There exists no dearth of outrage on the Left toward the perceived hypocrisy of President Donald Trump and the Republican Party at large. Mr. Trump, they remind us, was elected due to a number of campaign promises, not least of them was the pledge to “drain the swamp”, a not-so-thinly-veiled allusion to the pervasive influence of lobbyists and career politicians infesting the halls of power in Washington, D.C. Mr. Trump’s cabinet nominees, particularly Steve Mnuchin and Betsy DeVos, are stark examples in the minds of leftists that our president has broken his word.
The Left is correct, from time to time, when they call out the hypocrisy of the Right. We cannot on one hand claim to be for limited government and then on the other demand Big Brother interfere in a woman’s right to choose to exterminate her young. We cannot claim to be for free markets while also bending to the will of big business lobbies that demand unfair tax breaks and access to our regulatory apparatus for the purpose of writing anti-competitive rules that crush smaller rivals or prevent them from gaining market access in the first place.
We on the Right must always guard against making hypocrites of ourselves and we must not be shy about calling out our favored elected officials for their transgressions. We, the people, are instrumental in holding to account our government both in the press and at the polling place. The Right is not exempt from criticism and perhaps the venom of the Left can be abated by being upfront about our sins when we commit them. Probably not.
And what of the Left? Are they exempt from criticism? Certainly not. Their ceaseless bluster about the missteps of the Right work against their sanctimonious purposes. The incessant finger pointing may remind one of Matthew 7:5.
Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
The Left excels at identifying the specks in our eyes. Let’s take a look at the planks in theirs.
Hypocrisy is the Left denouncing racism while simultaneously bombarding Senator Tim Scott with racially charged hate mail because of his support for Jeff Sessions. Black conservatives are all too frequently labeled by liberals as Uncle Toms and house negroes and traitors or a disgrace to their race. Hypocrisy is the Left positioning itself as champions of minorities while in actuality playing the part of the Aryan Savior; the bigotry of low expectations compels the Left to depict blacks as poor, uneducated, and incapable of helping themselves without the assistance of rich, old, white elitists.
Hypocrisy is hating Christianity for being a fairy tale that justifies intolerance of gays and the subjugation of women while simultaneously welcoming into our homeland Islamists whose physical degradations of women and ferocity toward the LGBT community far outpaces the rhetoric of the Judeo-Christian religion.
Hypocrisy is condemning Christianity as a fairy tale while protesting to protect the heritage of asinine Native American folk religions. Hypocrisy is calling oneself a progressive while simultaneously standing against progress in the name of defending the shattered vestiges of a culture that was long ago obliterated. Hypocrisy is protesting to protect the environment at the site of the DAPL and then trashing the place, a two-faced infraction the Sioux may have characterized with an expression known as the “forked tongue”. Hypocrisy is decrying environmental hazards and monopolies and the evil 1% while acting as the unwitting shills of Warren Buffet’s/Berkshire Hathaway’s virtual monopoly on the exceedingly dangerous transport of oil-by-rail by way of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway.
Hypocrisy is Elizabeth Warren writing in 2003 that, “An all-voucher or all-school choice system would be a shock to the educational system, but the shake out might be just what the system needs…But over time, the whole concept of “the Beverly Hills schools” or “Newton schools” would die out, replaced in the hierarchy by schools that offer a variety of programs that parents want for their children, regardless of the geographic boundaries. By selecting where to send their children (and where to spend their vouchers), parents would take control over schools’ tax dollars, making them the de facto owners of those schools.”
(Pocahontas Miss Warren has changed her war-cry tune these days, as demonstrated by her futile opposition to the ascendancy of Betsy DeVos to the Trump cabinet. Did she flip flop or has she reserved for herself the right to be smarter today than she was yesterday? There’s no indication the latter is true.)
Hypocrisy is claiming to be champions of women’s rights while hoisting onto a pedestal flagrant womanizers like Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy, a man who may be described as an army-of-one in the liberal war on women. Conservatives have endured their fair share of sex scandals but can they really claim anything close to the litany of lecherous politicos in the progressive rogue’s gallery? John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer, and the walking, talking human embodiment of sleaze – Carlos Danger himself – Anthony Weiner, are only a few of the Left’s latest additions to a long, growing, and shameful list of debauched disgraces.
Hypocrisy is labeling conservatives and libertarians as “fascist” while simultaneously practicing the tactics of Kristallnacht. Hypocrisy is calling a baby a baby when he or she is wanted but calling he or she an inhuman clump of cells when the pregnancy is inconvenient.
Hypocrisy is opposing war when a Republican is in the White House and then turning a blind eye when a Democrat is the one dropping the bombs. Hypocrisy is the Democratic Party condemning Ted Cruz for “shutting down” the government (it didn’t shut down) and then doing everything in their power to prevent a new government from being formed. Hypocrisy is demanding government be virtually limitless in power and then denouncing the excesses of a Republican president when he exercises the powers institutionalized by his Democrat predecessor.
It’s easy enough to lambaste individual politicians like Elizabeth Warren, but like any fork-tongued hypocrite in government, she would be a toothless non-issue if it weren’t for the people who voted her and her ilk into power. Neither party could survive without the foot soldiers who pull the levers every election cycle to perpetuate the cycle of mind-numbing duplicity. These voters are, for the most part, well-intentioned though woefully misguided. They are so obsessed with the specks in their neighbors’ eyes that they overlook the planks in their own. It never occurs to them to diligently examine themselves for contradictions and double standards.
It’s not enough to call out the politicians and pundits for their hypocrisy. The voters who empower them must constantly be confronted with the bottomless potential of their blind faith in those whose hypocrisy is premeditated.
And we on the Right must constantly remind ourselves that the entire mindset of the liberal voter is completely at odds with itself: It calls upon government to be a nurturing mother, tasked with providing welfare for the masses, while it simultaneously condemns it for being a tyrannical father who punishes the poor and violates our civil liberties. Liberalism is hypocrisy and if the voters of the Left cannot see it in themselves we shouldn’t be surprised when they don’t see it in their chosen rulers.
Original artwork by Jesse Comeau
It is an inherently contradictory set of ideas. http://173.175.106.237/cmt/comment7.html