The Pete Quiñones Show - Reading Ivan Ilyin's 'On Resistance to Evil by Force' w/ Dr. Matthew Raphael Johnson - Pt. 4

Episode Date: May 20, 2026

55 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 begin 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 On Resistance to Evil by Force by Yvonnealine. This is episode four. Dr. Johnson. How are you doing today? You know, let me give you an example of excessive Steely Day and listening. I had to rush getting set up for today because I had to hear Kid Charlemagne for the eighth time. Not seven times. I had to listen to it eight times.

And when it was over then, then I had to just rush to get everything put together. So this is kind of why I asked you last time. I'm asking a lot of people, what is what is too much here? but beyond that I have my co-hosts is over there this time my Turkish Angora who's sleeping on a pillow which I think is an ornate pillow which I think ethnically correct she's deaf so she can't hear a damn thing's going on

so she sleeps better than every other cat in the house pure white I mean white white I mean shockingly white I mean no color at all it's not like a creamy stuff. Now, it's when we first got her and I saw her, I had to, oh my God. I mean, white, like an Arctic fox. It blew me away. But she was born deaf, so it really doesn't bother her. It doesn't seem to affect her functioning. And absolutely stunning, a cat. You know, cat are my hobby outside

of this crazy field. And frankly, I think that given the nature of this field, everyone needs a hobby totally outside of it that has nothing to do with it just to, you know, bring down their brain a little bit, you know, to keep them from going crazy, from high blood pressure and heart problems. How you doing? Good. I'm hoping that it's going to be a few days until we record again, maybe a week, and I'm hoping that by the time we come back, that you'll be listening to somebody else. Yeah, it's cyclical. Always has been going on my whole life.

I always have a song in my head, 24 hours a day. It's in the background when I'm working, you know, always, 24 hours a day and when I'm dreaming, always. And the song that I have when I'm dreaming. I have to listen to when I wake up. Who knows? I'm predicting maybe Boston. Maybe yes, I'm not 100% sure, but they've been out of rotation for a while.

So that's simply how I go. And so many bands that I were, I mean, they were all before my time. But, you know, the 80s bands that I hated at the time when they first came out when I was in high school, now I'm starting to appreciate for the first time. So who knows what it's going to be? You get whatever we want on YouTube, which is incredible. I can't remember the last time I bought an album. I think it was Joey Ramon's solo album in 2001. You know, a CD.

It was probably the last thing I ever bought. Everything else I either stole or, you know, downloaded or just it's on YouTube. It's incredible. Could be the Ramones. Could be the Ramones. That'd be a nice break in departure. I do fear Boston, though, because. Feel unsatisfied was in my head for two months.

So I'm a little nervous about them, but I don't know. Cheap tricks, another option. All right, let's go. All right, here we go. Picking up where we left off last time. Good and evil and their essential content are determined through the presence or absence of precisely these two combined characteristics. Love and spirituality. A person is spiritual when and to the extent that they voluntarily and spontaneously turn toward

objective perfection, needing it, seeking it, and loving it, measuring life and evaluating its content by the measure of its true divinity, truth, beauty, righteousness, love, heroism. However, spiritualization acquires true strength and integrity only when it is carried by the fullness, pleroma, I don't know that word, pleroma, of a deep and sincere love for perfection and its living manifestations. Without the pleroma, the soul, even with the right direction, is fragmented, extensive, cold, dead, and creatively unproductive. This is, this is an excellent point. Plum is a Greek word. I have it here. It means to fill up an empty thing, to complete, an incomplete thing in Greek.

It's a classical term. I don't know if it's used anymore, but it's often used in biblical studies. And let's be careful. Using the word perfection, I mentioned this last time. Perfection does it mean, we think of perfection as having absolutely nothing wrong with it. No, in this case, we mean having everything in order. That we need nothing in addition. It's having the virtues in order, for example. Now, the thing is, you could have these virtues but have a negative end. You know, criminals sometimes have excellent virtues but aimed at the wrong thing.

