Jesus was most impatient with one group…the hypocrites.

“Just kidding about the ass-kicking, of course.”

Crap! When I put two bugs in a bottle and shake them, I want ACTION, man!

Just kidding. Phil, when you made the statement Joe quoted, I blew cheerios on my screen…not because I know it isn’t true, and not because most people don’t think that about themselves, but because not many people have the pure cajones to come right out and say it.

It must be hard to walk that way : )

Phil, how many smart informed people do you know who disagree with you? You need to find some and hang around with them. You may not change your views, but you’ll see that issues are often far more complicated than you think.

Hmmm… I’ve been called idiotic, mindless, paranoid, Nazi-like, bigoted, and homophobic, and recently an atheist told me I was doing a pathetic job of explaining Christianity, but I don’t think I’ve recently been accused of failing to see the nuances of issues. That’s new.

On the other hand, if you’re offering me that airline ticket, I just might take you up on it. I’ve never seen the islands, and given the current administration and Congress, I’d probably find it cathartic to hand out a good ass-kicking to a progressive.

Joe, these days, everybody in my intellectual life is online. I meet smart, informed people every time I read Gateway Pundit, HotAir, PowerLine, The Moderate Voice, Politico, HuffingtonPost, TPM, The Atlantic, and Salon.com. I read that spread of sources for the same reason you come here — I need to know what the best of all sides are thinking. When I say I don’t hear many opinions that make me rethink my position these days, it’s not because I’m not looking for them.

I’ll answer your objections tomorrow. I’m going to enjoy the library and a movie with my lovely wife.

Just kidding about the ass-kicking, of course.

Hey Darkhorse, if you ever hear me say anything like this, I’ll buy you a plane ticket to the islands so you can come over here and kick me in the ass!

Phil, how many smart informed people do you know who disagree with you? You need to find some and hang around with them. You may not change your views, but you’ll see that issues are often far more complicated than you think.

Joe

First, I didn’t say or suggest that conservatives were “heartless bastards.” I don’t believe that and nothing I said can be construed to suggest that I do. I disagree with some – though not all – of the positions taken by social conservatives, but I don’t think they are heartless – just misguided.

Second, yes, I am providing another interpretation of the behavior of the critics of Sanford et al – albeit a far more reasonable interpretation than you provided.

Your interpretation requires us to believe that: (1) the moral views of social conservatives are correct; (2) that social conservative politicians support these positions because they truly believe in them – as opposed to supporting them for political convenience – even though many of these same leaders do not abide by them personally; (3) that people who publicly oppose socially conservative positions – and socially conservative politicians – truly know (in their hearts) that the social conservative moral positions are correct, but hate to be held moral accountable, and, therefore, (4) view the failure of morally upright but weak men such as Sanford et al as an opportunity to stifle calls to moral responsibility.

My interpretation requires me to believe: (1) that the people who say they disagree with social conservatives on moral issues really do disagree with them, (2) that they see the hypocritical misbehavior of a string of strident social conservative leaders as a political opportunity to accuse social conservative leaders of being disingenuous for not really believing the arguments they make, and (3) that they are taking advantage of that opportunity.

I think my explanation rests on far more plausible premises than yours.

By the way, I don’t doubt that Mark Sanford actually believes in the sanctity of marriage. And I agree with you that Sanford’s sin is evidence of nothing more than humanness. But that’s just it. Sanford and other social conservatives show little sympathy for the circumstances of gays and others when they advocate their moral/political positions. That’s what makes him and others, like Newt Gingrich and Ted haggard, big fat targets. If you’re going to take the high ground, you’ve got meet high expectations. Sanford’s failure is unfortunate for the social conservative true believers and their causes, but pointing out the disingenuous of your political opponents in pursuit of political goals is hardly something to scream about. And that’s all this is, as far as I can tell.

Third, you missed what I was saying about your complaint that opponents of social conservatives are citing the hypocrisy of the leaders as grounds for dismissing anything social conservatives say. I agree that it is a mistake to dismiss people’s arguments because one thinks the arguments are coming from dishonest or disingenuous people.

My point was that your complaint about the opponents of social conservatism calling for its advocates to be ignored was ironic, given that you have explicitly endorsed the dismissal of leftist arguments for the very same reasons. As I’ve indicated previously, I agree with your complaint – but I recommend that you take it to heart when you debate people you disagree with.

As for your evidence that conservatives behave better than liberals, we’re going to need more evidence than a survey about paying taxes, particularly when “liberals” are defined as people who “reject the idea of absolute truth.” As I’ve said before, “absolute” contributes nothing to the notion of truth, and liberals in no way reject the idea of truth. There are also a wide array moral issues to be evaluated. You know better than to conclude that conservatives behave more morally than liberals based on this kind of evidence.

Anyway, my lunch is over and I’ve got law to practice.

Have a good weekend.

