In my Taki’s Magazine column today I draw some idle reminiscences from a thematic source even more dubiously tenuous than usual.

Probably it’s just my simpleminded arithmemania, but years ending in the numeral three seem to be more memorable than average, both publicly and personally, for reasons high or low.

Read the whole thing over there.

For your further reading pleasure, here are some random links from the past few days’ commentary at various news sites and blogs.

• “It’s not about racism, it’s just that multi-culturalism doesn’t recognise how humans actually function.” [Stockholm riots leave Sweden’s dreams of perfect society up in smoke, Colin Freeman, Daily Telegraph, May 25.]
• “In fact, there's a good argument that ‘welfare benefits + ethnic antagonism’ is the universal recipe for an underclass with an angry, oppositional culture.” [Does welfare cause terrorism, Part XVIII . . ., Mickey Kaus, Daily Caller, May 23.]

Kaus is quoting a piece he himself wrote in 2001.

• “Have you come to hate the word ‘dream’ as much as I have?” [SAT canceled in South Korea, by the ineffable Steve on his blog, May 25.]

When it comes to selecting epitaphs to be inscribed on Western Civilization’s tombstone, this one will have my vote.

The ChiComs have picked up the ‘dream’ meme, though they are deploying it in their usual cack-handed way, leading to considerable cynicism on Chinese blogs. A common theme is that judging by the John Locke principle—“I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts”—the actual dream of educated Chinese people not blessed with aristocratic connections is to get the heck out of China:

China’s new president Xi Jinping has made the achievement of the “Chinese Dream” the goal of his tenure, but for many among China’s elite, their dream may be emigrating to another country. [Chinese Emigrants: China Still Land of Opportunity, But Life Better in U.S., Hongxiang Huang, TeaLeafNation, April 18.]

• “Your cars may be on fire, but at least the chapulas will be cheap, plentiful, and oh so tasty.” [Comparative advantages, by Foseti on his blog.]
• “More and more, I just feel sad about things like this. Is there any hope for white people? We’re basically awesome, but we’re basically retarded about why we’re awesome.” [Commenter Master Dogen on Steve’s blog, May 30.]
• “It’s an exciting time to be a Reactionary.” [The Specialization of Reaction. by Peter Frost on his blog, May 27.]

Peter goes on to explain why it’s an exciting time to be a Reactionary:

There was a time when a man could comfortably follow every single Dark Enlightenment blog and comment thread in no more than ten or twenty hours a week. The Dark Enlightenment was a small enough tribe that every single blogger and regular commenter knew one another, and everyone was basically able to stay up to date on everything that everyone else had written.

This is no longer possible. There are too many DE writers worth reading for any one individual to absorb and synthesize them all. We have reached our limit as a hunter-gatherer tribe of truth-seekers. It’s time to become scalable.

• “Tribalism—even for Westerners—is big. Can you have a multiracial society in one that is honest about group differences? Europe kinda has a choice on that, but we here in America don’t.” [Blogger JayMan commenting on chickens . . . home . . . roost, by hbd* chick, May 22.]
• “hbd knowledge is coming down the pipeline . . . fast! . . . whether anyone likes it or not, and we’d better get prepared for it—maybe that responsibility should fall especially on the shoulders of those of us who, for whatever reasons, happen to be aware of hbd before most of the crowd.” [hbd fallout, by the lass herself, commenting on the foregoing comment by JayMan, May 28.]
• “Second, my book has lots of numbers and Peter does not like the ‘numerical’ approach to this subject.” [Immigration and out-of-touch liberals who still censor debate, David Goodhart, Daily Mail, May 29.]

Goodhart is a British Tutsi who broke ranks by publishing a book, The British Dream (!—see third item above) politely critical of multiculturalism and mass immigration. He is now being given the cold shoulder by fellow Tutsis; in particular by Peter Florence, an über-Tutsi who runs the annual book festival at Hay-on-Wye.

Florence is just-barely-minority. His mother was Welsh, his father Cape Coloured (see here: “The Florence family are members of the so-called ‘coloured’ community”). Just-barelys seem to be exceptionally prominent in anti-white activities.

The real point here, though, is innumeracy. Immigration policy is all about numbers. If, as Goodhart alleges of Florence, you do not like “the ‘numerical’ approach to this subject,” you have nothing worthwhile to say about it.