In addition, you have those, and I saw this, you know, I saw it quite often where you have traditionalists of either orthodoxy or Catholicism. who seem to have the virtues and they know their Thomas Aquinas, you know, they know their church fathers, and yet they are cold. There's nothing, you know, they're rule followers. They have a quote for everything, but they're generally, you know, unpleasant. It's hard to tell if they just, these are just for show or what. So this is what he's talking about here. perfection doesn't mean you do nothing wrong we're in the you know

phenomenal world I was calling it the empirical world before it's a phenomenal world by its very structure we're going to do things wrong I said the last time how do you know how do you square the fact that the greatest saints say that they're the greatest sinners

they all did that does that make any sense to you obviously they're not the greatest thing Well, what they mean is perfection is something that you maintain internally. It's never going to be 100% objectified in reality. It can't be. And that gets, and regardless of their interior disposition. But I've known, I think we've all known Christians who, you know, canonically are, you know, perfectly fine. that's it.

They quote canons, they quote, you know, scriptures, and that's pretty much where it ends. They're almost mechanized. There's a lot of people like that, and they think that's sufficient. And there's a certain level of Phariseism there. So the virtues that he lists here, truth, beauty, righteousness, love, and heroism or courage, all of those have to be in the purse at the same time. internally for it to be perfect. The person's never going to be perfect because we live in the real world.

That doesn't mean we can't organize our soul perfectly. Perfection there is symbolized usually by a circle. And of course, all of these five things are connected. And one of the things that connects them is humility. Oftentimes I've come across people approaching me, just when I had a Facebook account looking for advice on something but they're not really looking for advice on something

they just want to prove to me how wonderful they are this happened more times than I was ever expecting there's a lack of humility there I lack humility I guess we all do at one point or another it's more connected with love than anything else love is something we'll end up having to define at some point I don't you know the word has been so

manipulated in our postmodern world it did mean something different back then than it means now I think Americans automatically associated with sexuality or at best you know relationships for marriage at best

but that's only one very very small aspect of it when you grow up reading Plato you understand exactly what it is So he's talking about the fullness. He's talking about not just those virtues, which are fine, not just knowing your canons, not just knowing your church fathers or, quote, St. Augustine with no problem. You know, I could do a lot of that stuff, me personally. But sometimes I do catch myself.

That's really, it's really all I'm doing. I'm not, I'm not internally perfect because I think that that's sufficient. It isn't sufficient. and once you gain that extra element, that extra element of humility, and because, you know, unity, nationalism, subotonos, all of these terms require you to be able to work with others. A nationalist is a communitarian by definition. We're talking about groups of people rather than individuals.

But working with any group requires humility. you're not always going to be the main character. And half the time, nationalists myself included, if things were to improve drastically and there were the ethnic unity, our people were like that, you know, would I like it? It's one thing to talk about it in the abstract, it actually work with it.

Now, I've done it before, and I guess I did okay. But we thought, well, there's one extra thing here. There's one extra thing to make those virtues perfect and that is humility. Any social system, I don't care if you're even, even the weird are libertarians. That still requires humility

because you're living in a society in matter what. I think libertarians are inherently contradictory with what they think stressing the individual while living in society. But no matter what you are, you have to learn to listen to people,

you have to be able to work with people. And if you don't, the system's going to fall apart. you start thinking that you're irreplaceable, you learn very quickly that you can very easily be replaced. And humility is, I think, one of the toughest things to learn. That's not something you could read in a book, which is my big problem. And you know, every one of those virtues that he lists here has its opposite. But someone can be virtuous with the improper end, and that has a lot to do with humility as well.

