Roosh V - Daryush Valizadeh - Roosh Hour #65 - Milo Yiannopoulos

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June 18, 2021 - Roosh V - Daryush Valizadeh

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Roosh Hour #65 - Milo Yiannopoulos

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	All right, welcome to a special edition of Ruch Hour.
	This is Ruch Hour number 65.
	It is June 17th, 2021, three days after my 42nd birthday.
	And I have a very special guest today who doesn't need much of an introduction, Milo Yiannopoulos.
	Thank you, Milo.
	Thank you for joining us.
	Thanks.
	Happy birthday.
	Thank you very much.
	Thank you.
	We are getting old.
	May I start our stream with a prayer?
	Please, please.
	All right, great.
	In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
	O Heavenly King, Comforter, Spirit of Truth, who art everywhere present and fill us all things, Treasury of good things and giver of life, come and dwell in us and cleanse us of all impurity and save our souls, O good one.
	Okay, good.
	And the prayer is over.
	So, Milo, I have constructed a pretty thick packet.
	I don't know if we're going to get to it all today, but we really haven't had a chance for a long time.
	I've been playing a game.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	Sorry, Director.
	I've been playing a game.
	I'm playing a game to try to strike out all of the sexual innuendo from my speech, from my kind of person I was and being British and loving the du Blancon.
	So I have the title of your sex tape game that I'm playing with a colleague at the moment, and that just said you just got me on strike one.
	All right.
	Sorry, carry on.
	So some people in the chat said there was an echo on Milo.
	I think I fixed it, so the echo should be gone.
	Okay, where do I want to start?
	I'm going to start with: for those who haven't been keeping up with you since your Breitbart days, since Trump, since you were kind of helping to ride the wave of Trump in 2016, along with myself and many other conservatives, what has been going on with you the past year or two?
	So I've been in a sort of semi-enforced retirement as one of the people that got sort of the full brunt of cancellation, and that's a very boring and stale subject now.
	But in that time that I had to, I had a lot of time on my hands, and time I had to reflect, certain things began to become inescapable to me.
	I started off on, even in 2015, 16, I was giving college talks saying the Catholic Church is right about everything.
	I gave a talk about abortion, all the rest of it.
	I was saying, you know, things I believe my whole life, but I wasn't necessarily living in the way that I came to realize that I had to at some point just pull the trigger and do.
	I had two conversations, I think now it would be about two years ago, with Michael Boris from Church Militant and with Patrick Coffin, who's a Catholic podcaster.
	And both of them kind of ended in the same way with a very compassionate and loving, you know, we care about you, but you've got to fix this.
	You know, when you're going to do it.
	And to both of them, I said, I don't know.
	I'm just not there yet.
	And this was rattling around my head.
	And then a few months ago, I made the announcement that I had decided to live more closely to the way that God always known that God wanted me to.
	And I was exercising a particular kind of sin from my life for good.
	And that was sodomy.
	That was having physical, intimate relations with other men.
	And this is a big deal for me in some ways.
	And I wouldn't exactly call it easy, but it was relatively simple in the sense that I hadn't been for some time one of those promiscuous drug-taking homosexuals.
	That was an earlier chapter in my life.
	I had been aware of that what I was doing was not how I ought to live, and therefore living as close to what a good life looked like as possible.
	So monogamous, faithful, you know, being a provider, being a father to two kids.
	And I just sort of took this extra big step.
	I posted a video on YouTube of me throwing my engagement ring into the ocean.
	This is not an inexpensive item of jewelry.
	And tomorrow is, in fact, my one-year straightiversary, which is a year from the day that I made the announcement sometime into it because I didn't want to make an announcement and then, you know, like be embarrassed by my own failures or whatever.
	So I thought, I'll give it a bit before I tell the world about it.
	So I told the world about it a few months ago, but I had, in fact, been trying to live this way for some time, as I think people following my telegram would know because I had a kind of sodomy counter on my telegram.
	I did have one slip, one backslide in the course of that year.
	So it's not so much of a AA chip as it is just a new life kind of anniversary.
	But I am up, aside from that one instance of backsliding, I'm now up to a year of living a new life as a, at least in some respects, as a new man.
	I still have the personality I have, which leads some people to say it's all a big con and a troll.
	But after a year, it's pretty difficult to keep up.
	It's pretty difficult to keep up the lie after a year.
	So, no, it is sincere and it's real, and it is changing my life immeasurably for the better.
	Well, I can attest that you sound less gay.
	You don't come across as gay as you used to.
	You come across as more of a straight man.
	So I think there is some change going on.
	But besides talking to the two.
	Besides talking to the two Catholic men that you mentioned, that was helping you, was there a moment where you hit a rock bottom where you realized that you couldn't continue this anymore?
	Or was it more of a gradual understanding that, hey, I have to stop this?
	It wasn't a rock bottom.
	Actually, it was something kind of worse and a bit more sickening because I embarked on a relationship with somebody.
	I even had a state union with that person.
	And the path that set me on, feeling as though I was worthy of receiving love and giving love, being able to provide for his kids, it set me on a path that led to the relationship's demise because opening me up to love and to authentic.
	This is probably the first authentic relationship I'd ever had with another man.
	It wasn't just based on sex or on some kind of, you know, bullying or professional.
	And, you know, it was the first real relationship I'd ever had with a man, not with my dad, not with anybody else, was with this guy.
	And that opening my heart up to being able to be as someone who's always kind of deflected into humor and constantly kind of inventing characters and playing roles and whatever.
	This was the first time that I had been me in a sustained way and not been afraid to be me around a man.
	I've done it with women, but around a man because I wasn't afraid of being rejected or being whatever.
	And the path that this led me on, in a sense, you know, this guy kind of like opened me up for love, opened me up to God's love.
	And it set me on a path that doomed the relationship, which is which haunts me because poor guy, right?
	And it's a kind of sick irony, but I guess it was necessary for me to have that to give me a little taste of what the rest could be like, even if it has ended up hurting somebody else in the short term.
	So rather than being rock bottom, it's actually been more of a part of a process of gradual improvement that I've been on, I would say, for the last maybe five to six years.
	My 20s were completely degenerate and dissolute, which I know is something that you can relate to.
	When I got to America and I did my college tour and with Trump and everything, I kind of cleaned up my act a lot in terms of casual sexual partners, drug taking, all that kind of stuff.
	People have always thought that I'm like a cokehead, but I'm actually just, you know, incredibly fidgety.
	I'm always like scratching something or fidgeting in my chair or whatever.
	And as one of those like ADD people, if I have taken Adderall or cocaine or whatever, it actually calms me down.
	So the way that you know I'm on drugs is when I'm not fidgeting.
	But everyone always thought that I was like that.
	But actually, in 2015-16, I started to really kind of straighten my life out, build decent friendships with people that weren't based on lies and authentic friendships with men.
	I tried to at least.
	And so it's been more of a, I would describe it as an uncovering or as an unveiling.
	It's been more of sort of veils being lifted and they're not all gone yet.
	You know, there's more stuff that I need to pull back.
	But the funny thing is, when you fix something big like this in your life, other things start to kind of like slide into place.
	I was untouchable, unemployable, unmentionable until I made this change.
	And nobody knew that I had made this change yet.
	Nobody knew that I had made this change in my personal life.
	But I started to get inquiries from people where they were saying, we might be interested in perhaps having you in for an interview or something.
	And I'm like, you what?
	And it was just amazing that everything started to fall into place.
	And I guess it was because I was giving off an energy that was more centered and grounded, competent, focused.
	I certainly saw the difference in my Telegram posts, they started to get longer and more insightful and better phrased and whatnot.
	I guess people picked up on that when when I when I did this even before I made this public announcement everything sort of started to slide into place So I've been on this journey the last five or six years of gradual self-improvement, training, as my friend Rachel Brown, the medieval historian, says, training, she kind of texts me this like every three days, training the soul in virtue, right?
	Habits become character, learning to be better by just doing it.
	And I'm a dramatically, radically happier person, more in touch with God, more physically relaxed in my own skin than I ever have in my whole life.
	And I've had less sexual contact.
	In fact, I've had none aside from one time with other human beings.
	But I suddenly kind of like now I wake up and I don't immediately go, you know, to be in my own body.
	So It's not to say that it hasn't come with trials.
	There's a big tension, and I think that maybe you wanted to talk a little bit about that today, between the performative requirements of a public figure and your soul yearning for a humble and modest life, which is very difficult to navigate and there are no easy good answers.
	And I also have learned the real meaning of spiritual attack, which I always kind of dismissed as a skeptical Brit before.
	I mean, the kind of dreams that I had when I first made this announcement, just relentless, heavily, sexually explicit, graphic.
	Maybe you've had this too, right?
	Sexually explicit, graphic, drug-filled.
	I mean, your audience can take a little bit more specificity than I'm able to say on religious podcasts about this.
	But I'm talking about like, you know, drink and drug-fueled orgy kind of stuff in dreams.
	And you wake up and it feels visceral and you are suddenly panicked because you're like, oh my goodness, did I slip?
	You know, so that it's, it's not, it hasn't come without its challenges, but I've personally never woken up less content, excuse me, never woken up more content and comfortable in my own skin.
	And I got that thing back that I have only ever had in brief periods in my life where I can't wait to get out of bed and do something.
	When Satan can't get you during the day, when he can't get you to consent to sin, then he invades your dreams at night to disturb you and your faith.
	So I've had that exact same problem.
	I wanted to read a quote from a saint in the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church by Saint John Chrysostom.
	And he says the following: God waits for our hearts to open to his grace.
	He waits for an opportunity to reveal to each of us his truth.
	Then, when we are ready, he ensures that we hear about Christ and about his gospel, and we find ourselves faced with a choice which will affect the entire course of life and death, whether to embrace the words of Jesus Christ or to reject them.
	If we deliberately reject the gospel, even when we fully understand it, then we condemn ourselves.
	If we embrace it, we shall ourselves be embraced by God in heaven.
	Would you say, Milo, that you have now embraced the gospel and have put on the new clothes of Jesus Christ?
	I felt for a long time, and I think that I was deluding myself slightly.
	I like to think of myself as like a Jack Bauer who would always do the things other people couldn't or didn't want to, without whom the Republic would fall.
	And I think I was making excuses for my own behavior.
	Sort of, well, I might be a faggot sodomite, but at least I'm leading all these other people into good things because I'm telling them it's wrong, even though I'm doing it.
	And there came a point a year ago where I realized that that's just not good enough.
	And that a role, you know, you can be a trickster and a jester and a troll and a fool, I mean, in the literary sense, kind of character and point at truth through whimsy and satire and mischief and all the rest of it.
	But you all, it's also, I mean, you can do that for a while if you want, but if you want to be the kind of role model that inspires heroism in other men, you have to lead by example and you have to get your house in order.
	And so I made excuses for a very long time as to why I was telling people, well, you know, I'm not like this, but you should be like this.
	And then there's just this thing like, well, when I do it, just rattling in my head, like, stop, stop.
	So I realized that Despite all of the awful things that happened to all of us 2017-18, that my life was not over and that there was more for me to do, and that there was another chapter, or maybe several, and that I was required, that it was a moral obligation.
	I was required and compelled to set aside the keep the spirit of the low-key trickster, but set aside the set aside the character acting,
	you know, and maybe perform a little of that on TV, but live well and be good and try to live according to my principles and beliefs every day.
	And so, I've been embarked on that quest, and I do feel like the decision I took a year ago is a result of me truly and properly embracing the truth and accepting these eternal metaphysical truths and realities of our existence and of our universe and of our Heavenly Father and of all the stuff that comes next.
	And I did want to save my soul.
	I thought that I wasn't like, okay, I'm going to end up in the bad place, but maybe I'll have saved some people on the way.
	And it wasn't good enough.
	I got to a point where it wasn't taking me anywhere else and it wasn't getting me where I wanted to go.
	And it wasn't, well, you know, I couldn't keep up the excuse making.
	So, yes, I definitely feel as though I'm now, I was a culture warrior, political warrior, whatever the hell any of that means.
	But now I very much think of myself as a warrior for Christ.
	Yeah, that sounds what you described is this idea of being a cultural Christian where I believe Christianity is good for everybody, but I'm not going to submit to Christ.
	I'm going to follow my own will.
	And I went through that phase too.
	I was doing it for a very long time.
	My first job was with Catholic Harold in London a decade ago.
	And more than that, it took me 10 years of working in Christian organizations around Christians and even preaching Christianity, explaining the truth and beauty of the gospel before I finally decided to start putting my money where my mouth was.
	So it took a while.
	So, of course, when you came out as not being out anymore, you came out as not being gay.
	That hit the news and it was.
	Is it coming in or is it coming out as it's kind of not?
	Yeah, I don't know how to do that.
	No, that's not a gay person who's no.
	So you're not.
	There is no more closet.
	How about that?
	There's no more closet for you to be in or out of.
	I've taken an extra closet.
	Now, almost immediately, I think this was a couple of months ago where it kind of went viral.
	Almost immediately, people started to say it was fake.
	He's trolling.
	It's a grift.
	Now, when I did the same, I had the same comments coming towards me, but it seems like with you, the avalanche of this type of comment was much greater.
	So what do you say to people who accuse you of faking this repentance and who don't find it genuine?
	I don't blame anybody for that.
	I think it's a perfectly reasonable conclusion to draw based on the fact that I have been engaged in this sort of stunt my whole life.
	Except to say that I haven't changed my beliefs one bit.
	I'm still saying all the same things.
	And if you think that this is, If you're unpersuaded by this, then I guess I love you.
	God bless you.
	Tune back in in five years.
	And when I'm still saying the same thing, reconsider.
	In the meantime, I don't blame you.
	God bless you.
	Be well.
	Go with God.
	It's not my problem.
	It's just not my problem.
	I'm principally concerned with my mortal soul and whatever.
