Liberals love to make absolute rules that only apply to things that are advantageous to themselves or their agenda.
This is why Liberals are considered hypocrites, because they have rules that apply selectively, depending on if it advances their agenda or not. And, of course, they have no problem jumping to the other side of the fence if that answer advances their agenda more than their original position.
I remember a while back some memes making the rounds on Social Media about “I don’t mind that 2.5 cents of my tax dollar goes to help the needy thru HHS” and things like that.
Well you know what? If you booked a trip through Expedia or one of their subsidiaries (Trivago, Hotwire, Hotels.com and more), 1.3 cents of every dollar you spent went to Dara Khosrowshahi’s (the CEO of Expedia) pay of $94.6 Million, the highest paid CEO in 2016.
“But that’s different” say Liberals. “He’s an E-V-I-L CEO!”
There actually is one big difference, which I will explain after I explain what this concept is.
When everyone pays a few cents for something, yet only one person or a small group receives those proceeds, this is known as “Concentrated Benefit over Diffuse Injury.”
The one important difference between the Health and Human Services department getting your 2.5 cents versus Mr. K getting your 1.3 cents is you had a choice not to “Pay the K” by booking your flight, car, hotel, etc. with a non-Expedia company. Now, think about the outcome of not paying that 2.5 cents to HHS. The IRS will come to your door and take it out of your hide.
Money out of your pocket by either choice or force…
Here is another example.
If you read the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution, the term “The People” is used in the First, Second, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments. In the First, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth, Liberals agree the term “The People” means “everyone living in the United States.” However, when it comes to the Second Amendment, those same two words mean “the National Guard,” even though that concept and term wasn’t used until over 110 years after the Second was written.
Because, you see, “that’s different!”
Liberals also like to decry “FULLY AUTOMATIC WEAPONS SPRAYING 30 BULLETS A SECOND” are not covered by the Second Amendment, because “The Founding Fathers could not have conceived of those kind of ‘DEATH MACHINES!’”
Yet, when we look at the media of the day, all there was for printing was the Gutenberg Press, which was over 300 years old at the time of the Revolution. That’s what the state-of-the-art printing technology was when the First Amendment was written. And because the high-speed newspaper printing presses of today (along with computers and the Internet) have been logical and systematic developments in technology based on the Gutenberg Press, we recognize that the protections of the First Amendment extend into those technologies we have today.
The small arms in civilian and military control today are likewise, natural and systematic developments of technology based on the flintlock rifle.
But the Second Amendment doesn’t apply to modern small arms because “that’s different.”
Another good hypocritical example is healthcare and education. With both of these arguments, the government is demanding more and more control over those markets, using opposite logic.
Healthcare costs, for a variety of reasons in addition to governmental meddling which are germane to my point here, have exploded over the past 20 years, especially since the passage of the “Affordable Care Act” known as Obamacare. Why does the government want control? “We have to lower healthcare costs!” Never mind, of course, that spending exploded even more after the ACA became law.
On the education side, between 1972 and 2010, the annual spending per student in the US has risen 118 percent, yet in 45 states, the SAT scores have fallen. For some “good news,” staffing in our schools has risen 97 percent in that time frame. This means double the people helping and teaching our children, while the young adults who do graduate are, on average, are less well-informed than their older siblings and parents.
But you see, these are different.
Then we have Liberals demanding all children (except theirs) go to public indoctrination centers schools. There is much rending of clothes and gnashing of teeth when the subject of school vouchers as brought up, because parents are too stupid to properly decide what is best concerning the education of their 1-2 kids whom the parents see every day and must defer to the “education professional” who sees 100 kids a day only during the 180 days of the school year.
Yet, those on food stamps have total freedom with their voucher system to purchase food. In February 2018, President Trump proposed an “America’s Harvest Box,” a box of food delivered to the door of people receiving SNAP benefits (food stamps). This boxed food would replace about half the SNAP benefits. I don’t like it because it’s going to be canned and processed food which is less healthy than fresh. It will also most likely not address special dietary needs of the recipients. That being said, the government would be consistent in its approach to government benefits.
Your choice, government control of education and food, or vouchers for schools and food?
But these are different.
I have saved my best example for last. Liberals want to eliminate vending machines in schools that are loaded with sodas and other snacks that when overused lead to obesity. The stated reason is “the students are not capable of making good choices about these products.”
Yet, in almost the next breath, they spout “pregnant teenagers should be able to get an abortion on-demand and their parents do not have to be told, because it is their body and they should make those choices for themselves.”
I have to admit, this one rattles my brains the most. Liberals say on one hand that teenagers can’t make their own choices concerning certain foods because they aren’t able to make healthy choices, then on the other hand they are encouraged to kill the inconvenient result of teenage sex, and the same teenagers who are too stupid to avoid unhealthy amounts of snacks are mature enough to make this kind of life-altering decision without first consulting with the adults who are responsible for them.
And we are told by Liberals, as all of the other examples above, these are different.
Liberals who scream like petulant children because they don’t get their way on these hypocritical points won’t admit that those kind of issues above are interrelated and need to be treated in a similar fashion. The bad news (for Liberals) is they are not different. This is known as consistency, specifically ideological consistency. If you have two similar issues, you need to treat them in a similar way. "A term means what it means except in this case", "direct government control of industries to either increase or decrease spending", "government handouts as either vouchers (giving the recipients control of how and when it's used) or mandated (you will use these benefits in this way)", "teenagers either are or aren't capable of making choices that have life-long consequences." You can't have it both ways. Pick one side or the other, or become squirrel pate on the road of life.
Right about now, I can hear the little cogs grinding in the heads of Liberals, and out pops the pre-programmed talking point:
Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”, yet he owned slaves! Good Liberal. You’ve properly memorized your talking points. Have a cookie.
Here’s what Thomas Jefferson himself said about this seemingly hypocritical situation:
"This thing I believe, do I water it down to the level that I can live up to, or do I say the truth, even though I am falling horribly short of it myself?"
This is not different for this simple reason: Jefferson admitted that owning slaves was wrong, even while he continued to do it. I am moderately sure that Jefferson hoped that slavery would one day be abolished in the United States and laid the foundation of that in those thirteen words.
I know I am not knowledgeable enough to speak on the 18th century economic situation on running a plantation with free vs. slave labor as the work force. I am also not knowledgeable enough to speak on the social situation of the time that made this market possible. I don’t know if it would have been economically feasible for Jefferson to work his land without slave labor.
All Conservatives, Libertarians and Conservatatians want is a consistent approach to similar issues. Boil issues down to their salient points, then apply the same solution to all relevant issues.
Make the voucher system apply to schools, food allocations and even Medicare/Medicaid, or force those under those programs to accept what is issued them without choice or complaint. Either teenagers are able to make decisions about their life without parental oversight and input, or let the parents and teenagers work out between them what choices the teenager can make on their own and which they need to talk with the parents about first.
I don’t see these as hard choices. Too bad for all of us Liberals do see these as hard choices and want the government to choose for us.