Hypocrisy, our common heritage

Leave it to a conservative magazine in the midst of a liberal political period to call out the hypocrisy squarely and honestly.

The hypocrites' club

"American history is littered with examples of puritanism deranging the law, from the Salem witch trials onwards. Anthony Comstock, a 19th-century anti-porn campaigner, used his position as a postal inspector to seize 50 tons of books and 4m pictures. He boasted that he was responsible for 4,000 arrests during his career and 15 suicides. Under Prohibition people could be imprisoned for life for consuming alcohol.

Puritanism continues to stalk the country in new guises. The most dramatic example is America's new version of Prohibition—a “war on drugs” that helps explain why one in 100 American adults are in prison. But there are plenty of humbler examples. Schools impose zero-tolerance rules that result in expulsion for minor offences. The citizens of Texas may not buy dildos. Americans are banned from drinking until they are 21.

The combination of legalism and puritanism invariably produces the same dismal results. It creates expensive government bureaucracies that seize on any excuse—rules relating to inter-state commerce are a particular favourite—to extend their powers to boss people about or spy on them. It throws up swivel-eyed zealots who pursue their manias with little sense of proportion or decency (remember Kenneth Starr). And it ends by devouring its children. Mr Spitzer is only the latest in an endless line of self-righteous crusaders impaled on their own swords.

He certainly had no choice but to resign (as he did on March 12th) if, as it seems, he broke the law. But that still leaves the bigger question of whether the law is an ass. George Bernard Shaw once defined 'Comstockery' as 'the world's standing joke at the expense of the United States'; but it is hardly a joke for the people who are caught in its tentacles. There are enough real problems for America's law-enforcement officials to worry about."

I have to say that it is so incredibly refreshing to read any major, serious newsource, these days, talking so squarely and unequivocally on the issues this column tackles. The New York Times is talking about doubling up on our drug war efforts, and it is the fuckin' Economist that calls out our bullshit prostitution laws, even when the figure involved is a liberal politician, and a particularly arrogant, sanctimonious one, at that.

A little different than my stereotypes of conservatives as a young liberal growing up in Wichita, Kansas. And it is so refreshing to watch those stereotypes get challenged. Especially when the reasoning works in the more honest, less power-mongering direction.

I have never been so disappointed with the left in my entire lifetime as in this political moment. And it is the hypocrisy and the bullshit and the lying that really leave me incredulous.

Mark Twain is what America is all about. These assholes are just a arrogant blip on a much longer historical trendline. It's not progressive, that's for goddamn sure.

And Elliot Spitzer should be a clear-as-day illustration of the flaw in the logic of this political period, if we only had the courage to face up to it. But, then again, courage was never what this logic was all about.