# 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:** 4
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2012, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/61 "2012-08-28T19:53:23Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > Believe it or not, there are those who are trying to say that the government should redefine marriage so that it no longer means marriage but any relationship involving love. They then want to force the rest of us to recognize the new definition of marriage. I guess given that choice… no, I _don’t_ believe this makes marriage less stable. If anything made marriage less stable in the U.S., it was no-fault divorce (and the first state to embrace it was California under Governor Ronald Reagan). Of course, it’s unclear that forcing a couple to stay in a marriage they no longer want is a benefit - society might be more “stable”, but the individuals are less free. I’m willing to squint a bit on some of your other points (i.e. a union derives its power not just from the skill-set of its members, but also the _number_ of its members, and is thus disinclined to take action that will reduce its membership, even to cast out the obviously incompetent) but you’re quite out to lunch on the marriage thing. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2012, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/62 "2012-08-28T19:58:44Z")
> [@denquixote](#): > > You are correct. Time is limited, so I won’t comment on the first twenty or so ridiculous comments, but rather on the final one: “despite all of this evidence liberals are still pushing to change marriage to make it even less stable.” I’m also a bit curious what the payoff to liberals is, should we… I mean they… succeed in making marriage less stable. How does anyone, even if they don’t plan on marrying, benefit from there being more unstable marriages? Why would this be a goal? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2012, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/63 "2012-08-28T20:02:10Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Just a drive by here (sorry, on the road), but the biggest instance of Left-wing hypocrisy to me is the left wing environmental folks, especially wrt nuclear power. Good one, and an issue I also find annoying - simultaneous opposition to pollution _and_ nuclear power annoys me, too, and I can recall seeing a bumper sticker (!) that said “SPLIT WOOD, NOT ATOMS”. Evidently the driver was okay to reverting to a pre-industrial power base, though that meant cars like his would either cease to exist, or be churned out by smog-belching coal-burning foundries and factories. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2012, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/64 "2012-08-28T20:08:44Z")
> [@VinylTurnip](#): > > I’m also a bit curious what the payoff to liberals is, should we… I mean they… succeed in making marriage less stable. > > How does anyone, even if they don’t plan on marrying, benefit from there being more unstable marriages? Why would this be a goal? Evidently liberals are in the pocket of the moving companies. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2012, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/65 "2012-08-28T20:19:01Z")
> [@VinylTurnip](#): > > I’m also a bit curious what the payoff to liberals is, should we… I mean they… succeed in making marriage less stable. > > How does anyone, even if they don’t plan on marrying, benefit from there being more unstable marriages? Why would this be a goal? I am not a liberal, you would have to ask one of them, but my guess is that feminism has always seen marriage and domestic life as a prison to escape. It first gained prominence in the The Feminine Mystique which popularized a marxist view of marriage as an oppressive institution. The idea was that if you liberated women from marriage they would go out and get jobs and be as happy and powerful as men. This obviously did not happen so they could admit they were wrong or keep pushing. Now the push is to redefine marriage so that the number and gender of the people involved are not important. Thus there would be no more husband role and wife role, just spouse 1, spouse 2, etc. If we pretend there are no differences between the sexes than women will go out and be happy and powerful like men. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2012, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/66 "2012-08-28T20:26:35Z")
Assuming this is really how liberals view the issue, and by your account, it’s a destructive wrong-headed view at that, what signs of increased instability should we be seeing, say, five years after this redefinition of marriage? Ten years? ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2012, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/67 "2012-08-28T20:33:04Z")
Libby here. To me the hypocrisy my side needs to work on includes: a. Party line Democrats: Getting too far in bed with big money and coming to accept big money’s definition of a healthy capitalist economy. This sucks for the little guy. b. Party line and further left: Professing to believe in rights, justice, etc. for all people but working mostly for one’s own group, with only token gestures toward unity. This is all based on an academic model of [identity politics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_politics), which academics themselves have deprecated for years now. c. So-called limousine lefties: Believing your responsibility, and your power, stops with how you, personally, spend your money. That is (ironically) a very conservative idea. For one thing: are you involved in your community or are you just too busy working? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2012, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/68 "2012-08-28T20:42:55Z")
On reflection, I regret and withdraw my post #66. puddleglum is way off on this issue, but I don’t want to turn this into another gay-marriage thread that’ll just end up following the same path as all the earlier gay-marriage threads. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2012, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/69 "2012-08-28T21:29:31Z")
