Hypocrisy: Leftists’ Hallmark Print
By Timothy H. Lee
Thursday, August 01 2019
On issue after issue, rank hypocrisy characterizes almost every aspect of the leftist agenda.

If canceling an airline flight could help save the world from a looming existential threat, wouldn’t you gladly do so? 

Particularly if the very act of flying was part of the causal sequence creating that existential threat? 

Seems like a no-brainer, right? 

If you answered, “of course,” then you’re apparently not an anthropogenic (man-made) climate change alarmist. 

That reality was driven home again this week, when Google convened a who’s who roster of entertainers, political figures and activists in a seaside Italian resort to discuss – wait for it – global warming.  The guests, including such high priests and priestesses of virtue as Leonardo DiCaprio, Barack Obama, Sting, Elton John, Katy Perry and David Geffen, naturally arrived via private jets and enormous yachts, not hang glider.  And naturally, their vast security entourages and assorted minions had to join them for the trip as well. 

Hey, you’ve got to burn a few thousand tons of fossil fuels in order to show the world how serious you are about ending their use, right? 

DiCaprio, who actually founded his own climate alarmist foundation, proclaimed in a speech just three years ago that, “Our planet cannot be saved unless we leave fossil fuels in the ground where they belong.”  Revealing a spectacular lack of self-awareness and inability to recognize irony, he continued, “I have traveled all over the world for the past two years documenting how this crisis is changing the natural balance of our planet.” 

Perhaps he was simply referring to gazing at his own exhaust fumes as he flew across oceans and continents. 

Whatever the case, such people are perfectly happy to shut down entire sectors of our economy, and eliminate millions of jobs along with them, to signal their virtue.  Just don’t hold them to their own standards or interrupt their privilege of jetting to Mediterranean resorts at whim.  That hypocrisy is the hallmark of their fraudulent agenda. 

Meanwhile, another hypocrites’ parade occurred this week in Detroit as the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates convened for two days of debate. 

There was “authentic” Bernie Sanders, who angrily thunders that millionaires must pay their fair share in taxes, and maligning the Trump tax cuts that accelerated economic and job growth.  But Sanders himself reached millionaire status, and owns several posh homes.  And when he released his tax returns earlier this year, it was revealed that he filed according to the lower Trump rate, not the rate that he claims millionaires should pay. 

When confronted with that discrepancy by Fox News anchor Bret Baier, who asked why he didn’t practice what he preached, Sanders had no answer.  Instead, he literally scoffed, and awkwardly replied that he’s more interested in seeing Donald Trump’s tax returns. 

Sanders also advocates a job-killing doubling of the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour.  But lo and behold, apparently Sanders refused to pay his own campaign employees that same amount. 

And then there’s Joe Biden.  He now bristles at the unfairness of other candidates tagging him with accusations of racial insensitivity over positions he’s taken over nearly 50 years in public office, on issues ranging from school busing to crime legislation.  But this is the same Joe Biden who grotesquely told a largely black audience while he was Vice President that Republicans “want to put y’all BACK in chains.” 

This man who suggests that half the country seeks to repeal a 13th Amendment that is over 150 years old can hardly be heard to complain about the unfairness of critiquing policy positions that he actually and explicitly did advocate. 

Like Sanders, Biden also fails to practice what he preaches when it comes to paying taxes on his own wealth.  Specifically, Biden saved approximately $500,000 by channeling income earned via speeches and book sales through S-corporation status rather than claiming self-employment, which the Obama Administration attempted to prohibit. 

Leftists’ hypocrisy is hardly confined to “socialism for thee, but not for me” economic issues or climate change, however.  On 2nd Amendment issues, they seek to curtail or even eliminate the individual right to keep and bear arms.  But do they forego armed protection for themselves?  Please. 

On issue after issue, rank hypocrisy characterizes almost every aspect of the leftist agenda. 

They preach like socialists, but live like capitalists.  That tells us everything we need to know about the validity of the ideas they seek to impose on everyone else.