A person is loving when to the extent that he is turned toward the content of life by the power of receptive unity, that power which establishes a living identity between the receptive and the receiver, increasing to infinity the scope and depth of the former and imparting to the latter feelings of forgiveness, reconciliation, dignity, strength, and freedom. However, love acquires a true object for its unity and its true purity only when, it is spiritualized in its direction and choice, i.e. when it turns toward the objectively perfect in things and people, accepting precisely this and entering into a living identity precisely with it. Without spirituality, love is blind, biased, selfish, subject to vulgarization

and ugliness. I didn't realize I was getting ahead of myself there. He's basically saying what I'm saying. You know, humility is absolutely necessary for things like reconciliation and forgiveness. You one big red flag with somebody is someone who just carries grudges for a long period of time, who doesn't know how to get past something. Now, dignity has to do with your station, your function in life. You know, how to comport yourself as a whatever you might be, as a scholar, as a musician, whatever it is. And of course, freedom has to do with integrity, that you're not manipulated by outside or even inside forces. You're not manipulated by the society. around you in a negative way or internal passion.

That's not how the American defines freedom whatsoever. Now, I don't think what he's saying here, love is blind, blind. I don't think that's love in that case. It's not love at all. It's a facsimile of love, but not love at all. So that the truth of the church is really what he's talking about here. Love is blind bias. That means it's not love in the first place.

It's something that looks like it. but isn't. You know, love sometimes gets defined by the organs and a body, that everyone does their specific job for the sake of the whole. One thing goes away and the whole falls apart. Your willingness to work at your station, which he mentions here in terms of dignity, and work very hard, knowing full well that you couldn't function,

without all the other thing individualism doesn't make any sense I can't I'm not gonna deliver my own mail I'm not gonna build my own house I don't know how to do any of these things we are totally dependent on others for pretty much everything the language that we speak obviously the books we read certainly the religion that we believe all of these things come from outside come from the community from the society you know the only time an individual actually matters is in these very, very brief periods of choice we talked about last week. And even there, you know, you're still making a choice based on the positive goods of the community itself.

Individualism did not really exist in any organized form until industrialization, which is really ironic because it was the last thing you consider individual individuality. It's a factoryism of the 18th, 19th century. but the mentality was there to justify the so-called free market and capitalism, especially Darwinism, which is capitalism based on. So it's not just having the virtues. It's having humility, and humility itself is based on love. And that's just one, I mean, love, I've tried to get my brain around what love actually is.

There's a thousand different definitions going back to the Old Testament. and it's a word that I don't like using unless I define it first. Love and marriage, okay, you know, this is what I mean there. He hasn't defined it yet, but he's talking about you're functioning in society, so it is closely connected with humility. I love someone so much, I will suffer for them.

or even die for them in extreme cases, as Christ did, as Zarnikoulos did. That's closer to what he's talking about here. Society doesn't function without that mentality. According to this, good is spiritualized love, while evil is anti-spiritual enmity. Good is the loving power of the spirit. Evil is the blind power of hatred. Good is by its very nature religious, for it consists of a clear-sighted and holistic devotion to the divine. Evil is by its very nature anti-religious, for it consists of a blind, decaying aversion to the divine. This means that good is not simply love or simply spiritual insight, for religiously unintelligible passion and cold pretentiousness will not create holiness.

And likewise, this means that evil is not simply enmity or spiritual insight. blindness, for enmity toward evil is not evil, and the helpless wandering of blind love does not constitute vice. Only the spiritually blind can praise love as such, accepting it as the highest achievement, and condemn every manifestation of hostile aversion. Only one dead in love can praise true spiritual taste as such, accepting it as the highest achievement, and despise the sincere and complete error of a spiritually blind love. Such is the essence of good and evil, and perhaps it is enough for the Christian consciousness

to recall the greatest commandment of the gospel, the fulfillment of love for the perfect father, for the last doubts to fade within it. Well, Christ gave the ultimate... You know, you think of what Jesus did. Here is God who had a huge part in the creation, you know, these logos, so the forms, that exists in the world

are manifest in him. And he permitted himself to be attacked and abused and then eventually murdered by people so inferior to him, objectively, that it's almost inconceivable. Actually, it is inconceivable. Yet he did it anyway.

And sometimes people forget about that. That's a form of love that when you read accounts of demonic possession, demons never understand it. They mention it, but they don't get it. That's the one thing that they can't comprehend is that level of humility. That's an extreme humility. That they'll allow people who he actually created and the world to torture him to death. And of course, not do anything about it.

