Journals like this one exist, generally speaking, not to praise politicians but to chastise, to upbraid, or at least to criticize them. And so, after hearing about the terrible shootings at the Alexandria baseball field the morning of June 14; after making the mistake of sampling the incivility and stupidity that some of our fellow Americans from across the political spectrum were spewing on television and on Twitter; after thinking of all the ways our public officials might fail to say what should be said—we feared the worst. But our fears were unwarranted.

The speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, reminded us that the decent and eloquent expression of sound sentiment has not departed our public life: