When a great general was once asked to detail his military strategy, he replied, "I have no strategy." In other words, he knew all the strategies, but also knew that his choice of tactics depended on the situation. Progressives have much to learn from this insight. It is more important to have multiple options for each context than to have a fixed commandment for every state of affairs. The goal in any struggle is to maintain a position of maximum flexibility. The general understood that freedom means being in a position where one can advance along any line of the compass -- north, south, east or west -- to achieve one's objectives.

Time magazine named The Protester its 2011 "Person of the Year" because, for decades till recently, most protests "seemed ineffectual and irrelevant." That's just silly. You can always find resistance and, depending on how you judge, it's often relevant. The spirit of protest is indomitable and inspiring. Eruptions happen constantly, exactly when you don't expect them. That defines resistance: it shouldn't exist but it resists anyway. Often it's crushed but it didn't fail to happen because Time failed to deem it cover-worthy.

Add Kim Jong-Il to the year's already substantial fallen dictator list. Take your news from Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of Canada, or from Mayan temple walls. Look at the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement or the demise of Durban and Kyoto. These all point to a similar outlook for the year ahead: we are at the end of an era.

But, hey, whether we like it or not, it's at the end of things that what comes next is birthed. But first the hard labour.

Choosing Bank of Canada language, this is "the end of the 'debt super-cycle.'"

I think I know what the Occupy (Wall Street, Toronto, etc.) movements mean to say and over which they are reproached by ill-wishers and well-wishers alike (e.g., "vast potential... untethered to many real-world goals"). What they're saying is: Change the agenda/change the channel. Saying anything less is inadequate because you could find a small piece mistaken for the whole. But saying that much is tricky precisely because there already is an agenda in place that keeps blocking and obscuring the demand to change it!