Predictions for 2006

One of the best (and worst) things about having a blog is that I and my reader (I use the singular advisedly) can look back at what I got right, what I got spectacularly wrong, and what I missed entirely. In that vein, allow me to dust off my cloudy crystal ball and reveal my absolutely 100% correct predictions for 2006:

1. Judge Samuel Alito will be confirmed by the Senate with about 65 votes, despite the Democrats' suspicions that he is not a physical and ideological clone of Sandra Day O'Connor. The oft-repeated fear that Alito will upset the court's sacred "balance" is one of those bizarre instances of modern politics in which a minor talking point written by some Senate staffer gets elevated by the mainstream media to the level of Constitutional sacrement. But I digress.

2. After Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's death (which is a tragedy for Israelis and Palestinians alike), former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will emerge as the frontrunner to replace him. He will have frequent clashes with his more dovish coalition cabinet, making his term tumultuous but short. The gradual move toward Palestinian statehood will continue, even after the Palestinian leadership fails to rein in Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

3. The Indianapolis Colts will win the Super Bowl. The Rolling Stones, to the relief of all humanity, will remain fully clothed during the halftime show.

4. The situation along the Korean peninsula will remain unchanged, because no one is willing to do anything to change it. The long slide into tragedy will continue.

5. Europe will slowly begin to realize the consequences of its demographic collapse and subsequent Islamification, but too late to do anything about it. More social unrest, such as was seen in Paris last year, will strike, perhaps in Germany or the Netherlands.

6. Al-Qaeda, or one of its progeny, will pull off a large-scale (comparable in size to the Madrid bombings in 2004) terrorist attack in Italy sometime during the year. There will be no successful attacks on American soil.

7. The WVU basketball team will make it to the Final Four, but sadly, no further.

8. About 100,000 American troops will be in Iraq by year's end, down from the current 150,000. Republicans will point to the drawdown as proof that the mission in Iraq is succeeding; Democrats will point to it as proof it is failing. The level of violence will remain about the same as it is now.

9. I'm really going out on a limb on this one: Federal spending will increase.

10. Illegal immigration will become one of the most contentious issues of the 2006 elections.

11. The avian flu will remain chiefly confined to avians.

12. Brokeback Mountain, a movie that critics are contractually obligated to shower with praise, will win the Oscar for Best Picture. The awards ceremony will go on for three days, due to all the assembled Hollywood elites giving themselves a congratulatory standing ovation for their tolerance and fearlessness. And they will continue to be mystified over why their movies fail to resonate with those 150 million Americans living in between the coasts.

13. The Dow will close out the year at around 11,500.

14. Osama bin Laden's status will remain unresolved.

15. The Republicans will retain control of both houses of Congress, although it will be close in the House. Democrats, emboldened by their first non-loss since 1998, will become even more hysterical in their attacks on President Bush, thereby weakening their chances in the 2008 presidential election. They just can't help themselves.

16. The gravest international crisis the West will face one year hence will be Iran's continued effort to build nuclear weapons. The UN Security Council will levy sanctions against Iran late this year, but the sanctions will do little to force the Iranian government to reverse course, and will do much to antagonize the Iranian people, who will be hardest hit. Military action--whether by the US, Israel, or both--will be discussed much more openly and frequently than it is today.

17. The West Virginia Mountaineers will go undefeated in the regular season, and will be in the Sugar Bowl again. They will play a 9-2 LSU team. The game will be controversial, because WVU will be one of only two undefeated teams in the nation, but they will not get a chance to play for the championship. Remember, you heard it here first.

If anyone out there has some predictions of their own they'd like to add, please feel free to do so in the comments.

Modern Times by Paul Johnson

The 20th century was a time of extremes for humanity; extreme ideologies, borne out of the writings of 19th century revolutionaries, led to extreme suffering, and forced the great Western democracies to resort to extreme measures to preserve themselves. Technological advances, paradoxically the most hopeful and the most horrible manifestation of mankind's innovative spirit, improved the lives of millions, but ended the lives of millions more; tragically showing that what we have gained in knowledge, we have lost in wisdom. Some have called these days the "Age of Anxiety," a time in which the civilized world gropes in darkness, searching for some sort of meaning after the old world's philosophies of ever-upward progress and eventual utopia were shattered by the collective trauma of the Great Depression, two World Wars, and the ensuing nuclear standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Of all the horrors endured by humanity during the 20th century, however, none led to more death and sorrow than the modern scourge of totalitarianism. This is the inescapable conclusion of British historian Paul Johnson's sweeping masterpiece, Modern Times: From the Twenties to the Nineties. In Mr. Johnson's analysis, totalitarianism--an impersonal, bureaucratic monster with a charismatic cult-like figure as its head--was made possible (indeed, inevitable) by the replacement of absolute standards of right and wrong with moral relativism and Nietzche's "will to power." When all notions of a final Arbitor of man's actions are banished, and the State is the only entity through which man can find meaning and fulfillment, it opens the door for unspeakable evil, as we witnessed during the Holocaust and Stalin's purges. Joel Engel, writing in the Weekly Standard, put it well:

Let's imagine six billion people who believe that flesh and blood is all there is; that once you shuffle off this mortal coil, poof, you're history; that Hitler and Mother Teresa, for example, both met the same ultimate fate. Common sense suggests that such a world would produce a lot more Hitlers and a lot fewer Teresas, for the same reason that you get a lot more speeders / murderers / rapists / embezzlers when you eliminate laws, police, and punishment. Skeptics and atheists can say what they like about religion, but it's hard to deny that the fear of an afterlife where one will be judged has likely kept hundreds of millions from committing acts of aggression, if not outright horror. Nothing clears the conscience quite like a belief in eternal nothingness.

