Party Loyalty is Hypocrisy

Any pledge of loyalty to a political party is a pledge to be hypocritical and, more generally, intellectually dishonest. Politicians, pundits, and ordinary citizens associated with these groups not only take positions on issues that conflict with their supposed principles, but often take different positions on the very same proposals from one year to the next, depending on who is advancing them. These hypocritical positions are not anomalies that can be easily dismissed. They are pervasive and are at the center of most major issues and at the very core of stated party philosophies. 

Here are just a few of the hypocritical views of Republicans:

• “Obamacare,” by other names, of course, was invented by Republicans, and advocated by party leaders even at the national level (see “Assuring Affordable Health Care for All Americans” by the Heritage Foundation), including the mandate to purchase health insurance (marketed as a way to get free riders to pay their own way) and increased subsidies for the poor. Yet, when proposed by Democrats, this same program was condemned by Republicans as a "goverment takeover of health care" and a severe restriction on freedom.
• As an alternative to Obamacare, Republicans promote the idea of tort reform, limiting the risk of health care providers, which takes power away from the free market they claim to support and puts that power in the hands of a distant government through regulation.
• Republicans promote special tax incentives and subsidies for businesses while denouncing entitlements as “taking from some to give to others.”  
• Although military spending typically makes up about 20% of the federal budget, and the US spends almost as much as the entire rest of the world put together on defense, this is rarely brought up by Republicans when complaining about the deficit, debt, and our “spending problem.” Agreeing with a particular role of government does not make it free. 
• Republicans usually include Social Security and Medicare when denouncing “redistribution of wealth,” even though they are paid for with payroll taxes, which is much more regressive (meaning that low income earners pay a higher percentage of their income than high income earners) than the income tax system. And as a way to reduce spending, Republicans promote “means testing” for these programs, even though this idea would, in fact, change the programs to be redistributive, and increase bureaucracy and government power in the process.

And here are a few for the Democrats:  

• Democrats are supposed to be the party of peace, yet Democratic administrations have initiated or expanded some of our most controversial wars, conducted military operations without congressional approval – much less a declaration of war required by the constitution (the US has not declared war since World War II), and, like Republicans, have regularly supported ruthless dictators around the world. 
• Democrats promote the idea of smart and responsible regulation, yet they have been directly involved in the same kind of disastrous deregulation for which they regularly criticize Republicans. For example, Bill Clinton, supported by a significant majority of Democrats in congress, signed the deregulatory legislation most often implicated in the 2008 financial crisis (see Financial Services Modernization Act and Commodities Futures Modernization Act). Then, to add to the hypocrisy, Clinton even criticized Republicans in his speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention for wanting to get rid of “those pesky financial regulations designed to prevent another crash and prohibit future bailouts” without, of course, acknowledging the role of Democrats leading up to the huge bailouts that have already occurred.
• Democrats claim to look out for the weak and defenseless, but they rarely acknowledge that those who are pro-life believe they are doing just that. Good people can disagree on this very sensitive subject, but not acknowledging the legitimacy of honestly held values here is hypocritical.

And libertarians deserve a special mention. (It’s probably more appropriate to think of libertarianism as a political ideology - really a pseudo-ideology - rather than a party, since many libertarians are members of other parties, particularly the Republican Party.) Although libertarians might fairly be considered more consistent than the major parties (libertarians promote a reduction in government that most mainstream Republicans would rarely agree with, at least in public, and they advocate such a massive reduction in military spending that any Democrat in agreement would be called naïve, weak, or anti-American), there are still deep hypocrisies and intellectual dishonesty at the heart of their ideas. Here are some examples:    

• They promote free markets, but rarely, if ever, acknowledge that the purpose of a corporation is to limit liability, with protection provided by the government, thus distorting the free market. People make more careless decisions when they don’t bear the risk of the results. That is, those decisions often impact others negatively (see “moral hazard”). If libertarians were consistent, they would want to eliminate the concept of a corporation and promote true private ownership of businesses. 
• If libertarians were to be consistent, which they are not, they would balance their proposed elimination of - or at least severe reduction in - regulations of products and services with a return to debtors’ prisons for people who can’t pay their liabilities, and they would advocate inheritance of debt the same as inheritance of assets so that, again, people would bear the full weight of risk inherent in their free market decisions, along with gaining the benefits. 
• Libertarians focus on the idea that every person acting in his or her own personal interest produces better results for all. When this doesn’t always work out, they often deny, ignore, or downplay the bad results (such as dismissing global warming as a hoax or not a serious concern) even though this also diminishes basic and undisputed concepts of economics (see “negative externalities”).
• Libertarians often twist logic to claim that civil rights, handicap access, food and drug safety, transportation safety, and many other aspects of society requiring regulation would be handled better by the free market. When you couple this idea with the risk-limiting concept of a corporation, you get, for example, managers in drug companies deciding, without an FDA, which drugs are safe to bring to market, without having to accept the full consequences of a wrong choice.

It’s often said that the major parties are simply too “ideological” to compromise, as if the people involved are just so passionate about their ideals and principles that any deviation is a sacrifice of what they feel is right. But this doesn’t make any sense, based on the evidence. It’s hard to be ideological without any clear principles we can identify.

Because of these inconsistencies, we are left in the uncomfortable position of not being able to rely on a label to figure out what’s right and wrong and which politicians and pundits to agree with on the issues. That is, we have no choice but to think for ourselves.