As 2013 comes to a close, we're looking back on the year that was by revisiting the best pieces by some of our favorite writers here at Liberty:
- Steve Murphy got the year rolling with "Fatal Mistakes," a look at how the massive ongoing failures of the state normalizes incompetence;
- Lori Heine wrote of the end result of such a process: "The Mediocre Inherit the Earth";
- World traveler Jayant Bhandari wrote of visits to North Korea in "A Mirror unto Myself," as well as back to his hometown, site of the world's largest industrial accident and an equally large governmental malfeasance, in "Bhopal, 1984";
- Liberty's adventure correspondent Robert H. Miller detailed hiking and gun-smuggling across the Canadian wilderness, as well as the staggering beauty and overwhelming friendliness encountered while biking the Taiwanese coast.
- Meanwhile, Liberty's entertainment editor Jo Ann Skousen fulfilled a lifelong dream visiting Easter Island, detailed in "The Land Where the Statues Walked" —while also keeping up top-notch film reviews, such as on the Drug War film Snitch, and the difficult but indispensable 12 Years a Slave;
- Robert Watts Lamon provided a great review of a collection by a titan of the written word, today nearly forgotten: Wolcott Gibbs—as well as an article on how little the self-appointed American Ruling Class cares about anything but its own power;
- Jon Harrison continued his excellent coverage of matters domestic—such as "The Zimmerman Verdict"—and foreign: see his "Imperium Sinarum Delendum Est" on the growing challenge of an imperial China;
- S.H. Chambers kept our homepage lively with cartoons skewering our political and economic overseers;
- In "The Hypocrisy of High Office," Gary Jason reported on the moral character of our esteemed president;
- And finally, a trio from our editor, Stephen Cox: "O Tempora! O Bama!" dissected our president's "soaring" rhetoric ; "Detroit" reflected on the decline of that great city; and "Words on Trial" joined the keen insight of Word Watch to the delirious fun of the year's great entertainment: the Jodi Arias murder trial.
Which were your favorites? What would you add to the list? We look forward to bringing you much more great material in 2014 and beyond—thanks for reading, and have the best of new years!
