Letter: Opinion writer created a ‘straw woman’

Published 1:30 am Monday, June 8, 2026

Editor,

A letter in your May 2 issue says, “Democrats mistake this reality [of the United States being a republic with democratic underpinning] thinking that majority rules and damn the minority.”

Could the writer supply perhaps a quote or a reference to support that “damn the minority” is how Democrats feel? Perhaps FDR or Obama said to hell with minorities and I missed it?

I’m a Democrat and I’d be the last one to say “damn the minority.” Quite the opposite. I believe our country should provide equal opportunity for all, work toward the common good of all its citizens, and correct sociocultural injustices against minorities.

I care very much about minority rights. There is no possibility that I support “tyranny of the masses,” a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835 and a matter of concern to our Founders when they created a “republic with democratic underpinnings” that resulted in a three-branch government of checks and balances.

It appears to me the writer has created a straw woman, me as a fabricated adversary, by painting Democrats as unsympathetic with the well-being of the minority in a democratic republic. And not just that, but the writer indicates we Democrats are know-nothings about our history and political system who have lost some sort of “simple understanding” of … what is it exactly we Democrats have lost a simple understanding of?

I do not like being set up as a straw woman who is told what I think without asking me what I actually think just so the writer can skewer the imaginary me. Wouldn’t want to be a windmill either in the writer’s quixotic world.

Betty Azar

Freeland