What have we learned after seeing photos of the Nazi flag being carried down the streets in Charlottesville, a pleasant and progressive community? Or from watching torch-bearing white nationalists march across the lawn at Thomas Jefferson’s academical village, a bastion of learning and enlightenment?

Or from watching an automobile ram into a group of people protesting these actions? Or from the deaths of two state troopers in a helicopter crash while they worked to maintain control and order during a chaotic day?

We learned that hatred is alive and well and sometimes willing to bare its ugly face. We learned also, however, that the great majority of Americans, no matter what part of the political spectrum they occupy, are appalled and offended by such actions.

Authorities expected trouble and had prepared, they thought, to contain it. Today the supremacists promise to return. We trust the authorities have learned, from that deadly weekend in Charlottesville, that they need to ...