	I seek to persuade people by doing shows like this that I'm being genuine because I would rather reach the maximum number of people that I can.
	But my ministry, if you like, is specifically now saving other gay people from same-sex attraction, getting them help they need.
	I'm going to open a clinic here in Florida, a reparative therapy clinic.
	I don't require straight people to believe that my conversion is genuine in order to save souls.
	So I very much hope that people can see the difference in me.
	And if they've been following me on Telegram, I think anyone who's been following me closely, I don't think has any questions at all because they have seen the change over five years, right?
	It's not just a, I ain't gay no more.
	We all seen that video.
	People have seen this change.
	I um, whatever.
	I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's honestly not my problem.
	What bothers me is that there's some people that seem to be rooting for you to fail, and they're almost uh waiting to the point where they can say, oh, I told you so, and this stakes are such a lie about everything I ever say.
	And I keep proving people wrong.
	And like, look, it brothers you because you're a compassionate person with a heart.
	And plus, if you fail, if you go back to the life, well, your soul is going to be condemned.
	I mean, this is, I wouldn't want anyone to do that.
	These are people who are rejoicing in the possibility of someone going to hell.
	Yes, yes.
	And that's why I don't spend a lot of time worrying about people like that because these are not, first of all, this is not my ministry, but it's also, these are not the kinds of people I need around me.
	Vox Day, who I have known for many years and of whom I think very highly, notwithstanding his inauguration madness, speaks very powerfully and persuasively about how critical it is to avoid the gamma males, you know, that some people know as concern trolls, some people know as, you know, whatever.
	And it seems to me that the people who are constantly doing this sort of aggressive performative skepticism, like, who, why do you even care so much?
	This is the gamma male element that I sometimes have indulged that I that I realized Vox was right about.
	Because you have a kind and decent soul, which I think I always liked you because I could always see it, even though we were both doing our own, you know, respective awfulness.
	I kind of kind of see behind the eyes something was good and decent about you.
	And now we've both kind of gone on a very remarkably similar trajectory.
	We know our hearts, and so does God.
	And that has to be good enough.
	And I think people can, I don't know, people can come along for the ride or they can sit it out, miss out on some good years, and come around in the end anyway.
	So it's up to you.
	So with men like us, our sexual sins were at the forefront.
	You can almost say that we use our sexual sins to achieve fame.
	People, you couldn't separate our sexuality and behavior with who we were.
	So of course, that is one of the first things that we wanted to change.
	But is there anything else?
	Is there any other areas of your life that you are wanting to change or want to improve?
	Or you feel that it's a problem that could kind of drag you backwards.
	It's a good question because, I mean, your career to some extent was about talking about your sexual peccadillos and encouraging them in others, which is a heavy cross to bear for you now.
	I don't think I ever went through a college talk without talking about black anatomy.
	And that very much defined me.
	I mean, I had the word faggot in six-foot-high letters on the side of a tour bus.
	I mean, there's no escaping that kind of brand legacy, you know?
	It's like, oh, you know, you think Victoria's Secret did a big brand U-turn this week by replacing the sexy girls with Megan Rapinoe and that fat one.
	Hell no.
	Try being the dangerous faggot and coming out and straight.
	What kind of an idiot would fake that?
	Why?
	So it's a good question because there's a lot that's connected to it.
	And I asked one of my, well, I say my priest, one of my battery of priests that I like bend the ear off every other night.
	I asked one of them about whether some of my aesthetic choices, the way that I speak, the way that I dress, the way that I behave, exist on a continuum with those kind of lustful urges that I am trying to strike out.
	And he said, yes.
	I said, oh, does this mean no more leopard print?
	And he said, I'm afraid it does.
	But opinions have varied on that.
	I may dispense with the leopard print, but hang on to the Louis Vuitton.
	I'm clinging to the dream.
	I think that what matters in this is we both know now that we had constructed a we constructed a false self.
	We constructed a person that was us and that was authentically us.
	And we were telling, you know, well, no, let me rephrase that.
	We constructed a version of ourselves or showed a very limited facet of ourselves, like one facet of the diamond lent into certain proclivities and urges that kind of, we kind of built a whole, well, I see, I did anyway, I built a whole kind of brand and personality and identity around, you know, like those three or four things.
	And so one of the challenges for me has been, I mean, I could give you a list of stuff, you know, leopard print and all the rest of it, but and I got to work on some of the handouts.
	I guess I was maybe thinking of the major sins like anger, pride, wrath, maybe gluttony, overeating.
	I was thinking more of the big things that kind of, like, let me give you an example.
	When I used to pursue women, say, I paired that activity with drinking, with drinking alcohol.
	And so, I mean, for me, drinking alcohol meant it was time to party, right?
	It was time to have fun, time to get my mind and body in a state where I could fall with a woman.
	So for me, once I repented, the alcohol, it went.
	It was, I stopped.
	I mean, maybe I drink a glass of wine every month or three.
	But so that's one of the things that I changed.
	I think for both of us, right?
	Because you're embracing the scorny life these days.
	I mean, you used to be quite jacked, right?
	What do you mean?
	Why did the patient say that?
	You just said that.
	No, I'm not saying you're not frail exactly, but I'm just saying that you're not.
	Sorry.
	But I mean, you told me you're self-plus.
	You told me last time we spoke, you're like making pizza at home and stuff.
	And this is not the ruch that we knew from the gym rat life, right?
	I'm just saying, I'm saying, you know, you're slimming down, embracing the scrawny life.
	I definitely think, and related to that, by the way, I'm putting on weight and kind of not caring about it.
	I'm doing this stint at the moment at True News, which is Protestant, but they're really good guys down in Vero Beach.
	And I'm just looking at myself on camera and I'm like, you fat bastard.
	But at the same time, and what would have horrified me before, I almost sort of don't really care now, which is like a scary thing to admit, but I just like, I mean, I can live with it if I'm saying good things and I'm living truthfully and whatever.
	Also, I kind of have been, I will tell you this: I have been leaning into minor sin, not sin, some sins, but I've been leaning into minor wrongdoing because it has helped me get over the big thing that I've been trying to fix.
	So I have been eating more and I have been smoking again and I have been drinking again more.
	And not to insane levels because I wouldn't be able to do my job and be up and about every day.
	I haven't touched any drugs and I haven't drunk myself insensible.
	But I would say, like, as a Brit, it's kind of normal to have one or two drinks a day.
	And I would say that one or two has maybe become three, sometimes four.
	I don't actually drink every day of the week, but I probably do drink, I don't know, right now, probably three or four days of the week, and probably three or four drinks, which for a British person in Britain is nothing.
	That's like drinking water.
	But for me, living in America, that's definitely an increase.
	And I gave up smoking for years, but I kind of am now up to about five a day again.
	You know, like a little after meal cigarette.
	So I'm leaning on some of those little things.
	So I would say you probably are, from what I pick up from you, from watching you, talking to other people, I think you're doing a little bit of a better job kind of like snapping into a more universally aesthetic, rigorous kind of life.
	Whereas I think I'm give my perception that I'm giving up a kind of addiction.
	And I kind of feel like the big guy's not going to mind a few cigarettes because I'm focusing on what really matters and focusing on avoiding what really matters.
	So I have, I'll be honest, I have been less, I've been loving myself slightly less in some ways that I don't consider as important as crutches to make sure that I don't do the thing that will, you know, cast me into the fiery pit.
	And so far, priests, pastors, therapists, they've all kind of agreed that will fade and I'll get over it.
	And in the short term, for now, it's not the end of the world.
	I certainly aspire to be much better than I am right now.
	But the focus for me, which is not an easy task, the focus for me is to stop stone dead that one particular thing I was doing that guarantees an express ride to hell.
	And I've pretty much managed to do it with one backslide.
	Kind of, for my age, like I'm 36 now, for somebody to, at my age, just try to stop having sex stone dead as a gay man who's, you know, was with somebody who he considered to look like a superstar, it's not an easy feat.
	So I'm going to be honest, I have been leaning in on other things.
	So one thing that I forgot the name, but there is an Orthodox saint.
	He says the three main urges that we have are sex, food, and drinking.
	When you try to tackle one of those urges, the other two start to pop up.
	So I think that's exactly what you are describing.
	And I do agree that smoking a bit is way better than what the sexual sins are.
	I can tell you that since I stopped with the sex, eating for me has been a challenge.
	I find myself overeating to the point of borderline incapacitation.
	Like, I just can't stop.
	At certain meals, you put a lot of good food.
	I cannot stop.
	How is that?
	I wish I could do that because I'm overeating and I'm starting to.
	I mean, let me tell you, I am Greek.
	We are from similar bits of the world, are we not?
	And I'm going to look like a kebab shop owner in two years if this doesn't improve.
	But how are you eating?
	Because the Orthodox Church, and we can talk about it later, has a pretty strict fasting regimen that prevents you from really, I mean, blowing up, but okay.
	One thing that might be the slipperiest attempt to convert me yet.
	No, no, no, no, no, no.
	I don't.
	I will just share with you, you know, the faith that I have, but I don't think.
	Okay, good.
	But I'm just saying, we work on beyond.
	So it sounds like you are receiving spiritual guidance.
	So I'm guessing, are there?
	So there is a collection, it sounds like, of priests that are giving you advice.
	Do you feel that I guess the, I'm guessing it's mostly internet-based because I have that too.
	I can get in touch with various priests too.
	Do you feel that the advice they've given you, and I'm guessing these are Catholic, right?
	There are priests that are in the Catholic Church.
	I think four child molesters.
	Joking, that's a joke.
	And I only say it to bring up the fact that you are much more likely to be molested by high school teachers than Catholic priests.
	It is Protestant propaganda and Marxist nonsense designed to attack the one true holy and apostolic Roman Catholic Church, which is the damn I'm sorry, I'm not going to say this.
	Do you feel that the support you're getting from these Catholic priests are enough?
	Is it sufficient for you?
	And also, have you considered also receiving guidance from monks as well?
	I have been told that I'm an unusual patient by my therapist, which does not surprise me, except well, the specific way in which I'm unusual is therapy doesn't work for some people, especially very smart people, because they tend to mock or run rings around or toy with the therapist.
	And I'm definitely one of those people who shies away from real raw, honest kind of confrontation with people I don't know and especially with people I don't respect.
	I tend to either deflect into humor or sort of fuck with them, you know.
	So therapy has been of limited success to me, and prayer has been much more successful and much more powerful.
	It has worked better.
	That's not the case for most people who are trying to deal with the problems that I had, but I also have a hunch that I was probably, if I'm honest, a bit less gay to start off with than a lot of the people who, although never mind how I act, but like, you know, in terms of really, I was probably a bit less of a faggot than most of the people who try to get this therapy.
	So What I found the most useful among the priests that I have on Speed Dial, and if you know anything about the American religious landscape, perhaps you'll have some idea of who might be some idea of who I'm talking about.
	They'll tend to be the sort of hero, the cool priests, you know, the ones who are out talking about men and masculinity.
	I think that I think the thing that's really been the most effective for me is having powerful role models who are uncompromising in their faith and who hold me to high standards.
	Because when I look, for instance, I'm not saying this is one of the people that I talk to, although it may be, when I look, for instance, of Father Altman, who is, you know, his bishop's trying to get him ejected for being too Catholic, and he's still doing podcasts, you know, saying, how dare you deny people the sacraments because of this COVID malarkey?
	If you really believed in the truth of the mass, of receiving Holy Communion, how dare you, and why would you, you wouldn't, ever deny people that?
	You know, the church is closing down and just acquiescing to this stuff is appalling and disgusting.
	And seeing people who are living the values that I'm aspiring to, the heroic masculine virtues, let's say, and seeing being around.
	One of the things I've liked most about being down here in Vera Beach doing this gig for True News, the Rick Wiles Network, is the office is full of fathers.
	It's full, not like most media companies where it's just full of young men and nerds who are single and bitches in HR and all the rest of it.
	This is an office that is full of fathers.
	And they have invited me to their homes, introduced me to their wives, their children, taught me how to build things.
	We've cooked, we've grilled together, just simple, silly, everyday, normal, wholesome things like that.
	That's the stuff, because I'm thinking to myself, I want to go from hoping to have a family to planning for that family.
	And having role models and being around good, wholesome people and having a priest on the end of the phone who is uncompromising rather than some, you know, weak relativistic lunatic.
	And this is something that the good Catholic priests and a lot of Orthodox priests are very good at.
	Having somebody who is uncompromising in the faith has been the most powerful motivator for me.
	Has an Orthodox priest tried to reach out to you yet?
	Yeah, one or two.
	And I have respectfully thanked them for reaching out and had conversations with a couple of them.
	I know so little about my own faith.
	I mean, I could spend three lifetimes just reading the Catholic, you know, theological, philosophical, whatever.
	I know so little about my own faith that I feel I need to catch up on that before I start dipping my toe in waters elsewhere.
	I'm certainly not, although I like to troll people on Telegram, I'm certainly not really equipped to, you know, do a J. Dyer showdown.
	It's like those little, they strike me as minor family disagreements among cousins, you know, the Orthodox versus Catholicism.
	although i i like to like to troll i'm not really terribly invested in all that uh i just i think i do have a question about that coming up but i'll save it i'm sure you do I'll see you.
	As far as I'm concerned, I think I'll see you in heaven, Roush.
	I hope so.
	I'm not really qualified for that, but I have been approached by priests from other faiths.
	I know more about Catholicism, and I've known the right people to reach out to in Catholicism, and I don't see myself converting anytime soon, to be honest.
	That's fine.
	So, I'm glad you do have a support network of men who are walking with Christ and clergy to help you out.
	So, I wanted to read a quote from Saint Augustine.
	He wrote this in Confessions, and he said, Yet in my memory, of which I have said many things, there still live images of such things as my former habits implanted there.
	When I am awake, they assail me, but lacking in strength.
	In sleep, they assail me, not only so as to arouse pleasure, but even consent and something very like the deed itself.
