As we reflect on all matters at the turn of the new year, maybe we should think about how lucky we all are to live in a country as rich, diverse, and beautiful as ours. One that allows the Robertson family and Ellen DeGeneres to live their lives freely, and to make a living without fear of reprisal for simply being who they are, and for believing what they believe.

And as some among us seek to cleanse the world of sound bites and speech that hurt our feelings and sensitivities, maybe we can reflect on Thomas Jefferson’s great words on the subject: “It does me no injury for my neighbors to say there are 20 gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my legs.”

For a New Year’s resolution, let’s stop breaking legs and destroying the livelihoods of people for the mere act of disagreeing with us. Or saying something we don’t like.

We are better than that. And tougher.

Lee Habeeb

Well, maybe we’re not as fortunate as we thought….

Ironically, both the conservative false confidence in consensus and the liberal false confidence in uniqueness have a similar downside: smugness. Evidence for this is about as hard to find as hay in a haystack. Liberals often talk as if only the backward masses disagree with them, and conservatives often assume that only overeducated weirdos and radicals could object to their agenda. Hence Barack Obama’s infamous explanation for why rural Pennsylvanians didn’t support him: They were too busy “clinging” to their God and guns. Tellingly, conservatives took that line as a badge of honor.

Smugness is also the chief source of political problems for both the Left and the Right.

Myths to Ditch in 2014