I read somewhere that Saint Kitts and Nevis, thriving democracies somewhere south of Miami Beach, are demanding reparations from the Brits because the bad old English owned slaves back at the time when owning black people was rather chic. What surprised me is that I haven’t seen any claims from descendants of slaves against African owners—who thrived in the vile economy that slavery produced—nor against any Arab states ...

The massacre in Gaza has shoved the Ukraine war aside, which is just as well for Zelensky, who canceled the election he was about to lose and has outlawed rival political parties for the duration. I recently watched an interview the ex-comedian gave, and I must admit he comes through as a charming, honest, and warm person. Was I fooled by his act? Probably, but compared with his archenemy Putin’s thespian abilities, Volodymyr ...

The magical embroidery of memory is not involved in this one: I remember it as if it were yesterday, despite something like sixty years having gone by. I had had dinner at El Morocco, the best dinner-nightclub that has ever been, back when New York still spoke English. I had drunk Chateau Mouton Rothschild 1947 and had gone back to my parents’ apartment at the Sherry Netherlands and lay in bed drunk and dreamy. I had turned ...

Okay, sport fans, according to Joe Biden the Donald is the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, so if you value your freedoms, do not vote for Trump or you’ll be seeing storm troopers marching down Fifth Avenue. Biden gets his ideas from The New York Times, the paper that prints only news that fits its extreme lefty agenda, and opinions whose virtue signaling is valued above truth or fact. I rarely read the Times, but when I do I ...

The word “democracy” comes from the Greek, but when the system was first used, it was a selective one, with men of means being the only ones eligible to vote. It has come a long way since, with American lefty busybodies trying to give the vote even to illegal migrants who have more or less snuck into the country. Personally I have always been a monarchist, although my type of monarchs—the Romanovs, Hohenzollerns, and ...

Happy 2024 to all you readers, although according to The New York Times it will be under a dictatorial regime if Trump becomes president again. So what is one to think or do? Americans have never tolerated autocratic government, despite Woodrow Wilson’s efforts to jail anyone opposed to Uncle Sam entering his war. Now the Times tells us that The Donald’s use of “dehumanizing language toward rivals” might be another ...

Living as we are under the collective inferiority of the West, and humbled as we are when faced with the cultural achievements of tribal Africans, primitive Amazonian tribesmen, Saudi Arabian witch doctors, and savages in general, I was relieved to see that Hollywood is hard at work in maintaining the myth that everything that the West has achieved since the Greeks was due to the white man’s cruelty and ability to steal from ...

My, my, how the years pass by. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve written a Christmas piece for Takimag, but the years have passed in an eye blink. Recently I asked myself, why do bad things happen to good people? (Well, not very good people, but well-intentioned.) This question has occupied thinkers throughout the ages. People who do not believe in a good God should logically have no problem with the existence of evil. In ...

I find it deliciously ironic and very satisfying. We suddenly have free speech at American universities, at least while Jewish billionaires are threatening to stop the moola. The presidents of top universities have cried uncle and have pledged that free speech will be for them what money was to Shylock. The only problem is that unlike Shylock, they are owed nothing and in fact are the ones who caused the problem in the first ...

I suppose it was the Almighty’s sense of humor to cover Western Europe with snow while those who flew into Dubai on private jets warned of planetary disasters due to fossil fuels. The United Nations climate conference is and always will be a contradiction, especially when held in a place whose wealth is uniquely derived from fossil fuel. COP28 is a joke, a lot of fat cats reading acronym-ridden speeches and with as much ...

The French are up in arms, as always; the Brits have raised eyebrows; and the Americans are nonplussed, as they thought Napoleon was a brandy. The brouhaha has to do with the latest movie about the Emperor of the French, one I am told contains great battle scenes but also saturnine mumbles from Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon. When I was young, the Corsican-born great was my hero. Did you, by the way, know that Napo ranks third ...

The question was a valid one: “How could you, a conservative and a gentleman, be for them?” The man is an acquaintance of long standing, also a gent, so I bothered to explain: “Because I’ve been there and have seen what’s going on up close.” Needless to say, it was the Middle East we were talking about, and my sympathy for the Palestinians, as opposed to tiny Israel surrounded by hostile Arab nations. I was based ...

“Vengeance is mine,” is the Lord’s saying, but also the title of a best-selling Mickey Spillane trashy novel of the ’50s. The slaughter that’s taking place in the Middle East as I write this is all about vengeance, but then most wars are about revenge. In May 1946, in Tokyo, the American victors decided to put on trial the Japanese losers, with 28 defendants sitting before judges chosen from nations on the winning ...

Okay, you fans of such classics as Age of Innocence, House of Mirth, and Ethan Frome, Julian Fellowes is no Edith Wharton, but for the dregs of what’s left of society today, he’ll do. He’s a Brit, a funny little fellow—pun intended—whom I sat next to at a London gentlemen’s club luncheon long ago. He had not as yet found fame and fortune for his Downton Abbey TV series, and he seemed awfully anxious to please. “My ...

I spotted a tiny faux pas, as they say in the land of cheese and garlic, and only mention it for the follow-up. I was watching a black-and-white movie made in 1948 starring Gale Storm, a beautiful young American actress in her debut role, when in a scene she exits an elevator accompanied by three men all wearing fedoras. Believe it or not, it could not have happened in real life. All men wore hats back then, and all men removed ...

Oh dear! A rift has taken place in Hollywood over the killings that are going on in Gaza as I write; mind you, it is a rare one because lefty Tinseltown speaks with one mind when it comes to politics. Conservative actors and executives over the hundred or so years that Hollywood has existed have been few, but they definitely counted when Uncle Sam called during World War II. Jimmy Stewart, a conservative, flew twenty missions ...