I just finished a very good book which cites De Maistre a few times: Nihilism, written by Father Seraphim Rose in the early 1960's. Like De Maistre, Father Seraphim explains why we're living through such rampant evil and madness today. It was striking to me how accurately he predicted our current situation.
He describes four stages of Nihilism that developed and took hold in the West, not only among many intellectuals but also among the masses: Liberalism, Realism, Vitalism, and the Nihilism of Destruction. At heart they are all anti-God, anti-civilization and intent on destroying all of the "Old Order." He also describes the various "new ages" and "new men" that Nihilists promote, and how all of this ultimately leads to the Antichrist and Hell on earth.
Father Seraphim led a heroic life. He fell into falsehood as a young man and struggled with severe personal demons, but he returned to Christianity, and it appears that he overcame those demons. He also was impressively learned, and understood human nature. He wrote,
"It is impossible to extinguish the thirst for truth which God has implanted in man to lead them to Him, and which can only be satisfied in the acceptance of His Revelation."
Unfortunately, by denying God, perverting that thirst for truth and imposing new gods on us, Nihilism has led many of us down hellish paths.
Thank you William I was unaware of Fr. Rose, and though am no expert on De Maistre find something thrilling and also often amusing every time I return to him.
Yes, Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future was important in bringing me back to Christianity. It also gave me a new perspective on Buddhism and Hinduism. I’d lived around these religions in Singapore in my late teens and could never reconcile what I was taught at school (British) about these beliefs with what I saw being practiced on the ground. Fr Rose made that clear to me.
The mystic who Fr. Rose identifies as first promoting Hinduism as a New Age religion in the USA was sponsored by the political class (“Kentucky Colony”) in Chicago at their 1893 Columbian Exposition.
The Kentucky Colony ran boss politics in Chicago and helped organize a counterfeiting ring which supported Lincoln and our civil war. They really understood “soft power”. After the 1890s prostitution was their most profitable criminal endeavor and Christian organizations were mobilizing against it, ergo “New Age”.
If you’re interested my book on it is “Lincoln’s Counterfeiters”.
Interesting, thanks. Maybe you already knew this, but Father Rose spend a lot of time immersing himself in those Eastern religions, including learning associated languages. He saw a lot first-hand, like you did.
You're doing God's work, Frank, and you're in my prayers. Thanks for all of your work. And now you've added to my reading list, which never seems to get shorter!
De Maistre's Christianity is one that leads him to the exaltation of the public executioner. A perfectly ironic inversion - the veneration not of the figure on the Cross, but of his killers.
Interesting. I should read De Maistre and see. Father Rose agreed with some of De Maistre's criticisms of the French Revolution, and gave him credit for warning about nihilistic thinkers and doers, but disagreed with what he called some of De Maistre's "more positive ideas."
It makes me wonder how far back nefarious schemers, like those responsible for the continued erosion of Europe go. It would certainly appear centuries, if not millennia. There's nothing new under the sun.
Anyone that sells a reality absent of God is a charlatan. It's all a fantasy that vanishes under even the most basic of scrutiny. That's why the only response you'll get from the people who've adopted this "new normal" is name calling. They can't defend their position, because they've not been told anything other than people who disagree are the enemy.
It's been such a relief that over the last couple of years I've seen more and more people snapping out of the coma they were in and realising that their fantasy world is now a hellscape. I think the first step to ridding ourselves of these parasites is to identify them. Unfortunately for Brits our overlords believe that pointing out the issue, or indeed those responsible, is the worst crime imaginable.
What an intelligent and insightful remark. Your experience related here shows how we recognise reality and the disaster that resulted from its denial, combined with a note on how many are coming to the same conclusion according to the evidence presented by “progress”. Well said. Thank you.
It’s the same condition on repeat. Milton’s Satan argues from a point of severe pride and wounded ego that he should have the right to his own destiny and cracks the shits when he’s told ‘sit down you’re not in control’
It’s Ahab and his megalomaniacal hunt for the deity in the whale - that cursed whale who is God almighty and the severity of his punishment. Needless to say, Ahab and the members of the pequod all go to their death except one…
As a high school student in Ontario, Canada I remember learning about the enlightenment, humanism, Voltaire and Rousseau, the storming of the Bastille, the revolution (also about the reign of terror, so I guess it was a "balanced" history), and liberty, equality, fraternity. Can't for the life of me remember ever hearing mention of Joseph de Maistre. Weird, huh?
