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?
The constitution has broken down. We have no enemies except the ones we select and direct towards the nearest nuclear bombs. They need an enemy to provoke, a diversion. This is the mentality of tenth-rate people who are in politics because corporate America likes them. They are malleable. They give them contracts to build missile shields that will never work. It's deeply corrupt.
The problem is not that the U.S. economy won't be able to take care of its citizens - it is that taking away benefits, creating intergenerational warfare, and scapegoating will make for very difficult and bad politics. This is a tragedy that we can see coming. Early action would be relatively painless.
And I'm not apolitical - I'm very specific in my politics. But a lot of the time it's nobody's business unless you're over at my house having dinner.
In the final analysis it doesn't really matter what the political system is...We don't need perfect political systems; we need perfect participation.
I have always been of opinion that all the political workers should be indifferent and should never bother about the legal fight in the law courts and should boldly bear the heaviest possible sentences inflicted upon them. They may defend themselves but always from purely political considerations and never from a personal point of view.
Like a cyclone, imperialism spins across the globe; militarism crushes peoples and sucks their blood like a vampire.
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