The bankruptcy of hypocrisy critiques

I thought that Trump’s seizure of the presidency would put an end to hypocrisy critiques, but liberals are still reaching for the same tired “point and laugh” gotchas. One that came across my Facebook feed today points out that conservatives think that flag-burning shouldn’t be protected by the First Amendment, but that they should have the right to take assault rifles to McDonald’s under the Second Amendment. See, the contradiction — and try to stifle your smug laughter — is that they think one constitutional right should be restricted, but another shouldn’t! How can they even live and function with such cognitive dissonance going on?!

In reality, I can construe those two positions as mutually consistent. American national identity is the guarantor of all constitutional rights, and therefore there must be a limit to acceptable critique or protest, to avoid undermining the very right to critique and protest. Particularly potent symbols of national identity — in particular the flag — should be held as sacrosanct for that reason. Prooposing otherwise would be, in this viewpoint, the true contradiction. Similarly, America is a nation founded on individual empowerment. There is no contradiction between a strong social bond and an armed populace — indeed, they go together because an armed populace is best positioned to fight for the individual rights that make America America.

If that construal seems incoherent or artificial, I encourage you to read Pericles’ funeral oration in Thucydides, which uses exactly the same rhetorical moves. This is all straight out of the standard toolbox of democratic patriotism, from time immemorial. It is not an ideology I embrace, but it is one that makes sense on its own terms, and it is one that is obviously very compelling for a strong plurality of our fellow-citizens.

Part of its power is its respect for emotions and symbolism, for something other than cold logic. A right isn’t an abstract formula, it’s something embedded in how you live every day — the kinds of symbolic identities you embrace and revere and the ways you perform your own self-reliance as part of that symbolic identity. From this perspective, the liberal “gotcha” point feels empty and meaningless. Worse, the hypocrisy-policing pose always implicitly assumes that the target is trying and failing to embrace empty liberal formalism. If they don’t draw the “correct” conclusion — in this case, that some old sheet of paper should be obeyed when it tells us people should be able to desecrate our sacred symbols but ignored when it says we should be able to have means of self-defense — they must be stupid. Isn’t it funny how stupid they are? You almost wonder why they keep winning so many elections.

I submit that assuming everyone is trying to be a good liberal but is too stupid to pull it off is a losing strategy. Of course, I’m probably being hypocritical because I keep trying and failing to persuade people of this. Or something. I don’t know. I kind of hate everything right now.