It turns out there are many mainstream experts who see serious defect in the Constitution and agree that replacing the document is with considering.

Leading Americans have called our country a democracy, and spoken approvingly of democracy as a goal, for many decades. Lincoln and Roosevelt aren’t around today to post their ideas on social media. But we need to remember what they said anyway.

A good idea that is likely to fail from lack of cooperation is the massive nationwide vaccination campaign. To be successful, that process needs a sufficient number of people to get the vaccination and make themselves ineligible as carriers. But it looks like not enough people are going to get the shots. There will be plenty of people walking around spreading the disease, and coronavirus will remain.

Both sides are determined to think the worst of the other side — and determined that the other side can’t possibly want to do the right thing because it is the right thing.

Predictions and claims based on guesses and projections ought to be looked at when the facts become available. Predictions turn out to be right or wrong. The people making those predictions ought to get credit when they were right, and criticism when they were wrong.

Imagine you are standing near the switch on a trolley line, and you look ahead and see someone standing near a puddle of water. If nothing intervenes, the trolley will roll down the track and splash water on the person. But you can throw the switch, killing the person standing on the side track, thereby saving the first person from getting wet. Should you do it?

In 2021, the US is so split on so many issues that it couldn’t descend into a civil war if it wanted to.