The Postil Magazine – Uniting Wisdom With The Soul

The Legutko Affair

Ryszard Legutko is one of the leading philosophers of Poland, and has long been on the faculty of Jagiellonian University in Kraków, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious center of higher learning. He was elected to the Polish Senate, and served as the Education Minister and then as Secretary of State. He is currently a … Read More

Breaking The Monopoly Of The Mainstream: An Interview With Ryszard Legutko

It is a high honor indeed to publiush the first English version of this interview with Professor Ryszard Legutko, which he gave to the Polish newspaper, Dziennik Polski, on Friday, July 30, 2021. Professor Legutko, of course, needs no introduction, being the author of the wekk-known works, the Demon in Democracy and The Cunning of … Read More

From The Gulag To Freedom

This month, we are so very delighted to present this unique interview with Nikita Krivoshein who was born in Paris, in 1934. His family of Russian noblemen, fled communism during the First Wave of emigrants. His grandfather, Alexander Vasilievich Krivoshein, was Minister of Agriculture in the Russian Empire and Prime Minister of the Government of … Read More

Roman Joy

We will never tire of Rome. There is an ever-present joy in descending from the Quirinale, where the lies the mummy, Draghi, and entering the Field of Mars. A first love glows every time. You spend your day crisscrossing this heavy city, crushed under the domes, sedimented under the layers of time and ruins. Rome … Read More

Those Pesky Poles! Forever Defying Totalitarianism

1. Polish Peskiness Brought Down the Soviet Union, While The Soviets Transferred The Baton Of Imbecility To Educated Westerners Is it the Bigos (hunter’s stew), is it the Zurek, is it the Blintzes, is it the Pierogi, or the Krupnik which makes the Poles so damned obstinate, so pesky? Or is that a people, whose … Read More

My Letter To Pope Francis

At the end of 2013, I wrote to Pope Francis suggesting we have a conversation about the fundamental questions facing Christians in the modern world. It was a naïve proposal, but it never reached him. The main element and purpose of this article is actually the letter reproduced below, which I wrote to Pope Francis … Read More

And The West Invented Buddhism

In 2012, a group of English-speaking scholars published a book with the austere title, How Theravada is Theravada? Exploring Buddhist Identities. This was the first time that an epistemology of Buddhism was presented that was so historicized and documented, and remarkably coherent. In 2014, the French orientalist, Gregory Kourilsky, wrote a review of this work … Read More

Traditionis Custodes: Mistep Into Incomprehension

Incomprehension is what predominates when reading the motu proprio, Traditionis Custodes and the accompanying letter to the bishops. One does not understand the justification or the necessity of such a document, and all the more so because the Pope has legislated on the basis of an incomplete argument and false information. The Incomplete Argument To … Read More

The Dialectic Of Imbecility And The Western Elites’ Will To Power – Part 2

Imbecility Leads The (Once) Free World In spite of the United States being closer to a civil war more than any time since 1865, there is one statement that I think one can safely say would find few, if any, dissenters on either side of the divide: at least one of the two Presidents who … Read More

Traditionis Custodes: To Guard And Defend Tradition?

Did you notice that the Holy Father affirmed extra ecclesiam nulla salus at the same time he set about limiting and ultimately extinguishing the Traditional Latin Mass? In his Letter to the Bishops accompanying Traditionis Custodes, Pope Francis wrote, “to remain in the Church not only ‘with the body’ but also ‘with the heart’ is … Read More

Igor Sikorsky: A Winged Legacy

It has been said that Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky achieved distinction in three separate careers, all in the field of aviation. He created the world’s first multi-engine airplane in Russia in 1913; he launched a second career in the United States and became famous for his Flying Clippers; lastly, he conceived and developed the world’s first … Read More

High Taxes And Unemployment

According to a recent study authorized by the National Association of Manufacturers, President Biden’s proposed tax hikes will indeed cause unemployment. In the view of NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons, it is possible to quantify the damage to the economy: “one million lost jobs in the first two years.” The research was undertaken by … Read More