He could have, but he didn't because he was there to conquer death. And he knew he was going to work out okay. But, you know, that, you know, he permitted it to happen, knowing in addition that the apostles were going to run away, the first sign of trouble. You know, I love people saying, you know, the first synod that ever took place was the apostles running away. And Peter denying him, which, you know, again, like I said before, it's tough to, you know, it's tough to condemn him for that. He hated himself for it. He was forgiven for it, but it's hard to, you know, when you're surrounded by a mob, it's very hard to judge what would you do in that situation. You know, enmity.

Well, you know, we hear especially, you know, he's ignorant clergymen talk about, you know, love, meaning indulgence. We should bring in unlimited immigrants because of love, which doesn't make any sense. They're objectively harmful to the societies around them, not necessarily individually, but as a group, they most certainly are and we could prove that they are somehow love is supposed to cover all of that and it's it's nonsense it's an invading force this was the whole problem with him and in tolstoy tolstoy's ideology taken to its to its extreme and i guess he held it to it extreme and if your house is invaded you don't do anything you call the psychiatrist in to reason with the person. That isn't love. That's not even indulgence. You are responsible for what happened.

Blind love isn't love at all. You think it is. But if we consider love is, now indulgence can mean forgiveness. So that sometimes that is a loving reaction. But not all the time. Hatred is also a legitimate reaction to someone doing harm physical harm and you could do something about and you're not necessarily hating someone on your own for your own benefit for the society around you I mentioned before the Saints of Montenegro the warrior saints of Montenegro they're all canonized they're all and yet they were there there were blood curdling in there in there because you know it was either us or them and these were these were Muslims they would have destroyed the church they would have destroyed the nation, had they not almost all of them sacrificed themselves in the field.

There's absolutely a contempt there and enmity there, of course. That's a responsibility. You don't do it just so you can be considered glorious, though. You know, Christ talked about our personal enemies, not enemies of the church or enemies of the community. that's just irresponsible. There is no way that he meant that, especially since he never negated that part of the Old Testament anyway. You know, love, and all of these, I think, are aspects of love.

All of them are. Hostile aversion is a manifestation of love in a very specific way because you're showing your love for your nation. You know that the body politic is dying when they refuse to take action against invaders. Just like in your own body, if your white cells don't attack diseases, you're going to die.

You're moribund in that case. And that's another anatomical manifestation of this. It's a love in a very eccentric sense, obviously. There's no decision being made. But, you know, throwing yourself in the heat of battle to protect your family and your nation, If that's truly your motivation in the church, of course, and going into it with enmity, I need to kill these guys, or else everything could be destroyed, that is a holy endeavor,

if it's done legitimately for that reason. And that's exactly what the Saints of Serbia and Montenegro say over and over and over again. Now, beating at the guy that made funny you in fourth grade, that doesn't count. but these other legitimate aspects of this hostile aversion is love and the regime uses that term hate so many times and now it has no meaning we know what they're talking about anything anything right wing really um but um but all of these things are aspects of love but when it's false you know a false humility seeking your own glory and that kind of thing it feels like love but it isn't It's, in fact, the very opposite.

And love, therefore, is very closely connected with humility. In this state of affairs, the interlocation of evil and its inner conquerability become quite obvious. True conquest of evil is accomplished through the profound transformation of spiritual blindness into spiritual insight, and in denying hostility into the grace of accepting love. It is necessary for not only hostility, but also love to be spiritually enlightened. It is necessary for not only spiritual blind. but also spiritual insight to be ignited by love. In a soul liberated from evil and transformed, spiritualized love becomes the true deepest source

of personal life so that everything in the soul becomes its living transformation, the daily service and the perception of music, and the reading of papyrus, and the contemplation of a mountain thunderstorm, and that highest strict impartiality in which the monk, the scholar, and the judge maintained both themselves and others, and even that merciless hostility to evil in oneself and in others, which is necessary for the prophet, the statesman, and the warrior. You know, the things that we do, me and you are motivated by love and humility. I could have been a very, very wealthy, successful funeral director if I wanted to,

but I went into this field because I knew something was wrong. I knew it wasn't going to make me wealthy. it wasn't going to make me even loved by people. It was going to cost me a lot. I did it anyway. And that says to me that I did the right thing.

