The failure of democracy? An academic study published last summer, which is rather suddenly being hailed in places like the New York Times, claims "an entire global generation has lost faith in democracy." Citizens "have grown jaded." This applies to youth especially, who call elections "unimportant" and say "a democratic political system" is a "bad" way to run things.

But is it really so? Young Americans who enthused over Bernie Sanders in the primaries, skipped the election because it wasn't democratic enough. People in Greece, Spain or Italy, left old parties and built new ones for similar reasons.

Race doesn't exist but it does. The strongest argument against Rachel Dolezal's African-American claims isn't that they're false. Everyone agrees race is a social construct. It's that for most African-Americans, race isn't a lifestyle choice; and it trivializes their often hideous experiences to treat it that way. Yet it's also an identity that people can willingly embrace, after the fact as it were, which can enrich or embitter (or even kill, as in Charleston last week). So there's an element of choice, even in extreme situations.