Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia recently said that what sets the United States government apart from banana republics is not the Bill of Rights but the separation of powers: legislative, executive, judicial.

He said Americans “should learn to love the gridlock. It’s there for a reason.” Well, OK, to a point.

True, the Founding Fathers were leery of too popular democracy — though voters then consisted only of white males who met property ownership qualifications — so they devised our Constitution’s slow and cautious system of checks and balances.

And that is all we need. We don’t need the extra gridlock created by the rules of the Senate. For instance, a single senator can put a secret hold on a president’s judicial or cabinet nominee or delay or block a bill from consideration.

But the chief tool for gridlock is the filibuster, most notoriously used in the last century by Southern Democrats to kill anti-lynching and other civil rights bills. In the past few years, however, it has been used or threatened almost routinely by the Republican minority to deny even small victories to President Barack Obama.

Sixty votes, not just a majority of 50, are required to halt a filibuster. So on almost any contentious issue, the minority party wins in the Senate. A former Senate aide has called it “the tyranny of the minority.”

Sure, when Democrats are in the Senate minority and the Republican majority proposes some outrageous bill to turn the clock back to the era of the 19th century robber barons, I think, “Whew! Thank God for the filibuster!” But that’s wrong. If Republicans have been elected as the majority, they should be able to pass their bill and let the chips fall where they may at the next election.

The Senate has been lauded as “the world’s greatest deliberative body.” In reality, as a small-D democratic institution, the United States Senate is a national disgrace.

John N. Rippey Zion