In my last two end of year pieces, I had to accentuate the negative. I don’t think you can blame me. As I wrote them, out in the real world, away from my wooden desk hounded by loving beagle twins, some ugly facts glowered from the distance.

• The government of the greatest country on earth shut down and paralyzed. Why? Because the party that represents the richer half of the country won’t let us enforce our borders.
• The government of my beloved Church in disarray, hijacked on many issues by her enemies.
• The governing powers in media, social media, and corporate America intent on suppressing free speech, and imposing leftist orthodoxy.
• The government of Turkey about to invade and overrun our Kurdish allies, and persecute Christians using al Qaeda mercenaries.

It’s easy to see 2018 as a piece of waste circling the porcelain bowl. In fact, I looked for exactly such a graphic to illustrate a column. Mercifully, iStockphoto didn’t offer one.

But now I’d like to dip my big toe in the river of hope. Not the theological virtue, which ought not to be affected by worldly events, one way or the other. No, I mean ordinary, this-worldly hope. I’d like to list a few developments in politics, faith, and culture which are possible, if maybe unlikely. Divine surprises that pop up and remind us not to stop fighting.

I hope that the Yellow Vest protests which started in France spread across Western Europe and lead to radical regime change in nations led by childless, soulless functionaries.

They’re the kind of things I’ll be praying for at church on New Year’s Day. It’s impossible to rank such priorities, so they’re in no particular order.

Louis CK Leads a Backlash to Suffocating SJW Culture, and Finds Christ

I was heartened by the news that the troubled, disgraced Louis CK has come out fighting. Reportedly, in a recent set, he went after the insufferable, self-appointed activists who distorted the Parkland Shooting into a gun control crusade. Good for him. Criticizing David Hogg is perhaps the most courageous thing a comedian could do nowadays. I used to kind of love/hate Louis CK’s humor. He seemed to carry over from his Catholic upbringing a keen sense of evil. When he skewers human foibles (especially male sex problems) he’s right on target. But then he always shrugged in utter despair. He even took that approach to abortion, which he admitted is killing [profanity], then defended because life is … “not that important.” Clearly Louis has been living in a dark place for a long time. 

I hope that the viciousness with which his former friends and allies turned on him in the wake of his admitted sexual harassment taught Louis something. Not just that their politics are insufferable, self-righteous, and grounded in nothing. (Though that’s a start.) I hope, and hope you will join me in praying, that Louis’ long contemplation of the Void at last leads him to the Light. If it does, he will make a hugely important cultural asset. And he’ll still be much, much funnier than Jim Gaffigan.

Europe Yellow Vests Topple Governments and Shatter the EU

It’s hard for Americans to realize just how suffocating, smug, and insufferable European elites really are. The cabal of technocrats that dominates politics in most of Western Europe has been conspiring for a decade to take most power from voters in nations. Then hand it to unelected committees meeting in secret. Just look at how Brexit was botched, intentionally, by a “Conservative” party led by Europhiles. I hope that the Yellow Vest protests which started in France spread across Western Europe and lead to radical regime change in nations led by childless, soulless functionaries. The process won’t be pretty — as it wasn’t in 1989, when another crop of tyrants lost their thrones.

The Abortion Rate Keeps Declining

Left-wing Vox offers some uplifting news:

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that the national abortion rate declined 26 percent between 2006 and 2015, hitting the lowest level that the government has on record.

The abortion ratio — the proportion of abortions to live births — is also down to historic lows. In 2005, the abortion ratio was about 233 abortions for every 1,000 live births; in 2015, it was 188 abortions for 1,000 live births.

Now Vox gives credit for this positive development to “better contraception.” Maybe so. Let’s pray that more and more young people see the emptiness and futility of the “hook-up” culture. That they start to consider the advantages of marrying young, growing up together, and having decent-sized families. But that will take major cultural work on our part.

American Christians Wake Up to Plight of Persecuted Christians

Those who read me regularly know that I fear disaster will result from President Trump’s shock withdrawal from Syria. If nothing changes, I fully expect a “Saigon 1975” catastrophe. I was heartened to see the Family Research Council, General Jerry Boykin, and CBN News all cover this story. And pass on the concerns of our brothers in Christ who face persecution. We also need to watch what happens in Pakistan, Nigeria, Sudan, and China — among other places. A good source for news on this front is Persecution.org.

