Discuss “Patriotism takes many forms”

No matter how cold the weather here turned late last week, Pittsburgh is still not the Arctic — even when you consider a particularly chilling news item that moved in from the north at about the same time.

The Associated Press reported last Monday that a few villages in Alaska are going without free heating oil because the company providing the fuel is controlled by Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, the man who infamously called President Bush “the devil” in a speech last month at the United Nations. Because of the insult, a nonprofit organization that would have managed the donation for four native villages turned it down.

“As a citizen of this country, you can have your own opinion of our president and our country. But I don’t...