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As US loses virtue, it also loses the many blessings of liberty

Editorials

A farmer can’t make his plants grow, but he can create the conditions that lead to their flourishing. A society can’t make its citizens virtuous, but it can nurture the institutions that lead to virtuous citizens. Great thinkers in Western civilization have long noted the importance of virtue. In Politics, Aristotle declared, “The best life, both for individuals and states, is the life of virtue, when virtue has external goods enough for the performance of good actions.” “Virtue then is a settled disposition of the mind determining the choice of actions and emotions, ...

All political violence must be condemned, punished harshly

Editorials

The traditional Labor Day weekend launch to the home stretch of intensive fall political campaigning got off to a rocky, disturbing and intolerable start in the Mahoning Valley this weekend. On Sunday afternoon, an assailant reportedly charged toward the Democratic candidate for Ohio governor, Amy Acton, during her campaign stop at the 180th Canfield Fair, injuring visitors before he was subdued by state troopers, the Ohio State Highway Patrol said. Though at least two people suffered minor injuries from the stampede, Acton thankfully was unhurt. Patrol members and Mahoning County ...

Republicans can rename things, too

Editorials

In one of his Truth Social bombs, President Donald Trump insisted we should rename Lake Ontario to Lake America after Canada refused to accept his trade negotiation terms. It obviously echoes his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. It’s easy to find these whole geographic kerfuffles unnecessary. But the media hated the first one so much that the Associated Press found itself restricted from the White House press pool for refusing to accept the new gulf terminology. What they hate is anything Trump does to add a patriotic pro-America tinge to something that they ...

Venezuela oil deal represents good progress, bad structure

Editorials

In 2007, Hugo Chavez sent men with rifles into the Orinoco Belt. They walked into oilfields Americans had surveyed, Americans had drilled and American engineering had made productive and told ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips to take a minority stake in their own work or get out. Those two got out. Chevron stayed and ate two decades of abuse for it. Chavez handed what he took to party loyalists, ran it into the ground and left his people eating zoo animals atop the largest proven oil reserves on earth. Give President Donald Trump the credit he has earned. Nicolas Maduro is gone. The Strait ...