The Redhunter

Liberal Bigotry

Liberals, leftists, call them what you will, but some are guilty of the most vicious forms of race and sex (no not "gender", that would be bad English) prejudice against women and minorities who adopt conservative political views.

Michael Steele is a black conservative who is running for US Senate on the GOP ticket in Maryland. Yet Maryland Democrats think that it is just fine to make racial attacks on him.

Kate O'Beirne, of National Review, wrote Women Who Make the World Worse. an attack on the feminst establishment. Leftists responded with a campaign to leave ugly "reviews" on the Amazon website.

Michelle Malkin, however, has received worse than either of these two, or any other conservative writer, from what I can tell. Brave woman that she is, she documents the sexual and racial attacks on her in posts. See here, here, here, here and here for examples.

As you can see, it's some pretty nasty stuff.

Malkin is a woman an Asian, and, let's be honest, very attractive. For this last reason certain lefties seem fixated on making the most vile sexual comments about her.

You see, in the world of liberaldom, it is "illegal" to be a woman or minority and be a conservatives. You are a "traitor" to the cause. To them, it is "just obvious" that all women and minorities should be liberals. Whenever one expresses conservative views, these liberals are enraged. They resort to any and all forms of name-calling.

This is exactly what the modern-day left is all about. They preach endlessly about "tolerance", but they are themselves only tolerant of those who agree with them exactly.

On Hypocrisy

My argument with the left, however, isn't really that they are a bunch of hypocrites. My argument with them is that 1) too many of them engage in racist and sexist attacks on conservatives, and 2) they don't understand the concept of hypocrisy or it's meaning.

I wrote a post on the use and misuse of the charge of hypocrisy about a year ago, and if I may I'll just quote myself

We need to distinguish between inconsistency and hypocrisy, for they are often mistaken for one another. Inconsistency is when a person does or says two things that are at odds with one another. In 1990 John Kerry voted against going to war with Iraq over Kuwait. When running for president in 2004, he said that he opposed the war in Iraq because we did not have a large international coalition. In taking this position Kerry was certainly inconsistent, but he was not a hypocrite.

An argument stands or falls on its own merits, not those of the person making it. Adultery is a sin, a bad thing. This is so whether the person admonishing us to be faithful to our spouses is faithful himself. It was either a good idea or not to invade Iraq, and whether or not the person making the case for invasion had ever served in the armed forces or not is irrelvant.

Hypocrisy is certainly something to be avoided, both in one's personal life and in recommending public policy. While the preacher who says that we must lead clean lives is certainly speaking the truth, but his message is dimished if he is caught in bed with another man's wife.

(Further), one of the most maddening characteristics of our modern culture is one in which the person who tries do live right but falls is considered a worse person than the person who doesn't try at all, and indeed flaunts his immorality. Considered even worse is the person who dares to tell others that they should live moral lives, yet who themselves yields to temptation.

Who is subjected to more abuse by the media and professionaly punditry; Monika Lewinsky or Jim Bakker?

To be sure, Bakker defrauded his followers of millions, so the analogy is not perfect (they never are). But consider their reactions when caught: Lewinsky seems proud of her affair with the president, while Bakker wrote I was Wrong, a 1996 mea culpa. I rather doubt we will ever see a similar book from Lewinsky, nor will one be demanded from her.

So we may conclude that while hypocrisy is something to be avoided, as a sin it has so en blown out of proportion that being a hypocrite is viewed as worse than someone who commits a sin and doesn't care who knows it. This is wrong.

In other words, folks, you have to argue the facts of the case. If Saddam Hussein gets up in front of us and says that murder is wrong, we may laugh at his hypocrisy, but ultimately we have to admit that he is right.

The bottom line is that all too often the charge of hypocrisy is made by people who want to avoid debating the issues. It's much easier to simply call your opponent a hypocrite than argue the facts and logic of the case.

Back To Malkin

Bringing all this back to Michelle Malkin, her loonly leftist attackers, Wonkette and Eric Muller attacked her for being a hypocrite. They did so because she has written columns critical of the sexualization of our culture, and of young girls in particular. Malkin, like most of us conservatives, values modesty. To us, "Girls Gone Wild" is not funny
but pathetic. Clothing stores such as Victoria Secret and Abercrombie & Fitch are stores to avoid, not to shop at. And the Bratz series of toys are certainly nothing social conservatives are going to buy.

So these leftist loons discover a photograph which allegedly shows a young Malkin in a bikini. Ah Ha! This, they say, "proves" that she is a hypocrite.

Uh, no.

On Redemption, The Prodigal Son, and "Breaking the Faith"

Luke 15:11–32 tells the story of the "Prodigal Son". We all know the story, or should: A man has two sons, one of whom leaves and goes off to live the wild life. The other stays home and is faithful. One day the first son returns, pleads forgiveness, and the father not only takes him in but throws a huge party. The second son is indignant, but the father tells him to not be angry but to rejoice, for it is good that the other son was once lost, but now is found.

Redemption is therfore possible. No matter what you've done, you can redeem youself.

Ok, so far so good. Here's where it gets tough, and what a lot of liberals wont' want to read: Once redeemed, you can tell others that they should change their ways.

People who are doing wrong things don't want to hear this. The person in their midst who wants to change is a threat that must be beaten down. If the person insists, fine, but must not be allowed to come back and tell the group that they must reform.

So amongst a group of drinkers or drug users no one in the group is allowed to leave. Anyone who dares express the view that all is not right will be immediately ridiculed. If he leaves, reforms, and comes back, he will be attacked as a hypocrite.

But this is not accurate. The hypcrite is someone who preaches one thing and does another. Someone who reforms and comes back to tell others that they shouldn't be doing what they do is not a hypocrite at all.

But idiots like Wonkette and Muller don't see it this way. To them, once you've done something wrong, you are forever more forbidden to tell others that they shouldn't do it. So if you used drugs in your youth, and then, as an older person advise young people that they oughtn't engage in such behavior, you are a "hypocrite".

Such thinking, however, is stupidity defined. Actually no, it's not stupidity, it's more that the people who make this charge want to engage in the behavior themselves or think the behavior acceptable, and can't tolerate dissention.

Now, to reiterate, this issue doesn't come up in the aforementioned case of Malkin, because the photo in question was an obvious fake. But so what if it was? How in the world does being photographed in a bikini make it illigitimate for you to criticize the sexualization of our culture in general or of children in particular? But as Malikin says, those who criticize her the harshest usually haven't actually read what she has written.

I think it best that I let Malkin have the last word

Since mm.com came into existence, I've been attacked regularly as a whore and a c**t and a puppet and a dupe and a sellout, etc. etc. etc. It comes with the territory--particularly when you happen to be a woman, a minority, and a conservative. The extensive arguments and blog posts and columns and books I've written are reduced to bumper-sticker putdowns by critics and their fellow travelers who couldn't be bothered to actually read what I've written day in and day out for the last two years on the blog and the past 14 years in my books and columns. I poked fun at this pathology in my last book. I think what drives a lot of the haters crazy is that despite their ceaseless sniping, they can't shut me up.

Rock on, Michelle.