Politics & Power Quote by Emanuel Celler

Celler’s line lands like a reprimand to a politics addicted to shortcuts: you can’t cure contempt for law by breaking the law yourself. Coming from a legislator who lived through the Prohibition era, the Red Scare, civil-rights battles, and the long slog of institutional reform, the sentence reads as a warning about the self-poisoning logic of “ends justify the means.” It’s not a moral flourish; it’s an operational claim about legitimacy.

The phrase “political lawlessness” is doing quiet work. Celler isn’t talking about street crime. He’s pointing at the kind of rule-breaking that comes with power: officials bending procedures, agencies freelancing, parties rationalizing dirty tactics as necessary. When he says “Illegality,” he’s also indicting the temptation of the state to answer disorder with extra-legal force - the raid, the blacklist, the backroom deal - because it feels faster than due process. That “never” is strategic absolutism: once government models lawbreaking, it teaches everyone else that law is optional, and it forfeits the authority needed to demand compliance.

Subtext: the rule of law isn’t maintained by toughness; it’s maintained by consistency. Criminalizing, banning, or suppressing may produce a headline, but it often breeds the very cynicism and defiance it claims to eliminate. Celler is arguing for a politics that wins by tightening its own discipline - clearer statutes, transparent enforcement, accountable institutions - because the moment a democracy fights lawlessness with lawlessness, it becomes indistinguishable from what it’s trying to stop.