Friday, August 31, 2007
Hypocrisy is a two-way street
The Left claims to hate “moralizers.” So any failure to live like Jesus while telling others to follow his example is an outrage, even the defining challenge of our lives. (In 2005, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean pledged, “I will use whatever position I have in order to root out hypocrisy.”)
One solution to the hypocrisy epidemic, of course, is to have no morals at all. You can’t violate your principles if you don’t have any. Another solution: simply define down your principles until they are conveniently consistent with your preferred lifestyle. My own perfect moral code would mandate a strict regimen of not enough exercise, too much scotch and a diet rich in cured meats. Men would be religiously barred from taking out the garbage until their wives told them no less than three times to do so. “Thou Shalt Not Shave More Than Thrice Monthly”: I’d never be a hypocrite if only the Bible gave us commandments like that.
But the Left has another solution. Under its system, you can still be a moralizer. You can still tell people what to do and how to live. And, best of all, you can still fall short of your ideals personally while guiltlessly trying to use government to impose your moral vision on others. All you have to do is become a liberal moralizer.
Once you become a liberal, you can wax eloquent on the glories of the public schools while sending your kids to private school. You can wax prolix about the greedy rich while making a fortune on the side. You can even use the government to impose your values willy-nilly, from racial quotas and confiscatory tax rates to draconian environmental policies and sex-ed for grade-schoolers — all of which will paid for in part by people who disagree with you.
Yep.
That said, I think we can all agree that Senator Craig is an idiot.
10 Comments:
By 
ScurvyOaks, at
Fri Aug 31, 11:48:00 AM:
>"Another solution: simply define down your principles until they are conveniently consistent with your preferred lifestyle."
This system of everyone defining his own morality as the set of rules he's willing and able to keep is not only really convenient, it has a side effect: nobody's a sinner, so nobody needs a savior. Neat!
By Gordon Smith, at
Fri Aug 31, 11:49:00 AM:
Who from "The Left" has said they "hate moralizers"?
Goldberg's a hack, but to get to the substance - "The Left" doesn't like it when religious people force their religious morality on those who don't share their religious values. Evangelical politicians who tout family values while having affairs, seeking sex in airport toilets, etc are people who would legislate discrimination against gays. They repress even themselves. It's awful really.
There are varieties of hypocrisy everywhere. Goldberg chooses to compare evangelical lust for self-repression with Democrats' populist policy positions. Nothing wrong with it I guess, but talk about your moral equivalency.
By 
, at
Fri Aug 31, 12:51:00 PM:
Gordon:
From Wikipedia ... "Populism is a political doctrine or philosophy that purports to defend the interests of the common people against an entrenched, self-serving or corrupt elite."
So the fact that a majority of states have voted on same sex marriage means that we still have to continue to debate the issue because the Left has carved out the gay vote as something they can count on, and want to keep counting on? Based on the votes, it'd seem like the majority has spoken, but the moralists on the left don't like the answer.
I'm tired of any extremist, be they religious frauds or the loons on the far left.
By Gordon Smith, at
Fri Aug 31, 02:41:00 PM:
The "moralists" on the left see discrimination and oppression and want to fight against it. The religious oppressors on the right want me to believe that they're doing something other than foisting a discriminatory religious belief onto the lawbooks.
If you think homosexuality is wrong, then you go holler at all those wrong homosexuals. Just like if you don't like black people, you can go holler at them, too. You can keep your children away from them if they frighten you. You ought not enshrine that fear and dislike of an organic demographic into the law.
This seems a basic lesson of the civil rights movement. Do we have to fight it all over again?
By , at
Fri Aug 31, 03:59:00 PM:
Right on, Gordon. If you really can't see the difference between trying to provide better public schools for those who can't afford better even while you take advantage of what your money can buy, and the rank hypocrisy and self-loathing of persons like Senator Craig, then you need your moral compass examined.
By honestpartisan, at
Fri Aug 31, 05:19:00 PM:
I look forward to this blog taking Jonah's counsel and applying similar restraint toward hypocrisy accusations when it comes to John Edwards driving SUVs or chickengreens in general.
By , at
Fri Aug 31, 06:51:00 PM:
Liberal hypotcrits like the ones who want more gun conrrol while still having their armed bodyguards or how about JOHN EDWARDS who wants us all to give up our SUVs while driving around in his 4 mpg limos flying ehre and there in his private jets and living in his fancy some with its big big utility bills SCREW LIBERAL HYPOTCRITS
By Buce, at
Fri Aug 31, 10:11:00 PM:
Tiger—I may call you Tiger?—there is an important opportunity for learning here. You say Craig is an idiot. Well and good; most people would agree.
But this is a grand time for you to consider: Craig is not an idiot by accident; he is an idiot by design; part of a grand idiotic pattern.
