{"id":10005,"date":"2017-03-24T08:54:52","date_gmt":"2017-03-24T15:54:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=10005"},"modified":"2021-07-26T10:25:36","modified_gmt":"2021-07-26T17:25:36","slug":"law-takes-a-holiday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/law-takes-a-holiday\/","title":{"rendered":"Law Takes a Holiday"},"content":{"rendered":"

And anarchy follows.<\/em>
\nby Victor Davis Hanson\/\/National Review<\/em><\/p>\n

In the 1934 romantic movie Death Takes a Holiday<\/em>, Death assumes human form for three days, and the world turns chaotic.<\/p>\n

The same thing happens when the law goes on a vacation. Rules are unenforced or politicized. Citizens quickly lose faith in the legal system. Anarchy follows \u2014 ensuring that there can be neither prosperity nor security.<\/p>\n

The United States is descending into such an abyss, as politics now seem to govern whether existing laws are enforced.<\/p>\n

Sociologists in the 1980s found out that when even minor infractions were ignored \u2014 such as the breaking of windows, or vendors walking into the street to hawk wares to motorists in a traffic jam \u2014 misdemeanors then spiraled into felonies as lawbreakers become emboldened.<\/p>\n

A federal law states that the president can by proclamation \u201csuspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.\u201d Yet a federal judge ruled that President Trump cannot do what the law allows in temporarily suspending immigration from countries previously singled out by the Obama administration for their laxity in vetting their emigrants.<\/p>\n

In the logic of his 43-page ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Derrick Watson seemed to strike down the travel ban based on his own subjective opinion of a president\u2019s supposedly incorrect attitudes and past statements.<\/p>\n

Some 500 \u201csanctuary\u201d cities and counties have decided for political reasons that federal immigration law does not fully apply within their jurisdictions. They have done so with impunity, believing that illegal immigration is a winning political issue given changing demography. In a way, they have already legally seceded from the union and provided other cities with a model of how to ignore any federal law they do not like.<\/p>\n

The law states that foreign nationals cannot enter and permanently reside in the United States without going through a checkpoint and in most cases obtaining a legal visa or green card. But immigration law has been all but ignored. Or it was redefined as not committing additional crimes while otherwise violating immigration law. Then the law was effectively watered down further to allow entering and residing illegally if not committing \u201cserious\u201d crimes. Now, the adjective \u201cserious\u201d is being redefined as something that does not lead to too many deportations.<\/p>\n

The logical end is no immigration law at all \u2014 and open borders.<\/p>\n

There is a federal law that forbids the IRS from unfairly targeting private groups or individuals on the basis of their politics. Lois Lerner, an IRS director, did just that but faced no legal consequences.<\/p>\n

Perhaps Lerner\u2019s exemption emboldened New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof to invite IRS employees via social media to unlawfully leak Donald Trump\u2019s tax returns. Later, someone leaked Trump\u2019s 2005 tax return to MSNBC.<\/p>\n

There are statutes that prevent federal intelligence and investigatory agencies from leaking classified documents. No matter. For the last six months, the media have trafficked in reports that Trump is under some sort of investigation by government agencies for allegedly colluding with the Russians. That narrative is usually based on information from \u201cunnamed sources\u201d affiliated with the FBI, NSA, or CIA. No one has been punished for such leaking.<\/p>\n

The leakers apparently feel that prosecutors and the courts do not mind if someone\u2019s privacy is illegally violated, as long as it is the privacy of someone they all loathe, like Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

The logic seems also to be that we need only follow the laws that we like \u2014 and assume that law enforcement must make the necessary adjustments.<\/p>\n

At this late date, a return to legality and respect for the law might seem extremist or revolutionary. For the federal government to demand that cities follow federal law or face cutoffs in federal funds might cause rioting.<\/p>\n

Going after federal officials who leak classified documents to reporters would make those officials martyrs.<\/p>\n

And to warn high-ranking IRS officials that they could likely go to prison for targeting groups based on their political beliefs might earn a prosecutor an unexpected IRS audit.<\/p>\n

There is one common denominator in all these instances of attempted legal nullification: the liberal belief that laws should \u201cprogress\u201d to reflect the supposedly superior political agenda of the Left.<\/p>\n

And if laws don\u2019t progress? Then they can be safely ignored.<\/p>\n

But when the law is what we say it is, or what we want it to be, there is no law. And when there is no law, there is not much left but something resembling Russia, Somalia, or Venezuela.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And anarchy follows. by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/National Review In the 1934 romantic movie Death Takes a Holiday, Death assumes human form for three days, and the world turns chaotic. The same thing happens when the law goes on a vacation. Rules are unenforced or politicized. Citizens quickly lose faith in the legal system. Anarchy follows […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1092,111,495,41,285,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2Bn","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11490,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/when-laws-are-not-enforced-anarchy-follows\/","url_meta":{"origin":10005,"position":0},"title":"When Laws Are Not Enforced, Anarchy Follows","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 2, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness What makes citizens obey the law is not always their sterling character. 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Unfortunately, President Obama\u2019s unilateral plan to exempt millions of residents from federal immigration\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Political Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Political Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/political-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"(John Gress\/Getty)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/pic_giant_112714_SM_Barack-Obama-G-500x291.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4369,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-global-shift\/","url_meta":{"origin":10005,"position":5},"title":"The Global Shift","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 10, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"The world will soon better appreciate the United States by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Radical global power shifts have been common throughout history. For almost a millennium (800-100 BC) the Greek East, with its proximity to wealthy Asia and African markets and a dynamic Hellenism, was the nexus\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "June 2005"","block_context":{"text":"June 2005","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2005\/june-2005\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10005"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10005"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10018,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10005\/revisions\/10018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}