A Dollop Of Delights

PREFACE Sorry, fans, I’m being more taciturn and less loquacious this month. But every word counts and every poem and joke is paradigm shifting. Take the Andy Warhol joke below: it will surely make my many feminist readers question themselves, just as they question the patriarchy, male gaze n’ stuff, during most of their waking … Read More

Josef Pieper On Prudence: The Mother Of Virtues

German Catholic philosopher, Josef Pieper, had very much to say about the theological and moral virtues in a number of his writings. Of interest here are chapters in his 1964 collection of previously written studies, The Four Cardinal Virtues, wherein he organizes his material according to the schema of Saint Thomas Aquinas, viz., prudence, justice, … Read More

The Rise And Fall Of Cartesianism

The one time I met Friedrich Hayek was at a lecture he gave at Stanford University in1980. Hayek, as I remember, kept complaining about the dangers of Cartesianism. Until recently, I never understood why. After all, Rene Descartes was one of the greatest and most influential thinkers of all time. In addition to founding analytic … Read More

Mary And The Hebraic Tradition

The history of Israel is so rich in meaning that it is the key to understanding the origin of the world (Gen 2-3). God, whom we can call with the great Hebrew tradition “Elohim,” or “Adonai,” took Adam and put him in the garden. Elohim took Israel from the house of slavery and put it … Read More

Ancestors Of ‘Issa – Meaning Of History, Meaning Of Suffering

The Koran speaks of Moses (Moussa), and the Bible specifies his role in history. When Israel escaped from Pharaoh and left Egypt, God revealed Himself as the One who sees misery and who descends to deliver from the oppressor (Exodus 3, 7-8). He also summons to leave the idols produced by man and to leave … Read More

Wearing The Full Armor Of God

When Ron DeSantis, Florida’s conservative Republican governor and likely presidential candidate, said recently we need to put on the “full armor of God,” the media looked at him like he was crazy—or from another planet. But his supporters gave him a standing ovation. As secular liberals, most of the press have no familiarity with the … Read More

What To Do About China

If the release of the deadly COVID-19 virus from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in late 2019 was intentional and sanctioned by the People’s Liberation Army germ warfare unit led by General Chen Wei, its top biological warfare expert, it was an act of belligerent aggression—on America and the rest of the world. The proper … Read More

The Aztec In Their History

I have long admired Hernán Cortes, conqueror of the Aztecs. He may not have gotten to Heaven, though who can say, but he exemplified the spirit of the West, that which from Charlemagne to Frémont drove the world forward. Fifth Sun would have us stop and shed a tear for the Aztecs, considering them on … Read More

The Fear Of Fear

It is with the sincerest gratitude to Monsieur Jean-Noel Freund, the son of Julien Freund (1921-1993), that we bring this first translation into English of “La peur de la peur,” an important essay on fear, published in Actions et recherches sociales. Revue interuniversitaire de sciences et pratiques sociales. Politique et insécurités. Le phénomène, ses consequences … Read More

The Decay Of America: A Conversation With Paul Gottfried

It truly is a great delight and honor to bring to our readers this insightful and wise conversation with Paul Gottfried, one of the foremost thinkers in America today. He is the author of well over fifteen books and innumerable articles, all of which carry the mark of his great scholarship that is the perfect … Read More

Towards Totalitarianism: An Interview With Rod Dreher And Mathieu Bock-Côté

Through the generosity of La Nef, we are greatly privileged to present this interview with Rod Dreher, the well-known Orthodox journalist and writer, who is the author, most recently, of Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents – and Mathieu Bock-Côté, the Quebec sociologist, thinker and writer, whose new book is La Révolution … Read More

