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Leftist Hypocrisy Is Still Not Hypocritical
I doubt that the Pelosis spend very much time in this part of San Francisco.
I don’t believe that this apparent dichotomy means that wealthy Democrats are hypocrites, though. I sat down to write a post to explain this point, and I got a feeling of deja vu. I went scanning through my old posts, and found this one, that I wrote four years ago. The point of the post is that calling Democrats hypocrites is giving them way too much credit, and it ignores the true problems that we face. See if you think this short essay from four years ago is relevant to current events:
Leftist Hypocrisy is Not Hypocritical
Conservatives promote a type of government that they would like to live under: limited government, lots of individual liberty and responsibility, federalism, property rights, low taxes, freedom of speech, and so on.
Leftists promote a type of government that they want others to live under, but that they would not want to live under themselves: high taxes (for other people), limited freedoms (as long as we can do what we want), controls on education (although the wealthy can afford decent schools), limits on freedom of speech (for political opponents), high taxes on gas-guzzling pickup trucks (because leftists don’t farm, and they use public transportation). Etc etc etc.
This is why leftist systems often end up building walls to keep people in, while conservatives build walls to keep people out.
This is also why leftists are often accused of hypocrisy. When Al Gore tells you to drive a Prius while he travels by private jet, that seems hypocritical. When leftists say that you should not be allowed to own the same guns that their own bodyguards carry, that seems hypocritical. When Hillary Clinton thinks that you don’t pay enough in taxes, while she uses every imaginable trick in the book to avoid paying taxes herself, that seems hypocritical.
But I really don’t think it is.
Conservatism is about the pursuit of happiness, for everyone. Equal opportunities, and restriction on the wet blanket of government. Freedom to think, speak, and live as you see fit. There are ethical, moral, religious, and practical reasons behind all this, but the hoped-for result is a better society for all.
Leftism is about none of those things. When you get right down to it, leftism is about control. Controlling freedom of speech so no one will be offended. Controlling which cars we drive so we can control the weather 100 years from now. Controlling the schools our children attend, so we can control what they think. Controlling how resources are allocated throughout our economy via taxing, spending, and regulating. Controlling what health care resources are available to who at what time. And so on and so forth. All those issues have very little in common, except for their common ultimate goal: control.
Leftists are uncomfortable with the unpredictability of the crazy world we live in. Surely they could help people and prevent suffering if they could exert some control over the chaos of modern society. I think most of them have good intentions, even if their goals and tactics are, well, absolutely insane. Giving more power to fewer people has rarely worked out well in the past. But of course, we’re smarter now, we could do better. It’s hard for me to comprehend the arrogance required to think that centralized control systems can make things better for people. But gosh darn it, they keep trying, bless their hearts.
Conservatives, in general, don’t like being told what to do, and have little interest in telling others what to do. Liberals are more comfortable with both. So conservatives attempt to establish rules that they would like to live under, while liberals attempt to establish rules that they would like you to live under.
This is why I don’t view leftists as hypocritical. It’s not about them. It’s about you.
Hillary shouldn’t pay more taxes. She spends her money properly. You should pay more taxes. Because you might spend your money improperly. Obviously.
You could call that philosophy a lot of things, but I don’t think you can call it hypocritical. We should just call it what it is: Tyrannical.
When conservatives accuse leftists of hypocrisy, they’re just being polite.
We should be less polite.
There’s a lot at stake. You can’t defeat an enemy that you can’t name. And control leads to tyranny, control is the enemy of freedom. We should fight the advance of tyranny with clarity. Not politeness.
Published in General
Good points.
Seeing her picture always nauseates me. But it’s appropriate when discussing hypocrisy.
Excellent post. Thanks.
Intrigued.
I think that you’re describing libertarianism, not conservatism.
I’ll disagree. Although it does appear that way…
Yes, but why?
The answer is that with control there are enormous opportunities for graft, fraud, waste, mismanagement, and bribery. That’s where the money is.
It’s not a question of being uncomfortable with unpredictability. I mean, how would even measure that?
It’s coming up with a believable excuse to exert control, and reap the aforementioned benefits.
And that is why it really is about them. They care about graft, not “you”.
She believes that she is superior to regular people and is exempt from the same rules of morality. She may or not have had people killed but she is deeply corrupt and if she viewed herself with the same kind of ethical rules as she would hold us to she would be filled with self-loathing.
In her excremental speech in India, she basically said people voted for Trump. Because they were racist or bigoted in some fashion. She couldn’t handle the fact that Trump is more likeable than her.
Much like in Communist countries, the most corrupt and cruel leaders think they have they are the best at ruling. I know not why.
I disagree. Bernie Sanders worked on a farm. Well, he lived on a farm once. Okay, he lived at a commune in 1971 but got kicked out for being too lazy. ‘Good enough for you, but not for me.’
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I think they absolutely believe the end justifies the means. I voted early today because I will be working in Maine again. Our official website Mass.gov says there are four ballot questions. When I was filling out the ballot there were five questions. Here is question #5
“Shall the representative from this district be instructed to introduce and vote for legislation that puts a fee on the carbon content of fossil fuels to compensate for their environmental damage and returns most of the proceeds in equitable ways to individuals as a cash-back dividend?(sic)”
What the heck kind of question is that? Somebody who drives to work with a gas vehicle needs to give a cash handout to those that don’t? I thought we already do that. I have pics of both if anyone is interested.
