Hypocrite Hunt

If you just got nailed for doing something stupid or immoral, just find out how your accuser also did something stupid or immoral and you’re off the hook! It doesn’t even have to be for the same indiscretion, just throw everything you’ve got at em’ and hope something sticks. If they did something wrong, then they’re a hypocrite! Hypocrite! Hypocrite!

This is a common tactic I see in modern debate, and it’s closely related to the “who are you to judge” fallout from our post-modern generation. The implication is that if you look for a fault and find it, we collectively lose the ability to call it wrong if we also practice it. If I claim your candidate is a liar, you just Google a quote where my candidate told a lie and suddenly telling a lie is off the table. Stupid, I know. But that’s where we’re at.

Given this standard, nobody can really preach about anything because none of us have perfectly acted out our values. I don’t believe in lying, but I’ve obviously lied before. Perhaps even today. But that doesn’t mean I can’t speak against lying. I’m selfish, and I teach my kids to try not to be selfish as much as possible. Even when I know our nature makes us selfish. We fight because it’s right, not because our record is perfect.

I was at a men’s Bible study where half of us were conservatives and half were libs. They asked how I could support a disingenuous guy like McCain and I said that I thought he would be best about expanding the rights of the unborn. The libs came up with quote after quote, even emailing me YouTube links where McCain was soft on abortion, plus he was a hypocrite because he would expand the Iraq war for 100 years and kill many innocent people.

Liberals love the hypocrite game more than conservatives because liberals learned that by promoting no standards of personal behavior, they can never be caught fighting against them. Liberals judge positions not standards of personal behavior. If you hold the wrong position on Global Warming, you’re not a hypocrite, you’re evil. It doesn’t even matter how you act, as we see when the leaders of their movement ride in jets that aren’t made of organic hemp. You can actually act with hate, as long as you don’t come down on the side of “h8te” on certain issues.

Conservatives think hate is an action, Liberals think hate is a position. Likewise, if a conservative takes a certain view on Embryonic Stem Cell Research we’re called anti-science, never mind that it’s anti-science to pretend the lab is empirically clear on the philosophical value of an unborn human.

The Republicans of the last eight years did act as fiscal hypocrites and deserved to lose their credibility on the subject. I hope our guys reform and see the real fallout that will only happen to Republicans when we’re caught saying we’re for small government while actively expanding it. President Obama can claim to be against big government while tripling down on his massive expansion and it will never occur to Libs that he’s a hypocrite. His intent is in the right place after all.

Philosophically, it’s easier to be a liberal than a conservative. We don’t hold liberals to a high standard because only conservative standard claims are taken seriously. So you can only have conservative hypocrites, which is why we so rarely hear about liberal hypocrites though most of us know better.

I don’t think our Republicans look better because the Obama administration fails. If that’s what we’re counting on then we’re screwed. I hope we don’t have a bunch of Republicans running on “The failed policies of the last four years.” When Obama did that I smelled a fraud and to not use the same standard on Republicans would be hypocritical.

Republicans need to make a positive case for a conservative view of politics. Our liberty is God-given and doesn’t need a government to make it so. Our government should be restrained, limited and pushed out of our lives unless our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness is at stake.