The Hazards of Ruling by Exception

In 1974, President Richard Nixon enacted a national speed limit of 55 miles per hour (mph) on all of the nation's interstate highways. What started as a fuel conservation measure in response to the OPEC oil embargo of 1973 became over time a safety measure as well. In fact, America's traffic fatality rate fell from 4.28 (per million miles traveled) in 1972 down to 2.73 in 1983. In other words, it was an indisputable fact that a reduction in the speed limit saved lives. 

We often hear the refrain, "If it will save just one life...," as a prelude to arguing for the passage of one policy or the termination of another. There's a calculation that most people make, however, between the public's desire for safety versus the public's desire to get on with living. The American people eventually weighed in on the matter. They knew that lives had been saved by the mandated reduction in the speed limit. They also knew that even more lives would be saved if the speed limit were reduced to 45 mph or even 35 mph.

Still, you'd have a better chance of being bitten by a daffodil than you would have of finding a majority who wanted the speed limit to stay at 55; never mind reducing it. In the 1980s the national speed limit was raised to 65 mph, and in 1995 Congress returned speed limits to the states, and the speed limit now ranges from 55 up to 85, depending on the state and the terrain.  

The American people have granted one exception after another until the exceptions became the rule and the rule of law became fiction — except insofar as it could be twisted in favor of some constituencies and weaponized against others. The fact is, having absorbed a tsunami of unvetted humanity into our country only to see innocent Americans victimized, attacked, raped, and murdered by predators who were then released by judges who were also focused on the exception rather than the rule, the American people have had enough. Our support for mass deportations is a direct result of our generosity having been taken advantage of for far too long and at too high a price. 

The point has been reached where the rot is so pervasive that a wholesale cleanup must be undertaken. This is why, when the inevitable exceptions occur, regrettable as they may be, the response of most Americans is to say, "I'm sorry it has to be this way, but you kept throwing exceptions at us until the situation became impossible and deadly. So now we have to clean this mess up once and for all." 

You see, as a nation we understand that for nearly every law there will be exceptional situations. But when you have to include every exception, every aberration, every outlier, you wind up excluding and ostracizing normal people. Put simply, we are tired of the system being gamed and we are bringing it to a stop.  

It could be immigration or the exception of gender dysphoria, which we were first asked to tolerate until we were ordered to approve of it and acquiesce in whatever pronouns and identities others pretended to be, or else! Next thing we knew, our girls were being clobbered by boys in girls' sports, and guys were even allowed into our girls' locker rooms and restrooms. And if we complained, we were called domestic terrorists.  

We embraced Dr. King's dream of a country in which people were judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, but then we were all put into boxes and labeled as oppressors and oppressed precisely according to the color of our skin. That's actually a textbook example of racism, but we were required to play along or risk losing our jobs. We went from Live and Let Live to the Theater of the Absurd in record time. It's reached the point that if progressives ever did come up with a good idea, it would die of loneliness. 

Meanwhile, we have a judge who, as Mark Steyn observed, has decided that he "can presume to substitute his own foreign policy for that of the President and can usurp the conduct of privileged state-to-state relations." What if a Venezuelan gang member in the country illegally is deprived of his presumed right to remain in the U.S. illegally and continues terrorizing American citizens? What if the Venezuelan gang member identifies as a 75-year-old African American grandmother? At this point, why wouldn't he give it a shot?

"You need only one example to derail adult behavior," said Greg Gutfeld recently. Except that, we've had precious little of anything except examples and exceptions that have derailed adult behavior and American sovereignty. We've had enough.  

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