yeah it's leaving the moral law don't want to do it that way but sometimes you simply have no choice you couldn't have espionage if you didn't think this way. You couldn't defend yourself in a lot of ways, tricking your opponent, using deceit in the course of the war is necessary, especially if your enemies are very good at it. Yeah, it's not 100% moral. You know that,

but it's something imposed on the righteous nation, the righteous people. The voice of conscience is essential for everyone, but for a ruler and a warrior more than any one. else. This is precisely because the primary work of their lives forces them to push concerns about their personal righteousness into the background. The work of a ruler requires not only wisdom, loyalty, justice, and a strong will, but also secrecy, resourcefulness, and the ability to fight the enemies of the people. The work of a warrior requires not only devotion, a sense of honor, self-control, and courage, but also the ability to kill and to fight. you know he's saying a few things um there's certain things that the state may have to do

that the individual just in his normal day-to-day life would go to jail for him and if it's for the right cause that's perfectly okay but even that individual if he's in his own personal fight against evil may have to do the same kind of thing so it works on whatever level we're talking about you know the individual the church the the state and army whatever he's talking about it works on all levels um you know sometimes you have to fudge the truth in order to convince somebody of the righteous way knowing for well that he you know reason is not his number one quality um no one likes to to talk like this no one likes to have an army go out and killing killing people or deceiving people but sometimes it's absolutely necessary

If you have a group of people like Afghanistan when the Taliban took over, that has been just one big, nothing by PTSD in that whole country. Warfare pretty much for the 20th century. How do you govern a country like that? You need an extremely centralized, powerful, strong Islamic group of people who will push the boundaries of good and evil to make sure that the next generation grows up properly. You're not dealing with normal people.

in such a circumstance. You're dealing with people who have been destroyed by, you know, what warfare does, constant warfare does to the human psyche. That's why they're righteous in what they're doing. They don't pass laws saying that, you know, you're not going to play poppies, heroin poppies anymore. No, they go to the farmer and they threaten to kill them, and they do kill them if they continue to do it. That's why they were so successful so quickly. They'd rather not do that, but they have no choice. That was the world that was imposed on them. They have to use an equal amount of force and possibly deceit and even violence to get it right again.

And it's going to take a very, very long time. And that would be another example of what he's referring to here. It is bad if a ruler or warrior lacks the necessary negative qualities, but it is far worse if the necessary positive qualities disappear from their souls. if negative qualities begin to be idealized and dominate, if they begin to mistake the bad for the good, to cultivate exclusively the bad, and to base all their activities on it.

A ruler or warrior with a stifled or distorted conscience is of no use to anyone, neither to the cause nor to the people nor to God. He is no longer a ruler, but a tyrannical villain. He is not a warrior, but a marauder and a robber. Their salvation lies precisely in the voice of conscience. They must firmly know where, how and why their actions deviate from the precepts of righteousness

and tolerate this pattern of behavior in practice no more than is required by the necessity of combating evil-doers. This comes down to being self-aware. If the ruler uses the excuse of the fight against evil to do whatever he wants, you start seeing sociopathic tendencies. And clearly what he's seeing here, that old Lutheran idea that all powers from God, God, you know, the state, whatever the state is, you know, you have to obey it. That nonsense, the claim comes from Romans, the book of Romans, Paul's letter, is nonsensical.

It isn't true. A ruler not following the proper cause, not following the truth, is not a ruler anymore. I think that's something that people quote that line from Romans. They're being very dishonest here. Certain governments deserve to be overthrown. the difference between an aristocracy and an oligarchy, an oligarchy should be overthrown, an aristocracy shouldn't be. An oligarchy should be overthrown.

A monarchy, I'm sorry, a tyranny shouldn't be, should be overthrown, a monarchy shouldn't be. The perverse variations of legitimate systems, especially as Aristotle laid it out, are either deviations or acceptance of the moral law, But even the best governments have to do things they'd rather not do. But again, they're being sinned against. They're doing it because it's forced on them. But even as they do it, they have to realize that this is a deviation. They have to be self-aware of their deviation.

And so long that's the case, it's all right. They have to be, you know, this is why people who seek power might not be the best people to have power. This is why sometimes Hereditary monarchy is the best because they're just given it They have all the power they need They can't be corrupt Since I have all that they need

Someone like Assad in Syria, he never wanted power He was a doctor This is a sort of man that you want ruling you He never saw people who seek power What are they seeking power for? So that's the big difference here.

