Posted by
Defend America on Wednesday, December 02, 2009 9:52:42 PM
Washington, Home of Intellectual Hypocrisy
by Jonah Goldberg
I think I've had my fill of moral hypocrisy. We routinely hear stories of
evangelical ministers who "mentor" hookers at $500 an hour, "family
values" politicians who like the cut of a congressional page's jib, or
senators who love to press the flesh, one bathroom stall at a time.
And, given the times, we increasingly hear stories about progressive
politicians and columnists who -- gasp! -- have bigger carbon
footprints than
they want the rest of us to have: CO2 emissions for me
and not for thee! For shame.
The press loves stories of moral hypocrisy. Catching a finger-wagging
politician violating his or her own moral code warms the cockles of
every reporter's heart. Indeed, sometimes journalists confuse hypocrisy
for the real crime. "If a politician murders his mother," the late
Washington Post editorial page editor Meg Greenfield once said, "the
first response of the press ... will likely be not that it was a
terrible thing to do, but rather that in a statement made six years
before, he had gone on record as being opposed to matricide."
The crusade against moral hypocrisy necessarily hits
conservatives harder, not because conservatives are more immoral but
because they uphold morality more publicly, making them richer targets.
The left aims much of its moralizing at moralizing itself -- "thou
shalt not judge." Meanwhile, the right focuses on the oldies but
goodies -- adultery, drug use, etc. I think we're right to uphold a
standard even if we sometimes fail to live up to it.
What I don't think we hear enough about is intellectual
hypocrisy. What's that? Well, if moral hypocrisy is saying what values
people should live by while failing to follow them yourself,
intellectual hypocrisy is believing you are smart enough to run other
peoples' lives when you can barely run your own.
http://townhall.com/columnists/JonahGoldberg/2009/12/02/washington,_home_of_intellectual_hypocrisy