Was Shammai a Hypocrite

 Last sabbath our synagogue had a visiting scholar. It was Rabbi Joseph Telushkin.

One of his talks mentioned Shammai, the Jewish sage who lived from about 60 BCE to about 30 CE.

As, Rabbi Telushkin notes, Shammai is today remembered as something of a grouch. The first two images are near Shammai's grave in Meron (they are both from the site http://www.zissil.com/topics/Shammai-the-Elder. 


The third is a painting of Shammai and Hillel (Hillel was born decades before Shammai and so the painting is a bit unrealistic).

This comes from a famous story from the Babylonian Talmud in tractate Shabbat, folio page 31a. In this story,

"... it happened that a certain heathen came before Shammai and said to him, 'Make me a proselyte, on condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot.' Thereupon he repulsed him with the builder's cubit which was in his hand.<sup>.."

However chapter one of the Pirkei Avot, a.k.a., "Sayings of the Fathers",  contains the following, " ...</sup> Shammai said...  receive every man with a pleasant expression of countenance."

The advice of pleasant expression and his actions with the heathen seem in conflict but we do not know when these two events took place, it may have been many years apart. Or, it could be that in Avot, Shammai is regretting what he did with the heathen. Alternatively, Shammai may have even received the heathen with a pleasant expression but then got angry.

Anyway, the situation is complicated by the fact that Shammai is quoted many times in both the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmud.  In most cases, Shammai rules that both positive and negative commandments are to be followed strictly, e.g., he ruled that young children should fast on Yom Kippur on page 77a of the tractate yoma  "They said about Shammai the Elder [HaZaken] that he did not want to feed his children with one hand, to avoid having to wash it. This prevented the children from eating during all of Yom Kippur. Due to concerns about the health and the suffering of his children, they decreed that he must feed them with two hands, forcing him to wash both hands. " ( in this translation, the bold words are those actually in the text, the unbold words are implied). 

Actually, Shammai was not always stricter than Hillel. There were times when he was more lenient and some of these are covered in the Mishna Eduyot   

Anyway, it got me thinking. 

Emails Hillary vs Ivanka

 Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton famously used a private email account for Government email (the first image is from Hillary's discussion of her private email account in March 2015).

Ivanka Trump, daughter of current President Trump and advisor to the President (seen in the second image) also used a private email account for Government email.

Donald Trump, both as a candidate for President and as President criticized Hillary and defended Ivanka.

Is this hypocrisy?

First off, it is legal to use private email for government business and in some situations necessary (I did this myself when the government server was down). However, such use has restrictions, for example, if you send government email using a private account, you are supposed to send a copy to your government email account to comply with the government records regulations. Also, you may not use private email to hide your actions or send government information to unauthorized persons and, most importantly, you may not use private email to send classified information (in fact you may not use regular government email for classified purposes, you must use the classified network).

As far as I can tell, Ivanka is guilty of using private email when there was no need to do so and also for sending government information to non government officials.

Hillary, on the other hand, was guilty of just about everything you could think of, including destruction of her emails and privately constructed server which held government records not elsewhere available and transmitting confidential (even secret) information on a non government email account. So the two situations are not equivalent and criticizing Hillary while, in part defending Ivanka is certainly reasonable, although Ivanka does bear a certain measure of guilt.

Golfing Presidents

 Both President Donald Trump and former President Barack Obama played golf during their time as President.

The first image is of Trump in Scotland (I think at Saint Andrews, although the Trump Organization licenses a course with the name Andrews in Ireland) in July 2018 (Getty image) subsequent to a State visit.

The second image is of Obama in 2011 with former Speaker of the House John Boehner. They are playing golf one of the three golf courses on the grounds of Andrews Air Force Base.

Both Trump and Obama were arguably mixing recreation with Presidential business.

The only difference here is that during his campaign for President, Trump criticized Obama's devotion to golf as a example of not working. CNN put together a number of clips of this and it is available here.

Whether this is hypocrisy or Trump changing his mind or just performance art is difficult to determine. I'm inclined to think Trump just doesn't care about being consistent and although it is hypocrisy, it is a casual, not strategic kind of hypocrisy.

In any event, one thing Obama and Trump have in common, in my opinion, is a reluctance to develop their own legislative language. Obama, for example, famously relied on Congress (primarily through then Senator Baucus) , on the legislation that came to be known as Obamacare. Trump, relied a collection of House Republicans for his signature Tax restructuring bill.  Surely golf must be more fun than reading through proposed statutes.

Warren's About Face on Sessions

In mid 2017, US Senator Elizabeth Warren was one of the leaders of a call for Attorney General William Sessions to resign.

Now, less than 18 months later she is calling the resignation of Sessions a constitutional crisis.

It could be that Warren changed her overall opinion but allows to the opinion that Sessions has 'protected' the work of special prosecutor Mueller. 


However, I can't find any evidence prior to November 2018, of, say, a Warren statement praising Sessions or a Warren statement saying she was wrong in calling for Sessions to resign.


If these don't exist, then it would be hypocrisy.