And sometimes, you know, it takes people like us do this all the time. Which rulers are the sociopathic and which rulers are deviating from the moral norm for a very specific and even a good reason? And since we're not controlled by, say, foundation money or a university or Israeli money, we have much more freedom. We could tell the truth about this stuff. Truth isn't hard to find. But for our opponents, of course, they're in a different situation. We know exactly, you know, like the Taliban is one of my favorite examples. I've written on them so much because they aren't doing the right thing.

There's no other way that that country could be ruled. There's no way that that drug war could have been won any other way than the extreme violence that they were willing to employ. And it really only took a couple of people. It took a couple of times, you know, maybe one, two people get shot, and the rest of the time. and say, we're not doing it. I think in the Philippines, something like 200,000 dealers turned themselves in when the former president, Duterte, declared war on them.

Said it's okay for you guys to kill your, for addicts to kill your dealers, which he did say. Now, when people realize the state means business, they give up. They're really cowards deep down. Now, after that, after he left office, big deal, everything changed. but unfortunately, that's something that these rulers inherit.

It's not who they don't want to do that stuff. They have no choice for this to do those things. Rulers must understand that if the state begins to be reduced to spying on citizens into intrigue, feeding the spirit of civil war, then it will destroy itself in public morality and will no longer fight evil but serve it. However, understanding this, they must not destroy either the secret police.

or diplomacy or counterintelligence or the apparatus of suppression and war, but only all these functions must be in the hands of honest, conscientious, and religiously minded people. If the soul of a warrior there must live powerful, impenetrable boundaries separating the obligatory from the forbidden, and these boundaries cannot be maintained by mechanical discipline alone. A spiritual autonomy is necessary, comprehending discipline in terms of the principles of faith, devotion, conscience, and honor, so that the warrior understands why the enemy in battle and the rebel during an uprising must be killed, while the private property of his family must be left inviolable, inviolable, and why skillful counterintelligence in the enemy camp is an expression of valor, while intrigue in the

regiment and in public life is an expression of baseness. Yeah, I think he's being extremely clear here. and because we're so used to living in corruption, we're dripping with it, we're surrounded by it. We don't really know anything else. It's almost like some people, I could picture people rolling our eyes. Like such a person doesn't exist, but of course they exist. They've existed in history. They exist now to make the decision

what private property should be completely destroyed and burnt to the ground and why they should do that and which property should be protected. And not only that, but the motivations for that distinction. You're not trying to manipulate people. You're not trying to fool anyone. Not trying to gain favor.

You're doing it for the right reason. Yeah, it's very difficult. But if you're truly independent, in other words, your rule is not dependent on foreign money or an oligarchy that keeps you in power. if you're independent, it really shouldn't be that tough. But we live in a world where, you know, in the U.S., our politicians are controlled by foreign and domestic sources of capital. They do a lot of special pleading.

That's why for us, reading this seems so unpopular. This couldn't possibly be. But there's people like this all the time. It's a great argument for monarchy that when you have someone who's raised in it, you're learning all. European languages, the law codes of every civilization on earth, which they all were, especially in Russia, when they come to power, which they never asked for, they're in the perfect spot. They can't be controlled by any particular, even a coalition against them. They're freer, in other words, than a politician in a democratic government would be. That's freedom. That's true freedom that they have. politician in the U.S. is the very opposite of free. He does what he's told. He believes what he's told. But the media is going to come down to his career is over. See it in academia, I don't even have to go there. We know that. So it's freedom in the true sense of the word. It's like the old Jeffersonian yeoman ideal.

That's very conception of freedom, being independent, having your own land. Not too much, not too little, not being dependent on anybody. that's the sort of person that should be voting. And then not only that, but be the ones who will eventually run for office for a couple of years ago to Congress. That's what the Constitution originally was supposed to be, not mass voting for a mass society. That was never it.

So, again, it comes down to self-awareness and not just amongst the rulers or the ruler, but also in the best of the citizens, realizing what they're doing. you know again this is why the old testament has to be read and it has to be read very slowly and deliberately because you see this working itself out all the time not just in the early you know like in exodus and numbers where they're you know Moses is slaughtering all kinds of people but how often the rulers of Israel eventually you know fall away they want to be like everyone else they lose faith in god how can

our little tiny country stand up against Babylon and Egypt together and so they make compromises like Solomon and that's when they get destroyed it's not an easy job you know the Old Testament a lot of it is simply Israel falling away doing the wrong thing it's like most Orthodox today

it's the right faith given to the wrong people as my bishop used to say so yes this is extremely hard but it has to do with how free the ruler is how free we are and it's listeners like yours, my own, who keep us in business, who allow us to be free, that we can see these things long before anyone in the establishment can, which is why we know that they steal from us.