You know, when you start losing friends over this stuff, sometimes losing friends is the best thing that weren't friends of yours in the first place. You know,

so all these things are depend on the situation. It's a in transformation is is done usually by grace, but you have to cooperate with it. You know, the monk, the scholar, and the soldier, I've always thought, and many of their fathers said the same thing, are similar. You know, they're sacrificing a huge part of themselves for the greater good. I don't think the people in academia are scholars for the most part. But you figure, you know, a soldier going through, let's say in the U.S., a Marine going through, Paras Island gets a chick beat out of him, as my father used to say. He was there. They're not doing

that because they hate you. They're doing it because they want you to survive. You live in almost aesthetic life as a different end, but the ends are connected. The monk essentially his whole life is one boot camp. Again, for the same end, but coming from two different points of one from the church, one from the state. And in a small country, surrounded by enemies, that gets even more intense. There, you can't even consider the individual. You can't consider your individual glory when at any moment you could be destroyed. And I keep using Montenegro because I love the, I'd have three-part lecture series on that I did in 2020.

Then I had the paper from that too, which I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I don't know where I got to publish. I gotta publish somewhere. And because they are small, they're surrounded by treachery everywhere and Turks everywhere. And of course, the Albanians who had converted to Islam were at war with them too.

They had no choice. Suicide is a sin. It's a deadly sin. And their lack of bloodthirstyness would have essentially been suicide. So a true monk and a true scholar and a true soldier, Marine, whatever, it is, their lives are very similar. They're sacrificing a lot. They give up a lot. They have to have a certain tremendous discipline. Now, a soldier working for the U.S. government today is a problem

because the ends of foreign policy are evil. Therefore, I don't think anyone should be signing up. However, Montenegro and medieval Serbia, yeah, a different story. They were actually defending the church here. Today, they're simply, you know, defending the investments of the oligarchy and defending Israel, essentially mercenaries. Sometimes they don't know that. Sometimes they do. American desertion, as I think we've spoken about before, is pretty high. Remember those pictures of the soldiers and Marines putting the paper in front of their face saying, I didn't join up to fight for Israel? there's a certain love for that. I'm not going to be your mercenary.

This discipline has to have the proper end. The proper end is to defend my people, our people, my family, and your family. And I'm willing to suffer for that. But certainly not for the greater glory of those who hate us. Very different story. And those guys, I think those who deserted in the Vietnam case were wrong. I think those who deserted in the present case, are correct same action two very different contexts and I think they were wrong to

abandon their posts in Vietnam because of what North Vietnam was connect to the Soviet system that literally wanted to conquer the world that was their poem Marxism is by definition global global and what they did to the South once they were removed and they cut they cut aid from South Vietnam knowing what's going to happen to them anyone who was caught left behind went to the camps um that's why i thought that they would be wrong so the same discipline the same idea uh but to an incorrect end or to a correct end um desertion therefore in today's case is also an act of love it is another manifestation of the

discipline and the asceticism um that a true soldier or marine requires um and that's kind of sort of of what he's getting at here. It's not just the virtues. It's not just the discipline. It's also to what end it's being put towards. And that has to be a huge part of it. Such a transformation can only be achieved through man's inner spiritual initiative. For love cannot be ignited and spiritualized by another's command. And spirituality can blossom and be saturated with fullness only through a long religious and moral self-pureification of the soul. Of course, the help of others can be great and powerful here, from those close and distant, from family and the church, and in the free teaching of the spiritual path, and in the awakening of love through living love through living love. It is clear that the more

