Orgy of the Species

Let’s begin 2019 with some truths and a few admissions: We humans have been evolving for some time now, but not really. Only a few decades ago we were certain that the oldest human fossil was a small-brained female by the name of Lucy. Lucy was known as Australopithecus afarensis, and she had ...

Boniface de Castellane

Speaking of Manners

Sometime during the 1920s, at an exclusive party at Count Boni de Castelanne’s, a great French lady felt herself beginning to die at the dinner table. “Quick, bring the dessert,” she whispered to the waiter. She was not overcome by greed. She simply wished to hurry dinner along so as not ...

Goodwill to Almost All Men

Here we are, once again writing for Takimag’s Christmas issue. Like every birthday of our Lord Jesus, this is a special one, so I want to make it count. In my sporting days, trying too hard was as counterproductive as not trying hard enough, so let’s see if this principle also applies to the ...

The Errors of Modernism

Father Munkelt is a New York City-based priest who is as intelligent and well-read as anyone I’ve known, and he wrote most of this essay for Takimag under my byline. (Journalists are expert cheaters and plagiarizers, but when it comes to a man of God, I cannot speak with forked tongue.) I asked ...

New York, N.Y.

Time to Fly Away

NEW YORK—At times I used to think the place was real. The New York of films, that is. The reality is an urban agglomeration of millions, most of them with a disinclination to speak English, and then there’s the celluloid city of 42nd Street, Annie Hall, Dead End, Rear Window, and King Kong. ...

Start Getting Your Jokes Ready

They will finally have their way: In the year 2044, only a short 26 years from now, white Americans will become a minority—hooray, yippee, viva The New York Times and all the left-wing scum who write for it. So says the Census Bureau, whose graphics show a demographic change that has white ...

Only in New York

What I should have done is gone out and bought a lottery ticket. I’ll explain: The snow suddenly came down in buckets, icing the city and bringing gridlock like I’ve never seen before. The traffic cops in the Bagel are all Hispanics, to a man and to a woman around four feet tall, and all weigh ...

Grandfather Clause

NEW YORK—A little Austrian count was born to my daughter last week in Salzburg, early in the morning of Nov. 9, 2018, becoming my third grandchild. Through modern technology I was flooded with pictures of a blond-fuzzed and pink little baby boy less than a day old. Flying in from Gstaad, the ...

Return of the Fifth Columnists

A fifth columnist is a supporter or secret sympathizer of an enemy nation, and the phrase was coined by Spanish nationalist general Emilio Mola Vidal. Before World War II broke out in 1939, Europe was awash with charges of “the fifth column at work” being bandied about by both appeasers as well ...

Outrage All Around

NEW YORK—An old-fashioned party is a gathering of friends invited by the host or hostess, who foots the bill. Old-fashioned parties are very rare in New York nowadays; actually, they are nonexistent, having been replaced by the charity shindig, where the guests pay, the host or hostess profits, ...