Liberal caterwauling about Mark Sanford’s hypocrisy and the concomitant criticism of conservative and “Republican” values has been rather predictable.  However, the shrieking harpies of the left don’t realize the Sherman tank sized hole in their argument.

The failure of conservatives to live up to their values isn’t a failure of those values, but rather another data point in the conservative argument about the crooked timber of humanity i.e., that our inherent flaws routinely keep us from acting on the better angels of our nature.  It is these very conservative values that act as societal guard rails, which keep us from running off the road into the chasm of barbarity, or what progressives would call the sunny uplands of history.  Just because proponents don’t live up to those principles doesn’t negate the inherent wisdom of their merits.

Remember, the liberal charges of hypocrisy mask their real intent: to delegitimize conservative principles.  The real issue to keep in mind is not the hypocrisy, but the reality that we are in a battle of competing values.  I don’t doubt the obvious hypocrisy of the Sanfords, Ensigns, Vitters and, Craig’s of the world.  However, when they betray their professed values they hurt themselves and their families.  However, as Peter Schweizer detailed at great length in his book Do As I Say Not as I Do, when liberals fail to live up to their professed values, they end up benefitting from abandoning their principles.  A few examples:

Noam Chomsky, a dashboard saint of the left, rails from his perch at MIT about the evils of corporations and the military and capitalism in general.  Yet, he accepts Pentagon funding, created a trust fund for his children, which invests heavily in military contractors and oil companies.  The same goes Michael Moore, who claimed he didn’t own a single stock, yet his rather substantial portfolio contained investments in Halliburton, Honeywell and Boeing, all military contractors he vilified in his agitprop film Fahrenheit 9/11.

Ted Kennedy rails against tax breaks for “big oil” yet he rigged tax breaks and shelters for oil companies owned by his family.  Kennedy also supports steep estate taxes for the wealthy.  And, just as he did for his clan’s oil company, Kennedy created a web of trusts and foundations to shield their wealth from the taxman.  

Liberal hypocrisy is even more prevalent when it comes to the environment.  Al Gore, Arianna Huffington, and Barbra Streisand, demand that the rest of us drastically reduce our lifestyles, while they jet around the world in private planes from one expansive manse to the other. 

And the list goes on.  But remember hypocrisy isn’t the issue, rather it’s a liberal meme used to obfuscate the real battle of competing values.  After all what does it say about liberal values if liberals constantly abandon them to enrich themselves?