Supreme Confidence

[Geee]

American Spectator:

Anyone fortunate enough to experience the annual re-enactment exercises that mark George Washington's audacious Christmas Day crossing of the Delaware River in 1776 will find there is no getting around the special role New Jersey played in reigniting the American Revolution.
As one of the original 13 colonies, N.J. responded forcefully to the phrase "no taxation without representation" and helped set the stage for new a constitutional order that keep political power divided, checked and limited. The "Ten Crucial Days" that resulted in major victories for the Continental Army over the Hessians in Trenton and the British in Princeton re-energized the American cause.

But over the past few decades, history has turned away from ideals underpinning the Revolution and in the direction of an unelected, elite class of policymakers. Despite the reverence and appreciation local residents have maintained for the "Spirit of 1776," they now inhabit a world that was reshaped at the behest of a renegade government agency.

Visitors to the "Old Barracks" in Trenton, where some of Hessian soldiers were quartered at the time of the Revolution, can't help but notice the sad irony attached to the museum's awkward juxtaposition with the state Division of Taxation building.