But we will always be aware that those judgements - however small or insignificant they may seem in isolation - can together change the character of our country.
Wemaybe able to use them on the fringes and on the edges and in small locales, but we're much more likely to lose them if somebody decides to challenge us for that space.
The idea, for instance, that we should block millions from moving here and vastly bettering their lives because there maybe a small statistical impact on some subset of us.
And just perhaps, when the debate is over, the rationalizations and the distinctions and the semantic gymnastics are put to rest, wemaybe closer to answering for our generation the haunting question asked 139 years ago in a small military cemetery in Pennsylvania -- whether a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal can long endure.