The Dialectic Of Imbecility And The Western Elites’ Will To Power – Part 1

This collection of essays started life as the introduction to another essay about the Polish intellectual resistance to totalitarianism, in general, and two excellent recent books by Polish philosophers, one, The Cunning of Freedom: Saving the Self in an Age of False Idols by Ryzard Legutko and the other, Homo Americanus: The Rise of Totalitarian … Read More

What A Piece Of Work Is A Man: Dostoevsky And Humanity

Your meeting with a book that became one of the most important books in life remains forever in your memory. And the writer who created that book becomes close to you, like family. Of course, this is not immediately understood, but only after the years go by. You return again and again in your memory … Read More

Europe… Trampled To Death

More than forty years ago, historian Pierre Chaunu published a collection of articles written between 1983 and 1985, which recast a history of history. Half of it was religious history: “At the religious heart of Europe” is a book which first of all recalls the essentials – that there can be no theology of final … Read More

Sanskrit – Language Of The Buddhists?

India is a recent state created by the conjunction of three historical sequences: The old civilization dominated by the Sanskrit language; the Mughal civilization where Persian and Muslim components were predominant; and mostly the British colonization that opened India to the contemporary world. In the 18th and especially the 19th centuries, the Sanskrit language discovered … Read More

Saint Aebba Of Coldingham

It is regrettable that only a few facts about the life of this great abbess who was venerated all over Scotland and northern England and esteemed by the Venerable Bede are known. Now that the interest in this holy woman is increasing among the Orthodox, let us recall her biography. St. Aebba, also known as … Read More

Hellenism: Past, Present, Future

When we commemorate the Metropolitan in the Liturgy, we do so out of submission to his authority. The commemoration of the local Metropolitan does not necessarily signify our prayers for his health or longevity, rather it is a token of our canonical subordination as a parish and Eucharistic community to a certain bishop. Greek Orthodox … Read More

St. Joan Of Arc And The Feminists

One can only be surprised, at first glance, that feminists have not adopted the figure of Joan of Arc as the standard of their cause. A strong woman if there ever was one, despite her five feet height; the great general of the armies of Charles VII, with a frank tongue, especially in front of … Read More

The Bolshevik Revolution: A Pile Of Rubbish

This is an excerpt from Mikhail Agursky’s book-length study of the impact of the Bolsheviks on Russia. The book, entitled, Идеология национал большевизма (The Ideology of National Bolshevism), and published in 1980, in Paris, remains untranslated. From the point of view of common sense, everything in Russia after the Bolshevik revolution was as bad as … Read More

Limericks A Tad Quitain

Me, I’ve been a poet since the age of six or seven, when my mentor was the very great Spike Milligan. The following was my favourite “Uncle Spike,” and I somewhat fear, dear readers, that it isn’t especially woke:“A thousand hairy savages/ Sitting down to lunch/ Gobble-gobble, glub-glub/ Munch, munch, munch!” Not only did I … Read More

A Euro-Chinese Redux: The Curious Case Of Viktor Orbán

Brussels can be a strange place. Where one day you see a Merovingian Christmas market, another day you’ll find farmers driving tractors to block a busy intersection in protest against some legislation. Kurdish and Uyghur groups take turns demonstrating against visiting dignitaries from their respective imperial capitals. And yet, while no mainstream eurocrat hesitates to … Read More

Curing The Real Disease

It was in the years following the Civil War, America was hard on the path to “becoming great.” The industrial revolution had moved into full swing, railroads criss-crossed the country, immigration was gaining speed, and wealth was accumulating at a rate never seen before. We were slowly moving from our original agrarian economy towards life … Read More

Saint Bernard, On Freedom

Over eight centuries before Franklin D. Roosevelt articulated his “Four Freedoms,” a shorter and much better list of freedoms was elucidated by the young abbot of the new monastery of Clairvaux, one Bernard by name. In his work, On Grace and Free Choice (De Gratia et libero arbitrio), Saint Bernard (1090-1153) distinguished three kinds of … Read More