I know they steal from me because I'm much freer than they are. Suddenly our stuff goes made in stream and they act like they discovered this on their own. I'm a lot freer than they are. I'm freer than most people. certainly freer than someone in academia would be. And that's enviable. And again, I have to thank our friends for that, because it wouldn't be possible without them.

Amen. In certain strictly defined relationships and cases, a man of power and sword must be able to commit acts that are clearly at odds with his own ideal of holiness and perfection. He must have in himself the strength to set aside one's inner disagreement. to restrain one's personal protest, to overcome one's personal disgust, and to do what is necessary and not only out of discipline and command, for oneself can always find oneself in the position of initiator and commanding.

One must be capable of this out of religious feeling and spiritual conviction, to accept the responsibility of a decision and an order to arrest a sentence to execute, but it is precisely this energy of spiritual compromise that can and should await a decision. in one's conscience. In other words, the more you do it, the more you're involved in it, a healthy man is going to feel it all the more deeply. And it's going to be more careful. This is why you need to have officers in an army have to teach the younger, you know, colonels

have to teach lieutenants. They've been through the mill already. And depending on the nature of the government, I wouldn't say it for our present army in the US, in the past, it has been the case, that yet they're on the right side, but they have to do some nasty things for the right side. See, the problem is, I talk about this with police all the time. Police have to follow the law. Criminals don't have to. Problem is that the due process, habeas corpus, that was all developed in the U.S. especially for a peaceful, pretty much all-white Christian society, when you have organized crime, like you had, say, in El Salvador, or in

major cities in the U.S., that doesn't work. Courts are completely overwhelmed. Now, you have to figure out other things. You have to take more extreme forms of action. Of course, you're not allowed to do that, because the regime makes money off these criminals. But that doesn't mean you reject the concept of due process. It just means that it's not relevant in the middle of a civil war. This is what, you know, in many cities have been going on for a long time in different countries in the world, drugs especially. As I keep saying, you can't have a drug war where every enemy soldier gets a lawyer. Sometimes a very expensive one. That's not a war. They should be shot. And you're doing it not because, you know, you're power mad or you like

doing this or it makes you feel tough. You're doing it because you need to get back to a position where you can have peace, where you can have due process, where you can have normal social life. Prinochet voluntarily gave up power in Chile. A lot of military governors did. Governments did. Our job is done here. We don't want to rule the country anymore.

We're military men. We're not politicians. So it takes a very special kind of a man to be put in that situation. But we live in a society so evil, it's hard to picture who would be. capable of that in a political, in a military sense. Now, he's talking about not only us as individuals. He's talking about military men. He's talking about governors.

He's talking about kings, presidents, everybody. He's writing this in the midst of Weimar, Germany. So he's very sensitive to what's going on. There are very few rulers today that have any sense of religious feeling. That have any conscience at all, especially in the West. so they'll do what they can get away with. They're not doing it for any good reason. So again, it comes down to self-awareness. You know, a governor who refuses to pardon a criminal is going to get executed. He has to carry that with him. I'm doing the right thing here. I'm chopping off a gangrenous

part of a limb so it doesn't spread to the rest of the body and kill us. I am the chemotherapy that's going to destroy the cancer in this society that's going to kill it otherwise. He has to feel himself that way. But the point of chemotherapy is to get back to a certain type of health helpfulness again, to live a normal life again. It's not just to keep pumping yourself up with it. And that's the concept here. That's actually a pretty good example of what he's talking about here. It's done. It's painful, but it has a very specific motive. And once that motive is, once that purpose is gone, you don't do it anymore. And the same thing go, you can't have, in most American cities, you know, due process is absurd.

You can't have due process in the middle of gang warfare. And yet this is what the ACLU talks about all the time. You have a situation where, you know, El Salvador used to be, gang could outgun the military. See it in Mexico. You saw it in Colombia for a long time. The cartels could take the military on any day of the week. And if the military shoots one too many people, the U.S. is going to cut off their aid. As if, you know, a country that is completely lost,

drug war can ever lecture anybody else and and um they'll take extreme actions they should take extreme action get rid of declare the state of emergency get rid of due process until you get back to normality again and what no matter how long it might take taliban's in the same situation you can't have a mentally sick group of people and and expect of them normal behavior Same thing for Ukraine or the next couple of generations. The whole country is PTSD. They've lost two million people at least. Their whole economy has been destroyed,

what little there was of it. They're not normal people anymore. This is why you need a military coup there. They can't be expected, you know, rational democratic discussion. It's not the question for a country like that, having suffered the way it has, because of its own corrupt rulers, the rulers in the West. So that's really what he's getting at here.

