Peggy Noonan: Finding the Good in an Uninspiring Year - WSJ.com: Richard Haass, the diplomat and author who this year marked 10 years as president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said the world has some things to say for itself. "I am grateful that Pakistan didn't fail, China and Japan didn't go to war, the euro didn't unravel, Jordan didn't collapse under the weight of refugees, and the U.S. didn't default."
Those were good didn'ts. Here's a good did.
Jeremy Shane, who runs an education foundation in Washington, found himself thinking this year of his native South Africa. When Nelson Mandela died, Mr. Shane remembered how all but fools thought apartheid wouldn't end without "a bloodbath." "And yet Mandela imagined, and with [ Frederik Willem ] de Klerk navigated," a peaceful transition to majority rule. "What Mandela fashioned stands alone in the annals of national reconciliation in improbability and result."