One of my biggest pet peeves in political discourse is the constant charge of hypocrisy, both explicit and implicit. They take many forms, most of which you are probably familiar with, and all of which can be grouped into two categories.
First, there’s the personal-political hypocrisy. Senator X is a pro-family conservative, but got a divorce after having an affair. Congressman Z is a leading proponent of tougher drug laws, and he got caught smoking pot. This is when your personal life conflicts with your political positions.
There’s the political-political hypocrisy. Congressman Y wants an earmark ban, but check out the pork he’s taking back home. . Senator Z wants a ban on PAC campaign donations, but look at all the PAC money he’s taking! These typically take the form of a politician promoting a universal rule, but then making political choices that signal the opposite behavior for either him or his constituents.
These are all relatively silly charges to level against a representative. But they interest me because they say something about libertarianism and American political culture.
In both the personal and political hypocrisy situations, there is an interesting selection bias; it seems that the charge of hypocrisy necessarily needs to be attached to authoritarian political positions in order to have any traction. For example, a 1910’s era proponent of prohibition probably would have gotten the hypocrisy book thrown at him if he had gotten a DWI (disclaimer: I have no idea if there DWI laws in the 10’s; Gatsby notwithstanding, I would think there were). But what’s the the hypocrisy level of a politician in the 20’s who doesn’t drink, and in fact crusades against drinking, but who wants to undo prohibition? Best I can tell, none.
The difference is so silly that many people reading this post will roll their eyes. But why? The only difference between the two positions is that the latter is on the side of freedom, while the former is on the side of authoritarianism. In effect, the political hypocrite is not someone who promotes policies he personally disagrees with, but something much more narrow: someone who promotes authoritarian policies that he has no intention of following.
This construction perhaps seems obvious with the personal hypocrisy situations, but it’s equally applicable to the purely political hypocrisy examples. Politicians who want to restrict things like pork spending and campaign contributions are, in the most basic sense, promoting authoritarian policies. When they then circumvent them (regardless of the legality of doing so), they are attacked. But in these cases, the converse argument is almost even more stark: no one is going to criticize an opponent of such regulations if they themselves happen to abide by it voluntarily. Think about a proponent of corporate/union donations to political campaigns, who personally doesn’t take any. That’s not common hypocrisy at all. But the opposite is deadly.
One interesting twist on this is the charges of hypocrisy that revolve around the tax code and social insurance systems. There would likely be a sense that you are a political hypocrite if you promote tax enforcement and then don’t pay your taxes. That fits into the authoritarian rule just fine. But there also seems to be a sense that you are a hypocrite if you support cuts or abolition or oppose expansion of social programs you benefit from. For example, I don’t think it’s particularly reasonable for conservative politicians should to be portrayed as hypocrites if they take advantage of social insurance policies like Medicare, even if they would prefer to see them abolished.*** Just as I don’t think liberal politicians should be seen as hypocrites if they refuse to voluntarily pay the higher tax rates they wish to enact down the road. Regardless of your position on a public policy, it seems you should be able to play under the existing rules of the game. But such charges definitely get traction in the former case. The latter? That’s just laughable.
What’s interesting about the Medicare example is that it doesn’t fit neatly into the freedom/authoritarian model of hypocrisy that I’ve been developing here. Conservative politicians are undoubtedly taking the traditional freedom position in regard to the policy: they want to reduce the taxation and government regulation level, which is pretty much the post-civil war definition of economic freedom. But they are also running up against the second strain of economic freedom: the late 19th and 20th century liberal notion that economic freedom requires a set of regulations that produce a baseline equality and security. By taking health care benefits that one opposes, under this theory, a politician is messing with the economic freedom (i.e. as equality and security of economic interaction) of the common man.
It’s fascinating to me to think that such theories of economic freedom can be observed through the idea of hypocrisy, but I don’t see any other way to explain it. It seems that the limits of economic freedom do exist, and that people have a natural feel for the boundaries as such.
***The Medicare/Social Security hypocrisy charge is particularly interesting because I would think there are a significant number of conservatives — and perhaps a significant number of liberals — who would opt out of both programs if they were allowed to also opt out of the taxes that support the programs.
