{"id":3648,"date":"2012-06-21T08:10:55","date_gmt":"2012-06-21T13:10:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=3648"},"modified":"2012-06-21T08:10:55","modified_gmt":"2012-06-21T13:10:55","slug":"not-really-hypocrisy-of-the-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=3648","title":{"rendered":"Not really hypocrisy of the day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Think Progress is accusing Ron Paul of hypocrisy<\/a> for criticizing social security but taking it (they also suggest<\/a> that he compared social security to slavery, which he did and didn't:  He did in the "immoral" sense, but not in the "social security is a type of slavery sense):<\/p>\n

\n

Paul is, of course, not the only conservative to benefit from government programs that he or she opposes. But his crankish<\/span> view of the Constitution has brought him to the conclusion that Social Security is altogether unconstitutional, which also hasn’t stopped him from collecting benefits.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Any critic A's criticism of policy x naturally leads critic B of critic A to see whether A is consistent with regard to x.  Since x is government policy, or law, it's very easy to spot alleged inconsistencies.  I'm against, at least I think I am, various tax breaks for people who make over a certain amount of money.  These tax breaks might benefit me.  I'm not a hypocrite for not writing a check to the federal reserve.  I'm a hypocrite if the policy I advocate goes into effect, and I do not abide by it.<\/p>\n

People might remember that this is, in essence, the Buffett criticism (we talked about it here<\/a> and here<\/a> and here<\/a> and here<\/a>): if you like taxes so much, pay voluntarily.  Such criticism was bad then, and it's bad now.<\/p>\n

It's bad in part because it would make it practically very difficult to criticize laws and policies without engaging in civil disobedience of one form or another.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Think Progress is accusing Ron Paul of hypocrisy for criticizing social security but taking it (they also suggest that he compared social security to slavery, which he did and didn't:  He did in the "immoral" sense, but not in the "social security is a type of slavery sense): Paul is, of course, not the only … Continue reading Not really hypocrisy of the day<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1109,1108],"tags":[1208,481,1070,908,1318],"class_list":["post-3648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-argument-from-double-standards","category-argument-from-inconsistency","tag-buffett-rule","tag-hypocrisy","tag-ron-paul","tag-social-security","tag-warren-buffett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3648"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3650,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3648\/revisions\/3650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}