Norms are expected patterns of behavior, usually applied to a specific group, organization, or even culture. The penalty for breaking norms is usually social: from criticism to ostracism. The purpose of the penalty is to re-establish the norm: you broke it, and we make you return to it by apologizing and making appropriate restitution. Or you refuse, and suffer the social consequences.
If the society or group in question decides to enact civil/criminal penalties, the norm may evolve into a law. An historical example of this was consanguineous marriage, that is marriage between close blood-relatives. It used to be a norm, since most of the eligible marriage partners in pre-modern societies came from your village, which was your extended family. The Catholic Church opposed it, and eventually influenced people to reject it. That changed norm became so fixed in many people’s minds that countries enacted laws prohibiting it. And many people today recoil and the very thought of it.
But norms by themselves have little or no power. The funny thing about norms, unlike some other social constructs, is that they can only be restored by insisting on them, not by violating them. If you have a social norm that violence is never acceptable as a means to settle a disagreement between two opponents, you can’t insist that you can use violence to respond to a violation of that norm. “He hit me first, so I hit him back,” is playground jurisprudence that has never won a case.
As an example, many societies have a norm to the effect that “you don’t speak ill of the dead.” It’s not a superstition, or even a religiously-inspired norm. It stems from two, solid, human emotions: the dead person isn’t there to defend themselves, and every death is a cause for mourning, so the immediate aftermath of a death should be about mourning, which can include being positive about the deceased. The process has no balancing criteria: I’ve looked closely at the quote I posted as the norm, and try as hard as I can, I can find no asterisk.
If you stand up at a eulogy and say, “that rat-b@st@rd slept with my wife” people will think less of you, even if it was true. It’s not the time nor the place. It’s just wrong; that’s the norm. People will criticize you or even exclude you until you make reparations for violating the norm. But what if, right after you commit the faux pas, someone else stands up and yells, “Sure, but you *bleep* goats, so what’s your issue, goat*bleeper*?” This will not re-establish the norm; rather, it also violates it (not the time, nor the place, not even if the goats are willing to testify in court), and exacerbates it. You can’t re-establish the norm by engaging in the same norm-violation. It doesn’t work that way.
I’m sure I don’t need to make the obvious point about celebrating someone’s death. Okay, maybe Hitler’s. But to those who say they felt compelled to point out a recently-deceased person’s faults because others were lauding the man? Read the norm again. Or just decide if you want to put your likeness onto the person in this video:
I wrote all this (and made you read it!) to get to the larger issue: one of my biggest concerns about life in these United States today is we have come to the point where both sides now believe they can–or more truthfully–they must violate the norms to re-establish them.
Let’s start with the walking. talking epitome of norm-breaking, President Trump. He gets very upset when people make fun of his weight, his hair, his orange-hued tan, and about a hundred other things. He says people who make these comments are “nasty.” He proceeds to talk about them in ways that also break the norm: “dummy,” “ugly,” “horseface,” and “retarded” are among his rejoinders. The norm teeters. His opponents respond with “pedophile,” “rapist,” and “Nazi.” Down goes the norm.
It happens not only in impromptu, personal observations, but in policies, too. The President maintains he was the victim of selective, vindictive prosecutions. Reasonable people may agree or disagree with him. But what are his directions to go after certain members of his first administration but the same thing? “Oh, but they’re guilty,” my MAGA friends would object, as did my progressive friends when talking about Trump’s legal problems. You see the point: guilt or innocence is not it, the norm is the point.
We used to have a norm in this country that we don’t go after our political opponents using the justice system (federal or state). Richard Nixon committed a bag of felonies in addition to the cover-up that got his impeachment rolling and resulted in his resignation. His successor, Gerald Ford, could have let the prosecutors go after him, but instead he cost himself re-election by reinforcing the norm and pardoning Nixon. And it wasn’t just Nixon. Reading history will remind you that many of our leaders (great and otherwise) could have been in the docket after the White House. That’s what happens elsewhere, not here . . . until now.
