To the editor:

In his book, “The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founding Fathers,” constitutional scholar Jeffrey Rose states that if the Founders were alive today, “they would tremble for the future of the republic.”

The Founders’ greatest fear, according to Rose, was that a demagogue would “subvert American democracy and establish authoritarian rule.”

In a 1792 letter to President Washington, Alexander Hamilton wrote: “The only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion…When a man unprincipled in private life[,] desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper … is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity … It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.'”

In a 1787 letter to James Madison, Thomas Jefferson noted that an unscrupulous candidate at some future date might lose an election and refuse to give up his office: “If once elected, and at a second or third election outvoted by one or two votes, he will pretend false votes, foul play, hold possession of the reins of government, be supported by the States voting for him.”

With the prescience of these statements one would think Hamilton and Jefferson were staring into a crystal ball, recoiling in horror as they watched Donald Trump working to destroy the republic they helped create.

George J. Bryjak

Bloomingdale