	So great a power have these deep images over my soul and my flesh that these false visions persuade me when asleep to do what true sights cannot persuade me to do when awake.
	Do you understand that due to your past sins and how entrenched you were, that Satan will not give up, that he is going to use all those past experiences to disturb your faith, to tempt you.
	And the spiritual battle for great sinners like ourselves will be very difficult.
	Yes.
	And one thing that priest friends of mine have pointed out is that just when you think that you have conquered one summit, one mountain, those challenges, those attacks will become even greater.
	They'll level up alongside you because you have become a target, right?
	I do honestly believe that he really didn't want to let me go because I think while I was still living in that lifestyle, and I got to tell you, I mean this really sincerely.
	If you believe nothing else I say, skeptical about my lifestyle changes, if you're watching this, believe this.
	I will be haunted until the day I die by my responsibility for the entities that have entered public life in my wake.
	The Ram Rances, the Rob Smiths, the Lady Margas.
	These are outright abominations.
	These are demonic entities.
	I will be, and I am responsible for a lot of that.
	I don't think Caitlin Jenner for California would be happening if it weren't for my blowing open the fire doors half a decade ago.
	And that will haunt me until the day I die.
	It's your fault.
	It is.
	It is my fault.
	The Republican Party would not be embracing a tranny had it not been for Milianopoulos in 2015-16.
	It just wouldn't be happening.
	At least, not for another 20 years.
	So that will haunt me until the day I die.
	And my job over the next 20 years is to undo some of that damage and hopefully bring some of these people all the way back.
	So that's the business I'm invoked on.
	And that's the primary focus of what I'm up to: is to try to undo some of the damage that I feel I did.
	Yeah, I can't help but notice how similar our lives are.
	I mean, granted, I wasn't okay, but I mean, it's weird.
	It's almost like you are the brother across the pond.
	We did the same, almost exact same things.
	We profited from our sexual sins.
	We repented.
	Granted, our churches are different, but it's so anyway.
	They're pretty close.
	But isn't it?
	It's very Plutarch's lives, isn't it?
	You know, like, are you familiar with Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans?
	It's an ancient author, and he compares figures, both real and mythological, from Greece and Rome, who have lots in common, you know?
	So he will compare various statesmen, heroes, military generals, because in both Roman history and Greek history, there are these archetypes that kind of look very similar to one another.
	I just saw it on my shelf the other day, and I was like, ah, that's like me and Rush.
	And I always thought that, yeah, it's like Rush and I are weird parallels in this journey and have been for almost half a decade now.
	And it occurs to me often, brother.
	It really does.
	And this is how I knew that your repentance was real because it looked just like my own.
	Just again, the context is a little different.
	Yeah, yeah, I guess you.
	So I wanted to go to the Bible, Colossians 3.
	Let me quote this.
	The wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them.
	But now you yourselves are to put off all these anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth.
	Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of God who created him.
	And quote, one concern I have about you is that sometimes I see the old Milo trying to come back.
	And I think this is most common in your social networking.
	The trolley, look at me.
	I'm going to dispute.
	I'm going to expose this person.
	I'm going to get into a fight.
	I'm going to curse.
	Am I fair to make this assessment?
	Yeah, you're right about that.
	And I think I don't know exactly what the answer is yet here.
	I know certainly that I have a hard time believing that God cares too much about and certainly compared to some of my other sins, although I realize it's not a relative game.
	I also very firmly believe to refer to Augustine as you did a moment ago in Sermo Humilis.
	I think that we have to speak in the common tongue and to embrace, sometimes to embrace the vulgar language in order to achieve holy objectives.
	And I think that one of America's real failings, American public life, and one of the real failings is this fake earnest language code, speech policing, you know, the court of Versailles, like, oh, you can't say this, you can't say that, you can't use inappropriate language.
	I've always thought that that was just nonsense.
	So to some extent, I would push back a little bit because I think some of the rhetorical power that is sometimes necessary comes from vulgarity and I'm not afraid to use it.
	And I believe that I'm justified in doing so based on my reading of Augustine.
	However, I do take the point about the old Milo kind of fighting to resurface.
	I would say that if that were reflecting itself in more sexual slips, it would give me more cause for concern.
	I think if I can learn to strategically deploy some of those habits, mannerisms, tactics, I mean, let's be clear, they are phenomenally effective at taking out bad opponents.
	What I have to do is balance that against my own soul and my conscience and what God expects of me, right?
	Because I do believe that Christians tend to be meek and credulous and not always well equipped to survive in especially not in 2021 in America, which is just a godless homosexual place.
	I think Christianity needs Rottweilers.
	I think in history that we have had them and we've called them saints.
	And I'm not calling myself a saint.
	I will agree with you.
	But I do think that I have to be as much of a Rottweiler as I can be.
	Is that a good idea when you're still early in your repentance stage?
	Because I do agree.
	Because the problem is this.
	The problem is this.
	How can I not be?
	If I muzzle myself, what I'm doing is selfishly retreating into.
	I mean, there are people who write to me and they say, shouldn't you just like take two years off and go to a monastery and figure yourself out?
	I'm never going to figure myself out.
	I'm never going to be good enough.
	I'm never going to be happy with myself.
	I'm never going to be chaste enough or dedicated enough or clean enough of spirit, body, mind.
	It's not going to happen.
	Meanwhile, America's self-destructing.
	There are millions of souls screaming out in the world.
	God doesn't need some of those to heal the world.
	God doesn't need you to fix anything.
	God needs you to save yourself first.
	Can I make this?
	That's fine.
	But listen, the problem with the small sins of, say, attacking others in anger, of getting into these prideful debates, is that's still a sin that keeps the doors open for the demons to open it greater and greater.
	So my concern is that when you do the little sins that you know are small, it just makes those big sins easier to happen.
	That's especially when we both, even though I'm a little further ahead of you, but man, it's going to be very easy for Satan to use the pride to get us back, right?
	I get it.
	I know.
	But I think that there is an irreconcilable clash between attention, between the demands of public performance, as is required by both of us as public figures, and the strict incentives of living a prayerful, modest life.
	And I guess I'm just prepared to risk myself.
	I don't think unwell when you say that.
	Because I can just say this.
	Let me just slide back into the kind of sin that is going to send me on a one-way ticket downstairs.
	But I'm prepared to go some of the way into.
	I am prepared to make compromises when it comes to living as I know I should.
	Because if I lived really exactly as I know I should, I would become ineffective.
	And I would become.
	I think it would be cowardly.
	I think it would be selfish.
	There is nobody who can do some of the things that I can do and the way that I can do them.
	There's nobody that can, that can quite has quite my particular set of skills.
	And if I can avoid the point of doing those skills if you're committing sins at the same time, God doesn't want you to use your gift while in sin.
	We're all committing sins.
	Yeah, but not if you're aware of it.
	If you're like, man, if I attack this dude on the internet, but I'm going to have to use anger, I'm going to have to get other people to hate him, but I'm using my gifts.
	I don't know if that's a good idea.
	I don't know either.
	And I have acknowledged that I recognize that in myself.
	But the other thing is, you know, sometimes the spirit's in me, and I'm just like, this guy's got to go.
	And I really mean, I feel like the spirit's in me.
	Do you have Catholics?
	I don't know the answer either.
	Okay, that's fine.
	That's fine.
	But do you have Catholic?
	I know sometimes if I make a misstep, I get people contacting me saying, Roosh, that's a bad idea.
	Now, do you have Catholics like the angel on your shoulder saying, Milo, maybe reconsider?
	Do you have that?
	Or do people just go along with whatever you want to do?
	No, no, no, no, no.
	I don't surround myself with sick offense.
	I have made that mistake at other periods in my life, but I'm quite good at surrounding myself with critics, not necessarily in my Telegram chat, but in actual real life.
	I will have people who will say, I didn't see this on a channel and I fell, you know, and I'll think about it.
	And sometimes I'll modify the direction of strategy or whatever that I'm doing.
	But I really do believe, I'll tell you one thing I don't do well.
	I sometimes don't do a good job of distinguishing between people and their sins and holding somebody up for ridicule for things that are not related to the criticism I'm trying to make about their behavior is definitely a habit that I have.
	But I do recognize that.
	I do see that.
	But on the other hand, I have to place this within the context.
	Like as a guy I've been going after recently, I won't get into it on here, but you know, he set himself up as a role model, as a leader of men, and not just of any man, but of conservative family men, of manly men, of men who want to embody the heroic masculine values you're talking about earlier.
	And it turns out he's a federal informant and a baby killer.
	He has manipulated women into killing their children, sometimes successfully, and in two cases, not successfully.
	And he won't pay child support.
	He laughs at them.
	God is going to deal with him.
	You don't have to deal with him.
	You're not the judge.
	You're not expanding the verdict on him.
	God will deal with him.
	You don't need to fix this problem.
	I guess that's what I'm getting at.
	God doesn't need us to point out wrong in sins.
	Well, I don't agree.
	Okay.
	I think I'm going to.
	We don't have to move on.
	I have always believed that I have been chosen.
	I've been anointed.
	I have been selected.
	But doesn't this continue the star mindset of I am needed in the world?
	I'm a somebody.
	God needs me.
	God needs me to do this.
	No, God doesn't need us at all.
	We need him 100%.
	He doesn't need us at all.
	But if we can use our gifts in a non-sinful way, we should do them.
	But if you're committing sin when doing them, I don't think it's a good idea.
	That's my whole point.
	But you mentioned him.
	Hold on.
	I can't agree that I'm supposed to sit by and do nothing and just focus on my own immortal soul.
	It's not what I'm saying.
	Things are happening that I can prevent.
	No, you can't.
	I can.
	I can.
	God does it.
	No, no, you have no power.
	God prevents it.
	Okay.
	If you don't do it, God is going to raise someone else up to do what needs to be done.
	He doesn't need you to do anything except save your soul for now.
	Why would anybody do anything?
	Why are there families?
	You're too spiritually immature.
	We are spiritually immature.
	We are sensitive to falling by the world.
	Everybody on the planet.
	No, especially us.
	I mean, especially us.
	Oh, come on.
	Especially us.
	The end point of what I'm saying is we should disband the family-first think tanks that are fighting Planned Parenthood.
	That's not what I'm saying.
	God will take care of that.
	Like, you're crazy.
	You're crazy.
	I have a responsibility to fix some of the problems that I created because they're on my conscience and they're on my side.
	It shouldn't cost your soul, is what I'm saying.
	It shouldn't cost your soul or even one sin.
	It shouldn't cost one sin for you to save the world as you see it.
	I think you are mischaracterizing my position.
	Like I'm talking about myself like I'm Superman or something.
	I'm not meaning to say that.
	But I feel a compulsion, an irresistible compulsion to undo some of the damage that I have done and to call out evil when I see it and to prevent evil when I'm able to prevent it.
	You can't.
	Provided that it doesn't prevent evil.
	But I agree with you.
	I want to undo the damage I've done too.
	And the way I do that is share the faith.
	I share my faith as I experience it.
	It's not enough.
	It's not enough.
	Yes, it is.
	Yes, it is.
	Because if you share the faith, people are going to join the church.
	And when people join the church, they are saved.
	But that's it.
	I like to read a quote.
	I think I'm going to be treated into a kind of quasi-monastic mode.
	I find it.
	I publish two articles a week.
	I just wrote a book.
	I am producing more work than I ever have.
	But that said, the problem you have, the problem you have is you're aiming for some kind of arbitrary and illusory spiritual perfection before you feel able to do anything at all.
	And before you realize that you're not going to be aware, I'm acting, but I'm not committing.
	Well, as far as I know, I'm not inciting anger and pride.
	Okay, can I read now?
	I would like to read from a Greek saint.
	I'm trying to hold a mirror up to people who are in places like I was in.
	I have a moral responsibility to do that.
	No one will ever persuade me otherwise.
	I know this interview here to do this.
	You seem to be saying all of the heroic acts.
	You seem to be saying that all the heroic acts of saints, all of the good deeds of people on earth who are working hard every day, raising money and protesting outside Planned Parenthood, working to undermine and to abolish Roe v. Wade, all this kind of stuff.
	You seem to be saying that if they all thought, oh, well, they just are babies.
	We are spiritual babies.
	We are spiritual babies trying to run a marathon.
	It's not going to work.
	We're going to get hurt.
	So take baby steps first.
	That's what I'm saying.
	I think that's what I'm saying.
	I think you are importing too much of your baby.
	Engineering, pick up artistry mindset into orthodoxy.
	And I think that you have constructed this like get out for yourself.
	It's not good enough.
	I encourage you to put it aside.
	Stop living this bogus monastic life you're constructing.
	Get out there on the street and start showing you.
	Are you interviewing me now?
	What are you doing?
	This is unorthodox interview.
	Okay.
	Can I read something now?
	Yes, I'm now done.
	Okay, thank you.
	If you're not perfect, if you're not perfect, why even publish those two articles a week?
	Why do it?
	You're perfect.
	You're strawmanning me.
	You're a straw manning me.
	You're a spiritual baby.
	So you're a spiritual baby.
	Why are you pushing me?
	You are strawmanning me.
	Because I'm not trying to defeat evil.
	I'm sharing my faith and what I've learned in the Orthodox Church.
	I'm not starting fights with people except you, apparently.
	That's what they're teaching.
	No, no, I love you, and that's why we can have a spirited debate.
	And I can hug you afterwards across the screen.
	But I love you to bits.
	And you are one person I check in on daily because I love seeing somebody else on the same kind of journey as me.
	And that's why we can, from a place of love and conviction and a good spirit and mutual respect, affection, and good wishes, have a sincere and sincere disagreement about what you and I are called to do.
	Let's do it.
	And following your logic and your logic and your reasoning, you shouldn't even be publishing those two things a week.
	I just think you're wrong.
	Okay, I think you.
	Okay, look, let's move on.
	Maybe we can come back to that.