Please don’t take this personally; quite the contrary, the reason that I am taking the time to enlighten you here is precisely because I think you are not an idiot. Therefore I think this would be a grand time to drive home some first principles about the company you keep.
Yes, I know (I think) how you got here. You like entrepreneurship. You like an effective military. You don’t like taxes, especially not when they go to fund some cockamany “public welfare” scheme. Your feelings are hurt when you feel that lesser mortals are being unkind to CEOs.
So far, so good. But to serve these ends, you feel you need to be a Republican. The lesson of the Craig episode: these people have nothing to do with you. They’re not just hypocrites; they’re a bunch of hate-filled autocrats who would like nothing better than to slap you and me both into shackles in the service of an imagined morality.
Craig is part of the picture, but put Craig together with Vitter. Vitter had a whole phonebook full of DC-madam contacts. But Vitter gets a bye, why? One, because he “repented” and “found God”—and I know that in your gut of guts, this makes you urp just as much as it does me. And two, because he did it with girls. Craig got it because it looks like he does it with boys.
Now, I do not for one minute question your manhood. But my guess is that you really do not care a rat’s patooty what Larry Craig or anybody else does in the privacy of his own shower stall, or anywhere else for that matter, as long as he does not frighten the horses.
But I’ll bet you are revolted by anyone who trades so shamelessly on this disconnect between public virtue and private (if you insist) vice. I’ll bet you really don’t like people who think laws are for everybody else, and who busybody the rest of the world while doing what they damn please themselves. You don’t want them anywhere around you. Hell, you’d rather put up with me.
And here’s the hard truth: these people are not just part of the Republican party. They are They’ve got guys like you flat on the floor and cuffed to the doorknob. You may think that you are using them, but do not kid yourself; you are just the plaster Madonna at the head of the parade. Oh wait—I think maybe it’s a piñata.
I know this presents a difficult choice. I’m hardly insisting you come out as a (formerly) closet Democrat. I know that any party man joins out of enthusiasm, but stays out of embarrassment.
But that’s the point; you don’t need to be a party man. You are a simple, barefoot, country blogger, free to call ‘em as you see ‘em, and free to free yourself from your moral inferiors.
PS: I don’t see anything hypocritical about sending your kid to private school and working to build a good public school. I’d call it rather heroic. But leave that for another day.
By TigerHawk, at
Fri Aug 31, 10:34:00 PM:
Buce, I don't disagree with any of that (except the last paragraph). Only thing is, I am not a Republican, as a careful reading of this blog will reveal. I agree with the Democrats on almost as many questions as I agree with Republicans. The only thing is, I tend to care about the issues on which I agree with Republicans much more. So, for example, I support gay marriage, lawful abortion, a more sensible approach to the war on drugs, sex education in the schools, a hefty gas/carbon tax, protecting the national parks, and so forth. I just do not care about them nearly as much as I care about economic growth and opportunity (as opposed to "fairness") and a "forward" approach to the war against the jihad. It really is a question of weighing the issues.
Truth is, if I could be persuaded that there were any Democrats that want to win the wider war, or who even genuinely believe that we are in a wider war, I would give serious consideration to voting for them. Unless I found their personality too icky to tolerate for four years, as was clearly the case with John Kerry.
On the schools point, well, you are distorting the issue and you know it. The Democrats want to preserve the quasi-monopoly status of the public schools, yet actual Democratic politicians will bypass them at every opportunity. Put differently, they claim that competition is not the best way to improve public schools thereby condemning the people who can only afford those schools to mediocrity, while they themselves opt out. They do not "work to build a good public school" -- that is being done by the charter school movement in this country -- they are working to protect the employees in those schools from the sort of competition that makes employees in the private sector better at their jobs every day.
By , at
Sat Sep 01, 02:39:00 PM:
"They’re not just hypocrites; they’re a bunch of hate-filled autocrats who would like nothing better than to slap you and me both into shackles in the service of an imagined morality"
You mean the morality that says, I want the environment protected from some chemical that might do some damage if it's misused, so I'm going to ban it's use, even though that ban kills a million of the poor people I claim to care about every year? That because the government won't let my gay freinds get married, I'll do everything I can to undermine it's efforts against people whose "gay rights debate" is over how homosexuals should be executed? Or the morality that says "I'm so apoplectic that guy has more than me that I'll support economic ideas that resulted in the death of 100 million people in the 20th century alone"?
There have been a lot of hate filled autocrats in this world, but the most damage by far has come from those on the left side of the political spectrum.
As for hypocrisy, when a smoker tells you smoking is a bad idea, they're right. When John Edwards tells you driving a huge SUV is generally wasteful, he's right. When Dr Laura tells you not to let your boyfriend take naked photos of you, she's right. Hypocrisy has nothing to do with the validity of one's position.
