Despite a mild winter, it seemed forever before that green-yellow haze appeared in the trees and regrettably on the hoods of our cars. Seedlings can finally be transplanted to the garden and the bedroom windows can be left open all night. But, Another View plants ideas, not vegetables.

As primary voters thinned out the list of candidates this Spring, Donald Trump, last week, completed his hostile takeover of the Republican Party, according to some. He did it by rejecting the party’s typical timid, even sheepish responses to liberal demonization and ignoring the language police to speak openly about concerns like allowing illegal aliens to flood into our country, the abject silliness of refusing to name the threat from radical Islamic terrorism, and the pervasive incompetence and failure of domestic and foreign policies over the past 7 years. Bernie Sanders, apparently, failed to overcome the Democrats’ super delegate system, but he has successfully frustrated the coronation of Hillary Clinton and built a large, enthusiastic, and loyal following. He did it, predominantly, by abandoning the Democrat/Progressive stealthy creep toward socialism and openly calling for a socialist revolution now.

I hope we are coming out of our century long-intellectual winter to a new season where ideas emerge and compete for sunlight and nourishment. Some will survive and most will perish, no doubt as they should. Just as seedlings must harden before they can flourish, ideas must be openly and harshly vetted. Weak ideas must not be protected from harsh criticism in “safe spaces” and we should be utterly intolerant of people like Loretta Lynch proposing to use police powers to suppress criticism of failed ideas such as the scheme known, this week, as “Climate Change.”

I believe America will be better off in a new season of clearly stated and sharply contrasted viewpoints. Trump and Sanders plainly say what their supporters had been saying privately for years. Specifically, Trump defied the political correctness thugs to speak about Islamic extremism, illegal migration, economic failure, diplomatic failure, and the crookedness and malfeasance of his likely opponent. Bernie, on the other hand, openly calls for abandonment of capitalism, confiscation and redistribution of wealth, and creation of a society where an elected elite determines what their subjects need, and confiscates whatever that elite determines they don’t need or deserve. He imagines a ‘fair’ society where uniformity of income and ideas is imposed on all from birth to death.

Plain speaking hasn’t been limited to the presidential contests. Congressional candidates I’ve met (Republicans) are equally frank about reigning in the EPA, the Department of Education, excessive regulation, and executive overreach. Candidates for our Legislature call for continuing welfare reform, supporting the bill of rights, reducing corporate taxes, and eliminating job killing energy rules. I presume their opponents have responded with promises of higher taxes (on others of course), regulating businesses they don’t like into bankruptcy, suppressing energy use, confiscating private property, and replacing work with expanded entitlements.

If some readers are now raging in disagreement, then I’ve succeeded in illustrating the divide in our country and the starkness of the choices facing us. Hopefully both sides will reject banal arguments such as, that by supporting the second amendment, Donald Trump wants more children murdered in their classrooms; or that what we’ve seen for the past eight years represents, in any measure, economic success, better education, improved international relations, or any improvement in race and class relations at home. I would hope as well that both sides join in rejecting the goals of any group that uses or suborns mob violence as a tactic.

The choices we face are neither complicated nor subtle: Either we will continue the fundamental transformation of America or we will restore the founding principles and return to policies and practices that work. We must talk at length about values, principles, goals and specific actions. We must demand honesty, facts, frank arguments, realistic assessments, and admission that expanding entitlements and regulation has not and will not increase fairness or create prosperity. I hope also, the enthusiasm of the primary season will be sustained, bringing more people out to meet the candidates and learn about solutions rather than grievances.

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Another View, a Maine Press Association award-winning column, is written on a rotating basis by a member of a group of Midcoast citizens that meet to discuss issues they think are of public interest.