Comment Re:Well It's About Time! (Score 1) 805
I have a law that is similar to the one you describe, but more general. I call it Meece's Law of Political Hypocrisy. It states that 'In a two party system, claims of hypocrisy can always be reversed'.
They are therefore nearly always irrelevant to the conversation.
The law generally works, because in a two party system, parties are invariably opposed to each other on every issue. So if one party switches sides on an issue, the other side needs to switch too.
An example:
dem: We shouldn't be the police men of the world (referring to iraq). I'm not for interventionism.
repub: You're a hypocrite. You were for intervention in kosovo.
dem: (reverses hypocrisy) Well, you didn't support the Kosovo intervention, but now you support the iraq intervention.
This is why I don't like to ever claim hypocrisy, and ignore claims when made my others.
Certainly there are nuanced positions, and subtle ways in which you can explain the flip-flops ( it was different then, etc), but the whole thing becomes muddled and pointless. It's much better to invoke Meece's law and move on to the actual topic at hand.
They are therefore nearly always irrelevant to the conversation.
The law generally works, because in a two party system, parties are invariably opposed to each other on every issue. So if one party switches sides on an issue, the other side needs to switch too.
An example:
dem: We shouldn't be the police men of the world (referring to iraq). I'm not for interventionism.
repub: You're a hypocrite. You were for intervention in kosovo.
dem: (reverses hypocrisy) Well, you didn't support the Kosovo intervention, but now you support the iraq intervention.
This is why I don't like to ever claim hypocrisy, and ignore claims when made my others.
Certainly there are nuanced positions, and subtle ways in which you can explain the flip-flops ( it was different then, etc), but the whole thing becomes muddled and pointless. It's much better to invoke Meece's law and move on to the actual topic at hand.
