Ediblog.com
Selwyn Duke
When Hypocrisy Is A Good Thing
©
2007 Selwyn Duke
Many
leftist partisans are licking their chops over the revelation that Idaho
Republican Senator Larry Craig solicited sex from a male undercover detective in
a Minneapolis airport bathroom. This
scandal is reminiscent of that involving Ted Haggard, the disgraced preacher who
had relations with a male prostitute. You
may remember Haggard, he was the Distraction du Jour the Shill Media conjured up
right before the 2006 election. (I
keep my finger on the pulse of our culture and I had never heard of this
Haggard fellow. But fixating on this
minor story served well the purposes of demonizing the “right” and
distracting people from the real issues – always useful during an election
cycle.)
What
is interesting about our time, though, is that these men are castigated not
because they have been living an immoral lifestyle but because they have been
living an immoral lifestyle without also sanctioning that immoral lifestyle.
Certainly,
as far as politicians who toe the left’s line go, they can’t seem to flaunt
their Liberace leanings enough to register on the radar screen.
Homosexual congressman Barney Frank (D) owned a residence out of which a
call-boy operation was being run, and the late Congressman Gerry Studds (D) once
spirited a 17-year-old boy off to Spain for a sexual liaison.
Studds won re-election until his retirement in 1997, and Frank is still
in office, lisping his way to legislative success.
Of course, both represent Massachusetts, and there has just got to be
something in the water up there.
What
interests me, though, are not the obvious double standards, but identifying the
correct standards. You see, it’s
interesting how the Studds and Franks of the world are often cast as superior to
the Craigs and Haggards merely because it was they – and not someone else –
who thrust open their closets and dumped the contents in the public square.
The idea is that it’s worse to espouse a standard you cannot live up to
than one you can and do live down to; second, it’s always implied that an
individual’s position cannot be credible if he lacks credibility.
And such tacks certainly are rhetorically effective.
They’re
also nonsense.
Let’s
examine the second point first. Does
a virtue cease to be a virtue simply because the vice-ridden espouse it?
If a preacher teaches that “Thou shalt do no murder,” do we conclude
that murder must be a moral act if we discover he is a serial killer?
Or, for those on the left, would you assume preserving the environment
was unimportant simply because you discovered that an environmentalist – like,
oh, let’s say, Al Gore or Ted Kennedy – uses far more energy than the
average person or preaches wind power but opposes it in his own neighborhood?
It’s silly. You may as well
say you won’t believe a mathematician when he tells you that 2+2=4 if you find
out he is a bad man.
A
position either has merit or it doesn’t, either a basis in Truth or it
doesn’t. The rightness of a
position is not determined by the righteousness of a politician.
Once
this is understood, refutation of the first point is simple.
It cannot be said that a person
who
espouses everything he lives is morally superior to one who doesn’t – nor
can we say he is inferior – as greater specificity is required; we have to ask
what behaviors he engages in and whether or not they would translate into valid
positions if advocated publicly. In
reality, though, it’s seldom very cut-and-dried, for while Truth is black and
white, people are shades of gray, possessed of both virtue and vice.
And our standards should reflect not our virtues and vices, but
the virtues we possess and those we should possess.
In
other words, it’s ideal to have saintly leaders whose lives reflect the
highest standards, but what is the next best thing?
If a leader is lacking, will we really be better served if he translates
his vice into policy than if he merely practices it while advocating the virtue
that eludes him?
We
would readily understand this if we applied it to other domains.
If a teacher lived a decadent lifestyle, would we prefer that he
advocated same in the classroom? Would
we say, “Well, it’s so commendable that he’s no hypocrite, that he lives
no double life. Why, he possesses
the virtue of consistency!”? If a
parent cannot stop smoking, is a glutton, is lazy, or has a tendency to tell
lies, would it be a good thing for him to sanction this behavior in his
children? Should a therapist with a
gambling or drinking problem encourage it in his patients?
Moreover,
if one did so, it would most likely be part of a rationalization, one that says
his darkness is actually light and that he designed so he could feel better
about himself. And this brings us to
an important point: Such behavior is antithetical to love, as it is selfish.
It is directed toward satisfying the emotional needs of the self, not the
moral needs of others. We would do
well to remember that misery does love company, but true love doesn’t spread
misery.
Now
we come to a very simple principle, one that applies whether your designation is
politician, preacher, parent or person. No
one is perfect, as we’re all bedeviled by frailty, and we all commit our sins.
But whatever one’s sin may be, there is one greater: Leading others
into sin. This is why closets exist,
because certain things should be kept in them.
There is no nobility in releasing your inner demons when doing so means
they will possess your fellow man.
Lest
I be misunderstood, my title is somewhat figurative; hypocrisy isn’t really a
good state, but it can be the lesser of two evils.
Sure, we should strive to elect politicians of strong moral fiber and I
certainly think we can do better than Larry Craig, Barney Frank and Gerry
Studds. But I do know this: I’d
rather have a politician propositioning in a bathroom than proposing policy that
turns the whole country into a bathroom.
We
should, however, also understand what hypocrisy is.
It is not saying one thing but doing another; rather, it’s saying one
thing while intending to do another.
In other words, let’s say a man has a weakness for drink but seeks to
abstain from alcohol and preaches sobriety.
Let’s then suppose he attends a party, has alcohol waved under his
nose, is overcome by temptation and becomes soused.
While this isn’t good, it also doesn’t mean he is a hypocrite.
It simply means he is weak.
And
this brings us to an important point. Really,
we’re all weak, in some areas and to some extent.
Thus, if we did espouse a standard of perfection – which would be ideal
– how could we possibly live up to it? In
point of fact, being human, we could only measure up to mortal standards, never
godly ones. But just as a musician
or athlete strives for perfection knowing all the while it’s unachievable, we
will fail to fulfill our moral potential unless we shoot for the stars.
And would we ever tell an aspiring young athlete or musician that being
mediocre was the state to strive for simply to make him feel better about his
lack of proficiency or make ourselves feel better about our own?
This is why we not only can but must erect a standard of
perfection for our fellow man; to do any less does him a disservice.
As I said in my piece,
Are Christians Hypocrites?,
“It’s
ironic, but anyone who can truly practice what he preaches isn’t practicing
anything worth preaching.”
There
is no doubt about it. If we were
limited to espousing only what we could practice consistently, our standards
would be cursed with our imperfection, when they should be blessed with the
divine reflection.
As
for the matter of weakness versus hypocrisy and the Craigs and Haggards of the
world, my guess is it isn’t that their values are a facade but that their vice
is a fall. Whether I’m correct or
not, though, I do know one thing for certain, and this I direct toward the
open-closet crowd on the left.
They’re
better than you.
Yes,
they might have fallen from grace in a shameful way, hurting their families,
party and/or cause. They may be
light years away from Heaven and a heartbeat from Hell, but your greatest sin
cannot be laid at their feet. That
is, such people don’t aggressively push libertine values to create latitude
for vice. They don’t seek to
transform their nation into a toxic wasteland just so they can feel (because,
above all else, leftists just have to feel good) better about themselves.
Their secretiveness is their saving grace, in that they limit their
battle to the confines of their minds and souls.
Theirs is an internal battle against personal corruption, not an external
one for the public variety. They
leave the rest of the world unmolested.
So
perhaps, just maybe, they’re the worst thing they could be: Hypocrites.
But they’re still
better
than you.
Selwyn Duke is a freelance writer out or Larchmont, NY. He has written for various publications including: IntellectualConservative.com, AmericanThinker.com and is a regular columnist for RenewAmerica.us.