Contours of Conservative Hypocrisy

It is not controversial to assert that the values, ideals, and opinions held by people on social and political matters vary in accordance with their place on the political spectrum. What if, however, it was posited that on one end of this spectrum, politics consists not only of pursuing stated aims, but also of crafting codewords and rhetoric designed to lure in others who would not otherwise be interested in those aims? Judging from the output of its vast array of columnists, pundits, and intellectuals, the modern American Right perfectly fits this description. For it is the rare conservative who will openly declare from the outset that he is in favor of waging war on weaker nations, cutting down safeguards for disadvantaged citizens, heaping aid upon the wealthy, plundering the environment, and so on. Far more common is the conservative who, in pursuing these very same aims, will invoke with much sincerity the cherished terms of security, responsibility, freedom, and optimism. It would be helpful, I think, if we took a look at a few of the very carefully constructed frameworks, codewords, and values invoked by the Right and see how they match up against actual reality.

Personal responsibility:
A key component of the Right’s supposed notion of “rugged individualism” is the insistence that the plight of any individual in society is mainly, if not solely, the result of some flaw in that individual’s personality or behavior. Sniggering contempt is displayed for anyone who tries to highlight the flaws of the actual social system in which the individual lives. Anyone who can’t find employment or fails to advance in some field need only hang his head at his own stupidity, weakness, or whatever other personal shortcoming; all other actors and agents on the social scene are absolved of responsibility.

But this ethic is applied with extreme selectiveness: poor people, minorities, oppressed groups, and the working-class are sternly instructed to adhere to this protocol, but the business elite and their government friends are neatly exempted.

Reverse discrimination:
This remarkable codeword is ensconced within the general framework of the earlier-dissected term moral equivalency, but deserves individual treatment because of its popularity among rightists, who reach to it almost intuitively. The basic premise is that affirmative action - for blacks in college considerations for instance – is merely racism in reverse, and therefore inherently unfair against whites. The very basis of the complaint operates on one of three assumptions at any given time: it denies the history of blacks being on the receiving end of an inherently unfair system of discrimination in the first place; assumes somehow that an equalization of opportunity has magically taken place very recently; or posits that since blacks are of less value than whites, their history of oppression is irrelevant and need not be compensated for.

And More on Satan's Bake Sale
The point was starkly illustrated when rightists on some college campuses set up politicized bakery sales in which whites had to pay a higher price for baked goods than blacks. Using the same setup, however, the point can also be utterly demolished. The bake sale demonstration completely covers up the historical reality preceding affirmative action – that is, it does not take into account the centuries of affirmative action enjoyed by whites. After all, if the bake sale demonstration was historically representative, for nine-tenths of the time the sale was going on it would have to be blacks who pay a higher price, since for centuries whites have, still speaking figuratively, been buying up the baked goods at far less cost than blacks. More bluntly, blacks were either slaving away under the white whip to produce the “goods” or producing them at such a menial wage to make them affordable to white consumers. [more]