There is a practical reason why conservatives have picked up the “you’re a hypocrite” hammer: If your opponent is defending his integrity instead of his ideas, you’re winning the debate. If Noam Chomsky has to spend time and resources reconciling his paychecks with his politics, those are time and resources that he can’t expend attacking the Iraq War. If Ralph Nader has to square his consumer activism and his stock portfolio, then he might not be able to have the next Corvair recalled.
But it used to be a common conservative belief that you could work within a system and still speak out against elements of the system. Logically, one could live in a rent-controlled apartment but still oppose rent control (as did the hard-core libertarian Murray Rothbard). This was the basic rationale for right-wing political activism—the golden mean between the Scylla of pietism and the Charybdis of more violent, revolutionary impulses. That the right would now criticize the left for the same approach is troubling.
Indeed, many conservatives, from Benjamin Disraeli to William F. Buckley Jr., have professed an appreciation for the moderating influence of hypocrisy. It’s the homage that vice pays to virtue, they would explain, quoting the 17th-century French noble Francois de La Rochefoucauld. There’s certainly a case to be made that liberal hypocrisy helps to restrain some fairly troublesome impulses by turning would-be revolutionaries into poseurs, clowns, and petty manipulators.
Teddy Kennedy may call for more government controls but, as Schweizer accidentally suggests, the desire not to harm his own clan’s extensive holdings has limited the damage. And when Ralph Nader calls for the abolition of the Taft-Hartley Act or rages against our “corporate paymasters,” he’s not making serious policy proposals. He’s playing a part while leaving his large stock portfolio relatively untrammeled. This sort of hypocrisy we can live with.
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Dept. of Rendundancy Dept.|8.10.10 @ 1:32PM|#
I think it's time we coin a new word for those of the ultra-hypocritical persuasion (read: liberal).
Hypercrite.
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