# Left-wing hypocrisy **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 27, 2012, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871 "2012-08-27T23:16:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2012, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/1 "2012-08-27T23:16:44Z")
As a certifiable librul, it is easy for me to see the contradictions in conservative ideology\*. The main one is this whole resurgence in the call for worship at the altar of life. Life is apparently so sacred that unborn zygotes should be issued voter ID cards. Maybe I would believe this was a sincere position if conservatives were the main ones calling for environmental regulation. You know, trying to tamp down on things that are not only impacting the [quality](http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/03/02/pediatric_asthma_linked_to_car_emissions/) [of](http://www.forbes.com/sites/amywestervelt/2011/10/10/two-new-reasons-to-worry-about-air-pollution-obesity-and-diabetes/) [our](http://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/news/20091123/lead-tobacco-exposure-linked-to-adhd) [lives](http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/08/18/more-evidence-links-pesticides-diabetes/), but also probably impacting our ability to [make](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elaine-shannon/yale-scientists-discover_b_221518.html) [more](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12387464) [life](http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/womens-health/articles/2011/02/24/pcbs-might-be-linked-to-failed-ivf-attempts). Moreover, pro-life conservatives that also have kneejerk reactions towards social welfare spending and universal healthcare don’t make sense to me. How many lives are being negatively impacted by having inadequate access to housing, food, and medical services? Why should I get worked up about unborn souls going right back to their Maker, while I have to step over homeless people on my way to work? Why should I believe that conservatives are the party of life, when the only increase in governmental spending they advocate is for the Pentagon? So this is a glaring example of hypocrisy to me. However, I am under no delusion that right-wingers hold a monopoly on inconsistent rhetoric. So I welcome some examples of left-wing hypocrisy–preferable on the same scale. Here’s your chance to say “they do it too!” \*I know that some–if not many–conservatives are nuanced in their views. But most of the ones you see on the teebee are not. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2012, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/2 "2012-08-27T23:24:31Z")
Liberals pretend that they want to have their own hypocrisies exposed, just so they can feel morally superior to other types of hypocrite. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Linden\_Arden](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/53a042/32.png) [@Linden\_Arden](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Linden_Arden)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2012, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/3 "2012-08-27T23:26:33Z")
It is almost a dead issue these days but the idea of quotas is anti-liberal in my view (and therefore hypocritical). In the 80s I worked on a large project that had quotas and the “quota hires” were deliberately left out of the coding work to prevent future debugging problems. ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2012, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/4 "2012-08-27T23:36:03Z")
Sometimes I feel that it is perfectly ok to see movie stars, athletes etc walk away with millions of dollars yet a business man who creates jobs and risks his fortune is somehow supposed to be evil. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2012, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/5 "2012-08-27T23:38:08Z")
I think both sides are anti-science, but the left tends to think that they’re not. While the right likes to do things like deny evolution and global warming, the left tends to include those who embrace alternative medicine, homeopathy, and similar nonsense. As a scientist, I would love to be able to feel like I could vote for a pro-science party, but there just isn’t one. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2012, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/6 "2012-08-27T23:38:14Z")
I notice it’s pretty common among many different groups that have been oppressed to take the position that their suffering and oppression are of great importance and that they deserve tolerance, respect and redress; while denying that the oppression and harassment of other groups matters or even exists. The conflicts between feminists and transwomen for example, or the occasional arguments between advocates for various groups that amount to “blacks/women/gays/Jews/whatever have suffered more than anyone else under the thumb of The Powers That Be, therefore only _their_ suffering counts and everyone else’s cannot under any circumstances be compared to it”. I note the latter happening fairly often in recent years when someone points out the obvious similarities between the attempts to force same sex couples to accept civil unions instead of marriage and racial segregation. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2012, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/7 "2012-08-27T23:38:39Z")
I think most political hypocrisy is non-partisan. They say they back some cause, but when the bill comes up they’ll find some fatal flaw that prevents them from voting for it. That flaw is usually about satisfying some donor. They’re all against spending of some kind, but never in general. Liberals in particular are often more anti-war, but end up voting for the war resolutions and expenditures. Both parties claim they want independent objective Supreme Court Justices, but then vote for the most biased nominee they can find if that person has the right biases. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2012, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/8 "2012-08-27T23:38:39Z")