And he keeps saying the same thing in different ways over and over again. But it's worth repeating. And you see the balancing act that any really good leader has to maintain. And I think Ivan the Terrible was one of these guys, one of these men, which is why the Western world doesn't understand him, treats him like a maniac. And he was no such thing. But he was ruling, he inherited a society ruled by oligarchs. whole cities that were going to go over to the Polish Empire

and turn Catholic and everything else. Russell would have been chopped up into pieces. He had to take extreme measures. And it turns out those measures weren't that extreme after all. Just the threat of them, knowing that he meant business was enough to get them to think twice about things. But, you know, American academics don't understand that. So you get this distortion, you get this manipulation.

So, you know, who in the West is capable of this kind of balance? and that's a very frightening thing. Acting with a consciousness of spiritual necessity, one must not, during the action, weaken oneself by reflecting on the ideal or indulge in premature remorse. He who walks a tightrope and begins to look back at the wrong time will fall.

He must prepare himself for spiritual compromise in advance. He must weigh everything, consider, feel, and make a decision. At the moment of action, he should feel strengthened in his service and a sense of responsibility and duty, and fulfilling spiritual necessity to the best of his ability, authority, and the best of his understanding. But outside of action, it is natural and necessary for him to be illuminated by God's light. It is impossible and necessary for all the noblest powers of the human spirit to be activated within him to a state of heightened sensitivity, a relationship

with God, a judgment of conscience, the will to absolute righteousness. This is necessary not to condemn his actions committed during the period of struggle as supposedly shameful, but to strengthen his capacity for spiritual compromise. For a compromise is spiritual when it does not undermine a person's spiritual foundations, does not destroy the walls of his personal Kremlin, does not tear him away from God, does not stifle his conscience. And over time, if power is given to the wrong person, even if he does have that sensitivity, having that power, being able to do as he pleases, that will get to them. You may get used to that.

You may not want to give it away. You know, it's all the Soviet nonsense about the withering way of the state. They just meant the withering way of the bourgeois state. Not the party. They always invented some reason for them to stick around and have the gulags and everything else. There's always enemies, which was nonsense

because the West built the whole place. They had to continue to invent reasons for their tyranny. But it's true even for the best of people to fall into this. This is why Machiavelli, as distasteful as he can be. I have a paper out on him from some time ago. Leo Strauss did a great analysis of both the prince and his letters. So exactly really what he was talking about.

Now, there is no moral law in Machiavelli. There is no moral law in Thomas Hobbes. but sometimes you have to act like that. And also to be able to act decisively, even if maybe you might be in the wrong, acting decisively, or I should say not acting decisively, maybe worse than not acting at all.

So this is why having power should be no fun. I can't imagine. Seeking power is, the guy got, he has to be a sociopath to want power. if you actually have any conscience at all because you have to make these decisions and you have to take responsibility for all of them

when they say, when they refer to the Russian Zardom as absolute they don't necessarily an absolute power who's a representative government he didn't have to use coercion at the local level he never did but absolute responsibility everything that happened in that empire was his fault

whether it was his fault or not sometimes a drill sergeants when their men are killed in war they take that personally they think it's their fault i didn't train them well enough but you know maybe i could have done differently yes it's going to it's going to be a lot of self-torture you can't get out of it but when you see someone who doesn't go through that you have to really watch them um make sure that people around you if you're doing the right thing you're doing the right thing that other aren't getting used to this kind of power. You know, a rebel group

kills its enemies, let's say that, you know, Marxists in different parts of the world, Latin America and everything else. Well, they start having to lie, making up stories about how evil the government is, not because it really is that evil, but because it justifies what they're doing.

Terrorism then feeds on itself. They have to start inventing stories about the people that they're killing, even when they're not that evil, because it justifies themselves. All of this has to be watched very carefully. None of this is very easy. And when you don't have a moral population to begin with, it's then infinitely more difficult. But even making errors, you know, maybe you execute someone who turns out to be innocent,

that isn't your fault. It's not the governor's fault. stuff usually comes from false witness identifications. I think most of the time. That might be their fault, but that the governor didn't put a stay on the execution. It's certainly not his fault. He had every reason to believe that this person was guilty.

