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In the WSJ, editor-at-large Gerald Baker confesses how humbling the start of the New Year can be. January, he writes, is more a moment for reflection on “real historic losses rather than elusive future gains: opportunities not taken, promises not kept, convictions that proved false.”
Looking back on 2022, Baker cringes at what he got wrong, did wrong. What he failed to do in 2022, he writes, was “another one for the ages.” It wasn’t necessarily disappointing, but Baker’s confident predictions now look too pessimistic:
I thought that Russia would easily vanquish Ukraine, that the U.S. would slip into a deep recession, and that I’d succumb at last to some terrible disease.
I’m content, if a little embarrassed, to be 0 for 3 there.
On the other hand there were disappointing errors: I was convinced that there would be a red wave in the midterm elections, that Joe Biden would be well on his way to one-term oblivion, and that I was going to run four miles a day.
“Thank you,” he writes, adding, “yes.” According to Mr. Baker, he does offer stock recommendations and racing tips too.
Recognize the Failings in Others
The above near-perfect record calls for humility, Baker resumes modestly, yet not so much humility not to recognize the same failing in others.
So here’s a resolution I will promise to try hard to keep in 2023 and respectfully ask everyone else to do the same: Can we strive to keep two competing ideas in our heads at the same time?
Zealots: The Great Conundrum
Advances in the lot of humanity have rarely come from calls for moderation and humility, but from true believers—zealots who convinced enough people that the choice they faced really was a binary one between good and evil.
The Founding Fathers didn’t achieve American independence by admitting that maybe constitutional monarchy had its advantages.
Winston Churchill didn’t lead the world to victory over tyranny with carefully balanced consideration of German grievances about Versailles.
If extremism in the defense of liberty really is no vice, shouldn’t we be able to sift from this history a proper understanding of what truly threatens us and what merely challenges us, inquires Mr. Baker.
As we start another year our domestic political and cultural differences are significant and enduring. But are they really an existential challenge to our way of life on the level of, say, Russian or Chinese totalitarianism?
“I’d say not,” writes Mr. Baker, before admitting he could be wrong.
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