One annoying species of meritless hypocrisy charges are those that involve neutral categories being treated as something you either favor or oppose.  For instance, both left and right have been hurling charges of hypocrisy at each other for taking different stances on the anti-war protests of the Bush years and the Tea Parties of the past year.  “Whatever happened to dissent being patriotic?”  But nobody is claiming that the Tea Partiers have no right to protest.  Rather, the Tea Partiers are criticized because they are 1) wrong on the merits, 2) using violent, racist, and homophobic rhetoric, and 3) displaying a level of hysteria and fear of the president so detached from reality as to suggest that it is at least in part motivated by a certain characteristic that makes our current president unique from all of his predecessors.  (And in case anyone got lost in the run-on end to that sentence, yes, I’m calling them racist.)  By criticizing the Tea Parties for these reasons, I am not preventing myself from taking to the streets and denouncing the president next time someone takes us to war for illegitimate reasons.

A prime example of a surface-level hypocrisy charge that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny is this post from “The Corner,” in which the tragic Jonah Goldberg endorses a reader’s condemnation of liberals for invoking the Constitution in opposing the Patriot Act but dismissing concerns that the health care bill is unconstitutional.  The argument has some superficial appeal:  liberals loved the Constitution when Bush was making laws, but now that it’s Obama they don’t care!  But with any knowledge of history and consideration of context, it’s obvious that the difference between liberal reactions to the Patriot Act and the health care bill (and conservative reactions, for that matter) is not a change in opinion over the importance of the Constitution, but rather a difference of opinion in how the Constitution applies in a given situation.  Liberals have long interpreted the Constitution to give strong protections to civil liberties while giving the government wide discretion to regulate economic matters.  The different reactions to the Patriot Act and the health care bill are perfectly consistent with such an interpretation.

-AR

And so here comes his latest masterpiece, in which he kinda sorta but not really accuses Ruth Bader Ginsburg of supporting eugenics. In a recent NY Times Magazine interview with Emily Bazelon, Ginsburg says she was surprised that the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a law outlawing the use of Medicaid funds to pay for abortions because she thought some people supported abortion rights out of a concern for population growth, “particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.” Now, a more shameless right wing hack like Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter would have ignored the distinction between positive and normative statements and blasted Ginsburg for calling for a holocaust of poor minority children. But Goldberg has intellectual scruples, so instead he just insinuates that Ginsburg might support eugenics because she doesn’t make clear whether or not she endorses the view she believed others held 29 years ago. (I’ve never met Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but I think I can safely answer Goldberg’s question: no, Ginsburg is not in favor of using abortion to limit poor and minority populations.) It’s weird to imagine a world in which every time someone made a descriptive or predictive statement they would then have to explain whether or not they were in favor of the circumstance they were describing; it would certainly make weather forecasts more interesting.

But, for kicks lets examine Goldberg’s basis for even suggesting the Ginsburg might be pro-eugenics. You see, almost 100 years ago, some prominent people did see abortion as a tool for controlling minority and/or poor populations, one of whom was a woman (like Ginsburg!) and one of whom was a Supreme Court justice (like Ginsburg!)

Of course, like a good conservative, Goldberg makes clear that the real villain is the media, with their unfair double standards, giving liberals a free pass while bullying poor conservatives. Bazelon didn’t even ask Ginsburg if she was pro-eugenics or anti-eugenics! And I bet Goldberg is right that none of those cowardly senators will ask Sotomayor if she’s pro- or anti-eugenics. Of course, the only reason one would think that such questions need to be asked is if one believes that all liberals are in fact Nazis. . . or owes 95% of his income to pretending he does.

-AR