When we look at statistics from the first full week of Omicron infections in the United States, nearly 80% of the patients had had a full series of a COVID-19 vaccine. About a third had received a booster dose. The statistical bottom line? The first CDC report on the Omicron variant in the US shows vaccination does not protect people against contracting the infection. Since that first week, the number of cases has jumped into the hundreds of thousands. That is a scary number unless you look at the actual impact. How many people have died in America from the Omicron variant? One. A man in his 50s with underlying health conditions has been the only reported Omicron death. Statistically speaking, one person out of a half-million infections is hardly worth closing down businesses, schools and the holidays. In fact, the CDC Covid Response Team reported “The most commonly reported symptoms were cough, fatigue, and congestion or runny nose.” The Statens Serum Institute in Denmark issued results of an early study they have done on Omicron and according to their report of the people who tested positive between November 22 and December 15, Omicron cases were three times less likely to be admitted to hospital than cases with other variants. If those studies and the ratio of infections to deaths in the United States both hold steady, Omicron may actually be a bit of good news. An overwhelming number of new COVID-19 cases in America are Omicron. If Omicron is the “wave” we face in the coming months, perhaps America and the world will be spared the flood of “severe illness and death”.

Positive COVID-19 tests are way up. We are told we are looking at another “surge.” Several colleges and universities such as Harvard University and Stanford University are planning on going back to remote learning for the spring semester. It sure sounds like parts of the economy are shutting down and that COVID-19 isn’t, but is that really even the story? Almost three-quarters of those new cases are the Omicron variant. We’ve been told the new variant spreads faster, easier and is likely to flood our hospitals with critically ill patients. In response to that warning, Mr. Biden tweeted recently, “We know that vaccines are working. If you are boosted with Pfizer or Moderna, you have a high degree of protection against severe illness with omicron.” His statement was clearly intended to ease worry and tension among the vaccinated and scare those not vaccinated into compliance. The problem is that on Monday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued the following contradictory official statement. “CDC has been collaborating with global public health and industry partners to learn about Omicron, as we continue to monitor its course. We don’t yet know how easily it spreads, the severity of illness it causes, or how well available vaccines and medications work against it.” That last line is important. “We don’t yet know... how well available vaccines and medications work against it.” Mr. Biden tweeted again. “Please get vaccinated. It’s the best way to keep yourself safe from the Omicron variant.” Apparently, Mr. Biden either knows something the CDC doesn’t or is just blowing smoke.

The inability to deal with violence ― whether from criminals, terrorists or nation-states ― can be compared to someone who sees “The Lion King” and thinks it is a documentary. They believe lions and zebras like each other and sing and dance together. Why not release murderers, rapists, robbers and others back into the population? Why not recognize and speak well of the Taliban and other terrorists? Why not tolerate the aggression of Communist China, President Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the Iranian mullahs or the dictatorship of Kim Jong Un? They are committed to the Big Government socialist worldview. Why be mean to them? The inability to design an effective economic policy of opportunity for all stems from the Big Government socialists’ failure to understand the 1934 film “The Grasshopper and the Ants,” which is based on the Aesop fable that describes two different approaches to life. The ants constantly work during the warm, pleasant summer days, storing up food and preparing for the winter, which they know is coming. The grasshopper enjoys life, thinks all the hard work is a stupid waste of time, and makes fun of the ants. Big Government socialists share the grasshopper’s disdain for work and favor policies that encourage dependency, indolence and redistribution. If you don’t want to study and succeed in school, the Big Government socialists will simply abolish grades so you don’t feel bad. If you work hard and save, the Big Government socialists will take your money to give it to others who have learned to be dependent on government. A Big Government socialist, “Lion King”-grasshopper ideology is impossible in the real world. It just doesn’t work.