Restoring Balance: A Dominican Call To Arms

The Dominican Republic (DR) overcame a grave political-institutional crisis in 2020 – the incumbent president attempted to use undemocratic and fraudulent means to stay in power. Luckily, our polity graduated toward consolidated democracy and witnessed the peaceful transfer of power from that party to the current one. As political theory predicts, internal resistance from diverse … Read More

On Homer’s Iliad: Why Eris, Mimesis and Menis Matter More Than Ever

The excerpt that follows is from Confessions of Odysseus by the late Nalin Ranasinghe (1960-2020), who was professor of philosophy at Assumption College. This book is a unique reading of Homer in that it seeks to examine modernity through the Iliad and the Odyssey. As Predrag Cicovacki in his indispensable preface to the book, elucidates: … Read More

Carl Schmitt: Democracy In Crisis

Ah, Carl Schmitt, Carl Schmitt! No man like him exists today. Political philosophy in our time is, and for many decades past has been, largely the domain of intellectual pygmies and outright morons; the age of gold has degenerated into the age of brass, or of plastic with yellow paint. Schmitt is dead, but his … Read More

A Pastor’s Letter From Prison

Canada has been enforcing draconian lockdown measures against its own citizens, the severest of such measures are in the province of Alberta. A few brave Christians have been defying this tyranny – and paying for their “disobedience” with prison-time. Reverend Tim Stephens is currently in prison for defying the provincial government’s health regulations. Please pray … Read More

Bearing Shame

In 401 AD, twenty-nine Saxon “slaves,” strangled each other to death with their bare hands in their prison cells. They chose this death rather than being forced to fight one another in Rome’s arena. Better death than shame. Their “owner,” the Senator Symmachus (famously known as the “Last Pagan”), wrote of them that they were … Read More

Resist Wokism

Until recently, the word “woke” seemed to belong to vocabulary reserved for American campuses, and really only for the most radical among them. It referred to a particularly active fringe of American students believing themselves to be in a crusade for social justice and more particularly concerned with questions of “race” and “gender,” and who … Read More

An American Journal Of Days, Or The Conservative Washout

Introduction With some temporal distance behind us, and much soul searching, let us examine the coup which deposed Donald John Trump in the winter of 2020-2021 and installed Kamala Devi Harris and her sidekick, Joseph Robinette Biden, as the highest Executive officers of these United States. Herein, we’ve a day’s work, for some things were … Read More

Between Chaos And Decline: Rebirth

Towards Political Optimism It is common, when one is a young man entering a career, especially in literary or artistic studies, to be charmed by despair and to have a taste for ruins. The image of the poètes maudits is cultivated. We let ourselves be seduced by the disillusioned dandyism. We succumb to the temptation … Read More

Fascism: History And Chimeric Reality

Everything about fascism and its opposite has been said for almost a century. Innumerable are the authors of studies, articles, books and documentaries, more or less serious or fanciful, devoted to the history of the fascist phenomenon and its historical significance. Singularly fewer, on the other hand, are interested in the controversies over the meaning … Read More

Marxism, Revisionism, Liberalism: A Conversation With Piotr Nowak

We are so very delighted to presented this interesting and wide-ranging conversation with Piotr Nowak, who is Professor of Philosophy at the Bialystok University in Poland. He translated works of such writers as Hannah Arendt, W. H. Auden, Leo Strauss, Alexander Kojève, Allan Bloom, Boris Pasternak, Vasyli Rozanov, Andrei Bely, Pavel Florensky, Jacob Taubes, Semyon … Read More

Raising Questions

It probably won’t be as spunky as a putative Block vs Black debate, but here’s the next best thing. A tad riled by Professor Block’s article, “Incitement,” Dr. Mark Stocker penned a counter-statement, brimming with provocative questions. The venerable anarcho-capitalist (80) has thus been challenged by a young whippersnapper of an anarcho-art historian (65) who, … Read More

Secularism or Islamism: Two Nightmares?

