In Defense of Hypocrisy

"Hypocrisy" is one of those words like "freedom", or "propaganda", or "justice"; they evoke an instant moral judgment from mainstream American society. Each of these things are considered by most of us to be inherently either good or bad, without any real exploration about how each of these things can be either good or bad or both, just like technology or religion or anything else.

All of man's tools and ideas are value-neutral. Is iron good or evil? Well, it's good if it's building ships to send grain to a famine, but it's evil if it's building trains to ship Jews to death camps.

Is democracy good or evil? Well it's good if it's used to avoid political violence by sharing power, but it's evil if it's used to abuse and segregate racial or religious minorities.

How can hypocrisy be good? Well, let's consider what a world without hypocrisy would look like. There are two ways such a world could come about.

The first way would be that all people behaved in a morally perfect manner towards themselves and everyone else for all time. Not gonna happen. The second way would be that society would abolish the very notion of sin or wrong or bad. Well, there would be one sin: being judgmental.

In this second scenario, there would be no such thing as wrong, so there would be no such thing as hypocrisy. If there are no rules to break, there are no hypocrites. But would any of us want to live in a culture in which nothing was considered absolutely wrong?

Hypocrisy exists because people aspire to be better than they are. If hypocrisy disappears, it won't be because we achieve perfection; it will be because we stopped aiming for perfection.

To take the example of Bill Clinton, he is considered by many to be a hypocrite. Since he never criticized anyone else for adultery, he wasn't as hypocritical as many of his colleagues, but surely he was hypocritical regarding his vows to his wife.

The relevant thing here is that he was wrong. He knew he was wrong. He said he was wrong. Everyone else knew he was wrong (well, almost everyone else). It was understood to be selfish and reckless and shameless behavior, a failure of moral discipline. A very bad thing, all told.

But since people are never going to be perfect, wouldn't we rather live in a culture that would condemn Bill Clinton rather than one which would call his adultery totally irrelevant and morally neutral? Because that's the only alternative.

Unfortunately, men will never stop cheating on their wives. So our options are: do we live in a society that condemns such behavior as a failure of character, or do we live in a society which accepts adultery or any other sin as a matter of personal "freedom" or "conscience" or "inner truth"?

There are certain bad things that some people will always do. Lie. Cheat. Steal. Kill. The question that confronts society is whether we condemn such behavior even if we're not perfect ourselves. If we are not willing to be somewhat hypocritical, our society will lose all sense of shared morality. And that is no society at all.

Even men who cheated on their wives should have condemned Clinton. Why? Isn't that hypocritical? Yes, but the more important thing is that people must been seen condemning such behavior if we share the assumption that such behavior undermines society.

If we only let perfect men pass moral judgement, we would have no moral standards, because the judges of such a high court simply don't exist. No person is perfect. Therefore, morally imperfect people must set moral ideals. The prospect of moral shame is a deterrent to some behavior.

If society does not set such standards for its children, the children can be forgiven for growing up into decadent heathens. If we wait for the perfect to lead us, we die. If silence the hypocrites, we silence everyone.