Well, later in the same post I did say this:
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Now that we’re done patting you on the back, let’s get back to arguing! 
So long as we include the caveat pre-emptor, that one can approach a question with complete and utter impartiality and still be totally freakin’* wrong!*
The reason posters focus on double standards is because, at least superficially, it frees them from having to prove anything substantive. It is easier. Regardless of the Truth of The Matter, if you say Republicans are bad for doing X but Democrats are not bad for doing X, then your position can be undermined without having to discuss X. One can hardly ever win an internet debate on the merits of an issue, but if you can show a logical contradiction or inconsistency, then you can win.
Sometimes it becomes the focus of a thread because the user of the argument knows X is bad, and the only partisan defense is to point to a double standard. Sometimes it is because posters disagree so thoroughly over X, all that they can do is debate whether each is applying his unique frame consistently. But usually it is because posters don’t really want to type the 750 words it would take to say something intelligent and non-obvious on the merits of the issue, they want to be proven right. And the surest proof is using one’s opponents own premises.
Of course, the double standard argument is only superficially independent from the merits. The underlying assumption of the argument is that the two categories are alike in all the ways relevant to the standard being applied. But that is a statement that cannot be shown by logic or by pointing out contradictions. It is a statement of substance. With every issue, there are dozens of potentially relevant distinctions between the two categories to which separate standards are being applied. And the only way to assess those distinctions is to debate the merits of the standard. But nine threads out of ten do not involve people wanting to debate the merits of an issue, but instead people wanting to express anger, or write one-liners, etc.
I’m not sure I read this correctly. Someone who steals money is more disgusting than someone who attempts to steal the republic? There’s a limit to how much someone can steal, but treason has no boundaries. Oliver North subverted the will of the American people and their elected representatives. He traded weapons to our country’s enemies and used the money to fund a collection of murderous thugs in Nicaragua. Him you admire, but the guy who kited checks is disgusting? I feel like you’ve got an underdeveloped gag reflex.
Yes. With difficulty. And not by calling those who are holding one or the other side to a different and higher standard than they hold other actors “hypocrites”. I would agree that that particular accusation tends to poison any reasoned discussion. And that sometimes such is the intent.
As to the other subject … okay, he was never a “popular” governor, but Blago got more digs from liberals and fellow Democrats than he did from the GOP. Also in Illinois alone we make plenty of fun of Roland Burris and most of us would jump on any unsubstantiated rumor to dis him just because we think he’s such a full of himself weenie. Paterson’s “scandals” got plenty of Dems in NY WAGing as well. And Spitzer, he was a bit popular but there were plenty of fellow Democrats who jumped right in making fun of him.
Oh I don’t deny that there is a particular enthusiasm to be had maligning someone who you already dislike, but that is a function of the dislike that only occasionally lines up with party. Maybe we’d hold fire if we feel that maligning a particular schmoe may seriously impair serious policy objectives. But usually not.
In a world that tends to grab both a person’s arms and pull, hypocrisy is sometimes the only way to stay sane.
I don’t necessarily fault anyone for it until it is shown to deliberately mislead.
I was disappointed by the responses to my message. To view Moore as sincere and Limbaugh as insincere is just “confirmation bias”? 
… That any intelligent person would disagree with my assessment of their sincerities confirms my bias that right-wingers have a distorted grasp of reality.
I’m no big fan of North or Reagan, but this thread is about hypocrisy/double standards. And yes, I do feel a greater personal bond with sincere players who disagree with me on the issues, than I would with a Congressman who keeps cold cash in the frig, but happens to vote Democrat.
Oliver North thought that he was fighting America’s enemies. Whether his view was correct or not is irrelevant in the context of my remark. Is this hard to understand?
Let me clarify the point.
It is conservatives who denounce “moral relativism;” will they agree that viewing Obama as more intellectual than Palin is not just “confirmation bias”? In case the point still isn’t clear, if I believe steak is absolutely a better food than dirt, is that just “confirmation bias”?
Sheeez. It’s the conservatives who preach “absolutism,” but by failing to acknowledge certain absolutely true facts, they show their hypocrisy.
It’s not hard to understand, it’s hard to care about. If an employee of a vaccine manufacturer thinks he’s saving children from autism by substituting sterile saline for the actual vaccine he’s no less culpable than Harry Lime who did it for profit.
Well, if a right-winger’s view is a useful data point, I’ll add mine:
Moore is much more sincere than Limbaugh is. I have no doubt that Limbaugh has a basic agreement with conservative principles, but there’s no nobility of purpose in what he does; he’s in it for the ratings and the cash that comes from the ratings.
Moore is willing to lie, big, and small lies alike, primarily because he feels the lie is justified in service of his higher goal of hurting the NRA, or exposing the truths behind 9/11, or the failures of American health care.
I don’t regard either as admirable, but I think that in Moore’s view of himself, there is a nobility of purpose. Moore is sincere, but mistaken in his tactics and his underlying beliefs.