fiery and insightful the spirit, the more it will teach others in free communication, both by word indeed by rebuke, consolation, act of mercy, and generous concession. And the deeper and purer the helping love, the easier and more fruitful it is, is its fire transmitted to the soul of another, not burning. A soul resisting evil needs love and spirituality for victory, and he who gives its spirit through love and love and spirit aids its victory and resists evil not only in himself but also and others. The transformation of evil can only be accomplished by the power whose blind distortion evil consists in. Only spiritually cited love itself can take on this task and victoriously resolve it to the end. Only it can find access to that abyss of blind bitterness and godless self-interest

from the depths of which conversion, purification, and rebirth must begin. And for the Christian unconsciousness, it seems there can be nothing controversial or doubtful here. You know, life, you know, I was born in 71. You're close to that. That's not our fault. We can't help that. We can't help the fact that we were born in a pretty much an atheist country dedicated to self-interest in the sexual revolution.

Even though I had a great father, I think you had great parents, that's not relevant. We were still brainwashed at a very early age to treat evil as good. What was, you know, the acquisition, lust, these were all perfectly fine and should be engaged. By the time I converted, I was in grad school, I was in my 20s, I was already habituated to all of these things. And so once you convert, it was certainly not my interest to do so. I was utterly convinced of the truth, and therefore I had to take action. And here I am 30 years later doing the exact same thing, struggling in the exact same way, but for a proper end.

You know, my life, my radio show is called the Orthodox Nationalists. Those are two separate things, but they have the same end. Orthodoxy meaning the church, nationalism is talking about. politics community in the state two things seen from two very different points of view and you know the the Orthodox monarchy the Christian monarchy whether you're talking about Austria hungry or or Russia is the almost the perfect manifestation of those two things together and it's funny I'm talking about monarchy a monarch has to understand that he may have a

tremendous amount of power. But he is therefore responsible for everything that happens, especially if it's not his fault. He knows, and especially, you know, in the late 19th century, Russia, there's a good chance he's going to die. The early Christians, Orthodox in the Soviet Union, that was a good chance they were going to be killed in the worst possible way. So if you maintained the faith in that situation, you're pretty, you know, they're extraordinary. And you just have to not care about self-interest. Whatever happens happens. St. Nicholas especially was well aware that there was a very good chance

that I would be killed either assassinated or the system were to fall apart. Regardless of how well the system was doing, it was under tremendous pressure from the outside. Vladimir Putin's like this now. He's like so many assassination attempts at this point. from the U.S., really. I think he's insulated from that, but these things are manifestations of love, certainly not self-interest.

The oligarchs that he threw in prison, that's pure self-interest. They'll just strip the assets of the country and go to an island somewhere. That's the very opposite of love. Satanism, Prometheanism, Luciferianism, they function by inversion.

They imitate the virtues, but towards a completely inverted end. Courage for all the wrong reasons. They claim not to, for many of them claim not to believe in God, but I tell you, there's one person who truly believes in God and knows him and hates him is Satan himself. Prometheus didn't bring fire to people because he loved them. He did it because he wanted to piss the guns off. You know, I think we were kind of, we were getting the point here.

Blind, bitterness, godless self-interest. What we do is not in our interests, if defined in the libertarian kind of a way. Not financially, not emotionally. We're under a tremendous amount of stress. Anything could happen. Any law could be passed. You know, Sven Longshanks went to prison for two years over next to nothing. I don't blame some guys for dropping out in England after that.

I don't blame them. Some guys kept going. Because there's something more important than their self-interest. And that is defending Great Britain from the invaders. That the system over there is so obsessed with these invaders that they'll send people to prison for even talking about them in a negative way. They'll break their own laws for the sake of it. Yes, that's fanaticism.

That's a tremendous discipline in the point of the state, but for all the wrong reasons. This is what he's talking about in terms of love. We are not archetypes by any means. But, you know, living a life against interest, there has to be a reason for it. And, yeah, our enemies will say there's a mental illness, maybe. There might be a little bit of that. But for the most part is that we know what the truth is. And we don't care what anyone says.

We know what the truth is. I've maintained the faith in my understanding of right-wing nationalism throughout grad school, where it was nothing but liberalism and Marxism from the minute I got there, the minute I left. That means my understanding is very sharp. I know their arguments better than they do. They don't know ours. But we all know it was going to be a struggle. If I was a just thought of it went along to go along, I'd be a professor somewhere now with tenure.