Joe

It speaks to whether one takes oaths seriously or not. In our day, it’s common to consider oaths mere ceremony, but at one time they meant something. Some of us still think that what one swears, one should perform. It does mean something to me to know that a man considers his oath of office mere ceremony rather than binding declaration.

You are correct about the dereliction of duty, however.

While I appreciate the sentiment, the temptations aren’t really the same. I don’t think you can equate them.

It might be more instructive to consider his willingness to (perhaps) desert his post to accommodate his personal passion, though.

He was gone for almost a week. Was he _really_ unreachable? If so, and if in fact he had not conveyed his authority as governor on someone, it was real dereliction of duty for personal matters. When you take on the responsibility of an office such as governor, you give up your right to that kind of action.

On the other hand, I have no faith in the press that we will ever learn whether he might have made some accommodations for contact or passing of authority. They enjoy skewering him way too much.

Not that you don’t know that, but you seem pretty angry with him right now.

Nah, just disappointed. I always feel compassion when guys fall like that, ’cause I’ve been in a somewhat similar position. From my own experience with this sort of situation, I know that the person on the hot seat actually needs the pain; it’s corrective. I go out of my way to remember that the family is hurting more, and doesn’t deserve the pain.

My point is that you have misdiagnosed what the critics are doing. They are not, as you suggest, decrying the idea of moral responsibility, or its defenders. They are pointing out that the least compassionate among us are often the biggest offenders. They are pointing out that many of those who have used the power of their office to deny others legal protections for their unions, based on their supposed “respect for the sanctity of marriage,” don’t give a rat’s ass about the sanctity of their own marriages.

That’s a legitimate criticism.

What you’ve done here, Joe, is simply lay a different template over the same behavior I described, giving it a more flattering explanation. I don’t think you’ll be surprised to discover that I disagree with your explanation.

The reason I don’t accept your explanation is threefold. The first reason is in the original article. What you’re saying is what social progressives always say about social conservatives — they’re heartless bastards, they don’t care. However, as I explain, it’s not a lack of compassion that prompts social conservatives to take the positions they take; it’s a concern for the stability of civilization. That’s the point of the essay. Social conservatives admitting sin when they sin is consistent with that concern.

The second reason is that social research on the matter, and also the outcomes of policy preferences, pretty consistently demonstrate that it’s conservatives who genuinely care about the poor and weak, and progressives who despise them. Conservatives routinely give more to charity than progressives, even though their income is less. Conservative policies rescue entire cities from poverty and deterioration, remove people from welfare roles, restore to them dignity and confidence. Progressive policies invariably enslave the poor to the government dole, and keep them sequestered within their deteriorating enclaves. I can recall no policy advocated by progressives that has ever lifted a single individual out of poverty. Progressives practically destroyed New York City in the 1970s and 80s, and it took Rudy Giuliani to restore sanity to the city. The poor suffered under the left, and prospered under the right. In general, saying conservatives lack compassion is partisan hokum.

The third reason is the inconsistency in your position. When progressives call conservatives “heartless,” their proof is that some of those who stand for a reasonable standard of public morality commit sins. And yet, we all agree that humans sin, that sin is common to humanity. You’ve said this, and I’ve said it, too, several times. Conservatives and liberals actually agree on this. Right? Well, if that’s so, Joe, then we can’t use the ordinary sin of humans as proof of anything other than humanness, can we?

The same people who are using “we’re all human” as the reason for what they call compassion on those who are weak, use the very same behavior in conservatives as the proof that they “don’t give a rat’s ass” about morality. So explain to me, if you can, how the very same behavior that is a reason for compassion and proof of ordinary humanness in one group, is a reason for contempt and proof of viciousness in another. It would seem to me that the consistent position, if they really think humanity is prone to this weak sort of behavior, would be simply to note that people on all sides of all issues have the same weaknesses, and that the conservatives’ weakness proves the thesis. After all, if the behavior of conservatives is the same as the behavior of everybody else, it’s pretty tough to make a case that their sameness proves that they’re different (e.g., more uncaring than others). Neh?

So I don’t think your explanation is the right one. Social progressives use the same evidence of humanness, for which they excuse their own kind, to condemn those who stand for public morals. You might be able to convince me that they do this simply as a vicious tactic to discredit their political and social opponents. However, I think there are deeper motives at work: I think they do it because it’s social conservatives who remind them that they have abandoned ordinary virtue and made themselves something less than fully human, and they hate them for it.

My analysis is not flattering, granted. I do believe it’s accurate. Naturally, the least moral among us are not going to go around admitting that they’ve abandoned morality, are they? Of course not. What they do, instead, is to give morality a political definition rather than a behavioral one, so that they can call themselves “moral” simply because they believe the right thing, and their opponents “heartless bastards” because they believe the wrong thing. That way, people whose behavior makes them the least moral among us, feel perfectly justified calling themselves the most moral among us — and they don’t have to lift a finger to amend their character, they just have to believe the right thing. It’s virtue on the cheap, a foolproof system of rationalization, and it’s the rot at the heart of Western culture.