Limbaugh is spouting the line that his audience wants to hear.
Thank you! 
When I saw “Bricker” as last-poster I thought to myself: There’s someone intelligent enough, at last, to grasp what I’m saying.
And I was right! It’s good to see somebody understood my point in this thread. (Even though it was someone who happens to be way off-base on the incidental political issues. 
)
There are objective standards by which you can show that steak is a better food than dirt. There is no objective standard by which you can show that Limbaugh’s motives are less pure than Moore’s.
You can argue “his exaggerations, distortions, and outright lies show that he is not sincere, but the exaggerations, distortions, and outright lies of the other guy are understandable hyperbole in pursuit of a legitimate point” but that is a difficult line to walk.
You can also say that one side does it so much more than the other that this shows hypocrisy, but as I mentioned above, only one side has done fifteen hours of unscripted radio per week for many years and the other a few movies. To which the natural rejoinder is “isn’t it worse that one side’s lies are carefully crafted and edited for maximum deceit value, while the other side has much more to do with the need to fill airtime”.
Those who are arguing on principle will not be affected by this.
If, on the other hand, you are setting up a standard and saying “Republicans are bad because they fail the standard but Dems are good because they don’t” then pointing out that Dems fail the standard just as much or more and it goes unremarked is a perfectly good refutation of the argument.
The SDMB suffers because there are a few of us who will call the liberals out on their hypocrisy? As opposed to allowing you your snug little echo chamber?
How does No strike you for an answer?
Regards,
Shodan
This is the problem with this type of debate. That’s just your opinion. No one knows this but the people who did it.
Maybe they did come to believe it eventually, but only due to rationalization. Most mentally healthy people don’t want to believe they routinely do bad things. If they do, their opinions of their situation will probably change. Judging this sort of mess while trying to consider their pre-change vs post-change opinions vs. if their thoughts even changed at all is difficult. I think you should look at their actions and what they said instead of trying to pretend to know what someone else is thinking, which is unprovable speculation. That sort of gossip can be fun, but it probably won’t convince anyone.
As an aside, Iran-Contra was weak tea. Selling guns and military equipment to thugs is SOP. What’s more American than that?
Thank you, in return.
Although I will note, wryly, that my intelligence seems to vary dramatically based on who or what I am defending, at least according to many commentators here.
I don’t think that’s entirely true. If nothing else, Oliver North did not in any way personally profit from Iran/Contra. At least, if he did, I’ve never heard it mentioned.
Given that, and given that he had to have SOME motive for what he did, and given that “arming those scrappy freedom fighters who are fighting against those communists” certainly fits into the general umbra of what we’d assume Oliver North would have thought was in America’s best interest, I see no reason not to assume that he was doing what he thought was right.
So I’m provisionally willing to give him an A for purity of motive, but an F for not-subverting-the-constitution. Someone who outright skims money gets a low rating in both. A lot of cases, of course, human fallibility being what it is, are things where someone is able to convince themself that what they’re doing is for the good of the country, while also realizing personal or political gain. But that’s really a different topic entirely.
Of course they will, for several reasons:
(1) If the thread gets hijacked, it gets hijacked, and the odds of further meaningful conversation occurring drop drastically, regardless of the purity of principle of one or more of the posters
(2) The vast, vast majority of accusations of hypocrisy are not leveled at individual posters but at one side as a whole. So ALL the posters on one side will feel that the accusation was addressed at them, personally, will take umbrage, will get defensive and combative, etc. (And if my basic premise in this thread, that everyone is at least a bit double-standardy, is true; then any sufficiently honest poster will have a naggling bit of doubt wondering “is it ME that he’s talking about? I hope not!”, which just makes it all worse.)
Except that arguments rarely go like that. Remember back a few years to when there was a quick succession of sex scandals involving Republicans in congress, Larry Craig, the guy with the texts to male pages, etc. There were a fair number of threads about it. Most of them were just “haha, bad things happened to republicans, lol”, or things along those lines. They were not, and SDMB threads very rarely are, saying something like “well, this proves clearly that all the badness in the world is Republican” or “due to this, we now have evidence that we should pass a law chemically castrating all Republicans or something”.
If someone was trying to argue the latter, then obviously bringing up the fact that there have been plenty of Democrats involved in sex scandals would be perfectly reasonable, as it would be a clear counterargument to the claim that only Republicans do bad things. But a whole bunch of the time it goes like this:
Some democrat: Hey, look what happened to Larry Craig
Other democrat: Heh heh, wide stance
Third democrat: Heh heh, airport bathroom
Der Trihs: That’s because all republicans are evil
Shodan: Where was your outrage when (some random sex scandal involving a democrat that happened before the SDMB existed)? You all think that all republicans are evil, but you have a big double standard. iokiaddi. Usual suspects. 1984 reference.
