>While hypocrisy is embarrassing, proving it does not disprove the spoken
>view because the speaker falls short of its standards. Some of the greatest
>moralists (in the positive sense of great) have been great because they had
>such a personal sense of their own weaknesses.
Do people with strong senses of their own weaknesses go around prescribing behavioral standards for others? The mote in the eye and all, you know.
>To
>give one example, folks on this list periodically rail against high salaries
>earned by union leaders. Now, on one level, a lot of members could be
>pursuaded that the money would be better spent on organizing and other
>needs, but there is a message by a lot of leftists that even if there was
>infinite money available, there is just something immoral in the leaders not
>donning hair shirts. Since one of the reasons why many folks join unions is
>at least partly for crassly materialist goals, they have great sympathy for
>union leaders wanting something for themselves and, if they deliver for the
>members, don't begrudge them the pay. There is a hypocrisy in union leaders
>rhetoric of equality while taking home so much pay, but its a very human
>hypocrisy that members often sympathize with more than the hair-shirt
>morality of the Left.
U.S. union leaders are probably the highest-paid in the world, except maybe hacks in semi-official unions like Mexico's. Do they earn their money by delivering for the members, or for the U.S. working class as a whole? Compare, say, French unions, who are more militant and more politically successful (even if the union density numbers suck) - and they're paid arachides.
I think U.S. union tops should have their pay tied to performance - some combination of delivering for the members and successful new organizing.
>There is an irony that Clinton was trusted by people not despite his
>hypocrisies and lies but often because of them, since while it meant people
>could not trust his actual word, they felt it meant that in his heart he
>understood their needs and hopes, and they trusted that far more than the
>abstract platform of a lot of other folks.
Clinton's personal approval ratings were terrible. His presidential ratings were high. Lots of people were revolted by his hypocrisy and evasiveness.
Doug