Posted on 08/31/2007 11:15:29 AM PDT by .cnI redruM
In the wake of the Larry Craig “Bathroomgate” story, some intrepid free-market-oriented bloggers came up with a novel solution to the problem of closeted gay conservatives indulging their carnal desires on the side. Gay-sex offsets.
The same market-based approach is used by environmentally crapulent liberal celebrities all the time. They use private jets, drive around with big entourages and own numerous energy-sucking homes. To make amends, they purchase an indulgence in the form of “carbon offsets” — a contract whereby the equivalent amount of greenhouse gases are soaked up by newly planted trees and the like.
So why not do the same thing with gay sex? Cruise the bus station, cut a check to the heterosexuality-promoting organization of your choice.
Since most on the Left think Craig’s alleged sexual liaisons are perfectly benign, they shouldn’t object. “Who are we to judge?” and all that. Rather, the Left claims it hates Craig’s hypocrisy, not his behavior.
From Rush Limbaugh’s drug use to Bill Bennett’s gambling to the long list of Republican politicians who’ve thrown a few earmarks and riders into their marriage vows, the Left has chosen to denounce the perceived hypocrisy rather than the behavior. The indictment sometimes loses its punch in the details. Bennett never inveighed against gambling, for example.
But that misses the point. 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.
You don’t even have to give up traditional religion, so long as you now define the teachings of your faith in perfect compliance with the Democratic platform.
Why, just look at John Kerry. In 2004, the Democratic nominee repeatedly insisted that his religious faith is “why I fight against poverty. That’s why I fight to clean up the environment and protect this earth. That’s why I fight for equality and justice. All of those things come out of that fundamental teaching and belief of faith.” Great! But when it comes to, say, abortion, consulting one’s faith is a no-no: “What is an article of faith for me is not something that I can legislate on somebody who doesn’t share that article of faith.”
So I guess under a Kerry administration, America’s civil rights and economic and environmental policies would all be voluntary?
The point is simply this: Hypocrisy is bad, sure. But it’s a human failing that should fall upon the individual in question. What the left wants to do is use hypocrisy as a cudgel to declare that conservative ideals are categorically illegitimate because some conservatives fail to live up to them. But we all fail to live up to our ideals sometimes (just ask John Edwards, who wants get rid of everyone’s SUV, save the one in his driveway). That’s sort of why we call them “ideals.” Most of us don’t fall as far as Larry Craig seems to have fallen, but that’s not necessarily an indictment of his arguments, it’s an indictment of the man.
Very little is expected of the Democrats. They never fail to meet those expectations.
Journalism is the PR business. Journalism defines itself to be the side of the angels. Comforting the afflicted, and afflicting the comfortable. "Objective" and all that . . .Republicans claim to be conservatives, but they generally are more or less compromised by their need for positive PR (John McCain, poster boy).
Democrats claim to be for the little guy, and they back it up by doing the same sort of second guessing as the journalists do, of exactly the same targets, and doing absolutely nothing which at all threatens journalism. Journalists would have to work as seperating themselves from "liberals" - and "liberals" simply give them absolutely no reason for doing so.
Getting good PR - right now - is the credo of "liberalism."
That always has been the underlying assumption to the entire "hypocrisy" scam - it is as if morality depends not on what you do but what you say about it. The real difficulty with that position is that it is equally hypocritical to condemn in another what one does oneself regrardless of what one says about it. The Democrats' and liberal activists' approach to this affair stinks to high heaven of that sort of hypocrisy.
Actually, it's more like: when you are a democrat and stand for EVERYTHING, there's nothing to moralize about.
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