By the way, I understand how this works because I did it myself for many years, and I watched my siblings do it, too. I escaped it by the grace of God, not by any particular virtue of my own. My own personal history is far from spotless.

Limbaugh, Gingrich, Craig, Foley, Vitter, Ensign, Sanford . . . all vocal social value conservatives who have acted contrary to their words.

But Joe, since all humans sin, it wouldn’t matter if you had 100 examples, or 1000, or if every single conservative in the universe acted contrary to the standards they articulate. Why? Because, as we all agree, humans sin. Moreover, a standard is supposed to be high. Standards are useless if they’re simple to achieve. If we’re going to be better than we are, we have to set the bar beyond where we are now. To quote a line from a movie I like, “It’s supposed to be hard… It’s the ‘hard’ that makes it great.” The inevitable result, if we set the bar high, is that some are going to fall short. In what way does that discredit those who have articulated the standard? “Man’s reach must ere exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”

On the other hand, you might want to read this article by Peter Schweitzer, that establishes that there exist replicable correlations between political belief and moral behavior. In general, it turns out in practice that conservatives really do behave in a more moral fashion that liberals. However, since all humans sin, it’s not very hard to find a conservative who sins.

As for why I come on your blog, I enjoy it. I like to read people with whom I disagree. It keeps me sharp… So you should welcome me as, at the very least, a useful idiot.

Look, Joe, I got pretty angry when you said, based on the Japanese war crimes trials, that the status of water boarding is “settled law,” and then I discovered that what the Japanese had been tried for was orders of magnitude beyond what we were doing. I don’t want to reopen that chapter, I just know not to take your word on legal matters without corroboration — and to be candid, I always felt that way anyway.

I used to enjoy jousting with opponents from all points of view a lot more than I do today. I think the issue is that I enjoyed it a lot more when my ideas were not so well-formed as they are today, and the ideas I heard challenged me to rethink things a lot more often. These days, it’s pretty rare that I hear a point of view that makes me want to rethink something I’ve believed (when it happens, it’s usually because I’ve gotten my facts wrong), because I’ve been examining my own thoughts pretty rigorously for a long time now. I don’t know if that’s good or bad; maybe I’m just getting old and crotchety.

You’re welcome here if you really want to be here, although I’m sure there are better conservative sites. And for what it’s worth, I know you’re not an idiot. I value your knowledge of philosophers and philosophies, and welcome corrections to my understanding of them.

First, what is the main point of your blog entry? You’re arguing that the fact that we are all fallen and weak should not preclude us from defending moral responsibility. Your point is that people who don’t like the idea of moral responsibility are taking advantage of the hypocrisy of Sanford and other fallen defenders of morality, to discredit the defense of moral responsibility by anyone at all.

Correct?

My point is that you have misdiagnosed what the critics are doing. They are not, as you suggest, decrying the idea of moral responsibility, or its defenders. They are pointing out that the least compassionate among us are often the biggest offenders. They are pointing out that many of those who have used the power of their office to deny others legal protections for their unions, based on their supposed “respect for the sanctity of marriage,” don’t give a rat’s ass about the sanctity of their own marriages.

That’s a legitimate criticism. I don’t see any inconsistency in pointing this out. It seems perfectly legitimate, in a policial debate, to point out that your opponents are making an argument that they don’t actually believe, or, at the very least, aren’t willing to live up to themselves.

Second, you don’t use the term “liberal.” “Leftist” and “democrat” are your terms. But you have said, repeatedly, that you do not trust “leftists” and see no reason to listen to them, based on their dishonesty.

I don’t see how this posture is any different from the alleged posture you are assigning to those that you think are trying to silence the defenders of moral responsibility. According to you, they are saying, “don’t listen to social conservatives because they are hypocrites.” How is your general posture towards leftists any different? That’s the point I was making – and its not in any way “lame.”

You claim that you think Democrats chose their positions based on policial expediency raither than conviction, and, therefore, you don’t need to consider what they say. But that is precisely the claim that you think is being used to club social conservatives – “based on their actions its clear that social conservatives don’t really believe in the sanctity of marriage, so no one needs to listen to them.”

Nor does it help you to argue that your lack of trust is justified. The people who you think are trying to silence the defenders are moral responsibility are equally justified – Limbaugh, Gingrich, Craig, Foley, Vitter, Ensign, Sanford . . . all vocal social value conservatives who have acted contrary to their words.

As for why I come on your blog, I enjoy it. I like to read people with whom I disagree. It keeps me sharp. I write entries to challenge you and your readers’ assumptions and reasoning. Surely you’re up for that, right?

I’m confident that when I’m wrong, you’ll expain how and why to your readers. So you should welcome me as, at the very least, a useful idiot.

But if you want me to go, just say the word.

Joe