The Civil War is over – at last! Our side won. The Nameless One and his evil minions have been vanquished. The country survives. But it’s a mess. Acrimony simmers (and will for generations). The old structures have splintered like spindly furniture. Time for a new plan, a Second Constitutional Convention: we’ve been invited (along with countless others). Gather our thoughts. What kind of nation ought we make to weather these new conditions?

A mind-game? Sure – until it isn’t. Nations are ideas not natural phenomena. They emerge from human minds. Dogs, Henry notes, acknowledge species, not nations. Species are facts, nations are opinions, and opinions differ, leading to quarrels. Dogs fight – for food, supremacy, sexual legitimacy (this last isn’t for Henry, but hey) – not for bragging rights. Nations, in Henry’s opinion, are stupid – but what do dogs know?

Where to begin? Tempting to replicate the Founders’ model – as amended – absent that provision about slaves being three-fifths human. But that would be sentimental folly. The Founders built a house for their moment, that miraculously survived two and a half centuries. Bless them! 2037 – with fifty states (soon to be fifty-two) and 350 million citizens (eight million war dead, may they rest in peace) bears little resemblance to 1787, with its thirteen former colonies and three million souls. Our brilliant Founders failed to envision the Internet, space travel, epidemiology, smart phones, nukes and all the other gewgaws of modernity we hold so dear. Let’s zero-base America: new nation, new notion.

How to proceed? How about with adjectives. Characterize the polity we hope to achieve, then sketch its structure. First, we must decide if this is an idea shared by the populace or imposed by a central potentate: democracy or tyranny. Since the Second Civil War was waged over this issue, this answer’s a no-brainer. It will still be “We the People” – of all human concepts arguably the most astonishing.

Now muster our adjectives and array them like cadets. Orderly, Just, Safe, Communal, Truthful, Civil, Decent, Inclusive, Prosperous are a few of mine. Not a government of the privileged few for the disparaged many. A government that most, if not all, feel bound to (there will always be dissidents). Oh, and I forgot Creative. No nation in history conceived, contrived, and constructed more than America before its Crack-Up. Tally the innovations in technology, science, medicine, communications, transportation, finance, fashion over the past quarter-millennium – a preponderance were American. Let’s not, in our revised nation, lose that edge in pursuit of pleasantness! (Tranquility and Originality are ever at odds.)

The more one ponders the trickier it gets forming a “more perfect union.” One right becomes another’s wrong and another’s left. Capital and Labor seem inevitably to separate like unpasteurized cream and milk. You want Truth? Of course – after these decades of deceit – but what does Truth mean? How to enforce it without stifling it? How much risk to tolerate in pursuit of new solutions? Better safe than sorry? Maybe. But too safe may make us really sorry.

Is this whole Federalism idea worthwhile? Can one make a case for Wyoming? How to balance the power of legislature, executive, and judiciary, if we maintain those divisions? It’s tempting, after years of the Nameless One, to emasculate our head honcho, but that would be unwise. We need strong leaders – just not too strong.

My generation assumed the Founders’ idea was optimal: the results proved it. Sadly, that structure failed. We’ve no choice but to confront our nation’s inadequacies and try building better. Will we succeed? Highly unlikely – humans are the devil to manage – but we’ve got to try.