Letters to the Editor: How we the people are letting Trump destroy our democracy
Tuesday, November 13, 2016
“The right to vote is now a privilege and not a right,” writes William J. Bratton, former New York City Police Department (NYPD) Commissioner, in his article, “How to stop Donald Trump” (Oct. 4).
How do you stop a man from being elected president of the United States? You don’t. You can’t, because that’s not how American democracy works. And, as the great historian and legal scholar Wayne R. Dynes says, “The democratic process is not an endless march toward a predetermined result. We proceed incrementally, by means of the individual person who engages in the democratic process.” As James Madison observed, “The great principles of republican government are, that the citizen must be considered as one of the equals or co-citizens of the State, and that in his opinion and will, the state is the general guardian and protector of the rights of the individual.”
How does one do that in a country where the people don’t even seem to have the right to know who the president is or what he might do? What if one of Trump’s nominees to the Supreme Court were to overturn Roe vs. Wade? What if one of his nominees for the Supreme Court were to overturn the 14th Amendment guaranteeing equal protection under the law? What if one of Trump’s nominees for the Supreme Court were to overturn the Voting Rights Act? What if one of Trump’s nominees for the Supreme Court was to overturn the right of states to set their own educational standards? What if one of Trump’s nominees, for the Supreme Court, was to overturn the right of citizens to be able to “obliterate” (i.e., destroy) records created by federal governmental agencies and to erase and otherwise destroy such records? What if one of Trump’s nominees for the Supreme Court were to overturn the right of corporations to have a voice in the political process by, for example, allowing the sale of their corporate stock only by, a) providing them with the means to buy it (in the case of publicly traded corporations, stock
