To the editor:

I don't have the pleasure of knowing Emily Firebaugh, but I wouldn't have expected her, judging from what I have heard of her positions, to turn out to be a proponent of such a freedom-limiting device as term limits. Term-limits supporters are mainly disaffected conservatives who know and resent the fact -- despite seldom, sporadic and brief episodes of conservative control of Congress -- that without term limits conservatives will never attain and maintain control of Congress for the long term. In short, the idea of term limits is an effort by chronic losers to circumvent their loserhood by artificially forcing out congressmen who would otherwise be retained in office by their constituents.

Firebaugh may take issue with my characterization of term limits as freedom-limiting, but what else could one call the taking away of the right of a congressional district or of a state to return its favorite legislator to office, if it would otherwise choose to do so?

Take the case of Canada. In a single election a few years ago, without any such device as term limits, its dominant Progressive Conservative Party went from holding 155 seats in Parliament to just two seats. Are U.S. voters any less discerning than Canadian voters?

Those who say that term limits are needed so that change can be effected are merely trying to impose their wills over the wills of the rest of us. Let's tell this bunch of elitists that if they want to win elections, let them do it the old-fashioned way: with votes, not with the artifice of term limits.

DONN S. MILLER

Tamms, Ill.