A writer who rejects the basic premise that beliefs should be justified by reason is, in a sense, removing himself from the dialogue. If De Maistre's work is noteworthy at all, it is for the oddly perverse relish with which he defends brute violence in the service of inherited privilege - a contribution somewhat embarrassing even to opponents of liberalism.
Thank you for the teaser and another book suggestion. We are excited to read Joseph de Maistre. We can hear your voice in the things you write. We miss your Frankly episodes.
Thank you Linda! Am working on producing some more talking head stuff for LSN right now. My head talking, that is. Hopefully shall return with some more of that soon!
1:36 PM here on the East Coast of America. GMT -6 I will check back in around 1:44. Frank leads us down unknown paths, dark wormholes, philosophically lost continents.
Man cannot transcend his limits by his own means. Progress is a fiction in the sense of inexorable moral uplift. Man’s nature does not change, and cannot be changed by believing it can be. To make all men enemies of civilisation in the cause of Liberty is to mobilise all humanity in a declaration of war - against God, and the Common Good which flows from the recognition of His sovereignty.
This means that all attempts to liberate Man by appeals to human progress are wicked, and will produce exactly the sort of universal damage we witness today in every dimension of our lives.
The disaster we call the new normal has been permitted by the supply of the false beliefs of the revolution as reality to the masses.
When you pass my freighter on the dark seas, Dear Wrighter, as two ships in the night- send up a flare. As so shall I.
Mr. Wright, Thank you for your fight against the Revolution. You mentioned “This means that for De Maistre that each Nation requires a specific political constitution according to its nature - and that no one form of government is universally valid” -
We have seen a great loss of the organic nature of each country, indeed even each county or village, which used to offer goods and culture unique to that area.
Dear Annemarie thank you for the recommendations and do please remind me of these when I might have time to read for pleasure. At the moment I cannot even devote much time to menes which usually only have several words in them 😂
In his great book "The Controversy of Zion," British journalist Douglas Reed (1895-1976) explained that the revolutionary movement that started during the Enlightenment and continued via the French Revolution and the Illuminati had as its aim the total eradication of Christianity but that it was gradually taken over during the 19th century on into the start of the 20th by the Zionist Jews. Zionism became a major force driving the world into World Wars I and II, leading to the creation of Israel as a revolutionary genocidal state by 1947-1948. While the Jews did not invent finance capitalism, they were clever enough to profit by it to the point where they are now the controlling force in the economies of the Western world. After they helped engineer the assassination of Kennedy, they were able to coerce and buy their way into control of the US government by the end of the 20th century. After this they engineered, along with US traitors, the 9/11 false flag attack on the World Trade Centers and Pentagon, followed by the program of endless war in taking over the oil and gas resources of the Middle East, all culminating in today's Trump-Netanyahu war against Iran, on their way to a nuclear showdown with Russia and China. The aim is final global conquest and depopulation except for a rump of goyim cattle owned by the cultists of the Jewish tribal god. It's up to each and every one of us to resist.
Attacking the French Revolutionaries or Bolsheviks is one thing, but the final boss is taking on the American Revolutionaries, who, as properly identified by Jefferson Davis, were the same exact same psychotic people who caused all three "English Civil Wars" (English Civil War, American Revolution, American Civil War).
We just celebrated our 250th Independence Day in America. I did a deep dive into the extensive roots of Freemasonry in the founding of our country. It was a real eye opener seeing many of our presidents wearing their Freemasonic aprons and watching YouTube videos exploring Freemasonry elements woven into architecture and many of our government buildings.
So when our Catholic Mass concluded a patriotic song I made a slight change from:
“and crown our good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea”. to:
“and crown our good with Christ the King from sea to shining sea”
Hopefully we will all finally become citizens of Heaven. But for now, saying some prayers of reparation for the defacing of a Christ the King billboard in Hollywood California, imagine that!
One question has stayed with me. You argue that the Enlightenment and the French Revolution gave rise to the pseudo-reality we now inhabit—a worldview that elevates revolutionary values while presenting them as self-evident truths.