Article and photo from the Boston Herald here.

Another hypocrisy column: this time in USA Today

Glen Reynolds, a professor of law at Tennessee and a relatively well known blogger (he is on the right in the first image which also has his two brothers), writes a weekly column for USA Today. Yesterday, the title of the column was,

Sen. John McCain's funeral put Washington's vicious political hypocrisy fully on display.

The column makes the point that, in 2000, a number of Republicans said nasty things about McCain and in 2008, a lot of Democrats said nasty things about McCain (the image shows Madonna at a concert where she compared McCain to Hitler and Robert Mugabe) but at McCain's funeral, former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama praised McCain.

The point is a good one but I have a problem with calling it hypocrisy. This is because, neither Bush nor Obama were the people who said nasty things about McCain in 2000 and 2008.   Also, the people who did say nasty things  back are not quoted with respect to McCain in 2018. 

I've made approximately the same distinction in other posts but since this column was in USA Today, I thought I'd redo the distinction once again.

 

 

The column is available here.

Madonna's image is from an article on that 2008 concert.

The photo of the Reynolds brothers is from a post on the Instapundit blog.

 

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Marco Rubio on Trump/Kim vs Obama/Castro

The image to the left is from a south Florida WLRM publication which accuses Senator Marco Rubio of Hypocrisy. The accusation is that Rubio criticized former President Obama for the same thing current President Trump did, namely meeting a dictator. The double standard is a type of hypocrisy but not as strong as if, say, Obama would have denounced the Trump/Kim meeting (he has not done so as of the day of this post).

The article has a short quote from Rubio on the Obama/Castro meeting and from Rubio on the Trump/Kim meeting.

 However, the article brings up an additional point which is important, namely, what did the US get out of the meeting.  There is good reason to differentiate between summits that achieve good results and those that don't.

So what did the US get out of the Obama meeting with Raul Castro?  There was a release of some political prisoners (some of whom were rearrested soon after Obama left Cuba).  What did the US give up? There were some economic and travel restrictions that were reduced or eliminated. The US placed diplomatic personnel in Cuba but then removed the personnel. Many of the diplomatic personnel had contracted illness in Cuba. The US concessions to Cuba were canceled by Trump in mid 2017.

What did the US get out of the Trump meeting with Kim Jung Un?  Several political prisoners were released before the meeting. More importantly, North Korea abandoned the testing of bombs and missiles and declared it policy to denuclearize the Korean peninsula before the Trump/Kim meeting. Some of the North Korea WMD sites are in the process of being destroyed by the North Koreans as of the date of this post.  Of course, the eventual results of this overall process are as yet unknown.

There is another important difference between the two meetings. In the case of the Trump/Kim meeting, South Korea had played an independent and also intermediary role and had it's own summit between North and South Korean leaders before the US meeting. In addition Kim visited China before the North/South Korea event. No U.S. friendly nation played such a role in the Trump/Castro meeting although both Canada and the Vatican contacts were used for logistical arrangements.


The WLRM article is here.

Article of CubaUS thaw is here.

News of re-arrest of Cuban prisoners released is here.

News of illness of US diplomatic personnel in Cuba is here.

Article on US/North Korea summit is here.

Irwin sent me a link to a video of people criticizing Obama and/or praising Trump for summitry with dictators.  That had a lot of very short statements and so was difficult to analyze.

Supreme Court Decision Seems to Turn on Colorado Commission Hypocrisy

Yesterday the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in favor of Jack Phillips in a case between him and the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

There is a lot in the decision that is technical and distinguishes the Phillips case from other cases and places it in the perspective of other civil rights rulings and discusses other administrative issues. These issues are complex and I don't pretend to understand them.

However, one aspect of this case involves the issue of a double standard (closely related to hypocrisy) and it seems to be an important element. Apparently, in several cases, the Colorado Commission approved of bakers refusing to decorate cakes* with anti gay marriage themes but in Phillips case did not approve Phillips refusal to decorate a cake with a gay marriage theme.

The commission apparently disparaged Phillips and his beliefs in clear and unambiguous language in the administrative record. That demonstrated the disparate treatment was likely intentional not accidental (and it is also stunning that a public body would act that way).

* the case is not about 'refusing to bake a cake' as it is described in many media reports, it is about refusing to decorate a cake but this is not a hypocrisy issue


The image is of Jack Phillips of the Mastercake Cakeshop from a Slate article.

Slate article here.

The Supreme Court decision is here. The discussion of the Commission's disparate treatment of the pro and anti gay marriage bakers is on page 2 of a 59 page ruling.

Blaming Her Own Constituents for Her Previous Opinions

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of NY was once a US representative. Her district included Albany and  Schenectady.

Back when she represented that district she opposed gun control legislation and advocated stronger measures to restrict illegal immigration.

Now, her opinions have shifted 180 degrees.

She blames her previous opinions on her district constituents for making her ignorant. She says that only after becoming a Senator and talking to people in Brooklyn, did she realize her errors. 