And yet a good governor is going to torture himself with that, probably for the rest of his life. If he doesn't do that, you have to start worrying. The deeper a person's religiosity, the stronger his love and sense of spiritual dignity, the freer the breath of conscience in him. The more capable he is of spiritual compromise, the less harm his interaction with the villain brings him.

The less his negative love embitters him. The less his spirituality is destroyed. Yeah, what he means is the holier and better you are as a ruler, the more freely you can engage in extreme measures and have it not harm your moral makeup. You know what you're doing, you know why you're doing it. not doing it because you because you hate these people

you're not doing it because you seek power doing it because society has to be made healthy again so the most religious people with the highest level of conscious development of their own consciousness conscience I should say those are the people you want in power

because they couldn't take extreme actions like this and have it not affect them people who are wishing to watch you on that can take extreme actions and start liking it That's what he means in that paragraph. Acts of forced treachery and cruelty are perpetrated against a particular individual. All the more reliably does he find the very measure of the necessary compromise.

This measure cannot be determined in advance by an abstract principle. It is acquired in the very process of struggle and creativity for each individual case through active discernment and utmost understanding, but precisely for this reason, the fundamental spiritual attitude with which a person and approaches an event, and from which he discerns, understands, and decides is so crucial. This attitude is not given to anyone arbitrarily, easily, or simply, without preliminary and preparatory spiritual work. Genuineness, purity, and depth of goodwill are the first and fundamental condition without which a faithful and victorious struggle against evildoers is impossible,

and the acquisition of this will requires a constant, lengthy, and intense struggle for one the spiritual purification. I've always been a big fan of Chris Hansen. He saves a lot of people. He has stopped a lot of potential child molesters from doing anything because they fear that he's going to show up. And I love it when occasionally you watch it on YouTube or something you see on the comments. Sometimes the perpetrator will say, I've been entrapped. You're entrapping me.

They don't know what the bad word means legally. No, all they've been given is a certain temptation, and they acted on it. That is not entrapment. Entrapment is when the state uses coercion or threats to get you to do something. That's what the courts have always said. So what Chris Hanson does is give you the opportunity to say no. And when you don't, that means you've always had that tendency, and you do need to be punished. Now, a few people know that the movie has just come out about him, where all of a sudden,

Hollywood, as you might expect, is condemning him to the skies in this stupid new movie, prime time, which shouldn't shock you. Why would Hollywood hate the guy that has given his life to fighting child molestation? Why would that be the case, you think? It doesn't take a genius to figure out why that might be the case. But this paragraph reminded me of this notion. No, it's not an entrapment. This is how you filter the good from the evil.

If we were to be approached by someone like this, we would say, get out of here. You're 13 years old. I would assume it's just Chris Hansen anyway. Not that I'm ever on those things. But even if I were, I was assuming anyway. These guys are so high to control, knowing full well that it may be Chris Hansen, they'd do it anyway. These horribly disgusting guys think a cute, cute 13-year-old is into them, which is like a can never figure this out. I mean, they've got to be, that by itself means I have to go to

prison. But we live in a society where we have the Hollywood crowd that sees, what I think is a very good man, I don't know if he's a religious man or not, and is very angry at him, that he has put in Britain, he has created the consciousness of child molestation to the extent that the Epstein stuff has taken over our minds. And Chris Hansen has been a huge part of that. And so in this new movie, they're treating him like a maniac. And there's a lot in this paragraph that's reminded me of that. That's not what entrapment is. And it's certainly not what he's talking about by a compromise.

Entrapment means coercion. That you say, you're going to commit this crime or we're going to put you in jail for something else. You commit this crime or, you know, we're going to chop your leg. off. That's entrapment. Not tempting somebody. And most of them say it. They try to use it in court. It never works. That's not what it means. They'll say pretty much anything to get out of it. But they belong in prison or at a work camp, I would say, what a re-education camp, more than anything else. because we know that they're amenable to that kind of temptation in the first place. So I'm not sure why exactly that the catric predator popped into my head the minute you read this.

But now in some cases, you have local guys who try to be Chris Hansen. They are in the wrong. They do kind of force it on people. But the way that Chris Hansen did it is very opposite of entrapment. Giving someone the opportunity is an excellent way. I mean, it's all a lie.

There's no 13-year-old that likes you. Of course not. The whole thing is a lie, but it's not entrapment. But it's also a very good thing done for the right reason. And we see who the vicious are who want to treat Prince Hansen like a criminal. And we know why. We all know why.

