By the time this appears, voters in the United States will be headed to the polls. At last count, 82 million votes had already been cast, a little more than half of the number polled in 2020.

The possibility of a Donald Trump win has caused much consternation, not just in the US but also in the rest of the world, particularly among the US’ Western/NATO allies. Pollsters say the race is tied. Seven swing states and their 93 electoral votes will decide who occupies the White House for the next four years.

The former one-term president, who lost to Joe Biden in 2020, is back and he is making everyone nervous, except his own MAGA followers, many of whom already believe he has won. They also believe, like an article of faith, that if he loses he will have been made to lose and that calls for an insurrection against a presumed conspiracy to keep Trump out. Going by what happened at Capitol Hill in 2020 and Trump’s statement that he shouldn’t have left the White House then has added to the post-election uncertainties: there will be disruption if he loses; there will be disruption if he wins.

Back in 1787, when the Constitutional Convention was debating the Union’s constitution, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay were writing essays, debating the minutiae of an effective and stable Union. The 85 essays were published under the pen name Publius in various New York newspapers. Two of those, Federalist 10 by Madison and Federalist 68 by Hamilton are important for our present purpose.

Number 10 is about domestic factions and insurrection. This is how Madison defined a faction: “By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

He also believed that “So strong is [the] propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most........

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