“HAPPY New Year!”

The beginning of a new year typically fills us with hope and enthusiasm. As we clink glasses and cheer at the stroke of midnight we’re anticipating the prospects of a fresh start, looking forward to the next twelve months with enthusiasm.
 
Unfortunately, the early news for 2012 provides little reason for such optimism this year. Instead, a quick scan of web headlines from the last few days brings a deepening sense of foreboding:
 

Regardless of how the MSM tries to spin the facts, the economy is not improving.

 
2012 Could Be The Year Germany Lets The Euro Die ~ Most of Europe is drowning in unsustainable debt and soon it’ll be every country for itself. Financial analyst, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, predicts “a global downturn on all fronts.”
Standard Charter’s CEO, Peter Sands says, about a break-up in the Eurozone, “Nobody should underestimate what a big deal that would be, because it would be very difficult to manage the contagion risk, even if it was only Greece. The disruption from that would really be quite significant.”
 
The U.S. national debt is well over 15 trillion and climbing. In case you’re wondering, that’s $180,400 per citizen.
 
From the UK Mail: The spectre of 1932: How a loss of faith in politicians and democracy could make 2012 the most frightening year in living memory. (What a cheerful subtitle!) ~ Drawing eerie parallels between today – and eight decades ago; critically unstable financial markets, shifting world powers, increasing isolatism. Even a secular socialist, as the author (Dominic Sandbrook) appears to be, can see big trouble brewing.
 

Radical Islam relentlessly marches on.

The Center for American Progress’ Jihad Against the Free World ~ Anti-American George Soros and his radical Muslim pals. “A more accurate name for CAP would be the Center for Islamist Progress. There is no Islamist thug or regime too awful for the Center, whose number one priority is backing Islamist takeovers in the Middle East.”
 
And unfortunately, 2011 was The Year We Lost Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, Tunisia and Most of the Middle East ~ “…the year that Obama helped topple several regimes that served as the obstacles to Islamist takeovers.”

Time Magazine declared that 2011 was the Year of the Protester, they might have more honestly called it the Year of the Islamist. In 2010 the Taliban were still hiding in caves. In 2012 they are set to be in power from Tunisia to Afghanistan and from Egypt to Yemen. They won’t go by that name of course. Most of them will have elaborate names with the words “Justice” or “Community” in them, but they will for the most part be minor variations on the Muslim Brotherhood theme.

The Occupiers and their irrational antics aren’t going away.

 
New Years Blitzkreig: Obama-Endorsed #OWS Occupy Nazis Use Jew-Hating Iconography to Crash and Destroy Rose Parade, and in NYC #OWS Stab NYPD, Destroy Zuccotti Park ~ In fact the anarchy and anti-Semitism of the OWS protests are increasing – “along with the media’s kneejerk hatred of the good for being the good.”
 

And the rest of us are getting awfully nervous.

 
In Smith and Wesson We Trust (and It Looks Like Santa Does Too) ~ Looks like a lot of us had “gun” on our Christmas wish lists.

…judging from sales receipts and FBI reports regarding sales for December 2011, it seems that Santa delivered at least 1.5 million firearms for Christmas.
…a growing trend among people of all walks of life: namely, folks are less and less trustful of government’s ability to keep them safe.

 
Or maybe, a one commenter quipped:

CORRECTION:

“namely, folks are less and less trustful of government’s ability to not kill them.”

~~~~~~~~~~
 
So, Is the West Doomed? In this article at FrontPageMag, Bruce Bawer gets at the real crux of the struggle we’re facing: the mis-education of the last two generations of students in western democracies. He cites several surveys which indicate a serious lack of historical, geographical and ideological knowledge, particularly among the young. For instance, shockingly, one in three British people thinks Winston Churchill​ was a fictional character. 😯

If knowledge is power, ignorance is weakness. A Western world run by people most of whom either think Winston Churchill was a fictional character or are barely aware of who he was and what he did – and how radically different their own lives would be if he had never existed – is the stuff of nightmares.
 
The West is, after all, engaged in a struggle on many fronts with a civilization (to use the term loosely) that has a long, long memory. It’s no exaggeration to say that this struggle will decide the future of freedom. And the grim truth is that freedom stands very little chance when those who are supposed to be fighting for it are so innocent of history that they can’t properly appreciate just how hard-won and precious a legacy that freedom is.

 
Fed misinformation by a biased media, and nurtured on revisionist history, our citizenry is rapidly losing its ability for rational thought and critical thinking. The answer to Bawer’s rhetorical question may very well be “yes.”
 

 
So, for “Auld Lang Syne,” let’s wish each other a “Happy New Year!” And hope – and pray – that we do get one… Instead of the gloom and doom that appear to be lurking just over the horizon.