Iowa Proves that Only Open Hypocrites Win

By Micah Tillman

If you don’t have “Faith” in your website’s list of “Issues,” you don’t win. That’s really all the explanation you need for what happened on Thursday night.

Romney’s inclusion of “American Culture & Values” in his list is close enough to “Faith” to get him second place. But the other candidates’ lists are more ambiguous, and the voting results showed it. Huckabee and Obama win. Everybody else’s (except Romney’s) percentages blend together because they don’t make Faith an issue.

A Closer Look
Take a closer look at the Republican Losers’ lists: They’ve each got “guns” but no “God.” Thompson’s site puts “God” under “Principles,” and then buries that under “Issues.” One has to hope for his sake that his webmaster is scrambling to bring God up a level or two.

McCain has his rebel image to deal with, and a focus on touchy-feely stuff like Faith wouldn’t fit. The best his site can do is, “Human Dignity & the Sanctity of Life.” But dignity and sanctity don’t win elections. One has to hope for his sake that he can figure out how Faith and “I Do What I Want” can be compatible.

And Paul has “Life & Liberty,” “Privacy,” and “Property Rights” in his list. His libertarianism scares him away from making God an issue. But it needn’t do so.

The Rules of Libertarianism
Libertarianism only bars you from turning religious issues into political ones. But making religion an issue in politics is not the same thing.

The authority you follow on an issue is what makes that issue the kind of issue it is. If you follow a politician, it’s political. If what you do is left up to you, the issue is personal. If, when left to your own devices, you decide to follow a religious figure on some issue, that issue becomes religious.

But when libertarianism — or any other political “-ism” for that matter — talks about the essential distinction between political and personal (or religious) issues, its speaking from the citizens’ point of view. Citizens shouldn’t be forced to take politicians as their authorities on personal issues.

The Logic of the Personal/Political Distinction
But that doesn’t mean that politicians have to take politicians as their authorities on political issues. If politicians could only appeal to political authorities (rather than personal, religious, or moral ones) when making decisions about political issues, we’d end up with an infinite regress.

Every politician would have to decide what to do on every political issue based on what some other politician thought should be done on those issues; but that other politician would have to think what he thinks about that issue because of what some third politician thought about it (who only thought what he thought because of what some fourth politician thought), etc.

And even if that could work, nobody trusts politicians that much.

Upon entering office, politicians are given a list of issues that are political (i.e., about which they are allowed to make decisions). But what they decide to do about each of those issues is largely personal. Whether they can tax us, for instance, is decided by the Constitution. How much they tax us, however, depends on what they personally think is best.

And if they happen to think that Jesus’ approach (call it “x”) to some political issue (call it “y”) was the best, they’re free to make a law that says, “You citizens have to do x on issue y.”

What they’re not allowed to do is make a law that says, “You have to believe that x was Jesus’ approach to y.” Personal belief is not a political issue, so politicians have no say in it.

Nor can they tell you, “You have to do whatever the Bible says.” That would be an attempt by a politician to force you to take a non-politician as your authority. And that leads to a logical contradiction.

But it’s perfectly acceptable for politicians to say, “You have to do x on political issue y, even though the Bible says to do the same thing.” (All those laws against murder and theft would be illegitimate otherwise.) Politicians just can’t start telling us what to do when it comes to personal issues like z.

Why Politicians Have to Be Hypocrites
So if Paul wants to win, he should loosen up a little. He should put an entry on his site’s “Issues” list about how his faith informs his decisions on both political and personal issues — even though he doesn’t think his faith-informed decisions on personal issues are anything but personal.

But I think it would be even more difficult for Paul to do this than McCain. To admit that the authority you follow on a political issue is not political — but personal, moral, or religious — is to admit that all politicians are necessarily hypocrites. They follow whatever authority they want, but force us — on political issues — to follow them (politicians).

In other words, they think we should do x on political issue y because their standards of right and wrong tell them it would be best. The authority they follow is some morality or other. But the moment they make a law that says we have to do x on y, they set themselves up as the authority. We have to do x on y not because morality tells us to, but because politicians tell us to.

So while politicians follow the standards of right and wrong, they expect us to follow them. And to require others to follow a different authority than you yourself follow is hypocrisy.

Only Open Hypocrites Can Win
Libertarians feel an aversion to the hypocritical nature of politics more strongly than any other political group (even though they may have never thought about their discomfort with politicians in these terms). But there’s no getting around it. The politician’s job hypocritical, and that means if we need politicians, we need hypocrites.

So those politicians who are comfortable with the necessary hypocrisy of politics are willing to talk about the personal authorities like Faith and Morality which they follow on political issues. And it looks like they’re the ones who win elections.

At least they’re honest about their hypocrisy. It’s not like they can help it.

Micah Tillman is a lecturer in the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America. His blog can be found at: http://micahtillman.com/.