As a liberal myself, I strongly agree that liberals in general SHOULD be more supportive of nuclear power… it’s probably my biggest single disagreement with the general liberal “party line”, to the extent that there’s a party line. But I’m not quite sure that not supporting nuclear power is hypocrisy. I’d just say it’s shortsightedness. It’s entirely possible to hold a consistent set of views along the lines of: (a) we need alternatives to fossil fuels (b) but nuclear power is super horribly dangerous and unclean © so let’s keep investing in solar energy research, etc. I think that (b) is WRONG, but I don’t see anything hypocritical there. And while I’m at it, I also don’t see anything hypocritical about thinking abortion should be illegal but the death penalty should be legal, or, for that matter, thinking abortion should be illegal and not supporting various programs to provide assistance to single mothers. Here’s a consistent and non-hypocritical set of beliefs (NOT ONES THAT I HOLD!): (a) human life begins at conception (b) it is terribly wrong to kill innocent humans © death row inmates are, by definition, not innocent, therefore it is not wrong to kill them (d) government spending on social welfare programs is a bad idea In general, as others have pointed out, it’s fairly pointless to discuss the hypocrisy of a group of people. I agree that to simultaneously be strongly pro-science and pro-rationality but believe in homeopathic medicine is quite hypocritical. And I agree that there are large numbers of people who do each of those who are liberals. But are there lots of people who actually simultaneously do both? And is it really “hypocritical” in any meaningful sense to have a coalition which includes people who disagree about something? ---
**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, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/70 "2012-08-28T21:32:36Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > On reflection, I regret and withdraw my post #66. puddleglum is way off on this issue, but I don’t want to turn this into another gay-marriage thread that’ll just end up following the same path as all the earlier gay-marriage threads. How is this a gay-marriage issue? I thought **Puddleglum** was going to demonstrate how liberals want to change marriage into something completely different from a marriage and into something that is just about people who love each other. Which isn’t gay marriage at all. So Puddleglum can’t be talking about that. ---
**Author:** ![Simple\_Linctus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Simple\_Linctus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simple_Linctus)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2012, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/71 "2012-08-28T21:38:10Z")
The idea that you should be completely free from government interference in your own private life, but if you form an association, be that club, company, whatever with other like minded people all of a sudden everything is suddenly the government’s business. I think that’s the main one. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2012, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/72 "2012-08-28T21:41:15Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > How is this a gay-marriage issue? I thought **Puddleglum** was going to demonstrate how liberals want to change marriage into something completely different from a marriage and into something that is just about people who love each other. Which isn’t gay marriage at all. So Puddleglum can’t be talking about that. I think it’s more like: once they see that two guys and a lawn chair can get “married” if they want, women will realize that they don’t need to go to Marriage Prison. Or something. But **Bryan** ’s correct that this is a hijack into a very familiar dead-end alley. ---
**Author:** ![AlienVessels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ba8739/32.png) [@AlienVessels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlienVessels)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2012, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/73 "2012-08-28T21:42:20Z")
> [@Simple\_Linctus](#): > > The idea that you should be completely free from government interference in your own private life, but if you form an association, be that club, company, whatever with other like minded people all of a sudden everything is suddenly the government’s business. > > I think that’s the main one. I think that is a pretty good idea. Because history has shown that when groups form, they tend to accumulate power and that power is often wielded against individuals and worse to my mind, eventually starts acting against the interests of the individuals comprising the group. ---
**Author:** ![Learjeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/94ad74/32.png) [@Learjeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Learjeff)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2012, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/74 "2012-08-28T21:47:47Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > Believe it or not, there are those who are trying to say that the government should redefine marriage so that it no longer means marriage but any relationship involving love. They then want to force the rest of us to recognize the new definition of marriage. Please explain how that undermines protection of women and children in marriage. You had some good points but you really lost me with this one. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2012, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/75 "2012-08-28T21:57:11Z")
> [@Simple\_Linctus](#): > > The idea that you should be completely free from government interference in your own private life, but if you form an association, be that club, company, whatever with other like minded people all of a sudden everything is suddenly the government’s business. > > I think that’s the main one. How is that hypocrisy? Regardless of whether you think it’s a good idea or not, it seems like a perfectly consistent philosophical/ethical position to take. In any case, a lot of people in this thread seem to be conflating “left-wing” with “hippies”. For instance: “The left claims to oppose materialism”. Wha? We do? Is that in the Democratic Party platform somewhere? There are lots and lots of things in both directions that people like to describe as hypocrisy, because hypocrisy is bad mmmkay, but which are in fact just disagreements of policy. For instance, I claim I care about education, and some Republican claims he cares about education, and I support increased teacher pay by raising taxes, and he supports school vouchers and lots of standardized testing… neither one of us is necessarily a hypocrite, even though we could both say “how can you CLAIM you care about education when you…”, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2012, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/76 "2012-08-28T22:08:32Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > When a company does open a factory overseas and locals are lining up to work for at the factory, liberals cry exploitation and pollution and want the factory to close down or put such rules in place that it would never be economical to open one in the first place. Thus trapping the poor in their poverty. > . I’m sure that the populace would be even happier to line up in a place where they received a fair wage and safe/healthy working environment. The only way in which a safe non-exploitative factories are be uneconomical is when they can be replaced with unsafe exploitative factories elsewhere. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2012, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/77 "2012-08-29T05:16:45Z")
