Learning from the Past: Reflecting on 2023’s Ups and Downs

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.

So long, 2023.

Here’s to a better 2024.

Ben Shapiro is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” and co-founder of Daily Wire+. He is a three-time New York Times bestselling author; his latest book is “The Authoritarian Moment: How The Left Weaponized America’s Institutions Against Dissent.”