As Mr. Johnson shows in example after example, there is another common theme of the 20th century that has extended into the 21st: No matter how heinous and brutal a foreign dictator might be, as long as he is virulently anti-American, he will enjoy either the implicit or explicit support of decadent American leftists. Of course, such an assertion usually leaves those leftists sputtering in protest, but the historical record is replete with examples: Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, and numerous others (Chavez of Venezuela, a leftist favorite who recently had his term as president "extended" until 2030, is a good contemporary example) all used pliant Western journalists and "intellectuals" to improve their image in the world. How telling it is that third-world despots often enjoy more support in American universities than they do among their own people.

The scope of Modern Times is remarkable. From the rise of Japanese militarism to the unraveling European empires in Africa to the socialist revolutionaries of Latin American, Mr. Johnson writes with great learning and insight, regardless of the culture or the time period. He has an uncanny ability for finding little-known but revealing quotes from famous historical figures, and he captures them in all their various peculiarity and greatness. Even the most familiar historical events seem fresh when read in Mr. Johnson's lively prose. There is not a wasted sentence in this meticulously detailed and thoroughly engrossing work.

Modern Times, after detailing the rapid collapse of Soviet Communism and the triumph of the Western democracies, ends on a optimistic note, as if the author hoped that through the end of the Cold War, the modern world might finally exorcise the demons of totalitarianism and social engineering that had led to so much suffering during the 20th century. But in the years since then, new fanatical revolutionaries have arisen, and once again, the world dithers while more aggressive men apply their will to power. Just as Hitler and Stalin before him, Osama bin Laden vows to remake the world in his own image, and is willing to use whatever means necessary to secure his evil vision. If the 20th century is any guide, such fanaticism must be fought relentlessly. But as the 20th century also shows, sometimes nations seek not to fight the growing threat, but to accomodate it. "The historian of the modern world," Mr. Johnson writes in the closing chapter, "is sometimes tempted to reach the depressing conclusion that progress is destructive of certitude." We would do well to remember that even amid the hand-wringing, guilt-ridden calls for "nuance" and "understanding," if not outright capitulation, there are some things in this world that demand moral certitude. The defense of civilization against the likes of bin Laden and his ilk is one of them.

Biggest. Win. Ever.

Nobody gave them a chance. They shouldn't even be there, decreed the "experts." They were a weak team who made it to the Sugar Bowl only because everyone else in their conference was even weaker. Their opponent was Georgia, a perennial powerhouse from one of college football's premier conferences. And to top it all off, the game was being played in Atlanta, where Georgia would enjoy an obvious home-field advantage.

But none of that mattered on Monday night, when the West Virginia Mountaineers, a team short on experience but long on heart, shocked Georgia and the nation (and some longsuffering Mountaineer fans) by defeating the heavily favored Bulldogs 38-35. WVU jumped out to an early 28-0 lead, but we all knew that Georgia would mount an inevitable comeback. There were quite a few nervous moments during the second half, but West Virginia never relinquished the lead. Oh sweet victory.

This Sugar Bowl win is, in my humble opinion, the biggest win in WVU football history, because there was so much more riding on this game than just a Top Ten finish. For the Big East to have any chance of keeping its automatic BCS bid status past 2007, West Virginia, as the Big East champion, had to show that they can hang with the more established teams. A loss would have given credence to all those "Big Least" bashers out there who worship at the altar of schedule strength and computer ratings. I'm glad some things are still decided on the field.

The future looks bright for WVU. Fifteen of West Virginia's 22 starters are either freshmen (including the backfield tandem of Pat White and Steve Slaten that ran wild against Georgia and everyone else this season) or sophomores. Mountaineer fans are as enthusiastic as they've ever been, and after WVU's first January bowl win ever, I expect folks will soon start naming their firstborn sons after Rich Rodriguez. The question is if West Virginia will finally get the national respect it deserves. A Top Ten finish this season seems certain, if for no other reason that most of the Top Ten teams have lost their bowl games. Next year's preseason rankings, although meaningless by season's end (just ask Tennessee), will nonetheless provide a good indicator of whether the college football powers-that-be view WVU's Sugar Bowl win as a fluke, or as a harbinger of a team to be reckoned with for several years. I expect they will regard it as a fluke, and they will be wrong again.