Kaylee McGhee White, our editor for the Washington Examiner’s Restoring America project, recently described our section as the effort to “bring back sanity to a country gone mad.” This often means publishing commentary that champions traditional American values. Individualism, free market economics , freedom of conscience, equality in favor of equity , American strength on the global stage, pro-family public policy, and excellence in education: These are the values upon which the strongest, most prosperous, and freest nation in history was built.

That's why Restoring America is not shy about championing these values — no matter how far out of fashion they fall. More than morally correct, they work. Societies flourish when the government eschews command-and-control economic policies, allows people to live in accord with their consciences, and protects its citizens. So, it is only sane to promote these ideals.

But we live in insane times. The further America grows unmoored from these bedrock values, the more it suffers. Life expectancy has plummeted to levels unseen in decades due to a combination of factors, including illicit drug use, obesity, and rapidly dissolving social ties. Real median household income has fallen 5% since 2019 thanks largely to inflation caused by runaway government spending. And in terms of security, Americans feel more vulnerable than ever as thousands of undocumented immigrants pour across the southern border each day and an ascendant coalition of authoritarian foreign powers flout American global leadership in Europe, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific.

And yet, despite these challenges, 2023 gave real cause for hope in the efforts to restore America to sanity. More than a few examples bear mentioning.

1. School choice is on the march

A whopping 20 states acted to expand school choice in 2023, which will allow millions of families to escape failing public schools and pursue a quality education. This is particularly good news for lower-income families, who are more likely to live in neighborhoods with underperforming public schools. Education savings accounts, scholarships, vouchers, charter schools, and other innovative vehicles for empowering parents in education have been expanded in states across the nation.

The pandemic remote-learning fiasco, during which parents witnessed firsthand the mediocrity of American schooling, blew open the doors for choice in education. 2023 will be long remembered as a banner year for this nascent movement.

2. Real science gave The Science™ a shellacking on COVID-19

If skepticism is the hallmark of good science, America, in the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, will live in scientific infamy. Aided by an intellectually outmatched Republican president and a pliant news media, a corrupt and arrogant scientific establishment led by Dr. Anthony Fauci injected one false narrative after another into the American bloodstream.

But in 2023, those false narratives unraveled for good, and the corrupt scientific establishment was thoroughly discredited. The policy of masking was unmasked by the Cochrane study and numerous subsequent studies, the natural origins theory of the virus was exposed as posterior protection for the American funders of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and lockdowns and school closures have been renounced even by the editorial board at the New York Times (finally).

2023 marked the official end of pandemic-era madness and afforded precious vindication for scientific skepticism, which has been a core value of Western civilization since the Enlightenment.

3. The gradual (and then sudden) decline of the DEI industrial complex

Signs that the "woke" movement had peaked were already present as we entered 2023. But in recent months, the movement and its enforcers from within the DEI industrial complex have self-destructed in spectacular fashion. Following the Oct. 7th terrorist attack in southern Israel, the grotesque behavior of prominent DEI figures and their Gen Z foot soldiers, whether at congressional hearings or the campus quad, has hastened the demise of the movement.

In 2023, corporate America slashed DEI departments , anti-DEI bills passed in statehouses across the nation, and the Supreme Court struck down racial preferences in college admissions, which is at the heart of the “equity” agenda. Even DEI kingpin Ibram X. Kendi has come under investigation by his employer, Boston University after reports surfaced that his once-vaunted Center for Antiracist Research had produced almost nothing in exchange for $30 million in endowments.

4. Free speech is having a resurgent moment

2023 was such a resurgent year for free speech in America that even the president of Harvard University (which is, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s annual survey, the very worst campus in America on free speech ) recently sang its praises.

Of course, Harvard President Claudine Gay simply paid lip service to free speech in the face of immense public pressure over her school’s poor response to antisemitism on campus. But what is truly remarkable is that such public pressure existed in the first place. Only one short year removed from the Biden administration’s attempt to install its now defunct “Disinformation Governance Board” and Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, the cause of free speech is enjoying a substantial revival.

At the dawn of 2024, the battle to restore sanity to America marches on, buoyed by its many gains in the previous year. Stark challenges lay ahead, but there is undeniable cause for hope.

Peter Laffin is a contributor at the Washington Examiner. His work has also appeared in RealClearPolitics, the Catholic Thing, and the National Catholic Register.