	Let me quote a Greek saint, Saint Porphyrios.
	Saint Porphyrios is a recent Greek saint.
	I think he was canonized in the 1990s.
	And he said the following: It is humility to believe that all people are good.
	And if you hear something negative about someone, not to believe it, to love everyone and not think badly of anyone and to pray for everyone.
	End quote.
	Milo, do you pray for people that you hate?
	Do you pray for people that wrong you?
	Okay, do you pray for people that wrong you?
	I pray the most for your enemies.
	I pray the most for my enemies.
	But the difference between you and me is you want to be aware of the enemy.
	Why is this?
	Why is this?
	You're asking questions that follow on from the last one.
	I think that you want more than anything else to be on Mount Athos.
	I don't.
	I want to be in the marketplace with St. Francis.
	Yes, because you are called upon to do better than that.
	I think I want to be down in the marketplace with St. Francis.
	You want to be in a monastery somewhere all day looking after you.
	I want to.
	You don't have to insult the monks now.
	Okay.
	You can insult me, but let's not insult men who are walking with me.
	Oh, come on.
	I'm not insulting monks.
	You can have no insulting monks.
	You can put your anger onto me.
	That's fine.
	Monks of any denomination.
	I'm mainly being colorful in my expression.
	Don't be silly.
	That's going to get you.
	I'm just.
	Did you think or not think that Trump was making fun of disabled people when he did.
	No, he was just saying stupid.
	He was being colorful.
	He was using sound and he was using body language.
	I'm not making fun of monks.
	You sound like a leftist.
	You seem to be ready to criticize the Orthodox Church.
	But can you wait a second?
	I was looking at any monks.
	That's fine.
	I can try to defend it as best as I can.
	Let's say I was talking about that.
	I'm just saying, look, I pray the most for the people I think have wronged me.
	I pray the most for mothers who have aborted their babies, kids that this guy that I'm currently going after, I pray for him every day, and I have for weeks because I want more than anything in the whole world for him to wake up one day and say, what am I doing?
	And to be in his kids' life.
	Mainly, well, not mainly, but somewhat, because that would mean I don't have to keep paying his child support.
	But it's like, I really can't afford it.
	But I pray for the people that do the worst things to me the most because they're the people who need it the most.
	The people who I want desperately to wake up and to be bathed in light and to be better.
	Okay.
	For their sake.
	People who are nice to me don't need my prayers.
	I don't pray for people who don't need any help.
	I pray for the people who need help the most, which is why I'm the iceberg.
	So when you're attacking these other people, I hope that at the same time you pray for their souls as well.
	That's all.
	I'll tell you what I do to answer that question, and I'll be quick, and it is important that I do it.
	I've always found performative charity to be really distasteful.
	I don't even like those meaningless statements.
	Everyone these days feels like they've got to put out a statement on Memorial Day.
	Like, you work in a shop.
	What are you doing?
	Like, on their Twitter profiles and everything, on their Twitter feeds.
	And I always find performative charity extremely distasteful and gross.
	So very often when I do do this, and I'm sure people find it disconcerting, and maybe they don't receive it sincerely.
	But when I'm coming for somebody in public, I very often will write to them in private and say, I hate the things you do, but I'm praying for you to realize that you need to be shaken out of what's going on and nobody else would do it.
	Now, you would perhaps say, it's not my place to do it.
	I feel as though I am called to and that I am required to, and that I, that is my, that is my reason for being here.
	So we can move on from that because we can have a loving difference of opinion on that particular subject.
	But we can come back to that.
	I have some other questions later.
	Maybe another day.
	Maybe another day.
	But I very often do privately write to people expressing my compassion and prayers for them and also telling them, on the other hand, if you want to just keep being a terrible person, I'm happy to go.
	I'll keep going with you.
	So come talk to me.
	I want you to be better.
	And I guess they find that insincere and patronizing sometimes.
	There's not really much I can do about that.
	But I do mean it and I do do it.
	Okay, good.
	Let me read another quote from Saint Porphyrios.
	He says the following.
	When something bothers you, a seductive thought, a temptation, an assault, ignore all these things and turn your attention, your eyes to Christ.
	He will then take over the task of raising you up.
	He will take you by the hand and will give you his divine grace abundantly.
	All you need to do is make a tiny little effort.
	The human contribution in all this represents only a millionth of a millionth part, a slight inclination, that is.
	Take a step in God's direction, and in a split second, divine grace will come.
	As soon as you think of it, the Holy Spirit will come.
	You don't do anything.
	You just move in that direction and divine grace comes.
	And end quote.
	So I guess this is a question of when you're dealing with temptation, and that temptation doesn't only have to be a sexual one.
	It could be anger, gluttony, pride.
	I have pride problems.
	How are you dealing it?
	Do you kind of try to depend on your own willpower or do you immediately put your eyes onto Christ, pray to him?
	I can tell you one thing in the Orthodox Church, we have the Jesus prayer where we say, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
	Try to keep our focus on Christ.
	Ask him to help us.
	Is this something that the Catholic Church also teaches, or is it more of a dependence on the willpower?
	No, I think based on my shepherds I've assembled, they would say something very similar.
	I have trouble with it, though, because it feels like it is up to me to summon the strength.
	And I also have always, I'm still wrestling every day with feelings of not being good enough because of the things that I have done.
	And I remember in sometimes visceral detail, which I will not turn the stomachs of your viewers by going into.
	The details of some of the things that I have done in my life, sexual impropriety and whatnot.
	And I have a hard time sometimes wrapping my head around the idea that I have any right to speak to God at all.
	And of course, every priest will be like, well, you're done.
	You'll never be good enough.
	But that's okay because this happened.
	So you don't have to be good enough.
	I'm still, I have a hard time with that.
	I have a hard time with that.
	I know what the right answer is, but I have it and it's in my fist and I've got it.
	And it's like, ah, fine, you get it.
	And it's in my hand, and I have control of it.
	And I feel, you know, the spirit is in me.
	I feel like I've given myself up to Christ.
	I've given myself up to God.
	God is acting through me.
	I feel powerful.
	I feel strong.
	I feel purpose and direction, the rest of it, as if I were being, you know, inhabited in some way.
	And other days, I wake up and I feel like very acutely aware.
	This is up to you to not do this.
	This is your willpower.
	This is your decision making.
	And until you've done this, how dare you even think about stepping into church?
	So every priest I've ever spoken to says that's crazy.
	And I'm still, excuse me.
	As you correctly mentioned earlier in the conversation, I'm less far along the path than you are.
	And I'm still very, on a daily basis, wrestling with feelings of not being good enough and not being worthy and not being clean and virtuous enough to appeal to God for help.
	And that's probably connected to the fact that I'm thinking and talking a lot about my sexual past and the reasons for it and the way that I have felt.
	I won't go into details about the deliberate because it's gross, but for your listeners, but there's a lot of talk about bodily and spiritual and emotional shame that you have to work through so you can get to a point of so you can realize where what you were doing was coming from.
	And that can sometimes interfere with prayer.
	They won't like me saying that, but it does.
	It kind of gets in the way because I'm arrested sometimes by feelings of being inadequate or unworthy or revolting or insufficient.
	And I have to remind myself, and I know up here, but sometimes don't feel in my heart all the time.
	But it comes and goes.
	I think you were right in it when you said you're a little further along than I am.
	But it gets better every day.
	I mean, like, every day I feel like I have another 0.2% of it.
	So it's definitely moving in the right direction.
	But I would be lying if I said, I'm good because I don't need to be better.
	The Lord runs through me.
	I'll go to give myself up to God.
	Yeah, I kind of know all of that, but I'm not going to pretend that every single day I feel that is a process.
	It is a process.
	I think Protestants think that it's a one-time emotional experience.
	You're saved and you're done.
	The Orthodox Church doesn't believe that.
	And the Catholics don't even feel saved.
	It's the, you know, this house is clear.
	Like, it's all Protestant nonsense.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.
	I think that's true, too.
	That's why I always hated when people talk about, have you been saved?
	Yeah.
	I mean, I know.
	I've been saved, but the process of it, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	What do you mean, have I been saved?
	No, of course I haven't been saved.
	I mean, I'm saved from, ah, no, yeah, it always does feel like that when they talk about it, doesn't it?
	It's like that.
	It was July 5th.
	Don't they all have a date?
	Protestants all have a date.
	It was July 5th, 2011.
	That was the day Jesus saved me.
	And I'm like, how did that happen?
	You know, yeah, that's not my experience at all.
	But I can tell you that sometimes when I pray, a memory of a random sin, horrible sin, I did in the past pops in my mind.
	Where does that come from?
	I think I know.
	So this is something is never going to go away totally.
	I mean, because the more sins you do, the more that Satan has access to your heart to disturb your faith.
	So that's why I tell young men who are, oh, I want to be with the woman.
	Rouge, it's easy for you to say not to sleep with girls, but I wish I didn't.
	Because then Satan wouldn't have this access that he has to me and to you too.
	So I think this is something, this is a heavier cross that we'll have to bear due to what we did in the past for such a long time.
	Can I ask you something?
	I want to share something with you.
	I know you're leading up to something, but I want to share something with you.
	I don't know if I've ever said this publicly.
	I mentioned earlier about how I'm kind of fidgety and people always think I'm like, you know, hyped up on something.
	One of the problems that I have, priests always kind of like listen sympathetically to this, but none of them's ever really responded because I just think they don't really know what to say.
	I'm very fidgety because my mind is the same.
	It's scatty and all over the place.
	And, you know, it's an ADD brain, right?
	Finding even a moment of peace in order to appeal, to pray, to ask, to offer myself up, it's almost impossible for me.
	Whether I'm in a good place spiritually or I'm waking up in cold sweats after the dreams, it doesn't seem to matter.
	It's extremely difficult for me to find any kind of prolonged, peaceful spiritual.
	And I've tried everything.
	And a problem that I have, this is not something for you to answer because I don't know that you've had any experience with this, but maybe somebody who's watching this could write to me and tell me if they have views on this.
	I have, and I do take from time to time medication to help with that.
	I have like a small, you know, dose of Adderall from time to time to like just keep me focused and things.
	And sometimes I do take a, you know, a couple of them for a book chapter to write or something.
	It feels obscene to me to contemplate praying in a state where I know my consciousness is chemically altered.
	But by the same token, it seems to me that that is addressing something that's a little bit off.
	So I never have prayed when I've taken medication like that because there's something about it feels blasphemous and obscene.
	I think in the same way that I never have when I've been drunk, I just, that feels so wrong.
	I just run like in the other direction, a thousand miles an hour.
	But I struggle.
	I mean, I just find it impossible to, it's just like even sitting through mass sometimes, like I'm like ready to explode out of the pew, you know.
	I know you guys stand, which would be even worse for me.
	I don't know if anybody's watching this.
	I'm sure they have plenty, but we have some.
	That's like my big, that's my big torture to du jour, is that right?
	Sometimes some days I just need to be chilled out, and those are, and I really can't go to church that day.
	Now, we have been born in a world that is fallen, so we're going to have various mental and physical deficiencies which make our approach to Christ harder.
	But whatever deficiency you perceive, whether it's not being able to concentrate, which I have that problem too, maybe not as severe as you.
	Have you tried asking God to help you with this?
	And by asking him, I mean every night, asking him, Lord, help me with this, help clear my mind so I can pray to you.
	Have you tried that?
	Yes, I don't think that I have.
	And I'm not one of those people that, you know, like America is like a country where everybody seems to think they've met Jesus.
	Everyone's had this like religious experience.
	I don't really think God reveals himself that way.
	I think he will plant people and things in your path, though.
	And one of the things that has helped me is to develop hobbies that help my mind to think in orderly and structured ways.
	So I'm taking Latin classes now, partly to help me understand the mass more, but also because I want to avoid that.
	You know, sometimes when you are doing religious ceremonies in a language that are not.
	It seems like you're trying to solve the problem on your own through whatever the hobbies, the medication.
	But have you asked God directly, persistently, consistently in tears, in tears, like, Lord, I need help.
	Please help me with this.
	Because, I mean, he's the ultimate healer.
	I mean, he's can heal you.
	If what you're asking is going to help you with your salvation, which I think in this case probably will, he's going to help you.
	But he wants you to humble yourself before him, not solve the problem on your own, unless he enlightens you on what the problem is.
	Well, I was going to say, I was going to get to saying, I did.
	I was praying for a while about this on and off, admittedly.
	It's no longer persistent every day until it's solved.
	And some I've read some stories.
	It could take years.
	It could take years.
	Let me answer that question.
	I don't pray very often.
	That's a problem.
	No, no, no.
	I haven't finished the sentence.
	Sorry, sorry.
	Okay, sorry.
	Sorry, sorry.
	I keep wanting to say things I shouldn't say.
	I don't pray very often for myself.
	It's very rare that I will say, Lord, please help me with this.
	That's all the Orthodox do.
	Lord, have mercy on me.
	That's all the Orthodox do.
	No, no, it starts with us.
	I don't.
	I don't.
	And I, you know, I look, I do, I do, I do my man culpa, whatever, but I, it's more about punishing myself and asking for forgiveness.
	I, uh, to be really honest with you, to be really truthful with you, when I pray, it's very rarely on my own behalf.
	I pray for other people.
	I don't very often pray for me.
	Okay, well, I can tell you the basic prayer rule for an Orthodox Christian, the basics, is to pray twice each day and each prayer recite at least a hundred Jesus prayers.
	Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.
	So at least 200 times a day.
	There are a lot of that in all various different basics, But they would typically be the ones that I would skip.
	Okay, well, from my experience, it greatly helps.
	It greatly helps.
	And I think it could help with the problem that you are having now.
	Those are the more than enough of that, believe me.
	But those are typically the ones I'll skip and I'll focus on praying for them.
	May I ask you, do you pray every day?
	Like a period of time where maybe you have maybe not an icon corner, but a statue corner or what Catholics have.
