{"id":628,"date":"2008-03-27T08:52:14","date_gmt":"2008-03-27T12:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=628"},"modified":"2008-03-27T08:52:14","modified_gmt":"2008-03-27T12:52:14","slug":"cheapskates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=628","title":{"rendered":"Cheapskates"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In yet another variation of his standard line, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2008\/03\/26\/AR2008032602916.html\">today George Will<\/a> argues that when it comes to charity, liberal people and places lag behind conservatives and so &quot;liberals&quot; are little more than disingenuous bleeding hearts.&nbsp; This combines Will&#8217;s love of the ad hominem tu quoque&#8211;the irrelevant charge of hypocrisy&#8211;with his love of the straw man&#8211;the purposeful distortion of his opponent&#8217;s view in order to knock it down (look <a href=\"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?page_id=167\">here <\/a>for a description of these particular logical errors).&nbsp; His argument goes like this: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Liberals, judging by their bumper stickers in Austin, Texas are self-described bleeding hearts (they are motivated by pity and pity alone).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Self-described conservatives are more charitable than self-described liberals.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>By their own self-description, liberals ought to be more charitable (on account of their bleeding hearts), so liberals are either:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>(a) hypocrites for being all hat and no cattle (this is Texas we&#8217;re talking about); or (b) dumb to wait around for government to do the work that can be done by charity right now.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This argument sounds vaguely familiar.&nbsp; Megan McCardle, a &quot;liberatarian&quot; blogger for the <a href=\"http:\/\/meganmcardle.theatlantic.com\/archives\/2008\/02\/tax_me_more.php\">Atlantic Monthly<\/a>, has made similar charges (discussed <a href=\"http:\/\/crookedtimber.org\/2008\/02\/16\/revealed-preferences\/\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/crookedtimber.org\/2008\/02\/22\/mcmuddled\/\">here <\/a>on <a href=\"http:\/\/crookedtimber.org\/\">Crooked Timber<\/a>).&nbsp; She argues that if liberals want the government to tax so much, then why don&#8217;t they just give extra money voluntarily.&nbsp; They don&#8217;t.&nbsp; So there.&nbsp; It also sounds like any similar charge of hypocrisy&#8211;if you cared so much about it, then why don&#8217;t you do something (for it, to stop it, etc.)?&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>But that&#8217;s not really the point.&nbsp; By any measure, liberalism is a broad <strong>political <\/strong>view about the just structure of government and the just distribution of goods.&nbsp; Liberals will differ about the meaning of either of those things (They&#8217;ll differ to the same extent that conservatives will differ about the proper role of government).<\/p>\n<p>More importantly, liberals will also differ about the reasons for their &quot;liberalism.&quot;&nbsp; Indeed, some liberals&#8211;some&#8211;might qualify as the &quot;bleeding heart type&quot; who fit Will&#8217;s perpetual caricature.&nbsp; They whine about injustice, but they really don&#8217;t care.&nbsp; Pointing out their hypocrisy might be entertaining, but it&#8217;s basically worthless.&nbsp; They don&#8217;t represent all that is the liberal position.&nbsp; Nor does their hypocrisy demonstrate anything about their broader political view.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>One can be liberal for reasons that have nothing to do with bleeding hearts, pity, or care.&nbsp; And the strength (if it has any) of the liberal position has nothing do with the feelings and action of individual liberals&#8211;any more, at least, than the weakness of conservatism is demonstrated by the appallingly bad arguments of a pundit for the Washington Post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In yet another variation of his standard line, today George Will argues that when it comes to charity, liberal people and places lag behind conservatives and so &quot;liberals&quot; are little more than disingenuous bleeding hearts.&nbsp; This combines Will&#8217;s love of the ad hominem tu quoque&#8211;the irrelevant charge of hypocrisy&#8211;with his love of the straw man&#8211;the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=628\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Cheapskates<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/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":[35,7,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tu-quoque","category-will","category-straw-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628","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=628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}