The idea of an ideal world comes from the Christian idea of the salvation of the world. Al-Massih (the Messiah) has achieved the salvation of the world by his victory over Shaytan (Satan), obtained at the time of the Passion. This salvation has unhappily been rejected by one part of humanity, so in order that … Read More

Mary, Queen Of Families: The Forgotten Apparition Of Le Ghiaie di Bonate

Last summer, during a brief break in the pandemic, I was sitting at a family dinner, close to my aunt, Emma (90 years old), and casually the conversation turned to St. John Paull II and the Holy Virgin’s apparition at Fatima. All of a sudden my aunt Emma said, “Well, I was present at a … Read More

Freemasonry In France: A Brief History

Masonic history has been (and still is) the area of predilection for inducements or hasty generalizations, made more hazardous by passionate allegiances, including the eternal conspiracy theory. Conspirators are definitely everywhere. The alleged Freemason plot comes to us from Abbé Barruel whose work consisted of asserting (more than truly establishing) that the French Revolution had … Read More

Which “Ecological Conversion?”

Ecological frenzy feeds on the fear of collapse and gives rise to many very different attitudes. Between the excesses, the integral ecology of the Church traces a path respectful of all balances which only achieves its full coherence in a process of conversion. To make the libertine of thought feel how dizzying their emptiness is … Read More

Medieval Philosophy Redefined As The Latin Age

Through the kind courtesy of St. Augustine’s Press, we here offer to our readers an excerpt from Medieval Philosophy Redefined As The Latin Age, a newly published work of the late John Deely, one of the foremost semioticians of our time. He taught at the University of Saint Thomas and Saint Vincent College and Seminary. … Read More

About A Certain Left

In these pandemic times, even more than usual, how can we not be struck by the sheepish conformism of our fellow citizens, and by their lack of thirst for freedom, happily sacrificing it rather than accepting the inevitability of risk related to the use of freedom? The way in which the government has infantilized the … Read More

Of Universities And Their Collapse

Briefly, I would like to discuss Allan Bloom’s anticipations, from his excellent essay on the collapse of the university. But first, let me give you an excerpt from it: Democracy, or the egalitarian regime, must (…) perforce have utility as its primary motive: it is founded on the rule of all, and the vital desires … Read More

The Necessity Of Christian Tradition

For a period of about three years in my late teens and early 20’s, I was deeply involved in a charismatic house church. It was a deeply committed group of people (some of us lived in a commune together). Our services could run for hours with very intensive Bible teaching. A feature of that time … Read More

The Natural Law, Impossibility Of Planned Eugenics, And The Chaos Of Transhumanism

We intend to develop here two reasons why a genetically or economically planned human society, which ignores both social inequality and intragroup competition, whether peaceful or coercive, is, in fact, intensely disadvantaged in its self-preservation, even doomed to failure. On the one hand, the projected success of a future sexuated individual in reproducing (and living … Read More

We Have Two Memories

In the past, when ancient history was still being taught a little (in 6th grade, the part on great civilizations), our children learned of the worth of Egypt and Babylonia in the history of human adventure. Ancient Greece weighed heavily in these programs. The grand dame. We owe her a lot, not everything, but a … Read More

Art Less Gnome More!

Some shocked readers will say disbelievingly, “No art this time?” In response, I feel a tautly-argued paper, “The aesthetics of garden gnomes,” coming on. I would write it with Andy Williams’s “Gnome lovin’ man” as background music. If anyone is interested, I did the comparable exercise with Lego(TM). I told the chairman of the board … Read More

The Democratic Dilemma: Herman Melville’s Ship of State

This excerpt comes from William Morrisey’s latest book, Herman Melville’s Ship of State, which reads the classic novel, Moby-Dick, as an allegory of America, democracy and the reciprocal obligations of the individual and the state. Thus, is America Moby-Dick? Is its power a source of chaos or order? You will have to read the Morrissey’ … Read More

Whatever Happened To American Industry?

