Founders' fears justified and prescient

In his July 15, op-ed, “Trump‘s most powerful enablers wear judicial robes,” Keith Raffel wrote: “In the first Federalist paper, Alexander Hamilton warned that a great risk to liberty comes from those who start out as 'demigods' and end up 'tyrants.'… A potential tyrant has risen who possesses the dangerous ambition that Hamilton feared … When the current radical, right-wing majority of the Supreme Court protects Donald Trump, they know full well what they are doing and do it anyway. Their holdings too often send a clear message: to hell with American democracy.”

The Founders exercised pragmatic wisdom when they required the government's judicial and legislative branches to be independent of the executive branch as well as balanced in power. These constitutional safeguards of checks and balances were designed to protect the republic from a potential executive-branch tyrant

Unfortunately, after 250 years, the Supreme Court's deference to the executive branch in their holdings, coupled with the subservient behavior of toadie members of the House and Senate who are beholden to the president, have led to a breach of the Founders' long-held safeguards.

The Founders' fear of mischief, violence and corruption by an effectively unrestrained executive branch has not only been proven justified, but prescient as well.

Frank G. Splitt

Mount Prospect