Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for the law: it invites every man to become a law unto himself, it invites anarchy. Therefore, if government officials break the law “righteously” we should look forward and not backward, we should trust that the accused did what they did because they thought it was best, we should not investigate, or really, not even bring it up too often as that would be impolite. Also, if committing a crime becomes a central plank in the platform for one of America’s political partys, then that’s another reason to not do anything about the crime, because doing so would look too political. And if the daughter of one of the government criminals often goes to the press and pleads on her father’s behalf we don’t want to be called sexist or mean so we should let just let it go.
- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, 1939
