I am going into isolation for a bit to rewrite the last chapter in my UN book, “Returning to Earth: When and How the United States Should Engage, and Not Engage, with the United Nations” – a chapter on the end of the human rights era at the UN. But I wanted to wish everyone a happy new year. And thank people for the excellent comments on cost-benefit analysis and the “line in the sand” question – please keep any comments coming in, particularly as relevant to the issue of how CBA deals, or does not deal, with deliberately arbitrary lines, in a form of analysis arising out of marginal incrementalism. (I am less interested in debates over particular issues to which CBA might be applied; I’m trying to understand it as a conceptual form and, if you like, something of its intellectual history and pedigree.) And, finally, to commend to you this essay by Jim Manzi, “Keeping America’s Edge,” at National Affairs journal – curious to return and see what people thought of it.