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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
That’s a pretty accurate diagnosis of the patient, my good Doctor!
Those two opening sentences nail it precisely. It’s like Hillary said, “it takes a village to raise your kids, but keep your [redacted] hands off mine!”.
Yes, the red pill. Spot on diagnosis, too – each and every little one of them imagine they’ll be among the favored.
The progressive project is and always was the transfer of wealth, status, and power from those who produce to those who persuade.
The best description of hypocrisy I’ve heard is not speaking according to what you really believe and doing things differently, it’s doing what you really believe and speaking things differently. The first is a sinner and the second is a hypocrite.
Another way of saying it, perhaps, is that what liberals fear from conservatives is not the mirror image what conservatives fear from liberals. Liberals fear that conservative hegemony will impede their progressive goals, which are mostly an abstraction. Conservatives fear the much more concrete reality which liberals want to bring about, namely, that liberals literally want to take their stuff.
For the rank-and-file, at least, control is not the goal, it’s the way to get to the various goals. All the examples of government control listed are absolutely what would happen if the left got its way, and they are tyrannical… but to those on the left, it sounds paranoid when you (or any of us) describe it that way. It doesn’t bother them as much that the government would be in charge of various aspects of their lives; they see it as just a series of tweaks to the “rules of the game,” which, coincidentally often, would materially benefit them in the short-term. Maybe it’s risk-aversion, or tyranny-tolerance.
“What’s the big deal if the government controls the healthcare system? It would make my healthcare cheaper!” Is where a lot of people are, even though the reverse is true. If you’re a voter and you weigh the perceived costs (to you) and perceived benefits (to you) of some new aspect of leviathan and you think your individual costs are less than your individual benefits, and those are the only things you consider when you decide, you have no principles and you are accepting a form of bribery that enables tyranny.
[Enter Mel Gibson in The Patriot: “I’m a parent, I don’t have the luxury of principles!]
John Adams said our Constitution was for a moral and religious people and was wholly inadequate for the governance of any other. Well, I hate to be Johnny Raincloud, but we are not a moral and religious people. Sure, there are plenty of decently moral people and plenty of decently religious people within “The People,” but as a People? C’mon. Principles and liberty and government control sound nerdy and boring and not related to real life to a lot of people, so I think one thing to try to do is demonstrate that not only would these various leftist schemes have tyrannical side-effects, but most of the time they wouldn’t even accomplish what they are supposed to. Maybe awakening the sleeping liberal within the raging leftist by appealing to principles is possible, but it seems more like there are dark days ahead.
Great post. Very well thought out. I would love some of my lefty friends to read this but I don’t have the control.
I still remember the time my bleeding heart sister-in-law related how she and her coworkers had collected money for another coworker who was down on her luck. My SIL was upset because the recipient chose to use the money to buy Christmas gifts for her kids instead of paying her rent. That was just wrong!
You nailed it.
This is such a perfect article. I completely agree with everything said. He is so right. It’s time to stop being polite and trench up and speak up. The Covington incident makes me sick! Even conservative pundits and writers are soft soaping the actions of the Black Hebrews the the man with the drum. They were disgusting! The kids did nothing wrong and were the real victims and continue to be victimized! Sickening. Stand up and shout the truth. There were clear bad guys, so what if they have darker pigmentation to their skin. And the kids were the good guys that I completely admire.
I just sent this excellent article to my kids and my brother. Of course the kids will all love it, the real object was my brother he’ll deny all of it.
The left believes in controls on society, the right believes in guardrails for society.
The right sees controls as the enemy of freedom, while the left sees guardrails as the enemy of freedom.
What are these guardrails I speak of? Limits on behavior – not necessarily legal limits, but things we don’t do in order to get along with other people.
For example, not cussing in public (especially in front of children). I know some judge somewhere ruled laws against cussing in public violated our vaunted “freedom of speech” amendment (I don’t think it does, but I’m fortunate enough not to have had legal training), but dropping an F-bomb at a Chuck-E-Cheese isn’t going to win you many admirers.
Now, you might say, “But Stad, aren’t your guardrails the same thing as controls?” My response is “Yes, but we voluntarily impose them on ourselves.” The left’s controls are always enforced on society, with the destructive power of government behind it. When they can’t get the control laws they want passed, well . . . that’s how you get Antifa and BLM . . .
Every word you write is why I am here, ensconsed in and supporting the Center.
Although it would be so nifty if somehow someone could make folks on the Left see that by critiquing us fascistas for our racism, their white privilege does not end or diminish. It really and truly still exists.
Martin Luther King Jr and Cesar Chavez would be be so appalled.
King wanted people to help one another, and he supported Chavez. Chavez had the knowledge and wisdom to state that open borders and rampant immigration made it impossible for the poor already here to ever leave poverty.
Indeed. See my post Jousting with a Phantom
I’m wondering when the left will disavow their admiration of Chavez. He was so anti-illegal, he led many of his followers to physically attack illegal aliens taking jobs away from his people . . .
The left also evades accountability. They are never really taken to task by their own side for failures, bad plans, etc. The leftist voter can deny personal responsibility also. If you are a liberal, and you pay taxes to support charity, you don’t really have to care. And when those programs don’t work, it isn’t your fault. All your failures in life can be because of things beyond your control that are unfair. This is a childish sort of behavior that liberals engage in while pretending to be the grown ups. Life is unfair to most people at least at some time in their lives. The conservative understands he has power to find solutions that don’t involve a convoluted, complex system.
I think an important to
I think an important disctinction needs to be made here. Your common everyday leftist, the ones who make up the twitter mob, the ones who show up to rally’s, the ones who emote on Facebook are all very different from leftists in the media or lefty politicians.
Everyday leftist feels an emotional reaction to things they disagree with but cannot control. They are ok with calling for controlling of others because it affirms what they feel. Being tolerant, debating your side of an argument, and compromising are all difficult things and cause additional emotional distress. Calling for control is much easier.
Leftists in the media have a burning desire to control what other people think because ideas and influence are their currency. And leftism is basically a set of ideals set up to reflect a pluralistic morality.
Leftist politicians are the real “villains” are the lefty politicians. They are the ones that want to control people in order to retain power over them.
Hypocrisy as an accusation, has a different affect on each different type of leftist.
Their overt desire to control has been going on for decades, getting worse by the year: Schools – now starting in grade school – teaching revisionist history, nonscience, questionable civics, etc.; workplaces buying in to the nonsense – what chance to clear-thinking citizens have?
Unfortunately, Huxley had it right when he said, “People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capabilities to think.”