Good points and I agree with every word.
I always thought Republicans and conservatives were off-base focusing on the hypocrisy of these people.
Those charges always fell on deaf ears. The Alinsky tactic is “make your enemy live up to their own rules”.
Our side assumes the left has rules of honesty they live by.“Make the enemy live up to its book of rules.” They don’t – and they feel no shame or remorse. But the conservative is only telling everyone that if he/she ever does the same, even once, he/she has lost the ability to charge others, even if they are exponentially more guilty by quality and quality.
Thus, we can be charged with hypocrisy effectively, but the charge doesn’t really stick because they have never claimed to be honest or fight fairly. Have they? Please someone, a citation…? Bueller?
In fact, no one expects them to be fair or honest, so the charge of hypocrisy or holding double standards is always less effective when applied to them.
I’ll quibble with this:
Good intentions, if you think whole swaths of ordinary people are evil and should be variously controlled or eliminated. Looking at it this way, the ‘intentions’ themselves are evil and unAmerican. The intentions are only good if their underlying assumptions are accurate. The Nazis had ‘good intentions’ the good intention was to purify Germany.
And by the way, granting people the blanket absolution of having “good intentions” might be more acceptable if these people would EVER consider that maybe their opponents were operating from good intentions.
It is not hypocrisy, it is hierarchy. We are Lessors and justice for us is what they say it is.
Leftists can’t allow the rest of us to opt out of their system.
Conservatives don’t care if someone wants to opt out.
They want other people to follow the rules they create, but they wouldn’t want to live their own lives as determined by other leftists whose preferred rules just might not agree with their own.
Maybe conservatives should care if someone wants to opt out of freedom for others.
I got that, but the examples aren’t especially compelling. Taxes, for instance; the left and right both pay the same taxes.
I would want a more detailed analysis on such things. For one thing, I think people on the left are far more likely to be government employees, which means the “Taxes” they’re “paying” are actually coming from money taken from other taxpayers.
That that question actually gets on the ballot is the problem in itself. If purchasing decisions, all of them, need to include a carbon impact – and therefore a tax – everything would be taxed, because energy and transportation is tied to everything.
So. If you’re already taxing income, sales, everywhere, all the time – why haven’t you been “compensating” for environmental damage through existing revenues? If it’s so important, why have you failed, then?
All of it is about power, graft, money. The rest is just the vehicle by which they accumulate those things.
They do, but one side does not claim that the rich don’t pay their fair share in order to buy votes, when that is demonstrably false. Assuming we agree on what “fair share” is – if the top 50% of income earners pay 97% of all income taxes collected, I would argue that’s *not* a fair share, it’s the full share.
But try math on a liberal, and you get glazed over eyes.
The fact that the official site said there are four questions when there was actually five is a big red flag. My rep is a friend of mine and one of a small handful of republicans in the house. I will ask him how this question came about after the election. It’s obvious they are trying to strong arm his opinion and representation. Not a chance of that working.
Edit: I just spoke to him. He didn’t even know it was there. Someone snuck it in.
This is confusing conservatism with libertarianism, too.
It’s interesting to see how many people with libertarian ideas consider themselves to be conservative, while supporting the social ideas of the 60s radicals.
Again, ad infinitum if needed, there is a solid difference between disapproving of behaviors we don’t approve of and policing behaviors we don’t approve of, the latter being expensive, self-defeating (in the way the War on Drugs moved drug dealers from guys you could arrest to cop-killing cartels), and impossible – the behavior doesn’t ever vanish, it just festers out of sight. Ultimately, the dangerous tools you propose to create are left lying around for the next unsupervised Democrat wave to play with.
Your idea of conservatism is closer to authoritarianism.
But for people’s own good. Of course.
Yes, but don’t give them ideas.
Not to worry, they’ve had the ideas for at least 100 years.
Problem is so many on our side didn’t realize things.
Lordy. Dead on.
He is correct. The military equivalent was, “ The war on terrorism.” Notice no enemy is identified, only a tactic.
I, too, disagree.
hypocrisy
Hypocrisy is not the condition of having a belief and not living up to it. Hypocrisy is professing and advocating what you don’t believe, but actually living up to what you do believe.
Hypocrisy has to do with three things: First, what you believe; second, what you say you believe; and only thirdly, what you do.
And deliberately saying something that is not true is called lying.
And I really have to say, it’s not about control per se, but about controlling outcomes; controlling people to do, or to think, or to act in a certain way. I know a lot of people who really, really want to control other people, but I can’t think of anyone who doesn’t want to control people to obtain outcomes beyond the issue of simply controlling others: that want things like psychological satisfaction, or material prosperity, or ease of living. I can’t think of anyone who controls others capriciously or arbitrarily for the purpose of merely demonstrating control itself, and being satisfied only by the exercise of control regardless of any other outcome.
The key to determining the presence hypocrisy is not so much what one does, as whether someone is lying about what he believes.
The Democrats are clearly lying about what they believe. They are not saying “Home ownership, or air travel, or guns, or butter for me, but not for you,” They are saying, “No home ownership, or air travel, or guns, or butter” while having all these things for themselves.
This is pretty much the standard for hypocrisy.