I was going to say something, but I'll just leave it. You did a good job there. What do you mean? There's a, the Washington Post had a tweet the other day where they said, to some, Chris Hansenov to catch a predator is an overzealous TV hack, thrilled to ruin the lives of people who never so much has touched a child. To fans of True Blue, his online crime-themed network, Hanson is a crusader against evil. Yeah, and it's to be expected from that bunch of people. They're coming out and defending their own, I suppose.

What happened to Ricky Gravades at the Golden Globes? When he called them all out, you know what I'm talking about. That was glorious. It was glorious. I don't even like him on a lot of things. But boy, he made up for all the atheism and all that crap. He made up for it there. He was calling them out almost by name.

And he was put through quite a bit after that. He's done okay since then, but only in Britain, not in the U.S. But yeah, there's been this huge backlash. Now that the movie is out, that Chris Hansen was this terrible guy in trapping these men. even the women do the most of it, especially in the public school system and in prison, entrapping these poor men. Well, you know, they didn't so much as touch someone.

Well, they would have. They say that they would have. They say right in their chance that they would have. They didn't do it because they weren't allowed to do it at the very end. So that's special pleading. That's a great example of special pleading. They're lying through their teeth. They know exactly why they're saying what they're saying.

They know who gives them their money. they know who they are. And to have to take that point of view to defend those kind of people, which is exactly what they're doing, unless they're sociopaths. A sociopath wouldn't care one way or the other. But if they have any conscience at all, it's got to be really tough to live that kind of a life

and to write stuff like that, whoever wrote that tweet for the WP. And as far as I know, the movie has gotten good reviews from all the typical suspects. Continuing. A man in action. is always at the height of which they truly lived before the action that tests and proves their soul. The question is resolved not by the apparent appearance of their life, deceptive both to others

and perhaps to themselves, but by the state of that passionate depth of the soul, the relationship of which to the spirit and to God defines their entire personality. The necessity of heroic action, danger, temptation, and misfortune does not evoke anything unprecedented in the human soul and cannot alter either its quality or its strength. It merely considers what is available and mercilessly sums up all that is possible, awakening the dormant, revealing the invisible in what is hidden. A man's action is their revealed being. A man's action is their revealed being. It is naive to neglect the foundation of one's spiritual being and think that at the moment of trial, one's actions will somehow prove themselves to be at their best. It is naive to

to conceal from oneself one's true motives, impulses, inclinations, and passions, and to imagine that the invisible is powerless in the soul, and that hidden passions do not spill out into actions, do not distort them in essence, do not fill them with unexpected content, do not illuminate them with the reflections of hidden evil. Not a single human action is random. Each man is the mature results of their entire previous life, the manifestation of their personal mentality. Therefore, each of us performs our actions not only through the effort that actually carries them out, but also through the entire process of our previous life. This is what Christ means by perfection. He knows that we're all sinners. He's the only one

who hasn't sinned, even though he felt temptation. We can be perfect, however, in our faith, conceptually speaking on that level, on the numinal level. Unfortunately, we can't live in the numinal level. We also live in the phenomenal level. We live in the day-to-day life. We have to make these kind of decisions. And sometimes they're stupid. And sometimes they're wrong.

Sometimes you don't learn from mistakes. You know, speaking of TV shows, another one that struck me was the first couple of seasons of The Walking Dead. and what struck me most of all was that civilization had broken down, right, entirely. And people who were absolute nobodies when civilization existed became powerful, strong leaders

when that civilization collapsed. They would have continued to be nobody's had civilization continued. It was only the collapse that brought that all out in them. That's what he means by bringing out this, they became leaders. They saved people. they wouldn't have been anything.

They wouldn't have, we wouldn't even know that about them if they just lived in their, had their stupid jobs like they had in, um, uh, in the regular world.

I think that's kind of what he's talking about here. That's, you know, if, if the civilization were to collapse, we had to fight for our lives 24 hours a day, you know, who would be the best leaders?

You know, would it be the, the ordinary person who just grabs the bull's horns? You know, is there's some truth to that. There's a lot of characters in that show, and another post-apocalyptic literature and stuff like that, these nobodies who end up being saviors, who end up being willing to suffer and to save people, but are absolute nobodies when society's institutions were functioning. And this is a great paragraph. It's not an easy paragraph. out. But at the moment of trial, one's actions will somehow prove themselves be at their best.

You know, I think of the chicken hawks in Congress or in the media who demand war for Israel or against Russia or whatever it is. I then think of the Greek polis, the ancient world, the classical world, where the men who declare war are precisely those who have to go and fight it. This is why there were no women permitted there Because men were the only ones involved in who could be involved in combat Same thing goes for Sparta As wicked as they were domestically With their serfs that they had under them They're helots and everything

They were honest When war was declared, they declared it Then they had to go and risk their lives Today is a totally different story Those demanding warfare if they were given a rifle would fall apart. I'm almost positive. Pete Hegsef was actually a legitimate combat veteran in an unjust war.