How far does that critique extend to science and technology?
Practical invention, mathematics, engineering, and medicine all predate the Enlightenment. I assume you wouldn't regard science itself as the Enlightenment's creation. At the same time, the modern scientific and technological order seems inseparable from Enlightenment assumptions about reason, progress, and human mastery over nature.
So I'm curious whether you distinguish between science as the discovery of reality and the Enlightenment's ideological use of science—scientism. Is technology itself largely neutral, or do you see some of its modern forms as expressions of the revolutionary project?
I'm a novice oblate at a Benedictine abbey in Massachusetts, where this question surfaces in a very practical way. The monks debate how much modern technology belongs within monastic life. Smartphones, for example, are useful for coordinating work and serving the outside world—but they also introduce distraction, fragmentation, and a constant pull away from 'ora et labora'. If the Devil were designing a device to scatter attention, the smartphone would be a strong candidate.
The abbey is a fascinating controlled experiment: how much of modern technology is simply a tool, and how much carries with it the revolutionary assumptions of the modern world?
I'd be interested in how you think about that distinction.
I don't think so - I am not sure as I have two editions and can't remember what is in either of them. You can read "The executioner" here for free in the meantime
I just finished a very good book which cites De Maistre a few times: Nihilism, written by Father Seraphim Rose in the early 1960's. Like De Maistre, Father Seraphim explains why we're living through such rampant evil and madness today. It was striking to me how accurately he predicted our current situation.
He describes four stages of Nihilism that developed and took hold in the West, not only among many intellectuals but also among the masses: Liberalism, Realism, Vitalism, and the Nihilism of Destruction. At heart they are all anti-God, anti-civilization and intent on destroying all of the "Old Order." He also describes the various "new ages" and "new men" that Nihilists promote, and how all of this ultimately leads to the Antichrist and Hell on earth.
Father Seraphim led a heroic life. He fell into falsehood as a young man and struggled with severe personal demons, but he returned to Christianity, and it appears that he overcame those demons. He also was impressively learned, and understood human nature. He wrote,
"It is impossible to extinguish the thirst for truth which God has implanted in man to lead them to Him, and which can only be satisfied in the acceptance of His Revelation."
Unfortunately, by denying God, perverting that thirst for truth and imposing new gods on us, Nihilism has led many of us down hellish paths.
Now I need to read De Maistre!
Thank you William I was unaware of Fr. Rose, and though am no expert on De Maistre find something thrilling and also often amusing every time I return to him.
Rose is unreal - also recommend; Orthodoxy and the religion of the future by Rose
Predicts with absolute precision what we are seeing today (nature worship, UFO’s etc)
Sounds like a great find. Thank you!
Yes, Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future was important in bringing me back to Christianity. It also gave me a new perspective on Buddhism and Hinduism. I’d lived around these religions in Singapore in my late teens and could never reconcile what I was taught at school (British) about these beliefs with what I saw being practiced on the ground. Fr Rose made that clear to me.
The mystic who Fr. Rose identifies as first promoting Hinduism as a New Age religion in the USA was sponsored by the political class (“Kentucky Colony”) in Chicago at their 1893 Columbian Exposition.
The Kentucky Colony ran boss politics in Chicago and helped organize a counterfeiting ring which supported Lincoln and our civil war. They really understood “soft power”. After the 1890s prostitution was their most profitable criminal endeavor and Christian organizations were mobilizing against it, ergo “New Age”.
If you’re interested my book on it is “Lincoln’s Counterfeiters”.
Interesting, thanks. Maybe you already knew this, but Father Rose spend a lot of time immersing himself in those Eastern religions, including learning associated languages. He saw a lot first-hand, like you did.
I think that’s why what he said spoke so strongly to me.
You're doing God's work, Frank, and you're in my prayers. Thanks for all of your work. And now you've added to my reading list, which never seems to get shorter!
Might have to look for that one.
It's very worthwhile, and it's a short book. 99 pages if I remember correctly. It's written in a nice, clear style, and I learned a lot from it.
De Maistre's Christianity is one that leads him to the exaltation of the public executioner. A perfectly ironic inversion - the veneration not of the figure on the Cross, but of his killers.
