Last week, the government released employment data that showed a drop in unemployment even though the economy remained weak and the country reached a record low labor participation rate. As the left-wing grapples with this disparity between statistics and reality, they have come to adopt an interesting term to describe this failure.
They call it the new norm, which has become a way to provide cover for their failed policies while making it sound like it’s not their fault. I’m sure you remember how they did the same thing when Bush was president, right? Of course you don’t.
This “new norm” has become a way of telling America to simply accept things as they are because it’s normal. Unfortunately, the new norm has begun to show itself in other areas.
Recently, the Supreme Court decided not to decide (which is deciding) on the issue of state’s rights—specifically, the right of the states (i.e. the people) to establish the boundaries on what is considered marriage—when they elected to ignore the appeals of several states that had their laws on the issue overturned by activist judges in several lower courts.
Whether you agree with this decision or not—and for that matter, whether you support homosexual marriage or not—really isn’t the point. The really important thing we need to take away from this situation is how tyranny has become the new normal in America; and sadly, how American’s have come to accept it.
“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of TYRANNY.”
James Madison, Federalist Paper 47
The fact that the fate of this or any issue was left in the hands of 9 unelected individuals with lifetime appointments provides proof of the wisdom of Mr. Madison. In his explanation of the structure and function of the three branches of government, he warned of the dangers America would face if the power of the three were to be too closely aligned. Quoting Charles Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu—whose writings on the Separation of Powers served as the outline for how the Founding Fathers structured our government—James Madison warned of the dangers of what we have today:
“The reasons on which Montesquieu grounds his maxim are a further demonstration of his meaning. ‘When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or body,’ says he, ‘there can be no liberty, because apprehensions may arise lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws to execute them in a tyrannical manner.’ Again: ‘Were the power of judging joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control, for the judge would then be the legislator. Were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with all the violence of an oppressor.’ Some of these reasons are more fully explained in other passages; but briefly stated as they are here, they sufficiently establish the meaning which we have put on this celebrated maxim of this celebrated author.
As if this latest example of judicial activism—or inactionism if you prefer—wasn’t enough, one need look no further than the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights as proof of the tyranny we are living under:
- Freedom of religion: Christian-owned businesses are under assault for not providing abortion-inducing drugs under Obamacare and for refusing to participate in homosexual marriage ceremonies.
- Freedom of speech: politically-incorrect speech could be criminalized, government agencies have been used to silence political opposition, and Congress has tried to overturn Supreme Court decisions.
- Freedom of press: Congress has made efforts to silence non-government-approved forms of news.
- Freedom to peacefully assemble: anti-abortion proponents are routinely prohibited from doing so.
- Freedom to petition the government: while technically still in effect, as we just saw from the Supreme Court, it’s essentially null and void.
And this doesn’t even include efforts to void the Second Amendment, illegal search and seizure by the NSA, the right to due process, and abuses of eminent domain.
It wasn’t all that long ago that Obama said the following:
“You’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave and creative and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.”
With these words, Obama attempted to have Americans accept the over-reaching power of the three branches of the federal government he loves.
Because, after all… it’s the new normal.
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