Source: Bigstock

The Electoral College was set up to prevent injustice. Majority rule only works when everyone agrees on the basics. And one of those basics that no one agrees on is the role of states in our federal system. If you follow the New York Times argument to its logical conclusion, we shouldn’t have states at all. We should be more like Germany. Or Russia. Or Starbucks.

So today is Thanksgiving, the holiday that commemorates a moment when two entirely different cultures—the Puritans and the Native Americans—decided that, even though they both had weird lifestyles and they were never going to have anything in common, they were willing to live peacefully side by side and respect each other’s traditions. Red states and blue states need to be breaking bread together today, because consider the alternative.

Does anyone wanna risk a straight-up popular national vote on abortion? Or gun rights? Or gay marriage? Or sanctuary cities? Or affirmative action? Or any of a hundred other issues that affect one part of the population but nobody else cares about? Isn’t it better to keep the messy system we have, where small groups of people can still win because it’s impossible to ignore them? There comes a moment in everyone’s life when you’re the minority.

There comes a moment when we’re all Wyoming.

Let’s make sure our cowboy hats are creased and our eccentric causes are always heard. Let’s make sure the bigots in New York don’t eliminate the bohemians in Bozeman. The Electoral College works just fine.