RESOLUTIONS TO SEE YOU THROUGH A NEW (ELECTION) YEAR.

• Author: Tuccille, J.D.

NATIONALISTS TO THE right of us and progressives to the left of us sneer at the idea that people should be left alone to do their own thing. It can be a little demoralizing. But another year dawns, and with it comes the opportunity for a fresh take on the world in which we live. Yes, New Year's resolutions are a bit of a cliche, but they can help us break bad habits and reboot our lives. What you do is up to you, of course. But you might resolve to:

Get some perspective.

TOO MANY OF your friends and neighbors are tribal idiots, but they're not the worst tribal idiots in recent memory, by any means. Friedrich Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom at a time when trendy thinkers agreed that free societies were a passing fad, debated whether they'd be superseded by fascism or socialism, and waged their argument in the streets and on battlefields. Anne Frank wrote her diary while hiding, ultimately unsuccessfully, from psychopathic Nazis who ruled an empire, not a website. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago documented the horrors of the forced-labor camps that were an integral part of life under Communism. And in The Girl With Seven Names, North Korean Lee Hyeon-seo described an entire country turned into a forced-labor camp. By comparison, Americans' current fascination with brown shirt/red shirt cosplay should be taken as a warning, but it doesn't yet rise to the heights of historical awfulness.

Work on your self-reliance.

YOU CAN'T CONTROL the world, but you do have some say over you. Instead of fretting about tough times, make sure you and yours are in the best position possible to weather them. If the economy takes a hit, are you ready to switch gears so you can keep making a living? Are you taking good care of your health so you don't find yourself at the mercy of others' goodwill? If you are prepared, are you in a position to help family, friends, and neighbors who might get blindsided by events?

Think about picking up a few skills that contribute to your handiness. Basic plumbing or carpentry, for example, can come in very handy for patching things up or making a few bucks. If nothing else, you'll save yourself money on home repairs.

Get out.

IT'S AMAZING HOW worries peel away when you step down a trail and realize how much of the...