	Do you pray?
	I have an altar in my hotel.
	Yeah, maybe I can show you without completely destroying my setup here, but I have no crucifix, my Bible stands, some books that I'm reading at the moment, and sometimes a little detritus from the day on there.
	But yeah, no, I'm in front of it a lot, but it is typically on behalf of others.
	And I wouldn't say that I this is what I'm saying.
	You really want to be in a monastery, my friend, because I don't have a kind of rigorous, monastic, scheduled kind of routine.
	I think that it would drive me insane.
	I can do repetition.
	I mean, as a Catholic, you really have no choice.
	You're turning into a preacher, I must say.
	You're right that you struggle with pride because you're definitely lacking in some, I don't know.
	I'm not going to say that.
	No, I'm just trying to share with you what I've learned since we've gone through the same things, but I don't see the spiritual state of your soul.
	I don't know what God has ordained for you, what he wants you to do.
	I'm just sharing some things.
	Maybe you haven't heard it.
	Maybe you'll think something I said helps.
	But one thing is that I'm not receiving it.
	Receiving it in the spirit that I know that it was.
	If you think I'm going too far, tell me and I'll stop.
	I'm not trying to.
	No, no, not at all, no, no.
	One thing that concerns me is you said you don't pray for yourself.
	It concerns me that you don't pray for yourself because you're deserving of God's love.
	He loves you.
	If he didn't love you, you would still be doing that filth that you were doing.
	And same here, too.
	But I think you have to accept at some point that God loves you and wants to help you, but you have to reach out to him.
	I think that my life will improve a lot when I do accept that, but perhaps I'm not there yet.
	Okay.
	Well, let's go on.
	I want to read from Luke 5.
	And Luke 5 says, And Jesus answered and said to them, It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick.
	I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
	Now, I know firsthand I was spiritually sick, very sick.
	So I required and currently require intensive spiritual care.
	Intensive spiritual care.
	Something all-encompassing, not a Protestant idea of you just go to church on Sunday and you get that rock band experience and it puts you on an emotional high and you're done.
	No, I need a daily thing.
	And you may joke that I am trying to become a monk.
	It's not that I want to become a monk.
	It's because I need it based on what I did in the past to keep me away.
	Do you think that the Catholic Church, and I think you probably need intensive spiritual care too?
	Do you think that the Catholic Church can develop that actually?
	I mean, I think you, I don't know, you're telling me to reach out to God like I haven't already, like I don't on a daily basis.
	And, you know, I think it's pray as you can, not as you cannot, right?
	I pray as I can.
	And I'm not saying you don't reach out to God.
	I'm just saying when you say that you don't pray for yourself, that's what I interpreted.
	That's what I commented on.
	Like me, that's mostly what I do.
	Pray, I mean, this book that I'm going to hold up.
	That's okay, but this is a prayer.
	Most of the prayers.
	Clearly, you need what you need is a much more regimented approach to your spiritual life.
	I don't feel that same compulsion.
	I don't feel the need to lean on that.
	I tend to lean more on interactions with people and on prayers that are especially powerful for me.
	I find prayers for others to be much more calming than prayers for myself.
	I find prayers for other people in which I'm asking God to help somebody see something or give somebody some peace, some mercy, help somebody's life to be a little less difficult because I can see that they are struggling and they don't want to say so, right?
	I find stuff like that to be way more soothing of my soul than just God have mercy on me, like, you know, 5,000 times a day.
	That does nothing for me.
	I wish I could say it that many times.
	But I guess what I'm kind of, I'm not saying I have a, I'm not saying I have a custom plan.
	I'm just going by the basics.
	So like the prayer book that we use, I mean, the prayers is have mercy on me, a sinner, and have mercy on us.
	We read Psalm 50 every day.
	So I guess what I'm saying is I don't take a custom approach.
	I'm just doing the basics.
	So I think for the basics in the Orthodox faith may be different than what you are doing.
	And that's why I wanted to talk to you to see what the differences are.
	There is plenty of God have mercy on me over here too.
	But for me personally, I am consumed by the absolute certainty that I am on this planet to perform certain tasks for him.
	But is that above the salvation of your soul?
	No, but perhaps the works is not going to save you.
	The works you do to heal the world or to defeat evil, that's not going to save you.
	It's your faith.
	Well, I think that the works are your faith through love, right?
	Not the works alone.
	Or am I saying something that is opposed to Catholic doctrine?
	It's faith and works, right?
	Because I know we believe Catholic and Orthodox believe in the same thing.
	I've always been basically the same.
	I have always believed both, but at this particular point in my life, I'm more focused on the works.
	That doesn't mean I don't have faith or I'm not praying or I don't believe or I don't go to mass.
	But what it means is I am absolutely certain that I am here to do something in particular.
	And I'm going to do that.
	Not at the risk of my immortal soul.
	I'm not going to do it knowingly, getting myself in a situation where I'm going to risk my mortal soul because I don't believe that he wants me to do that.
	But I'm going to do what I got to do.
	And nothing is going to deter me from that.
	And I'm what I know that I'm here to do.
	To interfere or intervene.
	Just going to share with you my thoughts on the matter, what I'm doing, and you live your life however you want.
	But the question I was trying to ask is: if, well, I guess, do you think you require spiritual intensive care?
	And if you do, can the Catholic Church provide you?
	You're a slippery character, aren't you?
	No, I'm just, I do.
	I require that.
	This is morphed into the Catholic Church on trial, which I'm not keen to get it.
	No, I'm not.
	I don't, I'm just for you individually, does the church.
	I'm not condemning the church.
	I don't want to attack any church.
	There's not a person walking God's earth that does not require spiritual intensive care.
	I am happy for you that you were in a place where you were able to luxuriate in it, but I need to clean up some messes that I made.
	And I, from my version of Lord, make me chase, but not yet, is Lord Mount Me let me focus on me, but not yet.
	Psalm 50, miserere mei, which I listen to the Allegri musical setting of on a near-daily basis.
	You know, I'm not lacking in cognizance about my own immortal soul at all, but I am prepared to put others above myself when it comes to fixing some of the messes I made.
	And right now, that means working tirelessly to help save other men suffering from same-sex attractions from disappearing irretrievably into that life.
	And so I think we got into a cul-de-sac here that I don't really recognize because it's not like I'm, you know, I agree with everything you're saying, but I just wouldn't be able to live with myself if I retreated into what I would maybe wrongly consider self-indulgent kind of self-indulgent solitude.
	I wish I was doing that.
	Begging for my own soul and not being out there doing that.
	A dichotomy, not black and white.
	I think you are thinking I'm in a monastery currently.
	And I think you're thinking that I don't pray and I'm just out there.
	No, I don't think you don't pray.
	I was asking you.
	I was asking you.
	Baby killing proud boys and going after the same old leftists.
	I'm asking you these questions.
	I'm not accusing you.
	Well, okay.
	Is it perhaps possible that we have both slightly exaggerated each other's respective positions?
	And in fact, we're not that far away from one another, really.
	And me and I'm not sure.
	Sure.
	And one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is I wanted to see the Catholic approach.
	I don't want to condemn the Catholic Church.
	Look, a third of the people who follow me are Catholic.
	I have no desire to anger them.
	So I just wanted to see what the Catholic Church is doing.
	I know almost nothing.
	Well, listen, I know almost nothing about my own religion, let alone be able to speak about it intelligently in relation to Orthodoxy.
	So you got the wrong one because I'm trying to persuade my priest at the moment to let me do that.
	You know, I can't remember, what's it called?
	The UCC, whatever, the conversion course of Catholicism.
	He's like, you were baptized.
	You don't need it.
	You are Catholic.
	And I'm like, I know, but I just don't know anything because I've been running from the church my whole life.
	And I'm like, I vaguely remember, I went to Vespers Two months ago, I think, in New York, with a friend of mine, Scott, and the tune, I mean, like, you know, the chants and the words and things were kind of like flooding back to me in snatches, and I was so, I was just gripped with shame and it's like, I don't know any of everything.
	So, if you want to kind of, if you want a definitive Catholic answer to XYZ, I mean, I can, I can recommend you some people, but I'm not an authority on anything as far as that goes.
	Sorry, that's a little bit of a cop-out, but all I can do is tell you the truth.
	I know I am starting from scratch, even with my own faith, because I've been running from it for so long, and because I've been telling other people to do things that I wasn't doing myself, and that wasn't just limited to sexuality.
	So, I'm re-engaging.
	I'm starting like at the basics, I'm re-engaging with everything on a day one basis.
	And I don't want to, you know, I'm not, I can tell you the broad brush stuff that you already know, but I can't give you any definitive theological thoughts.
	I was looking for your personal experience.
	Even when I know the answers, I won't do it because I'm too terrified of getting things wrong.
	It's a very complicated, it's a very complicated religion, and it's terrifying.
	Can I share with you some of the quote-unquote spiritual care that I think for me is important?
	And you can share whether the Catholic Church has it or if you've heard of it.
	But we take daily prayer very seriously, at least half an hour each day.
	We fast every week, at least Wednesday and Friday, in addition to longer fasts.
	The longest is Lent, about six weeks, where we adopt more of a vegan diet, but also proportions that are smaller too.
	Saturday night.
	Saturday night, we have services that are very long.
	We stand a lot, which is a minor physical challenge.
	But all these things, it kind of keeps my mind on Christ every day.
	Every day.
	So I think it's been helping me because it doesn't suck me into the world for very long until, oh, today is a fasting day.
	Why do we fast?
	Oh, I have to go and pray again.
	Why do we pray?
	Oh, it's Saturday.
	I can't just go party.
	I have to go to visuals.
	So I guess from my point of view, all these things, which, again, I don't know what the Catholic Church has or has not among this, it keeps me away from things that I shouldn't do.
	So I just wanted to share that.
	Yeah, I mean, so it sounds like you have a demanding schedule.
	I wouldn't be able to wrap that around having a career as well, personally.
	I pray every morning, I pray every night.
	I go to Mass on Sundays, as Mass is the thing that's really required.
	I pray the Rosary.
	I pray, you know, I have lots of books of prayers from various priests past and present that I admire, that I find useful, that I kind of invoke on an ad hoc basis.
	Certainly.
	I do all the things that I'm required to do, and I do many things that I'm not.
	I, however, take a slightly different view to you because I think I wasn't intending in any way to mock you or to mock monks when I say that you're kind of living a sort of quasi-monastic life.
	I think that you are.
	And I think it's obviously what's got you out, right?
	And it's worked for you.
	It's worked for you.
	What I'm doing has worked for me, and that is I have taken a new sort of radically humble approach to these things.
	I very much kind of like the definition of faith-seeking understanding, right?
	So I have a I'm trying to relearn everything anew, and I'm trying to start from first principles, and I know where my soul is, but I also know, and this is where we differ, I think, I also know that I have to be a little in the world to do good in it.
	And if I spent my straight and narrow this way, okay, maybe you wouldn't be able to straight and narrow this way.
	But my big problem, I mean, I've touched wood and I don't want to be rash or prideful or smog about it, but my big problem, I am, I feel, making really extraordinarily good headway on in a way that I, I mean, my therapist has never seen anything like it.
	He said, I don't, I've never heard of anybody who's just switched it off like you.
	So what I'm doing is working too, but I am not retreating, not retreating.
	I don't want to use that word because I don't want you to misunderstand me.
	I have not I'm not trying to insulate myself from things and people and situations that I think might drag me back into that kind of stuff.
	Because that kind of stuff, when I pray and when I talk to the priests that are at my council and when I read beautiful passages of scripture, the Psalms especially, and read beautiful prayers, it's like preposterous to me that anything around me could possibly lead me to slip, right?
	Because I feel like I have a carabace around me.
	And I need to be in the world a bit to be effective in it.
	And if I spend too much time in quiet contemplation, if I'm doing 500 rosaries a day and blah, blah, blah, blah, I can't be funny.
	It kills me.
	It kills my ability to do good in the world in the way that I am specifically and especially talented.
	I find it very difficult to be funny.
	I find it difficult to be motivated to do work, any work that is not tightly related to the church or to my own, or to really, I don't want to do anything but my Latin homework.
	When I've spent all day praying or on Sundays, I don't do anything but Latin homework.
	Do you think your humor is a gift from God or from Satan?
	100%.
	It's my superpower.
	And I can choose to wield it for good or for ill.
	Sometimes I have lent on it in a way that hasn't been healthy.
	Like I often deflect into it to avoid.
	I mean, I like compulsory compulsively reflect into it to avoid having authentic interactions with people.
	But that's getting less all the time.
	And I'm learning now to marshal my humor as a strategic weapon rather than as a reflexive habit so I can use it and then be serious.
	One comment I wanted to make.
	Sorry.
	That of course it's a gift.
	But one comment I wanted to make is that in the Orthodox Church, asceticism is not an option.
	It's integral.
	Christ teaches us to be in the world but not be of the world.
	So it's not that, well, maybe I can have some aesthetic features in my life.
	No, we're called to do that, at least what the Orthodox Church teaches.
	And really, your participation in the world is only what is required to serve your family, your church, your faith.
	But it's not meant to, I guess, it kind of goes back to what we were talking about, to save the world in some way.
	Because, you know, what does it profit a man if he makes a billion people laugh but loses his soul, right?
	I think that was in Luke.
	So I guess that's just one thing I wanted to share.
	So I guess, yeah, this is a difference in the approach.
	Maybe that is, maybe that is a, maybe that is a fault line, because I certainly don't recognize that in the Catholic priests I speak to, who are very much.
	I mean, look they, they.
	Maybe I should be careful about my wording when you start to get.
	It's funny.
	When I went on, when I embarked on this journey, I started to find my taste in books and movies was changing, because I used to.
	I used to, I used to read things for the textures, for the colors, so I would read like beautiful purple prose, or I would watch movies that were lushly shopped and I never really cared too much about the story or the plot.
