Letter: Maintain individual rights

To the Editor:

We need to maintain our individual rights by retaining the Electoral College and rejecting Supreme Court stacking.

The Founding Fathers wanted a republic and not a democracy because it would be a disaster. A democracy is ruled by direct majority vote of the people based on their feelings at the time, which the Founders called mobocracy. It would mean there would be no minorityrights. John Adams said “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”

A republic is ruled by law. The Declaration of Independence says all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. The majority cannot vote away our individual rights.

We elect the president through the Electoral College, not direct popular vote. Each state gets the same number of senators. The people in California can’t dictate to the rest of us. Other advantages of the Electoral College include forcing candidates to pay attention to lightly populated states, isolation of election problems and flexibility if a candidate dies.

Stacking the Supreme Court is not the same as filling vacancies and is inappropriate. Stacking is expanding the number of justices to get a liberal majority by filling those positions with liberal activist judges who will ignore what the Constitution says or what the majority of Congress wants.

Liberal activist judges usurp the function of Congress by legislating from the bench, negating the need for Congress. This is totalitarianism. The proper constitutional role of justices is to determine if laws from Congress conform to the Constitution as written with original intent. Justices should not modify the Constitution, write the laws or rule based on what they want.

Robert C. Lemke

Joliet