New Jersey Politics and Justice

New Jersey Politics and Justice
by Ted Lang, Associate Editor

October 14, 2002

Columnist Ted Lang New Jersey is the most corrupt state in the nation. In this state, politics is the law, and the law is politics. If anything is certain besides death and taxes, it is also fact that the public's perception and society's whims are always changing. When Hitler's Nazi movement was first getting started, and before it began killing lots of people, it was very popular. Even notable Americans - among them Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford, supported Adolf Hitler's dream of a New World Order.

This understanding of people and society was not lost on the Founders. Even back in the late 1700s, they knew that the whims and fads of society were undependable - they would never rely on polls or emotions; hence, their reliance on a nation bound by laws, laws decided upon for all, agreed to by all up front, and devoid of favorable and selective application. Rules to a game should not be made up as we go along. Playing punchball, stickball or touch football on the streets of New York City, we tried to avoid arguments as to what was in bounds, what constituted fair play, what was out of bounds.

That is the essence of a nation bound by written, up front, agreed-upon laws. To be just, they need to be equally applied to all: rich and poor; unknown and famous; politically connected and not; and to the powerful as well as to the weak. Realists and worldly sophisticates argue correctly that the rich and powerful protect the rich and powerful. After all, it isn't really appropriate to charge a former president with either treason or accepting bribes for pardons.

So accurate charges such as these aren't politically correct for precisely the same reason that the Founders knew would compromise the greatest foundation of freedom: an unequal selective application of the law. What compromises justice and therefore freedom, is politics. It was politics that most disturbed John Adams about the behavior patterns of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. Adams saw politics as the downfall of this republic. And nowhere has this fear been more substantiated than in the most corrupt state in the nation: New Jersey.

I once offered that if one had to describe our nation in one word, that word would be "competition," not "freedom" or "democracy." And that is precisely the problem in the Garden State. New Jersey voters are choking on ignorance and political bias, created by high taxing, cradle to crypt Big Brother government socialism, advanced by left-liberalism following the master plan of Karl Marx. And Jersey liberalism is spread and nurtured by the left-wing unholy trio of liberal Democrats, the New Jersey Education Association, and the heavily biased New Jersey press.

This triumvirate stifles any and all competition. It trashed libertarian gubernatorial candidate Murray Sabrin in 1997, and Republican conservative Bret Schundler in 2001. It produced the corrupt politics of New Jersey politicians Christie Todd Whitman and her EPA difficulties, and campaign dropouts Donald Di Francisco, James Treffinger, Robert Janiszewski, and Robert Torricelli. Even as Torricelli was going down for the count, journalistic flacks from the Jersey media were actively trying to convince readers that Torricelli's crimes were no big deal. Isn't the function of the press as envisioned by the Founders the exposition of corruption, as opposed to its partisan bias to cover up government wrongdoing on the part of corrupt politicians?

Isn't it risky to expose corruption only through political campaigns? Isn't it riskier to exercise control over government only via elections? Consider the New Jersey Supreme Court's violation of the law favoring Democrats in the Torricelli scandal and subverting the state constitution. All seven liberals broke the law. Republican versus Democrat does not define differences in the Garden of Evil State, but rather by criminals versus the law abiding. Isn't it also curious that New Jersey has the toughest gun control in the nation directed at the law-abiding? ***

Photo of Columnist Ted Lang courtesy of the author