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Rampant Hypocrites by Jeff Jackson (2/10/03)
The Land of the Free - A Conservative Politics Web Site

My friend Pete is going to hate me for singling him out like this.

He is not what I would call a traditional liberal that fought for individual freedoms. He is a new wave liberal that had adopted the philosophies of people such as Karl Marx and he hates it when I mention it.

During a recent conversation he made the following statements while discussing current events which I am going to use to use to illustrate a point. "I am pro-choice because I believe that no one should be able to tell a woman how to treat her body, which is her own private property." Followed by, "I think it is a great thing to continue to push for local businesses to be completely smoke free because I should not have to breathe in second hand smoke."

Now, I know that to many of you the hypocrisy of these two statements is obvious. But our goal here is to educate so I will spell it out for the rest.

What my friend Pete saw saying was pretty much two of the major talking points for the Marxist Left. First, that women have a right to do what they want with their own bodies and second that even though women have these rights, certain segments of America are morally superior to be able to tell others how to deal not only with their bodies but also their own property.

The argument boils down to the snobbish attitude that certain persons in America society have the moral authority to dictate how people live. The argument is not that people have the right to determine the ways in which they use their bodies and their property as stated in the first quote and then quickly contradicted in the second.

In other words, the attitude is that what we say is ok is ok and what we say is wrong is wrong.

We must go back to the Constitution and our other founding documents. These documents spell out that American's have certain unalienable rights such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They also grant the rights to speak freely without the fear of persecution, worship freely, bear arms freely, gather and assemble, come before government to seek redress for injustices freely, right to keep property without fear of government (and then only contradicted when the government justly compensates the owner), etc.

These are the basic rights our founding documents provide. And they must be applied in all situations, not conditionally as certain elitists see fit.

To argue that government has the authority to dictate to people who are practicing their rights (which are so enumerated) and that are not interfering with the rights of others is to argue that certain people have the ability to dictate to others how they should live while allowing others to live unobstructed. This leads to a slippery slope where we grant idealistic elites the authority to manage our lives.

When we allow rights to be selectively granted and restricted we are no longer equals before the law. When we are no longer equals before the law our founding structure is removed.

If you don't want to breath second hand smoke, for example, and the restaurant you want to go to has no smoking regulations and allows smoking everywhere then do not go there. It is simple when we apply our enumerated rights evenly to all. Your are not required to go to this hypothetical restaurant. It is a choice you make. You may want to go there which is your right to liberty. However, the restaurant owner also has the right to liberty in conducting his business as he sees fit.

Since there is a clash (your right to liberty versus his right to liberty) we have to look at who's rights prevail. In this case, since the restaurant owner owns the restaurant and you are not forced to go there your right to liberty can not be allowed to outweigh his right to liberty.

And this is where the Marxist Left falls into fits. They believe that it is, in the end, their right and privilege to dictate that someone else's rights can supersede your rights on your private property. It is their belief that they alone can administer your rights.

They can't. Your rights are your rights. It is simple. When we denigrate ourselves to requiring others to administer our rights and tell us how to apply our rights we have lost our rights.

So, Pete, I love you man; but you can't justify a woman's right to choose to abort a child because her body is her property, and in the next breath say that someone has the right to tell a business owner to run his private property in a certain way.

Consistency is the power of any good argument. Inconsistency shows hypocrisy.

Read the response to this article here.

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