2023 was a rather bad year.
Not as bad as 2024 is likely to be, or as 2020 was.
But bad.
Nonetheless, we ought to learn from the bad as well as the good. So, in a spirit of reflection, I offer a few lessons we ought to remember from this crummy year.
Lesson No. 1: Lots of people do not think like we do. And failure to recognize the truth of this lesson leads to failures of imagination that in turn lead to suffering and death.
When Hamas slaughters infants in their cribs, rapes women in front of their husbands and takes them captive back to Gaza, and tortures and murders civilians, that isn’t because of some outsized grievance. It’s because they do not have the same values as Westerners.
Pretending that members of Hamas are simply freedom-loving people who seek material prosperity, quiet family lives, and tolerance for those who think differently isn’t…
