The "Hypocrisy" of Conservative Individuals Doesn't Negate Their Ideals

Travis Rowley has an excellent piece in today's ProJo explaining that Conservative "hypocrisy" as evidenced by the moral failures of some prominent conservatives does not render the moral ideals themselves invalid. Yet, that is what liberals are essentially implying when they cry "hypocrisy" when a conservative suffers a moral stumble.

If a Sunday Preacher challenges his congregation to uphold a higher morality and speaks of the wickedness of pedophilia, murder, and thievery, but then is discovered to have committed such acts himself, who among us would then defend those acts and let them become our societal norm? Nobody would, but such reasoning saturated Joel Connelly's [recent] column...

Connelly. . . took issue with the stunning observation that, yes, values-pushing conservatives also do wrong. Gasp! So shocked was Connelly that he has become "deeply suspicious of proper places and public piety."

No column could have better exposed liberals' craving for right-wing hypocrisy, their utter incomprehension of traditional thought, and their shameless assaults on the character of their political foes. When your adversaries are winning the minds of a moral majority, one option you have is to destroy their integrity. If you can't discredit the thought, discredit the source. This is entirely consistent with the left's political heritage, and Connelly wasted no time staying true to leftist form. His column ripped through the personal lives of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R.-Ga.), former Rep. Robert Bauman (R.-Md.), Rep. Dan Burton (R.-Ind.), Rep. Henry Hyde (R.-Ill.), a Catholic bishop, and numerous citizens in the pious town of Spokane. . . . However accurate Connelly's accusations are of those mentioned above, they serve no substantive point in the domain of argument, and perfectly exhibit the left's failure to understand why conservatives hold the moral high ground.

The subtitle of Crowley's piece really does say it all: "Right's hypocrisy isn't the left's virtue." For more,

. . .Conservatives readily admit to the fall of man. Evidence of this is their humble turn toward religion, which their political adversaries somehow attempt to portray as bigoted and judgmental. This is because modern-day liberals are, in fact, moral relativists, right down to the bone.

The charge of moral relativity has never implied the total decency of those making the charge: that some of us are sinners while others are as pure as the wind-driven snow. It has always been about the acceptance of the slippery slope, and Connelly's column exhibited the contrast between those who are ready to accept the ways of the morally defiant and those who are not. We should be careful with such a literary piece, because it asks us to join the rabble of pacifists and apologists, and a philosophy driven by a cowardly outlook.

This mentality does not discriminate between right and wrong. It does not ask people to do better, or be better. To do so would be cruel, unenlightened, and too critical for liberal taste buds. This is a dangerous mind-set, to say the least.

Conservatives battle such a mentality not out of self-righteousness but out of fear of a decline in cultural decency, and from a concern about what kind of world they may pass on to their children. Therefore, there is no genuine right-wing hypocrisy to be discovered. The slippery slope, conservatives understand, is not a selective phenomenon. Moral deviance invades society as a whole. Just as a rising tide will lift all ships, a depraved society will sink all souls.

Even something as devout as the Catholic priesthood has been infiltrated by an increasingly decadent humanity. No doubt trying to incriminate the traditional Catholic Church, Connelly touched on this fact, but failed to understand the root of American priests' moral failures. They are simply immersed in an immoral society, one whose popular culture consists of Britney Spears, Howard Stern, and widespread pornography.

Connelly declares that all of this hypocrisy from conservative pundits and politicians "fits a pattern."

Sure, but it seems to be a pattern that only the left is willing to accept.