‘The People…Want Their Country Back’*

These are very interesting times in which we live, the likes of which I have not experienced in my 63 years. Everywhere I go people are talking about politics, but not like in the past.
Near election times in the past, people always tended to talk about this candidate or that one, or this party or that one. But not this time.
This time people are talking about things far more fundamental. In the past people’s concern was about tweaking the existing system on various issues; this time the discussions are dealing with the basics of the U.S. government and its legitimacy with the people it purports to serve.
Being one who loves to read history, the agitation I sense aloft resembles the discontentment of the 18th Century, culminating in our sending King George and our former government in Great Britain ‘apackin.’
The stir in the air begs many questions; I’ll focus on those at the national level, and ask, “What were the specific reasons that states established the larger, central government?”
The answer, of course, is that as a group of small, independent states, we lacked the power to accomplish certain things that we would be able to do by working together.
So we banded together and wrote a Constitution, which we later replaced with our current constitution. In it New Jersey agreed to delegate to a central government certain things, which could be better handled as a group of states.
We held on to the functions of government, which could best be handled in Trenton, which is closer by and which can understand local issues better.
Primarily, the things we decided could best be handled in unison with the other states are national defense and war, minting money, a postal system, regulation of trade between states, foreign policy, immigration, and a national court.
So why the stir around the country? Pollster Scott Rasmussen says “that only 23 percent of the people in this country believe today’s federal government has the consent of the governed…the major division in this country is no longer between parties but between political elites and the people.”
Again, why the stir? In the weeks ahead, I’d like to explore some issues, which may be giving rise to the rumblings. In doing so, my point is not to get you to agree with anything I say.
Rather, what is very important, and is particularly important in this election, is that we, the sovereign people of New Jersey and of the United States, exercise our right to govern ourselves by electing to office representatives who recognize that they are in office solely as one of us, and solely for the good of the people and the state they represent.
There has never been a more important time for us to become informed, to vote, and to hold on to our birthright as free people. If you are one of those who says, “I’m not interested in politics,” then for the sake of your grandchildren, would you get interested, and do for them what they cannot yet do for themselves? Retain for them the liberty your grandparents retained for you.
Art Hall, publisher
* An angry constituent, Craig Miller, standing two feet from Sen. Arlen Specter, shouted this in his face.