Provisional Typology of Hypocrisy

Many of the best (clearly written, thought provoking, lucid) blogs (my favorites include Instapundit, LGF, Rantburg and Critical Mass and some of the blogs they link to) post examples of hypocrisy. There are so many examples of this in politics, business, foreign affairs, etc. that it makes an easy target. My thought is that these posts typically fail to distinguish between the types of hypocrisy. Part of the reason for this is that no one has, to my knowledge classified hypocrisy. Dictionaries basically only distinguish between ‘pretending to believe what you don’t’ and ‘pretending to be what you aren’t’. The dictionaries give many nuances but basically each falls into one of these structures. So I will be attempting to do what the dictionary doesn’t and can’t; that is, break the hypocrisies into types by consequence of the hypocrisy. The provisional typology that I am using classifies hypocrisy into the following groups:
1. Necessary hypocrisy – can’t get through the day without it
2. Annoying hypocrisy - didn’t have to do it but little consequence
3. Minimally dangerous – a few bad consequences may result someday but there is plenty of time to correct it
4. Moderately dangerous – interferes with thoughtful and effective action but doesn’t substantially prevent thoughtful and effective action
5. Significantly dangerous – substantially prevents thoughtful and effective action

An example of Type 1 hypocrisy: A worker who wants to achieve a particular result, e.g., adoption of a specification within the production process. The worker knows that an honest description of why the specification needs to be adopted, e.g., the existing specification, which the boss developed, is causing problems, would fail to be adopted (because it would assault the boss’s ego). The worker instead pretends the specification needs to be adopted to more clearly reflect the inspiring vision of the boss. Without this hypocrisy, the change can’t be made.

An example of Type 2 hypocrisy: Former President Clinton contemporaneously advocated both midnight curfews and midnight basketball leagues in high crime areas. This no doubt annoyed people who dislike hypocrisy and probably significantly annoyed people who disliked both hypocrisy and President Clinton. This hypocrisy (I assume President Clinton knew that doing both at the same time was impossible) was unnecessary because former President Clinton could have advocated “Managed activity and policing of high crime areas in which both curfews and basketball leagues would be management tools.” It was in any event of little consequence because ultimately the implementation of such curfews and basketball leagues are a function of local government and because former President Clinton's administration didn’t put any serious effort into analyzing or documenting the benefit of the curfews/leagues (neither did any advocates of the curfews or leagues as far as I can tell although that did not stop the advocacy).

An example of Type 3 hypocrisy: Former President Clinton essentially claimed that his misleading the grand jury in the matter of the charges by Paula Jones (actually the testimony in question concerned Monica Lewinsky) was basically the fault of the attorney who questioned him (I am assuming President Clinton knew that witnesses at grand juries are supposed to take that 'truth, whole truth...' oath as a charge to avoid intentionally misleading the grand jury). If this matter had been unchallenged by anyone, the grand jury process would have been negatively affected. Over time, a cottage industry would have resulted teaching people how to mislead grand juries while another cottage industry would have trained attorneys in how to avoid being mislead (this may already have happened, I don't keep up with it). This, in turn, would have made for longer grand jury work and a less efficient judicial process. The matter was however, not unchallenged and in fact, a judge invoked a penalty against him. Even if the judge had not done so, however, governments could have enacted augmented penalties against misleading grand juries to reset the balance to where it had been before the claim.

An example of Type 4 hypocrisy: During the period immediately before the 2003 military action by the US in Iraq, many people claimed that, “military force should be the last resort (hence called ‘MF=LR’) or words to that effect. It is possible that some people actually believed that paying extortion, sacrificing lives of Iraqi innocents, risking years of potential catastrophic attack with chem./bio weapons, etc. should be preferred to military force (possibly the Pope actually thought this). I think most people who said, “MF=LR” simply meant that, “as of now the risks of military force are greater than the risks of not using military force" or "the benefits of using military force are less than the risks' or some such, however that calculation was made. It seemed to me at that time that, the fact that as long as no one seriously repudiates the “MF=LR” mantra it encourages potential aggressors. However, I acknowledge that the next time a potential use of military force came up (in Liberia); I can’t recall anyone (even the Pope) making the “MF=LR” argument. Thus the danger seems to be only moderate.

An example of Type 5 hypocrisy: There are many people, including knowledgeable, thoughtful and highly intelligent people who say, “Moderate Islam is the solution to the problem of virulent Islam (hence called the MI4VI)” or words to that effect. They base such a pronouncement on the fact that in some Islamic areas there is moderation and no terrorism, some Islamic countries are US allies, some Islamic moderates denounce Islamic terrorism, fanaticism, etc., some Islamic individuals have greatly assisted the US in the defense against Islamic terrorism, some Islamic individuals serve honorably, faithfully and effectively in the armed forces of the US, some individuals say that they use Islam as a vehicle to individual dignity, charity and kindness, etc. They might be right about this. However, what if they are not? What if Islam has within it more potential for violence, hatred, etc. than other religions? What if the hate speech that comes from mosques, the murder and mutilation of woman whose punishment is minimized by Islamic religious officials, the threat to murder imagined those who slander or insult Islam no matter how trivial or unintended, the threat to murder any Moslem who renounces his/her religion, the advocacy of eternal conflict until victory over the non believers (none of which have contemporaneous and significant analogues in other faiths) is latent in even moderate Islam (examples of the proceeding are in the blogs noted above and the links they provide)? This is in fact the argument of the website Faithfreedom.org hence called FF. It may be that the people who pronounce MI4VI are correct. It may even be that this will be substantially and effectively demonstrated at some time in the near future. However, I don’t know how the MI4VI proponents may claim this is anything but a hypothesis (similarly the people at FF may only claim this is a hypothesis). The hypocrisy here is that since many MI4VI proponents are knowledgeable, thoughtful and highly intelligent, they have surely realized that their mantra is just a hypothesis. The danger here is the MI4VI proponents, first of all, are in high US government positions (none of the FF people are), and secondly, the consequences of a wrong hypothesis are potentially catastrophic.

A typology of hypocrisy based on how to not be a hypocrite or minimize your hypocrisy is found at:

http://www.hardcoretruth.com/Hypocrisy/

A discussion of why some charges of hypocrisy are ill founded is found at:

http://www.communistvampires.com/articles/hypocrisy.htm