Interesting. I should read De Maistre and see. Father Rose agreed with some of De Maistre's criticisms of the French Revolution, and gave him credit for warning about nihilistic thinkers and doers, but disagreed with what he called some of De Maistre's "more positive ideas."
It makes me wonder how far back nefarious schemers, like those responsible for the continued erosion of Europe go. It would certainly appear centuries, if not millennia. There's nothing new under the sun.
Anyone that sells a reality absent of God is a charlatan. It's all a fantasy that vanishes under even the most basic of scrutiny. That's why the only response you'll get from the people who've adopted this "new normal" is name calling. They can't defend their position, because they've not been told anything other than people who disagree are the enemy.
It's been such a relief that over the last couple of years I've seen more and more people snapping out of the coma they were in and realising that their fantasy world is now a hellscape. I think the first step to ridding ourselves of these parasites is to identify them. Unfortunately for Brits our overlords believe that pointing out the issue, or indeed those responsible, is the worst crime imaginable.
What an intelligent and insightful remark. Your experience related here shows how we recognise reality and the disaster that resulted from its denial, combined with a note on how many are coming to the same conclusion according to the evidence presented by “progress”. Well said. Thank you.
It’s the same condition on repeat. Milton’s Satan argues from a point of severe pride and wounded ego that he should have the right to his own destiny and cracks the shits when he’s told ‘sit down you’re not in control’
It’s Ahab and his megalomaniacal hunt for the deity in the whale - that cursed whale who is God almighty and the severity of his punishment. Needless to say, Ahab and the members of the pequod all go to their death except one…
As a high school student in Ontario, Canada I remember learning about the enlightenment, humanism, Voltaire and Rousseau, the storming of the Bastille, the revolution (also about the reign of terror, so I guess it was a "balanced" history), and liberty, equality, fraternity. Can't for the life of me remember ever hearing mention of Joseph de Maistre. Weird, huh?
See also the drownings at Nantes.
Happy Bastille day! The slaves are free!
Hmm, I did not mean exactly like that. Slaves are still very expensive.
A writer who rejects the basic premise that beliefs should be justified by reason is, in a sense, removing himself from the dialogue. If De Maistre's work is noteworthy at all, it is for the oddly perverse relish with which he defends brute violence in the service of inherited privilege - a contribution somewhat embarrassing even to opponents of liberalism.
Thank you Frank.
Thank you very very much.
Blessings from Aus.
Please start a podcast and voice any future audiobooks!!
That is a very encouraging remark David and I would love to devote more time to talking about books. Thank you.
Love this post, Frank - sort of reminds me of my own journey from the wilderness of humanist indoctrination into the light of REALITY!
Thank you!
Thank you for the teaser and another book suggestion. We are excited to read Joseph de Maistre. We can hear your voice in the things you write. We miss your Frankly episodes.
Thank you Linda! Am working on producing some more talking head stuff for LSN right now. My head talking, that is. Hopefully shall return with some more of that soon!
We are really looking forward to that! Image big smiles in my home today! You are a treasure! ❤️
1:36 PM here on the East Coast of America. GMT -6 I will check back in around 1:44. Frank leads us down unknown paths, dark wormholes, philosophically lost continents.
I do like the 'Third Verse'
Man cannot transcend his limits by his own means. Progress is a fiction in the sense of inexorable moral uplift. Man’s nature does not change, and cannot be changed by believing it can be. To make all men enemies of civilisation in the cause of Liberty is to mobilise all humanity in a declaration of war - against God, and the Common Good which flows from the recognition of His sovereignty.
This means that all attempts to liberate Man by appeals to human progress are wicked, and will produce exactly the sort of universal damage we witness today in every dimension of our lives.
The disaster we call the new normal has been permitted by the supply of the false beliefs of the revolution as reality to the masses.
When you pass my freighter on the dark seas, Dear Wrighter, as two ships in the night- send up a flare. As so shall I.
Mr. Wright, Thank you for your fight against the Revolution. You mentioned “This means that for De Maistre that each Nation requires a specific political constitution according to its nature - and that no one form of government is universally valid” -
We have seen a great loss of the organic nature of each country, indeed even each county or village, which used to offer goods and culture unique to that area.
