Happy 2010, Plus Recommended Reading

This is my inaugural post of 2010. I suppose it would have had more impact had I authored it a couple days ago, but I have been busy. A belated "Happy New Years" to all.

I can only hope that 2010 will be better than 2009. Last year that saw countless economic woes and employee lay-offs, infuriating failures of national leadership, mounting terrorism both at home and abroad, and protracted warfare involving U.S. troops across the Middle East. It doesn't get much worse than that. However, there can be improvement if America is willing to pull itself up by its boot straps and demand more of its leaders and institutions. This year, we will have the opportunity to toss the bums out of Congress and start afresh. This strikes me as one of the most crucial things that the American people can do this year.

So keep your hopes high and your expectations low, as you peruse some recommended reading for the week:

-Heather McDonald at the Wall Street Journal brilliantly demolishes the "crime-as-a-symptom-of-social-injustice" theory.

-Joe Carter at First Thoughts airs an infuriating New York City Health Department pamphlet that helps people learn how to "safely" shoot heroin.

-George Weigel, writing for The National Review, explicates just war theory in regards to Obama the Afghanistan situation. This brilliant article appeared in December, and I forgot to link to it sooner.

Required Reading: "Time" Top Ten Lists

Paradoxically, despite its questionable leanings, I like Time magazine.

I like it because it is well written, comprehensive, and not nearly as nakedly partisan and obnoxious as other similar broad-scope commentary magazines tend to be. Let's be honest: Newsweek is just about unreadable these days, what with its replacement of good writing with inflammatory, subpar, college-level snarkiness. If I had a nickel for every time that Newsweek gave President Obama an "up" arrow rating in its weekly, over-simplified "who's up, who's down" featurette, I'd be rich. (Actually, I'd be richer if I had a nickel for every "down" arrow that they've given Dick Cheney, who seems to be the target of Newsweek jeers every day; maybe they're running out of other stuff to talk about).

Anyways, Time it is, and the Time year-end feature is now online, consisting of fifty separate top ten lists for the year (everything from the usual Ten Best Movies to more obscure stuff, such as Ten Most Awkward Moments and Ten New Weird Species). I highly recommend parsing this for at least a little while. There is some useful information here, and if nothing else, the exhaustive lists will jog your memory of 2009's most interesting news stories and events.

It can be both depressing and enlightening to relive a year in public affairs. Here you will be reminded of the heroism of our soldiers in the Middle East, and you will relive the irrelevant hype surrounding Octomom. You will read about the monumental debate surrounding congressional healthcare bill, and you will see the faces of Lindsay Lohan, Susan Boyle, and Miley Cyrus. The panorama of America, in all its complication, gloriousness, and stupidity, is such a thing to behold.