It’s that time of year when we sit back, reflect, and take in what’s happening in the world around us, now and over the course of the last year.

Sure, it’s possible to get down when you do that. After all, as I’ve stated many times in this column, the media loves to play up the doom and gloom, the “if it bleeds it leads” philosophy. After all, “the sky is falling” sells. If you watch CNN or Fox News, they will, quite frankly, tell you everything that’s wrong in the world from their points of view.

Sure, there are real problems in the world. Between drug wars, terrorist insurgencies, ethnic conflicts and civil wars, there are 30-plus going on right now. There’s a land war in Europe for the first time since the 1940s. There is an awful war in the Mideast, where violence seems to beget more violence.

According to the World Health Organization, there are more than 700 million people starving in the world today. On the domestic front, we seem to be more divided than ever, and both sides........

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