	But now I've put this bit of my life away.
	Suddenly it matters to me what happens, like I care what actually happens, rather than just reading something because I love the prose style.
	What happens in the end matters to me, and in the same way I've found that I've had to start being much more precise in my language now that I've been taking my faith more seriously and being thinking carefully about how I express myself.
	I've had to catch myself a couple times just in this conversation.
	Perhaps you noticed, so I've forgotten your question, but.
	But I wonder whether but that leads me to something else.
	A lot of people in the in the Orthodox Church, make the claim that the Catholic Church, I just, I just think, if you, if you want to, if you want to be in the world and not of it, I don't think, if you believed that, that you would be writing blog posts, and I think too, is the style and tone of my delivery, which perhaps isn't to your taste,
	but I'm sorry no, I'm not buying it.
	You you, you were given, you were given a gift, which is that men seek you out and believe what you tell them and wish to emulate the way that you live.
	You Ruch, have always had that if you wanted to be in the world but not of it, you wouldn't still be seeking to lead men.
	You used the expression earlier.
	I tell men, like you're, you're a shepherd.
	Stop pretending that you're not because you still are too.
	It's just nonsense.
	You're just not telling me.
	The truth I just clearly claim is that I'm using to be, I'm just.
	Do you understand the point that I'm making, though?
	Like I just don't buy the argument you make based on what I observe you doing, which is that you are, in fact, fulfilling your responsibility and your role to be a leader of men, even as you say you're you're you're, you know not, you're not, you're not doing it and and whatever.
	I just don't buy with the world.
	I'm not, I'm not committing, like say, I'm not getting involved in things that could drag me backwards.
	I guess I dream of that level of certainty that I'm not sinning, but I don't think I'll ever have.
	No, I don't have that either.
	I commit sin constantly, but I'm not okay.
	I really, because you have always been Sometimes lacking in humor, Roosh, if you don't mind me saying, brother, um, you have always been a little over-earnest, uh, as a person before, during, and in the next life, you will always be a little over-earnest.
	And I think what you really don't like is the fact that I think you really don't like his laughter.
	I think it scares you.
	What I'm trying to say is that I don't like my style, and I don't think it's about whether or not Jesus, when he wasn't here, never laughed in the world, he never laughed.
	Humor is part of our fallen nature, in my opinion.
	But anyway, one thing I just want to say is that the work I do right now is I don't feel like it's dragging me back.
	And you said that your work isn't doing that too.
	That's fine.
	That's fine.
	Okay, that's fine.
	I feel like it's doing the offer.
	You know better than me.
	I just think you don't like my particular style because my particular style is not to your taste.
	Well, you're not my target audience, brother.
	Okay, the only thing is when I see you on Telegram going on and on about exposing people and getting into fights, that's all it's not about exposing people.
	I've been on a tear for the last place of love.
	As long as you're doing it out of love, I guess.
	I've been on a tear the last week about one individual, but I can't remember the last time that I went off on one in that way about anyone.
	And if you ask me whether I'm doing it from a place of love, well, I'm about to adopt the guy's kid because I love the little boy so much.
	And I want him and the mom to be safe and happy.
	And I'm paying the guy's child support.
	So don't tell me I'm not doing it from a place of love.
	If I want to do all that, I'm not going to do that.
	And hold the guy up for public ridicule at the same time.
	I think all of that falls squarely, firmly, and safely within the category of doing the Lord's work.
	But my experience— Unless you think that ridiculing baby killers should be off-limits for soldiers of Christ.
	I don't.
	I'm not making that claim.
	But my experience is that social media has a way of inflating our pride, you know, inflating our sense of importance and hurting us in a spiritual way.
	That's all I'm saying.
	That's all I'm saying.
	I understand it.
	I also think you need to credit me with the judgment and intelligence enough to realize what's required of a public.
	I don't want to say performance in a sense like it's fake, but what's required of public statements and the mode in which they have to be delivered versus the man who sets the phone down afterwards and goes and has dinner with a friend and his family.
	I'm not even distinguishing my television.
	I am capable of distinguishing my Telegram account from me, the person.
	Okay.
	Aren't you?
	At times, no.
	At times, it feels good when you send a Telegram post and the comments come in and the compliments come in.
	That damages me, so I don't do it as much.
	I don't care a job for comments and compliments.
	Yeah, it gets to you still.
	Even if you don't feel it right then and there, it does slowly inflate my own pride.
	But if it doesn't, you, then that's fine.
	No, no, look, I'm not going to pretend that I don't have a look.
	It would be stupid of me, wouldn't it?
	And it would be dishonest for me to pretend that I don't have a little flush, a little swell, a little moment of self-satisfaction sometimes when I feel like I've got a good singer off against, you know, someone I don't like.
	Yes, of course.
	I'm not going to deny that.
	But does that imperil my immortal soul?
	No.
	Does that take me closer to committing serious sin?
	No.
	But does it give you, does it get you closer to Christ?
	Does your social activities, your public activities get you closer to God?
	That's the goal.
	Are you growing in the faith?
	Yes.
	Yes, I do.
	Yes.
	I'm glad to hear that.
	I firmly believe that what I do gets me closer to Christ, too.
	Although it doesn't look, although I certainly accept it doesn't look anything like what you from the surface.
	I do get that.
	Trust me, I get that.
	And I do understand that.
	And I also understand how people might believe you a lot more easily than they believe me when we both make those statements.
	But I said what I said.
	That's okay.
	That's okay.
	I am not your judge or anything.
	But, okay, so there's one thing I have.
	I'm not going to be the judge.
	No, I'm not.
	I mean, I'm not your judge.
	The most difficult thing in all of the world, in all faiths, is this lie that we can be non-judgmental because judging is not a decision that we take.
	It is an activity our brain performs with or without our conscious input.
	So you can continue to judge as to whether or not you allow that to form your long-term impressions of someone or affect your behavior towards them.
	Judging is an involuntary process, and everybody does it all the time.
	I have to ask you the next question because my fellow Orthobros would be upset if I did not.
	You recently on Telegram went on.
	Can I finish?
	Can I finish?
	But I want to know the answer to.
	So on Telegram, you recently went on the tirade, it seems.
	Multiple posts.
	It's about Stargate Atlantis.
	attacking the orthodox church you refer to a certain can i finish my question you You refer to a Russian cathedral as a science fiction spaceship.
	Now, some of these comments, they didn't come from an intellectual or theological place.
	So I wasn't upset.
	Excuse me.
	I am terribly sorry.
	Have you seen Stargate Atlantis?
	No.
	Okay.
	If you had seen Stargate Atlantis, you would know how astonished.
	I actually am relatively.
	I haven't checked when it was constructed.
	It would not surprise me at all if the design team for that sci-fi show modeled the city ship in the show after.
	This is okay.
	But this is solo tier, like making fun of a girl for being fat.
	This is something I used to do.
	You don't like my style.
	But if your style makes people angry, upset, is it a style we should foster?
	Bro, I was making a joke.
	I was making a joke.
	The main cathedral of the Russian armed forces looks exactly like the city ship from Stargate Atlantis, and is fun.
	That's funny.
	And by the way, I've done the same thing with Mormon churches and the same thing with Roman Catholic churches.
	And surely, obviously, the red thread running underneath all of this is these houses of worship really are not good enough for houses of God.
	And I think we could all do better, right?
	And I do it about Catholics.
	I do it about Mormons.
	There is nothing wrong with the Orthodox churches.
	It is only the Orthodox who lose their minds at the slightest.
	Catholics lose their minds at me.
	There's some in the chat that are doing.
	You can't just say Orthodox only.
	But I don't know.
	Oh, if you are trying to claim to me that the Orthobros are not thin-skinned, we can just stop because it's a conversation in bad faith.
	I mean, a conversation in bad faith.
	You are claiming that Orthobros are not thin-skinned.
	Ortho-bros are thinner-skinned than atheists.
	Thinner-skinned than libertarians.
	Thinner skinned than any subreddit anywhere.
	Okay.
	And I'm sorry, but I got to tell you, right?
	The biggest thing that is turning people off the Orthodox Church is the way that Orthobros behave on Telegram.
	You make yourselves and your religion look ridiculous.
	Because what people automatically think when somebody is so touchy is that they know on some level that their religion is BS.
	And I know that they don't actually think that, but that's how Orthobros are coming across.
	It's not how you come across, Rush.
	It is not how you come across at all.
	You come across as intensely thoughtful.
	Thank you.
	And but your brothers in or like wankers and touchy wankers.
	Okay, okay, we don't have to insult now.
	No, I'm not insulting.
	Look, I'm insulting thin-skinned, touchy wankers of all stripes, of all religions, of all faiths.
	I'm just saying you guys got a lot of them.
	And there's no point trying to relay something to you.
	I did not intend.
	I did not invent.
	Can I share a story with you?
	I promise I'm almost done.
	I did not invent the stereotype of thin-skinned orthobros.
	I am not responsible for conjuring that out of thin air.
	But do I feel bad about ridiculing people who make spectacles of themselves online?
	No, I don't.
	And making a joke about a church looking like a sci-fi show, are you seriously going to get upset about that given the gravity and serious and sincerity and incredibly like this has been a wonderful conversation?
	And then you want to ask me if I'd like to.
	What are you really doing here?
	Are you giving me the opportunity to apologize for comparing the main cathedral of the Russian armed forces to Stargate Atlantis?
	I declined.
	It looks exactly like it.
	I'm not asking.
	No, no, I'm not doing that.
	Well, let me relay a story for you.
	When I was in the Armenian church, which is in this technically called Oriental Orthodox branch, but it's not Orthodox, as I found out.
	When I was in that branch, a lot of the Ortho bros, they were not, they didn't send me very nice comments.
	Some of them were like, oh, you're in a schismatic church.
	This is a heretical church.
	And those comments hurt.
	And they didn't do anything.
	Can I finish?
	I let you talk.
	So you just, you just, you gave in to the bullies because you didn't want to get ridiculed anymore.
	Can I seriously?
	Can I finish?
	So it wasn't from all of them.
	It was from a few of the more anonymous accounts, right?
	I am perfectly.
	And I read that and I thought in my mind, this isn't going to get anyone to convert.
	And I believe those comments delayed in some way my conversion to the church.
	Because I would think, well, if people are angry, what kind of faith is that?
	So I converted not because of them, but because orthodoxy is the truth, has the fullness of Christ.
	I converted.
	And then when I converted and started to interact more with these men, what I found is that it didn't necessarily come from a place of pride or to attack me, but just because they take their faith so seriously.
	That's what I saw.
	So they took it so seriously.
	Oh, please.
	No, I'm telling you the truth.
	And by the way, and by the way, you know what these guys remind me of?
	They remind me of the guy who walks out on his wife, shacks up with a mistress, and spends his entire life complaining about his ex-wife.
	They are all ex-Catholics or people who know that they really should be Catholics.
	I'm not talking about Orthodox Christians.
	I'm talking about Orthobros.
	They are consumed with hatred of one thing and one thing only, and that's the Roman Catholic Church, which tells me everything.
	I think Protestants are, but the Orthodox are not.
	They are obsessed.
	I don't know.
	They are obsessed, obsessed, obsessed.
	And by the way, people who convert to Orthodox Christianity later in life, the only reason anyone converts to Orthodox Christianity is because they believe the lies about the Roman Catholic Church.
	I don't believe that a single person spends a year studying the abstruse, delicate mysteries and differences and theological distinctions and papal whatever between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Church.
	No, they make an aesthetic judgment.
	They make a judgment based on public relations.
	They make a judgment based on lies that have been concocted, executed, and maintained by communist assumptions about the Catholic Church.
	A lot of assumptions.
	Yes, I just said I was making an assumption.
	I just don't think of how it looks.
	I don't believe that anybody who is looking to return to an authentic, full-blooded version of Christianity picks Orthodox Christianity because they have really serious, deeply held theological convictions about the penta, blah, blah, blah.
	No, no.
	They pick that because it's Roman Catholicism without the child rape.
	That's the only reason.
	And the child rape thing is propaganda that was started and continues to be propagated by communist infiltrators.
	The Roman Catholic Church is the institution in history that has been subjected to more sustained, relentless assault and attack by marxists or in any other institution.
	There is a reason for that.
	There is a reason nobody's coming for Orthodox Christianity, but everybody, every single day, is still coming for Catholics.
	And the only reason people who go from atheism into Orthodoxy.
	My team is better.
	I think you're making so many assumptions.
	We are cousins.
	I don't even know where to start.
	I believe that we're cousins in Christ.
	I believe that we are all going to heaven.
	But I will not stop pointing out that most of the reason that most of these brazen, thin-skinned, new converts to Orthodoxy are Orthodox Christians is because they have believed lies about the Roman Catholic Church.
	And were it not for those lies, they'd be Catholics and they know it.
	And I know because I have in a moment.
	I know that there are Orthodox Christians like you who are in the faith for sincere reasons, the deeply held convictions.
	But I do not, all of that stuff about, you know, oh, well, this Pope thought, you know, blah, and fallibility, and that's why this and schismatic, people find out all that stuff way after they've already joined the Orthodox Church.
	The reason they're Orthodox.
	You're assuming like you've made a story in your mind of why everyone converts.
	Please.
	Can I now share?
	Please.
	The only reason anybody becomes Orthodox out of the world is they want Roman Catholic Church.
	Do I have to mute you?
	That's it.
	Nope, I'm done, I promise.
	Okay.
	I think the reason most people convert to the Orthodox faith, and most people don't encounter the Twitter people, the Orthobros.
	Most people don't.
	Only I did because I was in the public life.
	But most people, I believe, don't.
	We live in that world.
	Sure.
	People that I know who convert to the Orthodox faith do so because two reasons.
	One, the Catholic Church currently, their fruits appear to us to be lower than the fruits of the Orthodox Church, the level of faith of people, the seriousness of the faith.
