VILE
That’s how Thomas Paine described a government running solely on precedent.
And that’s basically what both sides do today. They don’t know much, if anything, about the Constitution, what it authorizes, and what it doesn’t. So, they just lean on precedent. “The last administration did it, so I can do it, too! And more!”
But as Paine put it, “Government by precedent, without any regard to the principle of the precedent, is one of the vilest systems that can be set up.”
No doubt about it – our system has long been vile!
There is no principle behind government precedent today. The people in power justify what they do by pointing at the last people who held power.
It’s the argument of a child “BUT HE DID IT FIRST!”
And inevitably, they almost always take things even further, expanding the precedent and claiming even more power. This sets the stage for the next set of government people to do even more.
But let’s be honest. “We the People” are also to blame because we sit back and let it happen.
In response to the Stamp Act, the Penman of the Revolution John Dickinson warned, “If you comply with the act….you rivet perpetual Chains upon your unhappy Country.”
He understood that when you give government people an inch, they’re going to take a mile. He said that when we don’t resist the first encroachment, “You unnecessarily, voluntarily establish the detestable Precedent, which those who have forged your Fetters ardently wish for.”
Here at the Tenth Amendment Center, we’re committed to opposing every unconstitutional precedent – the first, the last, and every one in between. But we can’t unravel decades of precedent without your help.
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The longer we wait to refuse the precedent, the more entrenched it becomes. It’s human nature. When people blindly accept one precedent, they’re more likely to accept the next.
And the next.
Dickinson – a great student of history – knew it in the 18th Century. And it still applies today.
“When an act injurious to freedom has once been done, and the people bear it, the repetition of it is more likely to meet with submission.”
It’s up to us to stop bearing it and break the cycle of VILE precedent!
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- The Rightful Remedy: Nullification is our Duty - November 4, 2025
- The Myth of Unlimited Federal Supremacy - November 2, 2025