Now that there has been a decisive ideological shift in American politics, I'm beginning to see a huge proliferation of "arguments from hypocrisy," i.e., arguments that accuse people of hypocrisy. In a very general sense, such arguments can take two forms: good and bad. The good ones point out some real case of hypocrisy, the bad ones a specious one. One variety of bad argument from hypocrisy is the ad hominem tu quoque–this is when you accuse someone of hypocrisy when such a charge is irrelevant.<\/p>\n
We've seen plenty of ad hominem tu quoques here. What makes for a good argument from hypocrisy, however? Is there some kind of expiration date? Consider along these lines the following from the Washington Monthly<\/a>: <\/p>\n Right-wing leaders continue to find the strangest things to get upset about.<\/p>\n President Obama paid his respects to fallen U.S. soldiers. This doesn't seem like an especially controversial thing to do. President Bush chose not to<\/a> greet returning caskets during his two terms, and didn't even want journalists to take photographs of the events, but nevertheless went out of his way to advertise<\/a> private meetings with the families of the fallen. Was this "narcissistic," too?<\/strong><\/p>\n For that matter, when 16 Americans were killed in an attack on the U. S. Embassy in Beirut, then-President Reagan not only appeared at Andrews Air Force Base<\/a> to greet the flag-draped coffins<\/strong>, he brought the First Lady and the media, and then talked about his appearance in a weekly radio address. Did that make it a "photo-op"?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n To be a hypocrite, one has to hold the beliefs one criticizes in others or one has to have ideological commitments to beliefs one criticizes in others. The present case is of the latter variety. The hypocrisy is inferential, since no is charging Bush or Reagan with hypocrisy, just people who purportedly adore them. <\/p>\n There are two routes out of this charge, I think. One is to deny they are adored. For many of the chatterboxes who make these arguments, however, this is hard to do in the Bush case. Their silence then would impugn them: they adored Bush, and most never criticized him. <\/p>\n The Reagan case, however, is a bit more difficult. It happened so long ago, I think, that one might wonder whether the expiration date has passed. One might wonder this, if it weren't for the canonization of St.Reagan. So I think "Reagan did it too" or "Reagan quoque" still counts. So given Reagan's stature within the current Republican worldview, one can use him in charges from hypocrisy. Nixon, on the other hand, probably not–but that doesn't mean former employees of Nixon can accuse others of being Nixonian<\/a>. That expiration date has surely not passed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Now that there has been a decisive ideological shift in American politics, I'm beginning to see a huge proliferation of "arguments from hypocrisy," i.e., arguments that accuse people of hypocrisy. In a very general sense, such arguments can take two forms: good and bad. The good ones point out some real case of hypocrisy, the … Continue reading Reagan quoque<\/span> \n