This is the last print issue of the Washington Examiner magazine of 2020, which invites rumination on the 12 months we’ve just gone through and also prompts thoughts about what lies ahead.
Last week, I said 2020 was a pestilential year, a literal truth from which few will demur even if the description is interpreted in a figurative sense. COVID-19 has accounted for more than 300,000 deaths, and attendant lockdowns will kill even more businesses than that. Many people’s livelihoods have been destroyed and their savings vaporized. The fortunate fact that America’s economy has proved wonderfully robust, and with vaccines now being administered should strengthen yet further, does not extenuate the disaster that the pandemic has been for many.
And the pandemic was by no means all we had to endure. Areas of urban America descended into months of anarchy during which mobs of vandals and looters were encouraged by Democrats, including some elected to govern those cities. It was a grotesque act of betrayal by the party of the Left. The “summer of love,” as it was egregiously dubbed, showed what America’s radicals would do to this great nation if given the chance. They don’t want America to succeed and will try to undermine it at every possible point of attack. We’ll see soon whether the election — it’s not over, because two Senate seats remain undecided in Georgia — will give these predators the opportunity they crave, explicitly proclaimed by the likes of Sen. Chuck Schumer, to change the country.
But there are fonder memories, too, from 2020, even if they are bittersweet. We remember and this week celebrate the lives of conservatives who have died in the past year. Some were dear friends whose parting leaves a gap in our personal lives. But the work of all of them streamed with crystal clarity into the intellectual current of America. They bequeathed to us a body of work that will enrich us for years to come.
I want to take this opportunity, too, to thank another great body of people whose presence in 2020 has been a constant source of gratitude. I refer to our scores of thousands of magazine subscribers, more numerous now than at any time before, whose taste for intelligent, open-minded, lively, and thoughtful conservative writing on politics and culture is an abiding inspiration to all of us who work on this publication.
As we step across the threshold into 2021, we hope to bring you an even better magazine, and invite you to journey with us through the next 12 months. The Washington Examiner will hold the new administration to account and will stand forthrightly, as it always has, for conservative values, preeminently the foundational freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. In addition to doing all we can to defend this nation’s oldest and best ideas, we will bring you the new ones being raised by emerging political leaders. We intend to influence and help shape those ideas. Stay with us — and read all about it.