	And two, the doctrines.
	People who convert believe that the Orthodox Church has preserved the ancient early Christian doctrines that the church fathers hashed out, and the Catholics seem to be adding new things to it, new things that seem to be separating them from what the Orthodox faith is.
	Now, that's my perspective.
	That's from what I've seen.
	I see some truth in that, and I certainly recognize that the Catholic Church is in a hideously bad way.
	I've written a book about it.
	I absolutely understand that.
	I really do.
	But my view on this is: if you, you know, for those Catholics who are really just desperate to tell you about how they're Orthodox now, is a man stays and fixes the house.
	He doesn't run away.
	If the roof is leaking and there's no food on the table, he stays, he fixes the house, he feeds his kid, he mends the roof, right?
	If the Catholic Church is in a terrible way, and it is, we got to fix it.
	But I must say that when I announced that I left the Armenian church and converted to the Russian Orthodox Church, all the Catholics online that were so nice to me lashed out at me.
	They lashed out in a serious way.
	Now, I wasn't hurt by it.
	I'm not, I don't want you to give me sympathy.
	But they, so this thing that they were friendly to me was because maybe they thought I was going to convert to the Catholic faith.
	You see this everywhere.
	It's just not among the Orthobros.
	Listen, listen.
	This is all a relatively modern invention, 16th-century invention, this war between Catholics and Orthodox.
	We are brothers and Christians in Christ.
	I don't think it serves us very well to be flashing gang signs at one another, which is all that these conversations really are, because there's barely any difference between us.
	I accept that people look at the state of the Catholic Church and go, get it, understand it, can't blame anyone for that.
	However, this preserving the stuff of the early church, I just don't believe anybody has that kind of understanding when they are reaching out for you know eternal mysteries of the universe.
	Give me a break.
	Nobody give me a break.
	I'm saying, first of all, I don't obviously agree with you if that's true, but also, I don't think people pick the Orthodox Church over the Roman Catholic Church for that reason when they're converting.
	I don't know what I mean.
	Give me a break.
	That's what I do.
	That's why I want the true church.
	Recognize, I do have a recognized that there is a kind of fetishism.
	There is a kind of obsession with.
	I mean, look at if you look at the Orthodox churches, look, anything I say now, you're just going to take as me trying to make fun, and I swear that I'm not.
	But if you look at the Orthodox churches, they're in country and earthy and real feeling about a lot of those Orthodox churches in a way that kind of feels like, oh, maybe this is like how the early Christians were, and it's free of that decadent Italian, you know, kiddie-fiddling men in dresses of the whatever.
	I do get, from an aesthetic point of view, if you're one of those people that just really wants to be, you know, back to basics, trad life, I get it, but it's not really based on theological fact.
	I believe that you have made a story of why people join this church or not that includes so many assumptions that you're really taking away the individual factor of why people are searching for Christ, the fullness of Christ in such an evil time.
	And you agree with me how evil this time is.
	Hold on, hold on, hold on.
	You agree with me.
	People convert because they want it.
	But anyway, okay, that's it.
	Can I move to a question?
	I have a couple more questions.
	I have expressed my views.
	Are we going to get to them?
	I'm going to get to them.
	I give long answers.
	It is what it is.
	You know who you were involved with?
	I don't want to take too much of your time because we have gone longer than I thought.
	All right.
	Well, you can talk about me as long as you need.
	I do believe that we are cousins, brothers, even in Christ across what seems to me a pretty meaningless denominational division.
	I mean, the Catholic Church even recognizes a lot of Orthodox orders and whatever, anyway.
	So it just seems so unimportant to me.
	I think we're all going to end up in the same place if we all live well and behave well.
	I also think we're basically the same.
	And I think this flashing gang signs thing is something that has arisen in the past couple of hundred years.
	It doesn't really mean very much.
	And I reserve the right to ridicule people who are mad online.
	So perhaps we can move on.
	Sure.
	Let's in the happy understanding that we're in the happy understanding that we are brothers and lovers in the Platonic way.
	Maybe we can move on from Catholic view of Orthodox.
	It's not a subject that really.
	It produces a lot of heat.
	Not from my side.
	Anyway, of course, you are the model of equanimity and comfort.
	I'm trying.
	It's easy to do when all you do all day is sit.
	All you do all day is sit in quiet contemplation.
	You don't know me, Milo.
	You don't know what I do.
	All you do is pray and cook pizza.
	Is that wrong?
	No, I wish I could, but I am called to I am called to do to exercise my faith and to serve God in a different way from you.
	That's all, brother.
	Okay, even though we do almost the exact same thing, but okay, fine.
	You recently.
	I just think if you believed it said you'd stop publishing blog posts and saying well, I tell men, I just think you're I think you're being a bit slippery.
	But we can move on.
	Maybe I'm doing things like you, but on a lower key manner that draws less attention to myself.
	That would be my point.
	All that you really object to is my style, and I think you're absolutely terrified of comedy.
	I'm jealous.
	No, no, I would say that.
	No, I don't think you're jealous.
	I think you're afraid of comedy because of the lack of control, because I think you're a control freak.
	I think you have really tight-ish brains.
	Okay, can you not psychoanalyze people?
	I didn't psychoanalyze you.
	Can't family, that's what family does.
	They're over-invasive and intrusive, and they don't listen.
	And you say, leave me alone.
	I just think you're one of those guys.
	Like, if you started crying, you'd never stop.
	If you let yourself go, you'd end up killing people.
	Like, I just think you need to keep yourself quite tightly leashed because you are intensely, acutely aware of the terrifying power of your, what do we call it these days, toxic masculinity.
	I think you're a control freak, and that's okay for you, but that's not me.
	I'm not afraid of laughter.
	You seem to be afraid of laughter.
	I'm going to work on that.
	No, I know, but that's mental because the one thing Christianity does that no other religion does is it embraces joy.
	Joy.
	Look at your buildings, your buildings have it as well.
	The caricatures, the pictures of, you know, people are laughing, they're smiling all the way through the Middle Ages.
	This early Christianity you love so much.
	People laugh and dance and sing, right?
	Why aren't you doing any of that?
	No, just damn with the beard.
	I just don't know why you're being a troll.
	Like, come on.
	If you really want to embrace the spirit of the early church, you'll be dancing, singing, writing poetry.
	You're not doing any of that.
	Okay.
	I don't think you are a little afraid of the loss of control that comes with laughter, and I'm not.
	And so we have different styles.
	No comment on that.
	I have two more questions, and there's a couple of Super Chats if you still have time.
	You even want to console my prayer line.
	You see that?
	He's not content with you.
	He's not content with regimenting his own life.
	He wants to know what my routine is.
	You see what I mean?
	You reveal yourself.
	No, I was just asking you questions that people ask me a lot that maybe my answer could help them in some way.
	Okay.
	Okay, whatever you say.
	But if my questions bothered you, offended you, then forgive me because that's not my intention.
	Don't make fun of me.
	Nothing you've ever said has offended me.
	Nothing anyone has ever said has offended me.
	I didn't mean, I didn't say that.
	I didn't say that.
	I was just, I was.
	I just want to move on to a second.
	Well, that might be all you want, but this is a conversation.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Seems like it's one-sided at the moment.
	Well, there we go.
	Okay, fine.
	You can laugh when you're being mean to me.
	That wasn't mean.
	I'm not offended.
	Carry on.
	Okay.
	You recently did an intervention on Owen Benjamin.
	You said you were going to leave this behind.
	You have.
	No, no, no.
	Listen.
	Can I fit.
	Can I ask the question?
	No.
	Can I ask the question?
	You're impatient, Milo.
	You're impatient at times.
	Okay.
	I am.
	I've been giving you two hours and I should be out saving souls.
	Aren't you ready for prayer?
	You're difficult to do.
	It's 9:12.
	It's 9.
	I've been talking for two hours.
	Shouldn't you have had like, you know, 30 rounds of God have mercy on me by now?
	I'm making fun of you.
	Carry on.
	Do you think your intervention was successful, one?
	And two, from your perspective, is there an obvious problem you saw in him that you think he could solve?
	Well, I think that we all know that he's reinventing a very old heresy.
	And the problem with autodidacts is that they think that they're when they crash into a realization or a revelation, they think they're the first person on earth ever to have discovered it.
	So his questions about the Trinity have been very comfortably answered in history.
	I am not a scholar enough to go into the details there with you.
	That was not my purpose in introducing him to some friends of mine who I think could help him out of that particular theological cul-de-sac, that dead end that he's wandering into.
	So when I introduced some friends to him, E. Michael Jones, Rachel Brown, the medieval historian, and Patrick Coffin, who's a Catholic podcaster, I was intending to create a little spectacle, sure, with the, and I said, I think about five times in the show, no one's going to persuade anybody of anything with five people on screen and only an hour, right?
	It's just impossible.
	It's not even worth trying.
	But what I was trying to do was draw attention to the question, and that's it for now, right?
	I happen to know that all three of those people have reached out to him privately.
	He's having discussions with all three of those people privately, which makes me very happy because I don't want to see a brother in Christ wandering down a dead end.
	I think you call it Aryan, the Aryan heresy, isn't it?
	It's Owen doesn't see the fullness of Christ's divinity.
	And he doesn't understand the.
	I don't think he's I'm not theologically literate enough to express what it is that I intuit about the Trinity that Owen isn't.
	I don't have the vocabulary for it, but I can see what he's reaching for and failing to grasp, and I recognize it in the belief that I have of the Trinity as this perfect conception of God that is both symmetrical and perfect, and it's an analogy for a bunch of different things, and it satisfies everything, and it's just a very beautiful thing that he's reaching for and not grasping.
	And so I wanted to, I figured there were lots of other people that were probably in the same position.
	I figured he was bringing a lot of impressionable minds along with him.
	So I thought that I would remind people that Owen Jones is not the last word on the structure, the structure of God.
	So, no, it wasn't my purpose in that interview to achieve anything, merely to draw attention to a friend who I thought was wandering off the reservation.
	Does that make sense?
	Yes.
	Well, I pray that fruit will come from that.
	And Owen can be aware of that.
	I do think it will, by the way, because I know that nothing was achieved immediately, but I also know that he did four three-hour live streams about it directly afterwards, that he has dug deeply into it since then, entrenched himself into it, but he's having conversations privately.
	I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that the long-term effect of that quote-unquote intervention will be that he sees the light about the faith.
	God would be something that you would not do that I would do that I think is going to have an impact.
	What do you think this is, Milo?
	This is an intervention.
	I'm joking.
	I'm joking.
	What?
	I'm joking.
	I'm joking.
	Yeah, probably.
	So I make jokes too, huh?
	Yeah, do you have to let people know that there are jokes that are before, during, and after?
	Have you experienced that sort of phenomenon?
	Yes.
	Yes, yeah.
	Well, yeah, yeah.
	You're supposed to laugh.
	Okay, last question before we get to the super chats is, so you have been a guest host on True News, where you can speak daily and comment on the news and other things, which is good.
	And I can't.
	I don't have any sexual interference of any job I've ever had.
	It's great.
	Okay.
	And you have a female co-host.
	Her name is Lauren.
	And I can't help.
	I look at the photos that you share of you and her.
	Are you putting the moves on her?
	Which I guess is a good sign.
	But I mean, people are talking, and I don't want to gossip.
	So I just wanted to ask you, I mean, is there something that you want to share?
	I don't want to gossip, but I will.
	Gossip is when you reveal private information about other partners.
	I'm not doing that.
	Well, okay, you can.
	That's your arbitrary definition of gossip for today.
	The answer is, I am a long way from being ready for a relationship with a woman.
	But I certainly enjoy my blossoming and close friendship with her.
	And occasionally I do get a little frisson of what life could be like for me if things pan out the way that I pray that they will.
	And I don't know.
	I mean, she's had a very circuitous route to God like I have.
	Who knows where we'll be in two years?
	And is she a catechumen in the Orthodox Church?
	Sigan?
	Is she a catechumen in the Orthodox Church?
	She is she's or is she baptized?
	No, she's definitely baptized.
	Right.
	I'm trying to remember exactly.
	She's Russian Orthodox, I think.
	Okay.
	Eastern, Eastern Orthodox.
	She says she doesn't like the Western ones, I think.
	She doesn't like the Greeks, she says, because they're communists.
	So she's Russian.
	I mean, of course, if we do get married, she'll have to convert.
	But we'll talk about the books when we come to it.
	She says, at the moment, she says she wants the crowns.
	She keeps sending me these photos of Orthodox weddings with crowns.
	And then I send her pictures of much more beautiful Catholic weddings.
	And she would never admit that she concedes that they're beautiful.
	Obviously, she'd have to convert, but the House of Witskopolis would last a thousand years.
	It would be 4,000, 10,000 years.
	It would be the world, it would be the greatest dynasty in the history of human civilization.
	But she'll have to convert.
	Right.
	So now I just want to get to a few of the super chats.
	I didn't announce I was accepting them because I didn't want a lot, but we got a few anyway.
	One guy asked me, why don't I want to debate Richard Spencer?
	That's not going to happen.
	But I don't know what actually happened to him.
	I think he got a leftist girlfriend and disappeared.
	The Russians stopped paying his bills or something.
	I don't know.
	Okay.
	White Boy Summer says, Milo, if Christianity, not race, is the key to civilization, why is Scandinavia?
	Oh man, why is Scandinavia not Christian?
	Highest quality of life in the world before the Arabs.
	I don't know if you want to answer this.
	I really don't care much for the race.
	I don't even understand.
	Hold on.
	Let me see if it's worth if Christianity is the key of civilization.
	Why is Scandinavia has a higher quality of life, even though they don't this person's just simply simply an imbecile incapable of critical thinking?
	Life measure constructed according to metrics that have global objectives and mainly to do with very materialistic things rather than any assessment or judgment of spiritual flourishing or religious participation.
	I think if it were more focused on that, Hungary would rank a lot higher.