How about this one: Liberals claim to embrace ‘diversity’, that a healthy society is one that embraces many different cultures and points of view. However, liberals are extremely intolerant of conservative points of view and to the lifestyles of people in the ‘fly-over’ states. People who would never dream of using a pejorative against a defined group of foreigners or minorities have no problem calling their fellow countrymen ‘crackers’, ‘rednecks’, ‘tea baggers’, ‘yokels’, you name it. In the same vein, liberals support women’s rights and the rights of black people, but if you’re a conservative black person prepare to be called an ‘Uncle Tom’ and be harassed by the agents of tolerance. If you’re a conservative woman, be prepared to be called a ‘c\*unt’ and a ‘useless twat’. Remember back when feminists and liberals argued that a boss that dated an employee was automatically guilty of sexual misconduct because there was an ‘imbalance of power’ that meant the woman might feel compelled to say ‘yes’ when she’d rather say ‘no’? You probably don’t if you weren’t an adult before the Clinton years, because once Clinton had sex with a young intern, that went straight out the window. And when Paula Jones actually sued Clinton for sexual harassment, the response from feminists was to attack her mercilessly. I believe it was James Carville who famously said, “If you drag a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you’ll find,” implying both that Jones was trailer trash and a liar. But when Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual misconduct, those same people instantly took her side, saying that “A woman would never lie about something like that.” I also recall that Clinton’s affairs with Gennifer Flowers, Monica Lewinsky, and his sexual harassment suit from Paula Jones was described by his allies on the left as a ‘Bimbo eruption’. Way to keep it non-sexist. Uber-feminist Gloria Steinem wrote a famous Op-Ed saying that the legal protection she advocated for women in sexual harassment suits shouldn’t apply to Jones. The National Organization of Women refused to come to Jones’ defense, or even criticize the sexual slander against her that Clinton’s surrogates were engaged in… ---
**Author:** ![AlienVessels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ba8739/32.png) [@AlienVessels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlienVessels)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2012, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/78 "2012-08-29T05:49:30Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > How about this one: Liberals claim to embrace ‘diversity’, that a healthy society is one that embraces many different cultures and points of view. However, liberals are extremely intolerant of conservative points of view and to the lifestyles of people in the ‘fly-over’ states. People who would never dream of using a pejorative against a defined group of foreigners or minorities have no problem calling their fellow countrymen ‘crackers’, ‘rednecks’, ‘tea baggers’, ‘yokels’, you name it. . It’s ok to be intolerant of intolerance. Every single one of those groups gets its reputation from exclusionary prejudice. And those very groups are the ones that begin the hate by naming other groups as unAmerican and preaching the ills of miscegenation. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2012, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/79 "2012-08-29T13:53:18Z")
[QUOTE=MaxTheVool] As a liberal myself, I strongly agree that liberals in general SHOULD be more supportive of nuclear power… it’s probably my biggest single disagreement with the general liberal “party line”, to the extent that there’s a party line. But I’m not quite sure that not supporting nuclear power is hypocrisy. I’d just say it’s shortsightedness. It’s entirely possible to hold a consistent set of views along the lines of: (a) we need alternatives to fossil fuels (b) but nuclear power is super horribly dangerous and unclean (c) so let’s keep investing in solar energy research, etc. I think that (b) is WRONG, but I don’t see anything hypocritical there. [/QUOTE] It’s hypocritical because there are no facts backing up (b), and (c) as a full scale alternative is unrealistic…wind and solar simply don’t scale up to meet our energy needs right now (and maybe never will), being more niche technologies for energy. So, what we get is a lot of yammering about global warming and the evils of big energy corporations standing in the way of alternative energy because of crass profit, WHILE IN REALITY IT’S THE LEFT ANTI-NUKES STANDING IN THE WAY OF AN ACTUAL, VIABLE ALTERNATIVE THAT WE COULD HAVE BEEN USING TO REDUCE OUR CARBON FOOTPRINT. THAT, is hypocrisy. And it’s stupid hypocrisy. Now, I’m not saying that research or even deployment of our current alternative technology is wrong or psudo-science. I’m all for wind and solar research, as well as development of both technologies…but it’s unrealistic at this time to talk about those technologies in terms of actually reducing our carbon footprint in any sort of large scale manner by replacing coal or natural gas, while maintaining a vicious knee jerk reaction to nuclear energy, something that could make a difference today (and in fact could have been making a larger difference for decades now). ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2012, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871/80 "2012-08-29T13:58:25Z")
How about NOW supporting Bill Clinton back when he was being accused of sexual harassment? I vaguely recall them coming up with an excuse about how a man gets one pass at a woman because until then he doesn’t know if it’s unwanted or not. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/left-wing-hypocrisy/632871.md?page=5)