Cut the track, Hegsaff, I mean, in an unjust war. But, you know, he does have some authority because he did, you know, he was a legitimate combat veteran. He had a couple tours over there. But generally speaking, most of these guys, have you seen the list of defense ministers? I love talking about it. It's in my Ukraine book in Western Europe. Most of them are women. Most of them have never seen a battlefield.

They're usually lawyers. They've never seen a battlefield in their life. They wouldn't know how to hold a pistol. They couldn't tell you the difference between a pistol and a rifle if their lives depended on it. And they're defense ministers. Eastern Europe, they tend to be military officers. You can't have that in the West. You have a much better situation there.

You know, this is one of the reasons I wonder, the brass in Ukraine, how long did they continue to send their men to certain death before they do something? Before they finally take over their government and say, forget it. We're done with the West. We're allies with Russia now. We're not going to lead our men to death anymore. Certain death. We can't do it anymore. Now, there's been a lot of purges and stuff like that.

And that's one way to keep them in power. There's been a lot of purges in the Pentagon over the last maybe 15 years, tons of it. They're all placekeepers in the Pentagon now. timekeepers they're just not entities turkey unfortunately went through the same thing in 2016 but I don't know for some reason the Walking Dead came to mind when I when I thought of this and that was that first season the first two seasons really struck me I can't think of the guy's name who he had the eye patch I don't know if you watch the show I only watched the first few seasons he had the eye patch he was in nothing I think he

like Walmart or something like that and he created the first functional was he called the governor that they yeah the governor that's exactly it yeah yeah he used to talk and complain about the kids the kids that were giving him orders at his job he couldn't have been much he had to have been a nobody if that was a case he clearly was but when civilization collapsed he became this extraordinary leader all of this potential I mean he He didn't want civilization to collapse. But we would never have known what he was capable of, had things continued as they normally are. We don't know what's going to happen as the Western Empire falls to pieces, as the American Empire falls to pieces.

There will be suffering. There's no doubt. I wouldn't wish that on anybody. But there may be acts of courage and heroism like that that they make up for it. I don't know. But as evil continues to grow in power, as we get closer, and closer to the end. More and more people like that are going to show up.

People who you would never dream in a million years have that potential. Remember, in all the great epics, ancient Greece, the hero doesn't even want to leave their house. They have to. Their house is usually destroyed. They're forced to go to place to become this hero. They don't want to do it. But the situation that they thrust themselves into, that had been thrust, I could say, thrust

on them. turns them into a tremendous hero, a legend. That's the classic epic structure. You see it in Star Wars, too, at least the older variation, like when we were kids. The hero does things because, you know, not necessarily they want to, because they have to. Because at the moment of trial, as he says here, one's actions will somehow prove themselves to be at their best. and sometimes you really can't tell who that might be and the hero

in the book of judges for example one of my favorites that should be read by anyone who's a Christian has to know the book of judges most of these people too you would never expect this out of them the prophets were absolute nobodies they didn't want to go and get themselves killed by lecturing to the Israelites how wicked they are but God came and told them to do it.

You have no choice in the matter. And so as things go from bad to worse, you know, Trump has abandoned us, as we all know. Who knows who the next hero is going to be? Who wants to lead an organization today of any note? Who could possibly put themselves through that? Who's not a total sociopath? But then, you know, no action is random.

That doesn't mean no action is free. He just means no action is random. When you see that hero, you're going to realize that he has had that potential, never had the opportunity given a corrupt and evil society to allow it to flourish. You know, we live in a society where the best, your highest IQ white males are dropping out. That's death. That's the death of any society. When your best men start dropping out because they can't take it anymore. what 65% of college admissions this year have been female.

When your high IQ white males are just dropping out, society is going to collapse and things are going to get worse and worse. But face with this evil, day in and day out, what's going to become of those people? They're just going to kill themselves? Or are some of them capable of rectifying some of this? and until things get really bad, we're not going to know. And, you know, the old heroic, epic idea from the classical world, these men didn't want to do it. They weren't seeking glory. They weren't seeking anything.

