To the editor:

In 2009, Peter Thiel wrote in an essay for the Cato Institute: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”

Peter Theil is the founder and head of Palantir Technologies, a software company with billions of dollars of government contracts. Palantir builds platforms that merge cell phone GPS tracking, license plate reader data, social media activity, crime reports and arrest records into searchable profiles. Anyone can be tracked through their vehicle movements, phone location history, facial recognition hits and social media activity, all viewable on integrated dashboards, much of it accessible without warrants.

J.D. Vance met Theil at Yale in 2011. They became friends and Theil mentored Vance. Vance later worked for Theil, and Theil donated $15 million to Vance’s senate campaign in 2022.

On a podcast in 2021, Vance suggested that Trump, if reelected, should “fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, [and] every civil servant in the administrative state … and when the courts stop you, … say: ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.'” In other words, Vance said to ignore unfavorable court rulings.

Kevin Roberts is the president of the Heritage Foundation. In July 2024 Roberts said: “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” He didn’t say what would happen if the left didn’t allow it to be. The Heritage Foundation is the conservative think tank that authored Project 2025, and previously collaborated with Hungarian groups that helped Viktor Orban dismantle Hungary’s democracy and establish autocratic rule. Vance and other Republican leaders have heaped praise on Orban.

And finally, President Trump has said: “I have an Article 2 [of the Constitution] where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” And in October, during a White House “Roundtable on Antifa,” Mr. Trump explained his administration’s approach to opposition groups: “We took the freedom of speech away.”

President Trump and Vice President Vance are the two most powerful people in the federal government. Kevin Roberts and Peter Theil have enormous influence over them and the government. These men disparage democracy and our constitutional system of government, and they make no secret of it, as demonstrated by the above quotes. Their goal is to consolidate power and hold it indefinitely, by any means necessary, to further their agenda of ever lower taxes, ever weaker regulations on the financial industry and ever weaker protections for the environment and public safety.

Even if you support this agenda, are you willing to sell 250 years of representative democracy down the road? Our constitutionally protected rights and freedoms, and system of government are at stake.

John Monroe

Saranac Lake