That’s what Greg Ip said about removing Federal Reserve Bank Presidents in his Wall Street Journal piece decrying (otherwise generally legitimately) the Federal Reserve’s potential loss of its independence.

Removing bank presidents would be an unprecedented violation of norms. But Trump has demonstrated repeatedly he is willing to violate norms.

Couple things wrong with that claim. First, such a removal would certainly go against norms, but there would be—can be—no violation. Norms are habits, even traditions, but there is nothing at all binding in them. Calling moves against norms “violations” is exaggeration even if the phrasing is…the norm.

Second, and most importantly, using the idea that such a move would be unprecedented, never before done, to argue that it ought not be done here is, at best, singularly bad logic. Everything humans do—every single thing nature does—was once done for the first time, was once unprecedented. If we never did anything that had never been done before, 10,000 years of human hunter-gathering, civilization, and advance would never have happened, and we’d still be competing with apex predators for road kill on the savannah.

Tending to not doing something never before done, tending to stay within “norms,” is highly useful: it lends a measure of stability and predictability to human actions, and that’s especially useful in matters of law. That cannot, though, be allowed to prevent doing something better just because that better something is unprecedented.

Tying back to the center of Ip’s piece, removing Fed Bank Presidents before their term is up, removing Fed Governor Lisa Cook before her term is up, may or may not be good ideas, but they should be decided on the merits of the individual cases, not on the never-been-done-before nature of the removals.