Report comment to moderator

Report comment to moderator

The problem with that thesis is that hypocrisy creates dishonesty rather than moral clarity, increases harm, and morality doesn’t depend on the transmission of absolute rules. We’ve tried a society based on the utility of hypocrisy. It’s called the Victorian Age and it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

In my experience honesty is the best protection against burns. The danger of hypocrisy is the confusion between what one thinks one should believe and what one really believes. There is no virtue at all in confusion.

Report comment to moderator

Making Hypocrisy Possible is a Cultural Virtue

Paul Begala has said that the GOP should stop lecturing everybody about sex — because of the hypocrisy recently manifested in the behavior of Sen. Ensign and Gov. Sanford. But this overlooks the important role of hypocrisy in every decent society. As it has been well observed, hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue. When virtue is publicly honored, there will be those who do not live up to that standard but who nevertheless want to [be] known as men who live up to it. As long as we have a fallen world, and we honor what we ought to honor — marital fidelity, say — we will have this problem.

It is no solution at all to remove the discrepancy the way the left has done, which is by dropping the honor of virtue. This is what Begala in essence is saying. But it is a good thing that there are still political parties and regions of the country where you can wreck your public life by what you do in private. It was no virtue for Gov. Sanford to head off to Argentina, but it was a cultural virtue that made going to Argentina necessary.

But there is a lesson for randy Republicans in this. Stop trying to save the country without explicit and ongoing dependence on Jesus Christ. If Jesus Christ is not Lord over all, then Begala is right.

Either that, or he simply realizes, along with Wilson and myriad others, that where there is virtue, hypocrisy will always be nearby.

Report comment to moderator

Actually, I think Rush Limbaugh is a very intlligent man. They’re is nothing about being smarmy or about being a demagogue that is incompatible with being intelligent.

I am sure Bernard Madoff, for example, is a very smart man. What did he use all those smarts for?

Report comment to moderator

Report comment to moderator

Report comment to moderator

Gerard Baker, writing in the Wall Street Journal, June 26, under the head “Infidelity is no longer a career-killer for politicians. But weirdness, mendacity and ineptitude just might be,” says (in an excerpted quote):

This suggests that the issue of personal behavior may have lost its force as a negative factor in politics, but it still clearly has the power to be a positive one. Infidelity and sexual misdemeanors may not kill a political career, but an impression of faithfulness and decency can still help one. It should be remembered too, that while character matters, voters seem prepared to see sexual failures as only one part of the character issue. There’s no particular reason that other traits such as personal courage, hard work or humility should matter less in a political career than the sexual fidelity of a candidate.

Report comment to moderator

I am trying to rephrase this to describe if a person engages in self-righteous condemnations of other groups and never examines his own group…?

Even if he mouths cliches about “we are all fallen,” but never means very much by it?

Report comment to moderator

Asa Hutchison’s affair was compounded by his strong role as “house impeachment manager” in the Clinton Zippergate scandal.
John Tower was a drunkard and a flirt but I dont think he cheated on any woman to whom he was currently married.
Good Time Charlie Wilson epitomized the carefree DC bachelor as depicted in the fab film by Tom Hanks.

Since we now have campaign finance deform (the Incumbent Protection Act as some term it) the blatant adultery is the only thing we term limits enthusiasts have to help kick the dastards out of the congress. And yes, some constituencies seem not to care, ie Barney Frank’s and Sen Vitter’s.
If I recall correctly Vitter’s wife had harsh things to say along the lines of “If I ever learned my husband was..” during the Clinton imbroglio. She came across as more hypocrticial than did Senator Vitter

Report comment to moderator