I also recommend two books: Revolution and Counter Revolution by Plinio Correa de Oliveira. A free e-book is found here: https://store.tfp.org/revolution-and-counter-revolution-ebook/
and Return to Order by John Horvat II. Several mediums are available, this one being a free Kindle version: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/xac8b9ub5e.
God bless
Dear Annemarie thank you for the recommendations and do please remind me of these when I might have time to read for pleasure. At the moment I cannot even devote much time to menes which usually only have several words in them 😂
The excerpt from Study on Sovereignty jumped right out at me, as I'm currently reading Plato's Republic.
In his great book "The Controversy of Zion," British journalist Douglas Reed (1895-1976) explained that the revolutionary movement that started during the Enlightenment and continued via the French Revolution and the Illuminati had as its aim the total eradication of Christianity but that it was gradually taken over during the 19th century on into the start of the 20th by the Zionist Jews. Zionism became a major force driving the world into World Wars I and II, leading to the creation of Israel as a revolutionary genocidal state by 1947-1948. While the Jews did not invent finance capitalism, they were clever enough to profit by it to the point where they are now the controlling force in the economies of the Western world. After they helped engineer the assassination of Kennedy, they were able to coerce and buy their way into control of the US government by the end of the 20th century. After this they engineered, along with US traitors, the 9/11 false flag attack on the World Trade Centers and Pentagon, followed by the program of endless war in taking over the oil and gas resources of the Middle East, all culminating in today's Trump-Netanyahu war against Iran, on their way to a nuclear showdown with Russia and China. The aim is final global conquest and depopulation except for a rump of goyim cattle owned by the cultists of the Jewish tribal god. It's up to each and every one of us to resist.
"...a superior intelligence..."
There's an app for that.
lol (NOTLOL)
Thanks for my ….not so early morning smile.
Attacking the French Revolutionaries or Bolsheviks is one thing, but the final boss is taking on the American Revolutionaries, who, as properly identified by Jefferson Davis, were the same exact same psychotic people who caused all three "English Civil Wars" (English Civil War, American Revolution, American Civil War).
July 15, 2026
We just celebrated our 250th Independence Day in America. I did a deep dive into the extensive roots of Freemasonry in the founding of our country. It was a real eye opener seeing many of our presidents wearing their Freemasonic aprons and watching YouTube videos exploring Freemasonry elements woven into architecture and many of our government buildings.
So when our Catholic Mass concluded a patriotic song I made a slight change from:
“and crown our good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea”. to:
“and crown our good with Christ the King from sea to shining sea”
Hopefully we will all finally become citizens of Heaven. But for now, saying some prayers of reparation for the defacing of a Christ the King billboard in Hollywood California, imagine that!
Hi Frank,
I always find your essays thought-provoking.
One question has stayed with me. You argue that the Enlightenment and the French Revolution gave rise to the pseudo-reality we now inhabit—a worldview that elevates revolutionary values while presenting them as self-evident truths.
How far does that critique extend to science and technology?
Practical invention, mathematics, engineering, and medicine all predate the Enlightenment. I assume you wouldn't regard science itself as the Enlightenment's creation. At the same time, the modern scientific and technological order seems inseparable from Enlightenment assumptions about reason, progress, and human mastery over nature.
So I'm curious whether you distinguish between science as the discovery of reality and the Enlightenment's ideological use of science—scientism. Is technology itself largely neutral, or do you see some of its modern forms as expressions of the revolutionary project?
I'm a novice oblate at a Benedictine abbey in Massachusetts, where this question surfaces in a very practical way. The monks debate how much modern technology belongs within monastic life. Smartphones, for example, are useful for coordinating work and serving the outside world—but they also introduce distraction, fragmentation, and a constant pull away from 'ora et labora'. If the Devil were designing a device to scatter attention, the smartphone would be a strong candidate.
The abbey is a fascinating controlled experiment: how much of modern technology is simply a tool, and how much carries with it the revolutionary assumptions of the modern world?
I'd be interested in how you think about that distinction.
Does the edition you picture in the article contain the essay The Executioner?
I don't think so - I am not sure as I have two editions and can't remember what is in either of them. You can read "The executioner" here for free in the meantime
https://traditionalistquotes.blogspot.com/2013/09/joseph-de-maistre-executioner.html
Thankyou.