But what the hell would be the point of that? What is the point of going through all this work and getting a PhD and just going there and repeating the slogans of the regime? What's the point of that? Now, the things that we go through, this is exactly what E. Lynn is talking about in this. Conversion, purification, and rebirth. You know, people in Orthodox countries, I know there was one monk in Athos who couldn't believe that they were in a non-Orthodox country and non-Orthodox ethnicities who took up the faith and suffered for. That blew their mind. They didn't know that was possible.

We hear all the time, the church fathers say that the sufferings of the end times are going to be worse than the suffering of the early church. and we know that's true for a whole bunch of reasons and yet we maintain it anyway this is what he means this is what love is in this case and we have to maintain a tremendous mental discipline or we're going to fall ourselves we're surrounded by people telling us

it's perfectly okay remember the alcoholic example I used last week that's pretty much what our life is and we get we have to maintain and it's exactly what we do and uh and uh you know when svan long sank went to went went to prison i you know that's that was a big part of what he's talking about here in terms of love remember these guys elin writing this he knows many of his friends are dead been killed in the in the civil war

or in camps or whatever um they didn't have to do that they could have they could have wave the red flag they didn't have to mean it and they would have been fine but they refused. That's not mental illness. That's what love is in the way that Eileen is describing it here. When Tolstoy and his associates call for internal overcoming of evil, for self-improvement, for love, when they insist on and emphasize a need for strict self-judgment, the need to distinguish between man and the evil within him, the incorrectness of reducing the entire struggle against evil to external coercion alone, and the spiritual and moral superiority of conviction, then they followed the sacred tradition of Christianity, and they are right. The mysterious process of the blossoming of good

and the transformation of evil is accomplished, of course, by love, not by coercion, and evil must be resisted out of love, from love, and through love. In other words, Tolstoy isn't all wrong. You know, I started reading his political, you know, not theological works, but his, well, he does have a paper called My Religion, quite some time ago. And, you know, much of it is true, but somehow he privileges violence as something that you could never do. Everything is reduced to internal conversion. It turns out that what he was converting to was nothing anyway. You know, he saw himself essentially as a Judaizer.

That article, which I hope most of our people have read by now, should tell you everything you need to know about Tolstoy and his, what is a judge? Jew. It's really weird for a non-Jew to write something like that what a Jew is. But certainly, Jews reveled in that. I've seen copies of that on Jewish websites all over the place. But there's a disconnect there because violence also can be an act of love. And that's what he keeps trying to get at here. He's finally getting to the point that physical coercion, violence against a certain group of people, done for the right reason, and the right context, is that. an act of love, and that's something Tolstoy couldn't understand. Anyone who acknowledges this on the ground set out above is not only not only not obliged to,

but also cannot accept the rest of their teaching, which fundamentally denies compulsion as such. Indeed, if spiritual love has the ability to transform evil, does this mean that, in the general, immediate process of resisting evil, compulsion is completely powerless, pointless, harmful and destructive. One might also conclude from the necessity of voluntary self-improvement to the necessity of allowing villains to commit evil voluntarily and unhindered. If I'm obliged to create moral purification within myself, does this mean that the villain has the right to live out all evil through external villainy?

It is impossible to influence a person in such a way that this influence is beneficially transmitted to the evil that dwells within him. It is impossible to conquer evil by compulsion alone, but does that lead to a complete rejection of compulsion? Does the deeper exclude the more elementary? And is the creative transformation of the soul only possible when the villain is externally constrained? Unconstrained.

Think of it like this. We all, we debate people all the time. Social media is now the way to do it, but sometimes we do it in person. We recognize that even though. they are supporting objectively evil things. We speak to them very pleasantly and very nicely because we get the impression that they don't know that. And maybe they're open to, you know, they're actually open to listening to you.