The No. 1 issue for 2022 and 2024 is very simple. Big Government socialism isn’t working. On issue after issue, and problem after problem, it is clear to most Americans that Big Government socialism simply is not working. To be sure, a recent Scott Rasmussen National Survey found 53% of Americans describe the Biden administration agenda as Big Government socialism. It is important to tie the continuing failures all around us to the underlying philosophy of Big Government socialism, which simply does not work. Big Government socialism seeks to control our bodies through vaccination and mask mandates while controlling our minds through radical indoctrination in schools, businesses and government offices. It isn’t enough to study and get good grades and real knowledge. You must learn the left-wing language and attitude. It isn’t enough to generate a profit as an effective worker. You must learn the official propaganda. This passion for total control fits the warnings of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” George Orwell’s “1984” and “Animal Farm,” and Friedrich Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom.” We have seen this kind of radical effort to remake society before ― from the Jacobins of the French Revolution, the Russian Communist effort to create the New Soviet Man, and the thought control of Maoist China, which is still underway with President Xi Jinping as the new Mao. Again and again, radical belief systems have tried to force people into a government-imposed version of reality. The impossibility of the thought processes of Big Government socialism can be best understood through two Walt Disney movies.

By most counts, 2021 turned out to be another miserable year. COVID-19 is still with us, inflation soared, the foreign policy establishment got everything wrong, particularly, Afghanistan. But most of us are still alive ― that is why it is important to look at the good news. The annual “State of the Polar Bear Report” was released early in the year, leading off with the comment: “Celebrate the fabulous news that polar bears had yet another good year.” According to the principal author of the report, Dr. Susan J. Crockford, much to everyone’s surprise, the bears are now more numerous and fatter than they have been for decades. Dr. Crockford reports that “less summer ice means more food for the entire food chain, including polar bears.” “Polar bears are more flexible in their habitat requirements than experts assumed, and less summer ice has so far been beneficial rather than detrimental.” There is good news from China. It is now using record amounts of coal to generate record levels of electricity, which boosts its GDP. It is also great news for those seeking employment in the coal and power industries. The explosion in information technology, combined with the internet, increasingly allows people to avoid stifling government rules by doing “workarounds.” There is an explosion in new medical technology - including tools, devices, drugs and information ― which will make medical care better and less expensive. Government regulation has slowed innovation and patient service - but it is increasingly cost-effective for providers to go their own way without government officials sitting on their heads.

Mr. Biden’s failures project a sense of weakness in the world. Former Secretary Gates said as much earlier this year when he declared that Russia and China are more aggressive because they believe the United States is weak. As we remember the 2,402 Americans killed 80 years ago at Pearl Harbor, it is important to review the climate in 1941. The Japanese wanted to establish their power in the Pacific and targeted Hawaii to neuter the influence of the United States. They assumed that a surprise attack would cripple our forces and push America into retreat. World War II was well underway by December 7, 1941. Isolationism was the prevailing thought in the country, and the Japanese misread that as a sign of weakness. The attacks forced the United States into the war. Six months later, the turning point of the Pacific was the Battle of Midway. There, American service members showed that, while the government’s leadership might have been weak and ill-prepared before the attacks on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. military was ready to fight back. We need to show the rest of the world that even if Joe Biden is a weak, bumbling fool, the American people are not. We are strong and filled with resolve. Russian leader Vladimir Putin is prepared to move. He has staged 175,000 troops on the border of Ukraine. He wants it. Historians see similarities with Hitler invading Poland in 1939 at the start of World War II. As President Ronald Reagan advocated, peace comes through strength. His Peace Dividend lasted well through the 1990s. He avoided war because our enemies were afraid to take us on. Now, they see the opposite with the Biden administration.

Afghanistan’s returning Taliban overlords are demonstrating their disdain for policies they established that are meant to guide the nation’s transition from factional terrorism to functional governance. Rules of fair play are foreign to these internecine combatants. There can be no peaceful outcome to the treachery the Taliban is practicing. The U.S. State Department has marshaled a body of global allies in condemning the Taliban over the “summary killings and enforced disappearances” of former Afghan security forces. The extrajudicial kidnapping and execution of more than 100 police and intelligence officials violate an agreement accepted by Taliban leaders following their overthrow of the Afghan government in August. Human Rights Watch reported in November that the nation’s new leaders had ordered former security forces to register with authorities in return for a letter guaranteeing their safety. Instead, the information is being weaponized as a means of rounding them up for execution or imprisonment. Is it surprising that those who traffic in terror have trouble with integrity? No. However, it is unsettling to realize that they are not the only ones. Moreover, memories are tormented with the knowledge that hundreds of American citizens and perhaps thousands of U.S. legal residents are still trapped in enemy territory where Mr. Biden abandoned them. As China menaces Taiwan, and Russia closes in on Ukraine, populations coping with the threat of invasion cannot help but feel that long-standing U.S. pledges of resolute support - now the responsibility of the man who abandoned Afghanistan - are little more than empty promises.