Some norms are small things, but they are part of larger things, like small building blocks. The Senate filibuster is one example, ensuring a majority party needs either an overwhelming majority or some minority support to get basic things done. Yet some are itching to erase it despite its obvious utility to whichever team isn’t in charge. Beware those who say such progress is always good, because norms great and small play important roles. You won’t know what you got till it’s gone, as the song goes.
Look at the norm about non-prosecution of past administrations. When the Democrats tossed it aside “because Trump,” they proceeded on a federal and state tear amounting to four indictments and eighty-eight criminal counts. Among these were the charges of interfering in the 2020 election, including the Supreme Court case of Trump vs. the United States. The decision established the President has “absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts.”
Now the Supreme Court majority reviewed the competing notions that the Founders certainly wanted no kings above the law, but also did not want a presidency which ended with endless subsequent criminal litigation. Before this, it was just a norm, understood that the President can’t be subsequently sued or charged for his actions in office. The push to end the norm led to a binding precedent that is sweeping. Whether you agree with it (I do) or not, I’m not sure this is a better place for the country to be in legally. I am absolutely sure the Democrats who pursued this course of action didn’t intend where it ended up.
When Michelle Obama told her Party, “when they go low, we go high,” many Democrats rejected it and described it as “weak,” “defeatist,” or simply “unacceptable” when facing Trumpism. She was right, they were wrong. It’s not weak or defeatist to insist on norms, it’s principled. Principled positions win in the end. Many people who don’t know the derivation of the term Nazi* but like to talk about fascism or Hitler forget that the Allies didn’t win by rejecting the norms of human decency in society or war. We won by insisting on those norms. Even after the war, we insisted on a legal tribunal with certain rights, judges, defense attorneys, and procedures before administering justice . . . even for Nazis.
Once you start jettisoning norms, principles and laws are next on the chopping block. Mr. Trump has always viewed laws as things to be manipulated or obeyed only as a last resort. Trying to claim he doesn’t have to back-pay some government employees idled by the shutdown is just his latest one, or is it bullying his ball room over the East Wing of the White House? It’s so hard to keep tally. Mind you, it’s a bipartisan sport. The Democrats recently took a principled stand against Gerrymandering, going so far as to put specific limits on it in blue states, with some notable exceptions (Maryland, for instance). History again is instructive: what are the norms of districting in America? Well the very term Gerrymander is a home-grown term, showing it has been going on since the inception of the Republic. There was indeed a norm that a state normally only redistricted after a federal census, or under court order, but it was only a norm. The Republicans tossed it aside, and then so did the Democrats with their once-principled stand. So much for norms and principles.
“Pat, you’re missing the larger issue. If Trumpism is not defeated in the next election, it will change us forever.” I regret to inform those who hold this view that it has already changed us forever. The question is whether those changes will be for the better or for the worse. If we toss aside every norm, principle, or even law, those changes will be for the worse. If we insist on reestablishing the norms, etc, by continuing to abide by them, it will be for the better. I would remind all that about ten years ago, Democrats were predicting their coalition had an unstoppable majority which would dominate the Presidency and the Congress for decades to come. Didn’t happen. Republicans feel somewhat similar today. Nothing is guaranteed. The new districts the Texas GOP is developing are based on continuing support from Hispanics in Rio Grande border areas. If those voters change their mind (which they did in 2024), the gerrymandering fails miserably. The same will happen elsewhere.
American politics are in flux. This is yet another reason the norms need to be re-asserted by all of us. Nominees come and go, as do parties. What we have left are the rules they compete under. When we suggest those rules are just part of the game, not even norms (let alone laws), we weaken the ties that bind us together. That is a far greater challenge than anything on the ballot in 2026 or 2028.
*Most people know the term Nazi stands for National Socialist in German. But the derivation is interesting. It should be NaSo, right? But Socialists in Germany were called by a derogatory term “SoZis” by the other parties. When the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP in German) came on the scene, the other parties gave them the derivative NaZi nickname. They embraced it.