There are some problems here since: she lived in NYCity for 10 years before she moved to Albany; they actually have newspapers and TV in Albany; she could have spoken to other US representatives. Also, she only represented the district in Albany for 2 years (2007 to 2009).  In that district, notwithstanding Gillibrand's characterization of it (being ashamed of her constituents), Obama received 58% and 59% in 2008 and 2012 and Clinton 54% in 2016. Also, she says her district was 98% white and it is actually closer to 80%.

So probably she was saying something she didn't believe in when she was a representative or is doing so now.  That's hypocrisy but not particularly damaging or serious since many, probably most, people naturally assume U S Senators (particularly the ones that change their positions 180 degrees) are prone to that. 

Irwin suggested that like the late Senator Robert Byrd and the late Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black (both of whom were KKK members and later renounced their membership), Gillibrand simply changed her mind on the issue.

Looking first at Senator Byrd; in the late 1950s, as he was running for the US Senate, he claimed to have left the KKK in 1942, however, as late as  late as 1946 he wrote a letter, essentially praising the Klan. Because of that letter, I would have classified him as a hypocrite in the late 1950s (he was born in 1917).  By the end of his career (2010), he had probably actually changed his mind.

Looking at Justice Black, in the 1920s Black joined the Klan but discontinued his membership in 1925. Nonetheless, in 1926 as he was running for Senator in Alabama he went to numerous Klan sponsored events and did not renounce the Klan at any of them. He later told a biographer that he joined the Klan so that it would not be dominated by irresponsible people and also said that he joined all groups that would get him votes but also said that joining the Klan was a mistake.  This make him something of an opportunist and also, someone who really never truly renounced the Klan. Thus I can't really call him a hypocrite (although never really renouncing the Klan is worse).

Comparing these two to Gillibrand is interesting. Byrd's journey away from the Klan has the problem of accounting for the 1946 pro-Klan letter. Black's journey away from the Klan seems to be opportunistic by Black's own testimony. Gillibrand's journey away from his position on gun control and immigration are clouded by the impossibility of believing her excuses. A truly sorry lot.










image and story about Senator Gillibrand is here.
presidential votes from wikipedia here
demographic from ballotpedia here

Senator Byrd and Justice Black's information come from here, here, and here. 

Exxon May Counter Sue California Cities for Hypocrisy

 Exxon filed a motion in Tarrant County, TX (which includes Ft Worth, TX) District Court last week. 

The motion seeks to obtain depositions from 12+ individuals. Exxon's contention is that these individuals have possibly conspired to abuse the law in suing Exxon for covering up climate research. 

Actually, I couldn't find the word 'hypocrisy' in the Exxon motion, but the motion definitely raises this issue. This is because:

 1. seven California cities including San Mateo county are suing Exxon for conspiracy to cover up climate research which would show a drastic increase in sea level based on a 2012 meeting in La Jolla, California and,

 2. some of these counties have, post 2012, sold bonds to investors (a big one was for San Mateo County, hence the map) declaring that they either do not expect sea level rises or do not know if there are any impacts from climate change that would raise sea levels.

I don't really understand much about the relationship between cities within a county and the county bonding authority or about the legal issues involved with selling bonds or about the issue of suing for climate research suppression.  Thus, I'm not going to take a position on the hypocrisy of the people being sued. However, it is the first example I've come across where hypocrisy could be a legal issue.

Exxon's filing is here.

Is President Trump a golf hypocrite

CNN had a story that makes the case that President Donald Trump has been playing lots of golf contradicting his campaign promises to work hard as president. The story is entitled, "Donald Trump's Huge Golf Hypocrisy". Irwin sent me a link to the CNN story.



The story actually does more than that. It chronicles many statements by candidate Trump that either promise to not play golf when elected or criticize former President Barack Obama for playing golf or criticize Obama for not making deals when playing golf.  

A defense of Trump is proffered by White House press secretary Sarah Sanders. The defense is, as I understand it, that golf, when played while discussing business is not really playing golf.  In that regard, the first image is Trump playing golf with pro golfer Rory McIlroy in February 2017. The second image is Trump playing golf with Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe in the summer of 2017. Per the Sanders theory, the first game is golf the second is business.

I tried to find this theory in the 1987 book "Art of the Deal" but was unable to find it. However, even if I had, it is clear that there are plenty of times, that Trump has played golf without doing ' business'.

However, I did find an interesting article by the ghost writer of the 1987 book (who gets credit on the cover and inside so its not so 'ghosty'). He explains Trump's counterfactual statements like this, " ...facts are whatever Trump deems them to be on any given day. When he is challenged, he instinctively doubles down — even when what he has just said is demonstrably false. I saw that countless times, whether it was as trivial as exaggerating the number of floors at Trump Tower or as consequential as telling me that his casinos were performing well when they were actually going bankrupt....".

So, perhaps, "hypocrisy" isn't the best way to describe Trump's golf statements. Magical thinking might be a better way to do it.




First image from Politifact.

Second image from the Daily Mail.

CNN story is here. 

A .pdf of "Art of the Deal" is here. 

The article by Trump's ghostwriter is here.