	And in any case, this entire question is based on a misunderstanding that Christianity is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the flourishing of a society.
	You require other things too.
	It's just that Christianity is the belief system, the bedrock, that which on everything, that upon which everything good rests.
	And if you don't have it, I mean, okay, fine.
	Sweden looks like it's on the face of it, looks like it's quite prosperous.
	But do you want to live there?
	It is a barren, empty, joyless place full of people, full of unsaved souls.
	And the way that you know what a miserable, barren, depressing, pointless place it is, is it creates no art, no literature, nothing of any lasting cultural value.
	The most Sweden has ever had to offer is ABBA.
	I mean, the buildings are bland.
	It is a play, it is a literally, quite literally, a soulless place.
	And that goes really for all of Scandinavia.
	I mean, they've got money, but they've got sod all else.
	And so this quality of life thing is based very much according to earthly metrics, which ought to mean nothing to you.
	So it's an idiotic question from an imbecile incapable of critical thinking, but I did you the favor of answering it anyway because I'm a giver like that.
	Should we move on?
	If I can add that material success is not an indication of faith, it is not an indication of souls going to paradise.
	If that was the case, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos would be kings in heaven.
	And I don't know if that's going to happen.
	Yeah.
	And there are no Norwegians, Swedes, or Finns in heaven.
	So, unless they convert to Christianity and do good things with their lives.
	I can't take seriously any country that doesn't produce great art, music, literature, where the people don't dance.
	Have you been to Scandinavia?
	Have you seen the faces of people?
	I mean, like, oh my God, this is the most miserable.
	Do you know?
	It's one of those, well, it is cold, but it's one of those places where everyone says how happy they are all the time.
	Yeah, no, no, it's it.
	No, it's look, it's one of those places where everyone's constantly telling you how happy they are, but all you see on their faces is that they're not going to be able to do it.
	So why do they have to drink?
	They drink and drink and drink and get involved in weird things.
	Anyway, I don't want to attack people.
	But let me go on to the next one.
	I'm perfectly happy to attack people because I love them, but I hate the sins that they indulge in.
	I hate the bad things that they do, and I want them to get better.
	And I consider it attacking people gets my pride.
	Well, that's a you thing.
	So sounds like a person.
	Neo Khan Destroyer says, Milo, would you acknowledge that the Jews have an evolutionary survival strategy of subverting civilizations and see white men as their racial competitors?
	I will tell you that I have been a student of Michael Jones for some time, that I have read Kevin McDonald, that I am familiar with all the literature on this subject.
	I have a great deal of sympathy for some of these arguments, but a lot of it also seems deeply ridiculous to me.
	I draw a quite crisp, clean, red line between Orthodox Jews who actually practice their faith, who seem on the whole to be thoroughly decent people to me, and secular liberal Jews who, as far as I'm concerned, should all be hanging from City Hall.
	Okay, next one is Milo and Rouch.
	Oh, have you read Kevin McDonald's culture of critique?
	Milo just said that he did.
	If not, I would assume you're familiar with the thesis.
	Yes, we have read that book.
	Dylan Volk said, Milo, I'm kind of shocked that you are not ethnically Jewish given your verbal IQ.
	Yeah, so I always thought that I was.
	My mother is a pathological liar, and one of the reasons that I ended up gay was her not having a dad around and having an overbearing, crazy mother, which is one of the things that I've realized thanks to therapy.
	And when I started to realize that my mother lied to me about literally everything and that much of my childhood was a complete fabrication, I began to ask questions about whether I really was, in fact, everything she told me.
	Is my mother actually?
	And it turns out no.
	So in that interview that I did with Dave Rubin, I was saying what I believed to be true, which is that I was ethnically Jewish, but it turns out, in fact, that I'm not.
	Am I surprised that I'm not Jewish because I've a high verbal IQ?
	No.
	I mean, you seem to be suggesting that only Jews have it.
	Quite clearly, that's not the case.
	Okay.
	Nation of immigrants says, random question, Milo.
	Do you remember that song by Mary Mary called God in Me?
	Very Christian song.
	I feel like it would be right up your alley.
	Yeah.
	I like, yeah, so to speak.
	I like Shackles Praise You a lot.
	That's my favorite.
	But yeah, I don't think they're the only ones to record that song, are they?
	I think it's a standard.
	So I'm fond of it.
	Yeah.
	Dylan Volk says, I guess this is to you, Milo.
	I don't like your stance on Richard Spencer, but I think you did much more good than harm for the right-wing cause in 2015 and 2016.
	So don't be hard on yourself.
	Well, thanks.
	That sounds like somebody who likes him as much as they like me, but is nonetheless being really quite generous.
	And I appreciate that.
	And thank you.
	And last one from Victor Ziegler.
	He says, thank you both for having this conversation.
	You both are in the midst of transformation, like many of us.
	Hence, your thoughts will probably change almost every day.
	This is a process many of us know.
	I recognize that.
	But we don't have a camera on us.
	Be honest to yourself, but accept the process too.
	You'll look back later and don't recognize yourself now all the best.
	Well, I think the change after you change, you're further along in this.
	I want to hear you talk about this because, and maybe, I mean, I've got plenty to say on this subject, but people have heard enough from me.
	Talk to us a little bit about how what are the challenges of living in public, which you still, to some extent, do despite your new monastic habits.
	You ought to learn when I'm saying it with love.
	Americans have no idea.
	I'm not offended.
	I'm really.
	You shouldn't be because this is how I express it.
	You can judge it.
	This is how I show love, okay?
	I can laugh, though.
	It's okay.
	I mean, it's like a compliment, honestly.
	It is a compliment because it means that I've paid enough attention to you to get to know you a little bit and gently tease you as a way of reaching out.
	How do American men not get this?
	Okay, so what is the question?
	I want you to talk a little bit about how it feels and how it's awkward and the challenges of living in public and sort of chronicling your changes, your moves, your journey when you go through, and I think everybody who has a faith journey recognizes this, quite dramatic changes from week to week as you learn new things about the faith, as you realize that maybe something that you thought was right wasn't right.
	This is why I'm so terrified talking about Catholicism.
	I won't even like acknowledge basic facts about the religion because I just think I get everything wrong.
	I just like seize up and panic when people say, is that the Catholic way?
	I'm like, I don't know.
	How's it been for you living in public, giving testimony, as it were, mid-education?
	How has that been?
	So three things that are going on is one is the hate comments.
	They still continue.
	Just when I was doing the old game stuff, a lot of people, it's not just, it's from everyone now.
	I mean, people criticize, criticize.
	They hang on your every word.
	It's tiring.
	It's very tiring.
	It doesn't stop.
	And people on the left continue that.
	But the way I look at it is I deserve it.
	I deserve to be brought down because of all the things I did in the past.
	So I see this as a way to keep me humble.
	Oh, dude.
	And the reason is because that leads to the second one.
	When you are in public, when you are writing content or creating content that people get value from, they're going to compliment you.
	I'm sure you get it a lot.
	I get a lot too.
	Compliments I ignore.
	I ignore.
	In fact, if you were to give me a compliment right now, maybe I get my fist and hit me.
	Roosh, you're still a sinner.
	Don't forget all that crap that you did.
	Now you got me worried about you.
	And let me say why.
	Because pride is where all sins come forth.
	Pride.
	It starts with pride.
	I have to annihilate pride.
	You have to.
	That's what we're called to do as Orthodox Christians, as Christians in general.
	I mean, it's all over the Bible.
	We're taught to be humble, humble in spirit.
	I think I understand now.
	If you have thousands of people falling, let me finish.
	If you have thousands of people following you online, how can you be humble?
	How?
	How can you be humble?
	So I am aware of that.
	I try to only do just enough online where I can manage the pride that comes forth.
	It doesn't increase, but not more than that.
	That's why I don't do a live stream every day where everyone's asking me questions, asking me questions about this and that.
	Okay.
	And the third thing, and the third thing to answer the question is I am very careful to advise others on how to live outside of coming to God's church, coming to the Christian faith.
	Outside of that, I don't know how God is working through an individual like yourself.
	If you notice, I didn't give you specific advice other than the general things of, you know, just make sure you pray, you know.
	I don't know, but you are a master of the humble brag, though.
	I mean, you like, you know, you're not, I'm not doing it on purpose.
	I'm trying to be humble, though.
	I'm not because that's what we're told to do.
	That's what the church taught me.
	No, that's your interpretation.
	Amazingly prayerful life that you have.
	That's not the intention.
	I was not misinterpreting.
	I understand a bit better now why you're concerned about the way in which I present myself and what that might mean for my sins and for my habits.
	Because I think that you might be generalizing from the particular a little, if you don't mind me saying.
	I think I understand now a bit more how deeply how paralyzed with anxiety you are about pride, especially.
	And particularly, not that we shouldn't all work on it, but I think that it puts the fear of Christ, as they say, into you, you know, like on a daily basis.
	I think I get now why you are why some of the ways that I express myself online leave you squirming or feeling uncomfortable because if you were behaving that way, it would produce something in you that you couldn't tolerate or that you would that would make you feel but we're called as Christians to approach salvation with fear and trembling.
	This isn't just a concept.
	This is a daily fact.
	Am I falling?
	But pride, I think.
	You have to learn to laugh at yourself.
	Can I ask you a question?
	Are you trying to learn to laugh and laugh at yourself?
	Okay, that's fine.
	But can I ask you, are you trying every day with the power that God gives you and ask him to be a humble man, to be humble?
	Are you trying every day?
	Well, I don't know if I use the word humble, but I think about it every day because I'm very aware of different demands of living as a private, meek and Christian, humble man and doing good out in the world.
	And I think I started this conversation by saying that I am aware that those are intention.
	They exist intention, right?
	And therefore that there are times when I will do what I need to do to do good works and then come home and I can separate myself from my Telegram account.
	And I think that you replied earlier in the conversation that you can't always necessarily it's kind of like saying, you know, I can take a hit of coke.
	I can take a one hit of cocaine a night, but it's not hurting me.
	You know, I just hope for you that's not okay.
	So that's not maybe for you.
	Telegram social networking is like that.
	For you.
	For you.
	Okay.
	And I get that if you were expressing yourself like I express myself, it might leave you full of guilt and feeling in need of absolution.
	Not guilt, but I think Sounds more like a deadly sin?
	There is a big difference between the kind of pride that sends you hurtling into hell and being a smart ass on you think.
	It's more subtle than you think.
	Just be careful.
	Just be careful.
	That's all.
	I don't know if you know how I think about it.
	You didn't ask me.
	So I don't know that you know that.
	So I don't think here's the thing.
	Okay, if someone were to follow your work, the average person, they were watching you on True News and they're following your Telegram.
	Would they say that this man is struggling against the sin of pride?
	I mean, is that an interpretation that people would get from you?
	I don't want you to think it's only me kind of attacking you.
	I'm not, but I think pride is serious.
	It's serious.
	But if someone were listening to this conversation, is that an impression that they could come away with about you that you are pompous and humorous?
	Do you think I have come across as that way?
	I think that you have those tendencies.
	I don't think you come across, I wouldn't go as far as to use those words, but I think that you kind of adopt the role of a teacher very often with people that are.
	I'm just trying to be gentle.
	I don't want to insult.
	I don't want to offend or aggravate.
	That's what it is.
	Maybe your peers might find condescending, perhaps.
	Maybe that's one way to put it.
	But I know that you speak from a place of love, which is why I see through that.
	I can see that in you.
	I know that about you anyway, but I see that in you.
	But I can imagine somebody finding you very condescending and a little smoke and self-righteousness.
	No, okay, that's fine.
	You can interpret that.
	I don't think most people who follow my work, that's the last qualities that they get out of me.
	Maybe I'm not perfect.
	I know I'm not.
	Maybe I just bring it out in you because you've got to be able to do that.
	Well, you wouldn't let me talk a lot.
	You kept interrupting me.
	That made me brought a part out of me that was impatient.
	Maybe your frustration with my loquaciousness had brought out your inner school teacher.
	I don't mind you talking, but anyway.
	I am prepared to accept.
	That's fine.
	This is why I don't like Skype conversations because in person I don't do this.
	In person, I'm fine.
	In person, I'm perfect.
	But over the internet, I just like, this is horrible.
	I'm just going to talk.
	This is why I very rarely accept invitations to do conversations over the internet at all.
	Are you happy that you accepted this?
	What do you think of the two and a half hour conversation that we just had?
	I wish you lived next door.
	I'd love to do this more often and without the mediating layer of Skype and sometimes without an audience.
	So I'm very glad we did it.
	And I think people watching will be very happy to see that we can have good-natured and spirited debates and mutual even teasing, laughing at ourselves, Roosh.
	Learn to do it.
	I'm not hurting.
	You can hurt me.
	Start.
	We can start and finish, as perhaps we will now do from a place of deep mutual respect and love and good wishes, because that's all I feel towards you.
	And I'm always so happy when I finish a conversation with you that there is somebody whose journey echoes my own.
	You are one of the people that I do look toward when I am reaching out for others in a similar situation to me and looking for people who have successfully executed those changes.
	So I'm grateful for you.
	I'm grateful to you for being a pal.
	And I'm very happy we had a conversation.
	I'm very happy.
	Thank you for the kind words.
	I hope you got something from the Orthodox point of view.
	And I definitely learn more from your Catholic point of view.
	We're in different churches, but we both pick up and carry our cross.
	We both fight our past.
	So I hope we will be successful.
	And if you are ever thinking of converting to the Orthodox Church, just let me know.
	Sorry, I just had to.
	Come on now.
	Or if you don't want to have to wait around in purgatory, you can come to Rome.
	So, you know, as you wish, folks.
	But okay.
	Milo, God bless you.
	I will continue to keep an eye on you.
	Again, you can reach out.
	Thank you for taking the time to talk to me.
	And thank you to everyone who watched.
	Okay.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Okay, everybody.

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