The Virtue of hypocrisy

Apparently Socialists don’t like having their hypocrisies pointed out anymore than humans do:

This is the danger of being a radical and taking a stand. Once you claim to have principles you gain a new ability: hypocrisy. The only people who can’t be hypocrites are nihilists who have committed suicide. For everyone else this is a real danger.

I wish there were more hypocrites. At least the hypocrite can repent and be corrected by their own standards. Sadly our world is overpopulated with Chesterton’s pathetic new rebels…

“But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. . . . As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. . . . The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.”