It's time to recover our justice system and deliver our own verdict

Sometimes, you just need to start over

Have you ever started something with high hopes and good intentions, like a do-it-yourself project, and after sweating and fuming for hours, you suddenly realize that your work just isn’t going to come out the way you hoped? I’m sure you all have. It’s called failure.

You can walk away from your failure and never try again, or you can learn from your failure and do better the next time. A mature and wise person always takes the latter course.

Learning from mistakes and starting over doesn’t just apply to individual endeavors but also to the political endeavors of great nations.

One can easily argue that our nation needs a do over in many respects. Nations have done so before.

In the seventeenth-century England, The Parliamentarians, better known as “Roundheads” literally decapitated the English monarchy to establish a democracy that survived the eventual restoration of the crown a few years later. About a century later, English colonists in America defeated the most powerful army in the world and established our republic here, and the French got rid of their monarchy and established their own republic. Since then, there have been numerous political changes brought on by conflict, including our own civil war and two world wars.

In all of these conflicts, the losers ended up paying a price: Kings lost their heads in England and France, England lost its American colonies, the American South went through a long period of reconstruction, and Germany paid an enormous financial bill for its militarism in the “Great War,” but maybe we should look at what happened to Germany after the cataclysm of World War II for an example of how to deal with our own problems.

After World War II, it was decided that the surviving leadership of the defeated fascist powers had committed such heinous crimes that they needed to be brought to trial. A series of tribunals were held, most notably the Nuremberg Trials, which resulted in severe punishments for those who became known as “war criminals.”

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Now, I’m not suggesting that we should launch into war crimes trials, but there was one tribunal that we conducted after World War II that we might just want to copy once we change administrations, and that is the “Judges Trial,” which was held before a U.S. Military Court, in which 16 German judges and prosecutors were tried for subverting the rule of law to advance Hitler’s twisted totalitarian agenda.

We certainly have enough potential defendants for such a tribunal: Special Counsel Jack Smith, known for a string of failed prosecutions, is now the Biden Justice Department’s top hatchet man in their quest to imprison Joe Biden’s 2024 presidential opponent; Alvin Bragg, the New York District Attorney who puts murderers and rapists back on the street, but literally creates crimes with which to charge Donald Trump; Juan Merchan, the partisan Democrat New York Judge who donated to Joe Biden in 2020, has a Democrat operative daughter, and who is presiding over Alvin Bragg’s phony prosecution of Trump; Fani Willis, the scandal-plagued Democrat Atlanta DA whose election platform was “I’ll get Trump” and who is now in charge of a phony RICO case against Trump and others; and Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is leading the witch hunt of Jan. 6 protestors and will preside over yet another phony prosecution of Trump for “attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election.”

Finally, don’t forget the ringleader of the whole “Get Trump” movement, Joe Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland, who, among other things, thinks Christians and conservatives are more dangerous that Islamic terrorists.

It would be a pleasure to see all of these sorry characters standing in judgement to answer for their perversion of justice to advance their and their masters’ political interests. Back in 1947 during the original Judges’ Trial, 10 of the 16 defendants were convicted, with four receiving life sentences and six receiving sentences of five to 10 years. We can do at least that well, can’t we?

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The worst of all of the Nazi jurists was never brought to trial, not on this Earth, anyway. Roland Freisler, the fanatical Nazi judge who presided over the trials of the anti-Hitler conspirators in 1944, and who could be called Hitler’s Jack Smith (there is actually a resemblance), was killed in his courtroom by an American bombing raid in 1945. When his mangled remains were brought to the morgue after his demise, an unnamed German attendant was said to have commented “it is God’s verdict.”

We don’t want to use bombs, but we can reclaim our justice system to deliver our own verdict.

Dwight Weidman is a resident of Greene Township and is a graduate of Shepherd University. He is retired from the United States Department of Defense, where his career included assignments In Europe, Asia, and Central America. He has been in leadership roles for the Republican Party in two states, most recently serving two terms as Chairman of the Franklin County Republican Party. He has been an Amateur Radio Operator since 1988, getting his first license in Germany, a past volunteer with both Navy and Army MARS, Military Auxiliary Radio Service, and is also an NRA-certified firearms instructor. In his spare time, he dabbles in genealogy and learning new languages.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: It's time to recover our justice system and deliver our own verdict