But those aren’t examples of hypocrisy. Firstly, the idea that looser environmental laws would significantly impede reproduction is just factually incorrect unless taken the the wildest extreme. Your cites are not definitive, and they don’t represent some huge risk to Americans. Further, I think if you did a poll of conservatives and asked if substances known to cause significant infertility in humans should be banned, I doubt you’d get many people saying yes. They might doubt the science, but they are not “pro-infertility as long it’s caused by pollution”. And conservatives not only take a pro-life stance, but they believe we are all personally responsible for our own decisions. Make a baby, and you better support the little rug rat! Conservatives aren’t too concerned if someone’s life is “negatively impacted” through their own actions. They think most people are poor because of bad decisions they made, and that rewarding those bad decisions just re-inforces that behavior and creates even more problems than it solves. Now, you might argue that it isn’t true, but it is what they believe. So, not hypocritical. Where you see conservative hypocrisy is in things like claiming to want smaller government, but voting for an increase in government when it comes to enforcing morality. Or, wanting their own religion to have a larger place in the public sphere, but not other religions (usually non-Christian religions). Conservatives are ready to go to war, but aren’t willing to pay for those wars through higher taxes. I’ll let the boards experts on liberal hypocrisy fill you in on that part. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2012, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/9 "2012-08-27T23:39:26Z")
One I can think of is taxation. While increasing taxes on only the rich is more fiscally responsible than lowering taxes for our currently agreed-upon spending plans, it is not as responsible as more broadly-based tax increases. They should at least acknowledge that even if the current economy is so fragile that we cannot implement a broad-based tax increase for fear of triggering another recession, they need to be honest and say that it is required in the medium term (within 5 years), barring a severe decrease in spending. The hypocrisy is that they criticise the GOP for being fiscally irresponsible, when they don’t have much room to claim responsibility, either. Other issues, even the ones I disagree with left wingers on such as immigration and gun control, I just think they’re wrong, not hypocritical. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2012, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/10 "2012-08-27T23:43:42Z")
> [@Smeghead](#): > > I think both sides are anti-science, but the left tends to think that they’re not. While the right likes to do things like deny evolution and global warming, the left tends to include those who embrace alternative medicine, homeopathy, and similar nonsense. Not buying that. I think uneducated people are prone to believe in quackery, and it doesn’t matter if what your political persuasion is. Both sides are reluctant to accept conclusions that conflict with their preconceived ideas, but that’s just human nature. In practice, though, conservatives have proven themselves to be more anti-science due the large numbers of Creationists and Climate Change deniers. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2012, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/11 "2012-08-27T23:54:59Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > And conservatives not only take a pro-life stance, but they believe we are all personally responsible for our own decisions. No they don’t; they don’t want to be held responsible for _their_ decisions. “Screw you, I’ve got the money and power and you don’t” is not “personal responsibility”. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2012, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/12 "2012-08-27T23:56:45Z")
The logic on the left that astounds me - and I’m not sure if its hypocrisy, I think its just blinders, is the “corporations are evil” logic and the thought that we should be able to simply demand higher wages and that somehow corporations aren’t just going to find cheaper labor. Yet, if corporations charge too much for their goods or services, they are price gouging. Its like the whole concept of Cost of Good Sold is foreign to people. That isn’t unusual, there is a lot of “bread and circuses” thinking on the left that sort of assumes that the money is somewhere to pay for it - and that sort of thinking often ignores that the truly wealthy can take their money and move to the Bahamas and not have to pay for either bread nor circuses. ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2012, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/13 "2012-08-27T23:57:13Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Not buying that. I think uneducated people are prone to believe in quackery, and it doesn’t matter if what your political persuasion is. > > Both sides are reluctant to accept conclusions that conflict with their preconceived ideas, but that’s just human nature. In practice, though, conservatives have proven themselves to be more anti-science due the large numbers of Creationists and Climate Change deniers. Both sides have huge constituancies that have simply aligned themselves to a philosophy they no little about just because they think it is the cool thing to do. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2012, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/14 "2012-08-27T23:58:48Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > I’ll let the boards experts on liberal hypocrisy fill you in on that part. I’ll take a shot at it. My topic: Hollywood elites. Anytime the subject of censorship comes up over depictions of things like sex or violence in popular entertainment, it tends to be conservatives calling for censorship and liberals arguing against it. And one of the main arguments liberals use is that depictions of sex and violence are meaningless - viewers understand they’re fictional and these depictions don’t affect the actual behavior of the viewers. But what about depictions of positive behavior? Don’t these same people claim credit for depicting positive behavior like tolerance? If viewers change their behavior positively because they watched _Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?_ or _Gentleman’s Agreement_ or _But I’m a Cheerleader_, then how do we know watching _I Spit on Your Grave_ or _Up In Smoke_ or _Debbie Does Dallas_ doesn’t change viewers negatively? The more logical conclusion if that either viewers imitate what they see in the popular culture or they don’t. I don’t see how you can reasonably argue they receive positive effects from popular entertainment but are immune to negative effects. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2012, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/15 "2012-08-27T23:59:31Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > No they don’t; they don’t want to be held responsible for _their_ decisions. “Screw you, I’ve got the money and power and you don’t” is not “personal responsibility”. Except there are legions of conservatives who are not part of the money/power class, so your hypothesis fails in the real world. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2012, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/16 "2012-08-28T00:07:21Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Not buying that. I think uneducated people are prone to believe in quackery, and it doesn’t matter if what your political persuasion is. > > Both sides are reluctant to accept conclusions that conflict with their preconceived ideas, but that’s just human nature. In practice, though, conservatives have proven themselves to be more anti-science due the large numbers of Creationists and Climate Change deniers. And then one has to mention that many followers of those pseudosciences in **Smeghead** ’s list are not clearly on the left side, most of the ones leaning left or leftists over here (including me) have taken the followers of those pseudoscience to task. And as **John Mace** points out, it is in places where this counts, like in government where one can see some liberal support for pseudoscience, but it is the conservative heavyweights that are the front of protecting things like Homeopathy from the “unfair” FDA. > **[Utah Senator Orrin Hatch: A pit bull in defense of the supplement industry](https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/utahs-senator-orrin-hatch-defender-of-the-supplement-industry/)** > > Editor's note: This weekend was truly NIH grant crunch time. I have to get my final version of my R01 to our university's grants office by Tuesday, or it might not get uploaded by the July 5 deadline. > [@](#): > > And when one looks at the place where this matters, very heavy conservative guns are keeping things like Homeopathy out of the FDA control. > And, as the article goes on to mention, Hatch was the principal author of the DSHEA. Fast forward seventeen years, and these days any time the Obama Administration tries to write rules to regulate supplements more strictly, Orrin Hatch is there to do his damnedest to block them. Because Hatch is a very senior (and therefore powerful) Senator, he nearly always succeeds. Indeed, as the NYT article points out, the relationship between Hatch and Utah’s massive supplement industry been a hugely mutually beneficial one, and the article also describes just how incestuous it has been as well. First of all, there’s an enormous amount of campaign contributions that Hatch garners every election cycle from supplement manufacturers, but the relationship goes so much more deeply than that: ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2012, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/17 "2012-08-28T00:13:00Z")
Actually there is a very good reason for conservatives to believe in alternative medicine: it promises easy cures of almost anything. So if you don’t take their magical cure for cancer that only costs $5 a month, it’s YOUR FAULT that you get cancer. Why should we subsidize your health care when ALL of your health concerns are COMPLETELY PREVENTABLE? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2012, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/18 "2012-08-28T00:16:05Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Except there are legions of conservatives who are not part of the money/power class, so your hypothesis fails in the real world. No it doesn’t; those conservatives tend to believe that someday they will rich, so they want the wealthy to have all sorts of privileges for the day when they are rich too. The Right is pretty notorious for this attitude. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2012, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/19 "2012-08-28T00:18:45Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > No it doesn’t; those conservatives tend to believe that someday they will rich, so they want the wealthy to have all sorts of privileges for the day when they are rich too. The Right is pretty notorious for this attitude. There are plenty of social conservatives who don’t see themselves as being rich some day, they just don’t want to go to Hell for voting for a liberal. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2012, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/20 "2012-08-28T00:19:09Z")
> [@Smeghead](#): > > As a scientist, I would love to be able to feel like I could vote for a pro-science party, but there just isn’t one. There’s always John Hagelin and the Natural Law party. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871.md?page=2)