I’m exaggerating a bit, obviously, but my point is that few if any posters in the thread were claiming that this was evidence of, as you say, “Republicans are bad because they fail the standard but Dems are good because they don’t”, at least in anything approaching an absolute sense.
Yes, the SDMB suffers when the accusations of hypocrisy are both near-universal and vague.
Basically it comes down to what I said to Superfluous Parentheses in post #10. If you’re calling out a specific poster with specific evidence of clear hypocrisy, got for it. But if you’re just generally leveling a vague accusation at an entire group, I think it’s quite clear that all that does is derail any useful discussion that might occur.
(And of course group-vs-individual double standards is another entire big issue along these lines. There are thousands of active liberal posters on the SDMB. It’s entirely possible for there to be a thread about republican wrongdoing with 100 liberals posting in it whining about how bad that republican was, and a thread about democratic wrongdoing with 100 liberals posting in it coming up with reasons it’s not a big deal, but zero or almost-zero overlap between the people posting in each thread. That would certainly seem, to someone reading the threads, like evidence of a big double standard, but is not.)
Unless you think that becoming a celebrity and his TV career that blossemed later. Regardless, he did say at the time that he considered it an act of patriotism, but he was well aware he was breaking the law. True patriots can disagree on what is best for their country and history sorts it out. Was FDR a patriot for dragging an unwilling public into WWII by purposely putting Americans in harms way to provoke public outrage.
On hypocrisy and the double standard.
We all have our bias. It’s the human condition. A conservative freind of mine and I discussed it during the election. Because of our political leanings I was much more likley to find fault woth the GOP and more likely to give Dems the benifit of the doubt. For him it was the reverse. Being aware of our own potential for bias we can factor that into issue when we consider them.
When evaluating I try to look at intent and that is very much connected to honesty and the integrity of their overall behaviour. Liberals and conservatives can have honest respectful disagreements with each other over how best to handle certain issues. Both can have good intentions and sincerely be trying to do what they think is best for the country. IMO that’s one of the brilliant things about our democratic republic. Input from various sources and a balance of power is intended to help our society.
Intent is a hard thing to judge. Personally I look at a persons history of behaviour and positions to try and judge intent, unless their action or position is outrageous and extreme.
I think we can function just fine by acknowledging our bias and examing our positions on a regular basis with a committment to facts.
Do you see that these two quotes contradict each other?
I think we now see another instance of confirmation bias - accusations of hypocrisy are not nearly universal. As you say
As you recognize, it is heavily weighted only to one side. But you don’t seem to think that these accusations - those coming at conservatives from liberals - have a disruptive effect on the SDMB.
But earlier you said -
On the SDMB, obviously, liberals are far more influential than conservatives. Posters are mostly liberals, the more vocal posters are even more likely to be liberal, all the mods are politically liberal. But you don’t think that influence is to be decried.
Take your example of Fox News playing up a Democratic scandal and ignoring a similar Republican one. This is bad, in your view, because of its influence.
Suppose the other MSM, such as CNN and MSNBC and CBS, show a similar pattern but on the other side, downplaying Democratic scandals and highlighting Republican ones. Is this not a example of an influential double standard? But you are never going to get anything like the traction arguing that as you do ragging on Sarah Palin.
Liberal tu quoques outnumber conservative ones by 100-to-1, by your count. But this is not a big deal, because people naturally defend their own. So it appears that conservative tu quoques are a hundred times more disruptive than liberal ones.
Sorry, I don’t buy that. It seems to me to be much more likely to run like this:
[ul][li]Liberal says something silly like “Sarah Palin doesn’t know what the Vice-President does”[/li][li]Conservative points out that what she said was correct, and that Biden said essentially the same thing[/li][li]Thread gets hijacked because it takes an awful lot of verbiage for some people to talk themselves into believing some of the whoppers they do.[/ul][/li]
Regards,
Shodan
[quote=“septimus, post:28, topic:551024”]
I have to wonder what you’re basing that claim on. Sure, he has an Ivy League degree, but there are plenty of mediocrities and incompetents with Ivy League degrees. And we don’t know how well he did there, because he won’t release his transcript to the media. I’ve browsed through both of his books, and neither of them struck me as literary masterpieces; William Ayers claims to have written one of them, though the claim may well be specious. His speeches are just standard political boilerplate. His grasp of economics seems sophomoric at best. And someone who claimed to have visited all 57 states and that Islam has always been an important part of America clearly needs to learn a lot of basic geography and history.
But if he is “more intellectual,” so what? Many so-called intellectuals are fools and scoundrels. There’s an awful lot of quackery in academia and the media, and the mere fact that someone is “more intellectual” doesn’t mean that he necessarily has a better grasp of how the world works.
George Orwell is supposed to have said (I have not been able to track down the specific source of the quote), “It was something so stupid only an intellectual could believe it.” Whether or not he actually said it, it is the sort of healthy skepticism about the intelligentsia that everyone should have.