By Selwyn Duke

Many leftist partisans are licking their chops over the revelation that
Idaho Republican Senator Larry Craig solicited sex from a male
undercover detective in a Minneapolis airport bathroom.  This scandal
is reminiscent of that involving Ted Haggard, the disgraced preacher
who had relations with a male prostitute.  You may remember Haggard, he
was the Distraction du Jour the Shill Media conjured up right before
the 2006 election.  (I keep my finger on the pulse of our culture and I
had never heard of this Haggard fellow.  But fixating on this minor
story served well the purposes of demonizing the “right” and
distracting people from the real issues – always useful during an
election cycle.)

What is interesting about our time, though, is that these men are
castigated not because they have been living an immoral lifestyle but
because they have been living an immoral lifestyle without also
sanctioning that immoral lifestyle.

Certainly, as far as politicians who toe the left’s line go, they can’t
seem to flaunt their Liberace leanings enough to register on the radar
screen.  Homosexual congressman Barney Frank (D) owned a residence out
of which a call-boy operation was being run, and the late Congressman
Gerry Studds (D) once spirited a 17-year-old boy off to Spain for a
sexual liaison.  Studds won re-election until his retirement in 1997,
and Frank is still in office, lisping his way to legislative success.
Of course, both represent Massachusetts, and there has just got to be
something in the water up there. 

What interests me, though, are not the obvious double standards, but
identifying the correct standards.  You see, it’s interesting how the
Studds and Franks of the world are often cast as superior to the Craigs
and Haggards merely because it was they – and not someone else – who
thrust open their closets and dumped the contents in the public
square.  The idea is that it’s worse to espouse a standard you cannot
live up to than one you can and do live down to; second, it’s always
implied that an individual’s position cannot be credible if he lacks
credibility.  And such tacks certainly are rhetorically effective.

They’re also nonsense.

Let’s examine the second point first.  Does a virtue cease to be a
virtue simply because the vice-ridden espouse it?  If a preacher
teaches that “Thou shalt do no murder,” do we conclude that murder must
be a moral act if we discover he is a serial killer?  Or, for those on
the left, would you assume preserving the environment was unimportant
simply because you discovered that an environmentalist – like, oh,
let’s say, Al Gore or Ted Kennedy – uses far more energy than the
average person or preaches wind power but opposes it in his own
neighborhood?  It’s silly.  You may as well say you won’t believe a
mathematician when he tells you that 2+2=4 if you find out he is a bad
man.

A position either has merit or it doesn’t, either a basis in Truth or
it doesn’t.  The rightness of a position is not determined by the
righteousness of a politician. 

Once this is understood, refutation of the first point is simple.  It cannot be said that a person who espouses everything he lives is morally superior to one who doesn’t
– nor can we say he is inferior – as greater specificity is required;
we have to ask what behaviors he engages in and whether or not they
would translate into valid positions if advocated publicly.  In
reality, though, it’s seldom very cut-and-dried, for while Truth is
black and white, people are shades of gray, possessed of both virtue
and vice.  And our standards should reflect not our virtues and vices,
but the virtues we possess and those we should possess.

In other words, it’s ideal to have saintly leaders whose lives reflect
the highest standards, but what is the next best thing?  If a leader is
lacking, will we really be better served if he translates his vice into
policy than if he merely practices it while advocating the virtue that
eludes him? 

We would readily understand this if we applied it to other domains.  If
a teacher lived a decadent lifestyle, would we prefer that he advocated
same in the classroom?  Would we say, “Well, it’s so commendable that
he’s no hypocrite, that he lives no double life.  Why, he possesses the
virtue of consistency!”?  If a parent cannot stop smoking, is a
glutton, is lazy, or has a tendency to tell lies, would it be a good
thing for him to sanction this behavior in his children?  Should a
therapist with a gambling or drinking problem encourage it in his
patients? 

Moreover, if one did so, it would most likely be part of a
rationalization, one that says his darkness is actually light and that
he designed so he could feel better about himself.  And this brings us
to an important point: Such behavior is antithetical to love, as it is
selfish.  It is directed toward satisfying the emotional needs of the
self, not the moral needs of others.  We would do well to remember that
misery does love company, but true love doesn’t spread misery.

Now we come to a very simple principle, one that applies whether your
designation is politician, preacher, parent or person.  No one is
perfect, as we’re all bedeviled by frailty, and we all commit our
sins.  But whatever one’s sin may be, there is one greater: Leading
others into sin.  This is why closets exist, because certain things
should be kept in them.  There is no nobility in releasing your inner
demons when doing so means they will possess your fellow man.

Lest I be misunderstood, my title is somewhat figurative; hypocrisy
isn’t really a good state, but it can be the lesser of two evils.
Sure, we should strive to elect politicians of strong moral fiber and I
certainly think we can do better than Larry Craig, Barney Frank and
Gerry Studds.  But I do know this: I’d rather have a politician
propositioning in a bathroom than proposing policy that turns the whole
country into a bathroom.

We should, however, also understand what hypocrisy is.  It is not
saying one thing but doing another; rather, it’s saying one thing while
intending to do another.  In other words, let’s say a man has a
weakness for drink but seeks to abstain from alcohol and preaches
sobriety.  Let’s then suppose he attends a party, has alcohol waved
under his nose, is overcome by temptation and becomes soused.  While
this isn’t good, it also doesn’t mean he is a hypocrite.  It simply
means he is weak.         

And this brings us to an important point.  Really, we’re all weak, in
some areas and to some extent.  Thus, if we did espouse a standard of
perfection – which would be ideal – how could we possibly live up to
it?  In point of fact, being human, we could only measure up to mortal
standards, never godly ones.  But just as a musician or athlete strives
for perfection knowing all the while it’s unachievable, we will fail to
fulfill our moral potential unless we shoot for the stars.  And would
we ever tell an aspiring young athlete or musician that being mediocre
was the state to strive for simply to make him feel better about his
lack of proficiency or make ourselves feel better about our own?  This
is why we not only can but must erect a standard of perfection for our
fellow man; to do any less does him a disservice.  As I said in my
piece, Are Christians Hypocrites?,

“It’s ironic, but anyone who can truly practice what he preaches isn’t practicing anything worth preaching.”

There is no doubt about it.  If we were limited to espousing only what
we could practice consistently, our standards would be cursed with our
imperfection, when they should be blessed with the divine reflection.

As for the matter of weakness versus hypocrisy and the Craigs and
Haggards of the world, my guess is it isn’t that their values are a
facade but that their vice is a fall.  Whether I’m correct or not,
though, I do know one thing for certain, and this I direct toward the
open-closet crowd on the left.

They’re better than you.

Yes, they might have fallen from grace in a shameful way, hurting their
families, party and/or cause.  They may be light years away from Heaven
and a heartbeat from Hell, but your greatest sin cannot be laid at
their feet.  That is, such people don’t aggressively push libertine
values to create latitude for vice.  They don’t seek to transform their
nation into a toxic wasteland just so they can feel (because, above all
else, leftists just have to feel good) better about themselves.  Their
secretiveness is their saving grace, in that they limit their battle to
the confines of their minds and souls.  Theirs is an internal battle
against personal corruption, not an external one for the public
variety.  They leave the rest of the world unmolested.

So perhaps, just maybe, they’re the worst thing they could be: Hypocrites.  But they’re still
better than you.