Look how different the world appears after Donald Trump left office. For the first time, China is building a naval base in the Atlantic Ocean, off the African coast. Beijing is also ratcheting military flights over Taiwan and threatening to invade the democratic island nation. Mr. Biden’s response is to announce that he will not send government officials to the 2022 Beijing Olympics. That isn’t likely to put fear into the heart of President Xi Jinping. Iran appears to be proceeding with its program to build nuclear weapons. As a Wall Street Journal editorial accurately put it: “The Biden administration’s problem is that it came into office believing that the main threat to world stability was Donald Trump.” Mr. Biden weakened Mr. Trump’s maximum pressure campaign against Iran’s nuclear program and has put nothing but diplomatic entreaties in its place. Rogue regimes only engage in “diplomacy” if they think they can pick the pocket of their adversary. The West too often believes everyone wants to be like us. If that were true, wouldn’t they already be more like us? Evil must be opposed, or it grows in nations, as well as in individuals. Criminals naturally see weakness as an opportunity to loot and kill, fearing few, if any, consequences. If Mr. Putin invades Ukraine, if China invades Taiwan, if Iran finishes a nuclear bomb, if North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un decides to move against South Korea, all of them may see this as the ideal opportunity to engage in behavior they might think twice about if America had a strong president. Leaders of “evil empires” feel emboldened when they conclude they will not be effectively opposed by the “strongest nation in the world.”

The Islamist movement, which seeks to apply medieval Islamic laws and build a worldwide caliphate, has expanded massively in the past half-century. It now, however, faces a significant and growing counter-movement, especially in Muslim-majority countries. Increasing numbers of Muslims, spurred by shocks like the fall of Kabul, fear and reject this radical version of Islam. Awareness of the anti-Islamist surge has been largely limited to those directly involved, but it deserves to be much better known. Anti-Islamism comprises four complementary trends. Going from quietest to most radical, they are: Moderate Islam, irreligiosity, apostasy, and conversion to other religions. Husni Mubarak’s 30-year police state so consistently accommodated Islamists that Egyptians dared not oppose them. His fall from power in 2011 finally permitted an open expression of views, which the one-year Islamist rule of Mohamed Morsi further galvanized. The results have been hyperbolically anti-Islamist, as seen by street attacks on Muslim Brotherhood-appearing men, by women discarding the hijab, and the immense popularity of scathingly anti-Islamist figures. Younger Turks are adopting non-Islamic ways. Survey research by Volkan Ertit found that the sacred had less influence regarding belief in supernatural beings, clothing that reveals body shape, premarital flirtation, non-marital sex, and homosexuality. In Saudi Arabia, flat-out rejection of Islam “is spreading like wildfire,” says a Saudi refugee. The WIN/Gallup survey found that “convinced atheists” make up 5% of the population in Saudi Arabia. The monarchy has responded by partially acquiescing to such sentiments, opening the country to many modern ways.

“We recognize that the Human Rights Council is a flawed body,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken diplomatically understated when announcing the administration’s intention to rejoin. He added: “When it works well, the Human Rights Council shines a spotlight on countries with the worst human rights records and can serve as an important forum for those fighting injustice and tyranny.” But when has the UNHRC ever worked well? Can you think of one country whose record on human rights has improved thanks to the UNHRC? Does anyone believe that the UNHRC’s occasional resolutions on North Korea keep Kim Jong-un awake at night? Here’s a clue: At a UNHRC session last month, the North Korean envoy took the stage to accuse Australia of “deep-rooted racism, racial discrimination, and xenophobia.” Mr. Blinken said he believes that “the best way to improve the Council is to engage.” But the Obama administration, in which he served, spent eight years engaging with the UNHRC to no effect. And, again, why not at least demand a few fundamental reforms in exchange for American participation? I understand President Biden’s desire to shore up the international order which, not so long ago, could be characterized as liberal and based on equitable rules. But a growing number of the organizations that give the international order structure and substance are now dominated by despots. That has increased the peril to the world’s health, while both distorting and eroding the very concept of human rights. Must we continue funding these organizations? Should we consider establishing alternatives? Are we not able to disabuse ourselves of the notion that American engagement alone will transform them?