Private equity has made me rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Yet private equity can be, as this book shows, a tool of the devil, a corrosive and destructive force in American life. Still, I do not think the story is as simple as Brian Alexander, the author of Glass House, would have it. The … Read More

Saint Bernard: The Three Freedoms

Over eight centuries before Franklin D. Roosevelt articulated his “Four Freedoms,” a shorter and much better list of freedoms was elucidated by the young abbot of the new monastery of Clairvaux, one Bernard by name. In his work On Grace and Free Choice (De Gratia et libero arbitrio), Saint Bernard (1090-1153) distinguished three kinds of … Read More

The Great Reset! The Gospel According To Klaus Schwab

There is a book everyone should read, an exceptional book, which promises to be among the classics of contemporary literature. It is Covid 19: The Great Reset. Its author is the humanist and scholar Klaus Schwab, the founder and president of the World Economic Forum in Davos, a club of people of the world. This … Read More

For the Birds and the Rest of Us

Whether your only experience with birds is that of chasing away pigeons stubbornly trying to nest on your balcony, or whether you spent your last pre-Covid vacation trudging through tropical forest in search of the elusive Pinto’s Spinetail, Richard Pope’s Flight from Grace: A Cultural History of Humans and Birds (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021) is … Read More

Jean Doresse And The Gnostics

The Chenoboskion-Nag Hammadi manuscripts are leather-bound codices (papyri, that is), dating from the middle of the 4th century AD, and found in 1947, northwest of Luxor, by Egyptian peasants, and since then kept at the Coptic Museum of Cairo. These compromise twelve papyrus codices, plus the remains of a thirteenth, totaling nearly 1,300 pages and … Read More

Saint Augustine, First Archbishop Of Canterbury

Together with St. Gregory the Dialogist (Gregory the Great, according to the Western tradition), the Pope of Rome, St. Augustine (also Austin) is venerated as “the Apostle of the English”. He was most probably born in Sicily in the mid-sixth century and became a friend of the future Pope Gregory. In his youth St. Augustine … Read More

The Wit Collection: Art History Jokes 8

Well, chaps, one or two of these are likely to be over the heads of the common herd, so I am assisting with a few select images. The first joke alludes to a famous Caspar Friedrich painting. Ernest Trobridge designed fantastic houses in unfashionable petit-bourgeois London suburbs like Kingsbury. Hands up who’d prefer to live … Read More

Something About Those Ancient Greeks

The society in which we live, a liberal democracy, is the result not of events that happened all over the world – rather, it is the result of events that happened in just one country, ancient Greece. We are who we are not because of what happened in ancient China, Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt or India … Read More

Laurence Krauss, Or The “Incestuous” Universe

There is something extraordinary about astrophysicists. They have a rare gift of writing about very complicated problems in language intelligible to a general audience. Laurence Krauss, author of the best-selling A Universe from Nothing, is no exception. Just like his colleagues, he has a gift for clarity and gives his readers true pleasure in expanding … Read More

Tracing The Descendants Grigory Rasputin

Some saw him as a charlatan, others a “saint”, who foretold the fall of the Russian Empire shortly before his own death. His descendants had had to live in the shadow of the ‘tsarist monk’ for years to come – almost all of them succumbing to the same fate. Grigory Rasputin – a favorite of … Read More

The “News” Media’s War On Donald Trump: A Retrospective

Socrates: Do you mean the so-called ruler or the ruler in the most precise sense [of the word]?Thrasymachus: I mean the ruler in the very precise sense of the word.Plato, Republic(341b) In Book 1 of the Republic Plato portrays an argument between Socrates, sometimes cited as the creator of “moral philosophy,” and the sophist Thrasymachus, … Read More

A WASP Manifesto

In recent decades, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) has become a derogatory term for a closed group of high-status Americans mostly of white British Protestant ancestry. In some circles it is a word of considerable derision. If the woke crowd had its way, such whiteness would be banned or somehow eradicated altogether. The accolade WASP applies … Read More