In his column discussing Republican proposals to repeal the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship at birth, Jonah Goldberg accuses me of being opposed to amending the Constitution.

Goldberg is wrong: I am opposed to this proposed change to our Constitution. It is a bad idea and threatens core American values.

The story of our nation’s progress is told through our Constitution’s amendments. The amendments ratified in the wake of the Civil War are key chapters — prohibiting slavery, ensuring equality and citizenship rights, and securing the right to vote free from racial discrimination — in which the promises of liberty first made in the Declaration of Independence were written into the Constitution. I object to reneging on those promises by repealing portions of the 14th Amendment.

“We the People” have amended our Constitution to make our country more democratic and egalitarian, but we have never amended it to make it less so.

Elizabeth Wydra

Washington

The writer is chief counsel of the Constitutional Accountability Center.

Read Elizabeth’s letter to the editor here.