What Mr. Weiss writes may very well be true, but we have to make the effort. If we don't even do that, then we've given up, and ceded the political discourse to the extremist on both ends of the political spectrum. At the very least, we need to resist getting sucked into exchanging simple minded political insults/name calling with the ideologues who can't seem to handle viewpoints not in accord with their own. Democracy, and this country, has worked best when there has been an open, and respectful exchange of well thought out and workable ideas.