I say statecraft is soulcraft. Just as all education is moral education because learning conditions conduct, most legislation is moral legislations because it conditions the action and the thought of the nation in broad and important spheres in life.
Interpretation
Statecraft encompasses moral considerations, shaping the character of a nation through its laws and education.
George Will asserts that the art of governance, or statecraft, is intrinsically linked to the moral education of a society. The quote emphasizes that both educational systems and legislative actions play crucial roles in shaping the ethical landscape of a nation, influencing the thoughts and behaviors of its citizens in significant ways.
In practice
In a political debate emphasizing the importance of ethics in governance, one might reference this quote.
The problem with intelligent-design theory, is not that it is false but that it is not falsifiable. Not being susceptible to contradicting evidence, it is not a testable hypothesis. Hence it is not a scientific but a creedal tenet - a matter of faith, unsuited to a public school's science curriculum.
The cultivation - even celebration - of victimhood by intellectuals, tort lawyers, politicians and the media is both cause and effect of today's culture of complaint.
Correct thinkers think that 'baseball trivia' is an oxymoron: nothing about baseball is trivial.
Constitutional arguments that seem as dry as dust can have momentous consequences.
The civil forfeiture law - if something so devoid of due process can be dignified as law - is an incentive for perverse behavior: Predatory government agencies get to pocket the proceeds from property they seize from Americans without even charging them with, let alone convicting them of, crimes. Criminals are treated better than this because they lose the fruits of their criminality only after being convicted.
Actually, there is only one first question of government, and it is How should we live? or What kind of people do we want our citizens to be?
Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.
One day after laying a wreath at the tomb of Martin Luther King Jr., President Bush appoints a federal judge who has built his career around dismantling Dr. King's legacy.
There is no excitement anywhere in the world, short of war, to match the excitement of the American presidential campaign.
There is an important sense in which government is distinctive from administration. One is perpetual, the other is temporary and changeable. A man may be loyal to his government and yet oppose the particular principles and methods of administration.
If we can deter the Soviet Union, if we can deter North Korea, why on earth can't we deter Iran?
A Russia that gradually begins to gravitate toward the West will also be a Russia that ceases to disrupt the international system.
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