They didn't want to leave their house, but they had to do it. They had absolutely no choice. But they had it in them the whole time. And they became heroes that we still talk about today. I haven't marked off that this would be the last paragraph that we do in the way. this episode because it sort of springs into a little different center after this. If a man's soul is pure, then his actions will also be correct, despite their apparent inconsistency with the laws of righteousness. Conversely, even the most righteous actions of an impure

soul will be morally wrong. While this applies to every person, it takes on a completely special significance for a ruler and a warrior. According to an ancient and profound view nurtured by the Orthodox Church, those who wield power and the sword wield them not as a privilege, but as a religiously meaningful service. This service imposes upon them special burden and duties, special burden of duties and responsibilities. Among these duties, the duty of execution and combat is the most severe, and coping with his burden of responsibility is possible only with constant concern for the religious purification of one's soul and will. I think reading Marcus Aurelius, in addition to, of course, the church fathers is really a good idea.

Again, Marcus Aurelius didn't seek the position that he had. But he stresses over and over. When you read the Stoics, the Stoicism was mostly a Greek phenomenon. It's really a metaphysical situation rather than what we know in the Roman world. But power, and he says this over and over again, is a crushing. horrible responsibility because you really don't know you know one decision that you make affects every other damn thing and especially when you're a monarch you are a Tony Shepano used to say alone with it all people may even abandon you if you

make make the wrong decision might even be your fault having power is like that what are these people who seek power what do they think it's going to be like when they get it Marcus Ruelius is a man It's awful. He says awful every day. I don't know if I'm going to make a decision that's going to lead to the death of thousands. I don't know. If I make a mistake, it's not like normal people at their job. To make a mistake, the company may lose a couple bucks. If I make a mistake, a thousand people may be killed. I don't know. And I'm responsible for it. I didn't mean it for it to happen. But it's so complex at that level. Being a Roman emperor, anyone who wants this job, you have to be. You should never have it. And this is a big theme in his meditation. And that's, and we're getting really to the summation of what he's talking about in this whole book. And how naive people like Tolstoy and others are.

This kind of service, this kind of power is not something that anyone wants, that any normal person wants. This is why, again, hereditary monarchies make a lot of sense. This is why the Syrian government and actually had a government under Assad made some sense. He didn't want this but that's exactly the sort of person you want in power. He said, well, I have a duty, I'm here now, I have to do what I have to do. And he was an excellent ruler.

And it's often that Westerners just never understood that. Everyone wants power. Everyone wants money. Everyone wants to win the lottery, despite the fact that lottery winners lead a miserable life after they win it. Demons function by fantasies. They put a fantasy in your brain. And this is what you go in search of.

And when you reach the goal, the fantasy translates to be totally ephemeral. It's all a lie. That's how demons operate. And that's how people who seek power operate. Demons can't create. They can't create anything. So the most they can do is create a fantasy in your mind. If I win the lottery, I'm going to be able to do whatever I want.

but there are so many there's so much literature out there lottery winners those that don't kill themselves lose their money very quickly they're scammed everything goes wrong they're the most miserable group of people on the planet but when they're playing the lottery they didn't think that was going to happen they had this fantasy what was going to happen if they want it power is the exact same way any kind of political power

economic power there is nothing fun or good about that there is no you don't get a good night's sleep if you're not a sociopath if you hold power like Marcus really is held power it's not an accident that Christ did not have political power same thing for the prophets

there were absolute nobodies it was stressed that there were nobodies Isaiah was one exception he wasn't a nobody but he was an arrest of crap the rest were total nobodies that's not an accident and that's really being stressed here and this is why

I'm glad we're doing this book because going through it is difficult enough, but you have to have a certain knowledge of Christian history, Russian history, and people like McEvelli in order to make sense out of where Aline is coming from. I think it's gone well. I certainly, I certainly agree. So, all right, as I do at the end of every episode, go over to the show notes, go over to the description on the video, donate to Dr. Johnson's work by his Ukraine book,

by the revised version of his book on the murder of the Tsar. and his family. We did an episode on that one. Go back and check that out and join his Patreon or send them a one-off. Oh, before we leave, by the way, speaking of Patreon, I am, I've decided to put a small book together. It's 100 pages of my work. This is the second time I've done this. I did one of the MyLylai Massacre as a book, and I just put it on Patreon for my, you can't get it anywhere else. and I'm doing mine on the Iran War, putting a lot of my stuff together, rewriting a lot of it, new information, and making a book out of it and posting it on my Patreon too.

It'll be done in a few days. Only my Patreon subscribers are going to be able to get it. And so that's a very good reason to join my Patreon page. Awesome. Everyone go do that. Thank you, Dr. Johnson. So I'll see you in a couple days. Okay, my friend.

Talk to you then.