Blacks and Hispanics Keep Prospering, and Abandon the Democrats

We’ve seen record employment rates for Americans in both the black and Latino community. The Democrats have shown again and again that they take native working class people of every race for granted. Their policies hobble job-creation, while they seek to flood our communities with ever more poor, future Democrats from foreign countries. Even a modest reduction in the rate at which non-white Americans turn out to vote for Democrats could make a huge difference at the polls on crucial issues, from religious liberty to the sanctity of life. President Trump has confounded his critics with repeated, substantive efforts to reach across racial lines. I hope they continue and bear more fruit.

Mexico Enforces its Borders

The new Mexican president Lopez Obrador, for all his leftist rhetoric, isn’t a fool. He sees that his country doesn’t benefit by serving as the passage way for much-poorer Central Americans to sneak into the United States. Indeed, much of Mexico desperately needs the rule of law, instead of the reign of terror cartels. Obrador’s apparent willingness to secure Mexico’s southern border, and work with Trump by holding those with transparently false asylum claims, is reason for hope.

Of course, we need the GOP to retake the House and fix our absurd asylum laws, but for now we depend on Mexico’s help on the front lines.

Democrats Overplay Their Hand on Immigration, Guns, and Taxes

Drunk on their own righteous indignation, Democrats are taking an average off-year election gain in the House as a mandate for radical change. Good. Let them keep huffing the paint from their Antifa protest signs. I hope House Democrats mistake their zealots for the electorate, and try to defund ICE, obstruct all border enforcement, confiscate private handguns, and impose a single-payer, Cuban style health system. The backlash will be fierce, and I think President Trump will find a way to ride it not just to re-election, but a recaptured GOP House, with much more conservative members.

The US Justice Department Joins Attorneys General in Launching a RICO Probe of Catholic Bishops.

In the past three decades, U.S. Catholic bishops have squandered the work of 200 years. When our ancestors in the faith arrived in the deeply Protestant U.S., we faced distrust. We worked hard to overcome that, to create our own school system, and establish ourselves as patriotic fellow-Christians. But the hijacking of seminaries by libertine homosexuals and enabling bishops changed that. So did the blatant institutional selfishness that led diocese after diocese to cover up crimes against children. And the sick clericalism that led normal, even virtuous priests to essentially side with perverts against parents and victims.

The only force on this earth that will cleanse the Catholic Church will be the law. We need to see guilty bishops in orange jump suits, doing long prison terms. And the Church will have to become much poorer and smaller — so the priesthood and the episcopate cease to be a refuge for low-energy homosexuals. Then and only then will we see a new crop of saintly bishops and faithful priests.

Build Up an Infrastructure for Free Speech

I don’t know any billionaires. But if I did know a very wealthy person with right of center views, I’d tell him this. We desperately need a complete alternative infrastructure to preserve free speech in America. The left is attacking our freedom at every point of vulnerability: Silencing Christians on social media. Stopping conservatives from fundraising online. Preventing Americans from buying ammunition with Paypal. Using state pension funds and ginned up charges of “hate speech” to pressure credit card companies.

Because the oligopolies that control all these industries are in private hands, the First Amendment is little help. So we need to create (or shore up where it exists) a soup-to-nuts alternative to Facebook, Youtube, Paypal, VISA, Patreon — you name it. And we need those alternatives now.

Leftist College Departments Keep Collapsing

The percentage of students who major in the liberal arts is plummeting. Now, as a liberal arts grad who used to teach at a Great Books college, you might expect me to mourn this. But I don’t. I celebrate it, the way a doctor would when he finds out that patients abandon dangerous quacks for Christian Science. No, students won’t be learning the details of Western Civ, the glories of art and literature, or the discipline of philosophy. But at least fewer of them will be drinking in the poisonous, Cultural Marxist perversions of these disciplines which dominate most colleges.

Let the narrow, pinched, civilizational vandals face empty classrooms, pay cuts, then pink slips. My hope is that every year, more Women’s Studies majors end up selling nylons and shoes at Stein-Mart. We must take up the slack by passing on our culture in our own schools and homeschools, and steering our students toward vocational schools or STEM disciplines, which will let them support a family. Let’s outbreed and outvote our enemies, so we never have to outshoot them in self-defense.