The Morality of Leftist Morality

In my rather angry and convoluted post about the sordid toe tapping, stall mauling affair (Larry Craig’s attempted indiscretion), I was trying to say what Jonah Goldberg says better. Here’s what I wrote:

Let me put it this way: I think Republicans should retire over sex scandals when Democrats start voluntarily living carbon neutral lives in mud huts powered by windmills, give extra money to the government because taxes aren’t high enough and boot the criminals in their midst.

The fact is that Democrats don’t give a poop about toe tapping in a toilet stall. They don’t care about $100K in a freezer. What they care about is power. Power comes by bringing the opposition down. It’s especially delicious when there’s sex involved.

Here’s what Goldberg writes:

One solution to the hypocrisy epidemic, of course, is to have no morals at all. You can’t violate your principles if you don’t have any. Another solution: simply define down your principles until they are conveniently consistent with your preferred lifestyle. My own perfect moral code would mandate a strict regimen of not enough exercise, too much scotch and a diet rich in cured meats. Men would be religiously barred from taking out the garbage until their wives told them no less than three times to do so. “Thou Shalt Not Shave More Than Thrice Monthly”: I’d never be a hypocrite if only the Bible gave us commandments like that.

But the left has another solution. Under its system, you can still be a moralizer. You can still tell people what to do and how to live. And, best of all, you can still fall short of your ideals personally while guiltlessly trying to use government to impose your moral vision on others. All you have to do is become a liberal moralizer.

Once you become a liberal, you can wax eloquent on the glories of the public schools while sending your kids to private school. You can wax prolix about the greedy rich while making a fortune on the side. You can even use the government to impose your values willy-nilly, from racial quotas and confiscatory tax rates to draconian environmental policies and sex-ed for grade-schoolers – all of which will paid for in part by people who disagree with you.

That was what I was trying to say. I’m fed up with the left’s “moralizing for thee, but not for me.” Their moral code is higgly-piggly and everyone must comply with their current whim. So Larry Craig screwed up–not a Bill Clinton screw up, mind you–but he screwed up. And by the left’s moral code, he goes to the gallows not because they’re against gay sex, casual sex or even sex in a bathroom where a father might bring in his son (a child should have early and explicit “education” after all), but because he’s a hypocrite.

Republicans and the right actually have a moral code. The left loves to use the right’s moral code against them. The left’s moral code? Well, it changes on the day, and anyway, private lives are private and we shouldn’t judge.

Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world if everyone lived by the left’s code of ethics? I’m afraid that too many already do.

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Tags: Leftists • Politics