Liberal hypocrisy and the incivility of the left...

We've all witnessed the liberal establishment pouncing on Rush Limbaugh this past week because of comments which he directed at Sandra Fluke, a long time liberal activist.

Brian Maloney, writing at his Blog Radio Equalizer, notes how, "When looking for fresh examples of 'progressive' hate talk, it really doesn't take much digging. From any day's libtalk lineup, pick an hour at random and one or more will usually slither its way to the surface quickly enough. But why go to the trouble? We've already done the work for you, tracking lefty smears by the hundreds (thousands?) here at this site for years. It's all right here.

Despite their horrible nature, it's quite rare to see these instances picked up by the establishment media. Conservatives apparently deserve to be slandered. That's why the latest manufactured OUTRAGE (!!!!!!!!!!!!!) from our 'progressive' friends rings hollow. If subjected to the same standard applied to Rush Limbaugh this week, not one libtalker would still be on their air. Instead, two of the most hateful spent today celebrating a new cable talk deal." (See his full post here).

Remember when Alec Baldwin made an appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien on December 12, 1998, eight days before President Bill Clinton was to be impeached, and said, "..if we were in another country...we would stone Henry Hyde to death and we would go to their homes and kill their wives and their children. We would kill their families, for what they’re doing to this country."

Where was the liberal outrage?  If Rush Limbaugh crossed a line, isn't it fair to say that Alec Baldwin not only crossed the line but obliterated it?  How about the thousands of other examples of liberal hate speech provided at Brian Maloney's Blog? 

Hypocrisy is the pretension to qualities which one does not possess. Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, in a sermon delivered in the presence of Pope Benedict XVI on March 11, 2007, explained the gravity of hypocrisy: "Hypocrisy is the sin that is most powerfully denounced by God in the Bible and the reason for this is clear. With his hypocrisy, man demotes God, he puts him in second place, putting the creature, the public, in first place. "Man sees the appearance, the Lord sees the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7): Cultivating our appearance more than our heart means giving greater importance to man than to God.


Hypocrisy is thus essentially a lack of faith; but it is also a lack of charity for our neighbor in the sense that it tends to reduce persons to admirers. It does not recognize their proper dignity, but sees them only in function of one's own image.

Christ's judgment on hypocrisy is without appeal: "Receperunt mercedem suam" (They have already received their reward)! A reward that is, above all, illusory, even on a human level because we know that glory flees from those that seek it, and seeks those who flee from it.

Jesus' invectives against the scribes and the Pharisees also help us understand the meaning of purity of heart. Jesus' criticisms focus on the opposition between the "inside" and the "outside," the interior and the exterior of man. 'Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead men's bones and filth. So you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity' (Matthew 23:27-28).

The revolution which Jesus brings about here is of incalculable significance. Before him, except for some rare hint in the prophets and the Psalms — 'Who will ascend the mountain of the Lord? Those whose hands are innocent and whose hearts are pure' (Psalm 24:3) — purity was understood in a ritual and cultural way; it consisted in keeping one's distance from things, animals, persons or places that were understood to contaminate one and separate one from God's holiness. Above all, these were things associated with birth, death, food and sexuality. In different forms and with different presuppositions, other religions outside the Bible shared these ideas.

Jesus makes a clean sweep of all these taboos and does so first of all by certain gestures: He eats with sinners, touches lepers, mixes with pagans. All of these were taken to be highly unsanitary things. He also sweeps away these taboos with his teachings. The solemnity with which he introduces his discourse on the pure and the impure makes apparent how conscious he was of the novelty of his doctrine. "And he called the people to him again and said to them: 'Hear me all of you and understand; there is nothing outside a man that by going into him can defile him. It is the things that come out of a man that can defile him.... For from within, out of the heart of a man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man'" (Mark 7:14-17,21-23)."

Jesus knew that the pharisees often preached a good game but that they failed to live up to what they preached. Which is why He told His listeners, "Do as they say, not as they do." Might not the same be said of the liberal mainstream media with its selective outrage?