A (Surprisingly) Happy New Year - by William Kristol - 0 views
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It was people—both extraordinary leaders and ordinary folk—who turned things around in 2022.
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he world around them changed because of the struggles and successes of those who fought for democracy and for freedom.
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this is the key part—people did not accept the reasonable expectations. They fought and organized and worked. They bent the curve of the future.
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now is no time for celebration. To use a World War II analogy, we’ve survived Dunkirk, the Blitz and Pearl Harbor—but much damage has been done, the enemies of liberalism remain formidable, and we’ve only just begun the effort to regain ground. Even if victory is possible, there is a long and difficult road ahead.
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Perhaps Churchill’s 1941 Christmas Eve address from the White House, where he was visiting Roosevelt, is apt.
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“Let the children have their night of fun and laughter,” he remarked. And “Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasure.”But Churchill added that, after sharing that moment of pleasure, we will have to “turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us, resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world.”