On Tuesday night, he repeated the commonplace belief that climate change is not a hoax (as many Republicans argue), and that the science is clear.
We can learn a lot from him – even from the easy acceptance, against his own better angel of reason, of the commonplace belief in witches that sent two old women to hang by the neck until dead.
Petra Kelly, a co-founder and the first leader of Germany's increasingly powerful Green Party, credited Gandhi for the now commonplace belief that having an ecologically oriented society "reduces the risk that policies of violence will be pursued in our name".
But it may be that the United States has already offered one kind of an answer, creating a society in which faith and reason continually cohabit in uneasy proximity, and iconoclasm is as commonplace as belief.
While uncertain or disappointing earnings from Europe are commonplace, there is a belief that similar disappointments would be felt in the U.S. "This was one bit of news that indicated that not everything in technology had gotten better," says Arnie Berman, an analyst at Wit Soundview.
Though freedom of thought, religion, expression, assembly and the right to protest and hold demonstrations are unequivocally protected by the Constitution, in reality, imprisonment for religious and political beliefs is commonplace.
At a time when belief in witches was commonplace and to deny their existence was heresy, it would have been very easy to interpret any suspicious behaviour or mark on the body as positive evidence of witchcraft.
That Mr. Zhou should have to suffer for his beliefs is an ugly commonplace of totalitarian societies, though in this instance that may well play into the hands of the movement the government is trying to kill.
With belief in pig-faced women commonplace, unscrupulous showmen exhibited living "pig-faced women" at fairs.
Metaphysical beliefs about odd numbers were commonplace by Shakespeare's time: "They say there is a divinity in odd numbers," Falstaff remarks.
Conflicts between religious beliefs and scheduling are becoming more commonplace because of the nation's changing demographics, said Sarah Barringer Gordon, a professor of law and history at the University of Pennsylvania.
