“Hypocrisy” is a misunderstood word: see Jeremy Lott’s book on the topic
For instance, I’ve been accused by leftists of hypocrisy for using Canada’s “free” “health” “care” when I was diagnosed with lupus.
But that isn’t hypocrisy, because hypocrisy presupposes choice.
In Canada, it is illegal to purchase health care. You can’t buy private insurance. If private insurance existed, then I would have purchased it as the earliest age possible — just like my mother bought us funeral plots 50 years ago, and got me my first bank account at age 8, and my first will at age 19.
But I had no option, any more than I have a realistic alternative to walking and driving on government built sidewalks and roads.
(I cop to being the biggest purity hag in the West, but then I occasionally leave my house [almost always a big mistake] and reluctantly get some of my sharper edges temporarily smoothed out by the tumbler of life.) (Dammit.)
Likewise, Rush Limbaugh is not a “hypocrite” for being a broadcasting performers union member while railing against unions. Thanks to the sinister machinations of the same people who call him a hypocrite, Limbaugh literally would not be able to do his job without that — what’s the word liberals use for wedding licenses again? Oh, yeah — “piece of paper.” Maybe he wouldn’t be so anti-union if you hadn’t obliged him to join one. (Or is that concept too mind blowing for you?)
On the other hand, someone who rails against “sodomy,” then is caught soliciting sodomy — in a public washroom, no less — is a hypocrite, because they had a choice.
Jesus called hypocrites “white sepulchers” — that is, crypts, because they were prettily white washed on the exterior but contained a reeking, rotting corpse inside. There has to be a duality for hypocrisy to exist, an “inner” and an “outer,” plus a way to avoid falling into hypocrisy through free choice and the Will.
And contrary to what liberal Christians like to believe, Jesus wasn’t mad at people just because they were hypocrites. He was mad at them for committing the sin that made them hypocrites.
That’s the opposite of the idiotic Watergate take-away, “It’s not the crime, it’s the cover up.” In fact, the popularity of that phrase has helped screw up generations of moral compasses. Thanks again, 1970s!
Anyway, here is Zombie (who needs to start writing under his real name):
Well, for the “at least we’re not hypocrites” sentiment to make sense, there must be an agreed-upon starting point — one which the liberals themselves are confirming each time they make this argument. And what must that starting point necessarily be? For conservatives to be hypocrites when they do something immoral, then that means they must profess a moral ideology in the first place. And — here’s the key — for the liberals to be let off the hook when they do something immoral, then that means they must profess an ideology with no moral claims whatsoever.
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Of course, liberals DO profess an ideology with no moral claims whatsoever.
These are the same people who raise up Kevorkian and Hugh Hefner as heroes, who dismiss the sleazy activities of Martin Luther King and Bill Clinton as “just sex.”
I’m not as convinced as he is that “the American people” will reject a party of amorality, not when Glee is one of TV’s top rated shows, and tens of thousands of young people matter of factly sexting away and posting amateur porn of themselves.
Ten years from now, a Broadway play depicting Anthony Weiner as a misunderstood pioneer hero for “freedom” — the Rosa Parks of the penis pix — will win a Tony and a Pulitzer.