They're seekers of something. You could never be nasty to that person. You know, that would destroy it. You need to slowly bring them to the truth. I mean, many of us have tried to do this with varying, degrees of success. So many of our people were former, you know, leftists. A lot of the people in the White Army were former leftists, lefticamidov, former member of the anarchist group, Land and Liberty in Russia, former terrorists, in fact. However, there is a point where

you simply can't get through to somebody. There's something wrong with them. There's a short circuit in their brain. When that short circuit affects a large number of people, people, we have to take action. If the state does, or if it can't or won't by natural law, we have to. And compulsion can mean a whole lot of things, cutting them out of our lives at a minimum. But the state then has a right to neutralizing them, has the obligation to neutralize them, less than that poison everybody. Poisoning is a problem because it's so much easier to slide down into the passions and to slide up into the virtues. Virtues are hard.

High standards are difficult. You're always going to fail. You know, having high standards is terrible because, you know, you're always struggling. Having no standards is easy. So if you're preaching no standards, it's really easy to get people to listen to you. Now, we live in an age now where we know what the sexual revolution did. We know what feminism did. We know, you know, we're in a good position.

We know what the regime is. and it's exposing itself all the time. I'm finding more and more people are very interested in listening to us. They can't do much about it, but they definitely want to listen. There, you speak in the most pleasant tones possible. You don't condescend to them.

You speak to them as a human being. You agree with certain things that they say that might be true. Don't alienate them. But then there are others. Like antiphaling, you know, they use violence, by their very structure, the state has to eliminate them. They are a terrorist group.

I've faced them before personally many times. See, for younger men now. But that's a different story. There's certain people who cannot be converted. There are certain people who cannot be reasoned. When the irrational dominates the soul completely, it's almost like they're not a person anymore. As Aristotle says, humanity is defined by the possession of reason and freedom.

If you see someone who has apparently no conception of reason, therefore they're not free, and they wouldn't know what to do with freedom. I don't think most people know what to do with freedom. The regime then gives them the ends to follow. Here's what you do with your freedom. And it's usually completely wrong. Yeah, and when those groups take up arms, when those groups, there's not just one individual anymore, the state has an obligation to take action. St. Augustine said this many times.

That was his justification among other things for the use of force in conversion. That we're going to force them to look at the truth, and maybe that will, over time, lead them to understand it better. Maybe that's true, maybe that's false. That was St. Augustine's position. Now, you know, he was iffy about that in his retractions, but force always has a role. And compulsion is a little bit more vague. We'll get to that here in a little bit. Actually, the next section on coercion and violence.

You know, violence is directly physical. Compulsion doesn't necessarily have to be. But it comes down to the fact, you know, people aren't born with free will. This is a point I'm going to make a lot in this discussion. Free will is something that we have to fight for. To be able to choose among alternatives without internal or external influence is very difficult. It's so much easier just to go along, to go with the flow, which a lot of people do. Most people do.

It's so much easier. It costs so much to go the opposite direction. Of course, there's love involved in that to go in the opposite direction. people haven't used their free will in so long, I don't know if they can. People who live through celebrities and consumerism and, you know, trends and everything else, they have no free will. I mean, they may have the potential for it, but who knows what it would take, well, it would take economic collapse maybe to bring out their actual freedom. Freedom, free will is difficult. It's not something you could just, you know, call on. Making the right decision

at the right time can be extremely difficult. So I, people. People blame people, you know, it's not my fault. You know, I made this decision, but people will give me wrong advice, whatever it is. It's hard. And that's a key concept here. Free will is something we have to fight for. We become ascetics precisely to liberate free will. That's what asceticism is to make sure that our decisions are not subject to internal force, let alone external force.

All righty. I'm going to wrap it up there and pick up part. part four when we come back. I'm going to do, as I always do, go over to the show note. I'm sorry? I thought that works. Yeah, we got a little bit of a delay. It happens.

Go over to the show notes. Go over to the descriptions on the videos and donate to Dr. Johnson's work, buy his new book, and we'll be back in a few days to continue with part four. Thank you, Dr. Johnson. No, thank you, my friend. I'll talk to you next time.