The gentleman from Carbonado (“Americans have lost sight of what is truly valuable,” published Dec. 3) is correct in his statement that a true democracy is mob rule, that is why our founders created a Democratic Republic in order to simplify the governing process while giving most of the population a say by electing their representatives.

And he is also correct in stating that senators could only be land owners in the beginning of our nation.

He deems the discontinuation of this part of our government to be an error, I think?

I may be wrong in my assessment that he is of the opinion that we should go back to the practice of rich land owners be appointed to be senators rather than our current practice of electing them to serve a six year term. He seems to make the argument that rich land owners are somehow more deserving of governing because of their ability to get rich.

If I recall correctly, and I’m pretty sure I do, our founding fathers recognized the dangers of rich families passing on their wealth to their progeny a danger to the Republic as that practice, over time, would create the very aristocracy that was so abhorrent to them at the time.

Most of them were in favor of an estate tax that would insure that there would be no amassing of wealth such as we have today.

We have fallen to the same level of our previous “Gilded Age” of the late 18th and early 19th century where there are just a few ultra rich and the rest of the population, while a portion are relatively comfortable, many millions of our citizens are barely surviving with many homeless because of these vast inequities.

What I feel we need in our government is a return to our government, “Of the people, by the people, and for the people” instead of, of the rich by the rich and for the rich, which is our current system and it is getting worse by the day because of the oligarch we have in the Whitehouse at the present time. Just sayin’.

Larry Benson

Enumclaw