My wife and I recently had the tremendous misfortune of needing to buy a car. Car prices, you may know, reached an all-time high between this year and last.

The Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade — and with it, half a century of constitutional precedent.

If you’re the sort of person who follows the news, you’ve probably heard a good bit lately about podcaster Joe Rogan, Neil Young’s fight with Spotify, and maybe a little about Russia and Ukraine.

It would be easy to survey the end of 2021 and see another year in wreckage. There’s the pandemic that won’t end. Rising inflation. Climate disasters. A democracy that looks creakier by the day.

Most of us who were alive then remember where we were on the morning of the 9/11 attacks. As we mark the 18th anniversary of the Iraq War this March, I wonder how many also remember where we were that day.

For decades, Republicans have painted anyone left of Barry Goldwater as a “socialist.” Why? Because for a generation raised on the Cold War, “socialist” just seemed like a damaging label.