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Monday, September 29, 2008

Purity & politics

One of the many incongruities about Victor Reppert’s position is that he’s been assailing Sarah Palin’s character. He’s implicitly cast this election as a choice between corrupt Republicans and upstanding Democrats. And he’s implicitly suggesting that we should make that moral criterion a political criterion.

But he’s set up a false dichotomy. It’s not as though Obama is a moral purist, by any stretch. For years now, Obama has found it politically expedient to cultivate the most corrupt members of the Chicago machine. And when, in running for the presidency, that became a political liability, he found it politically expedient to distance himself from his old cronies. For his part, Biden has a reputation as a plagiarist.

So how is Reppert’s moral criterion an argument for the Obama/Biden ticket? If that’s an argument against the McCain/Palin ticket, then, by parity of reasoning, it’s also and equally an argument against an Obama/Biden ticket.

For someone who pretends to be a political moralistic, Reppert’s ethical elasticity is startling.

2 comments:

  1. If you had read all of my posts, you would have realized that I criticized the veracity of the Obama campaign, particular its assertion that McCain wanted to wage a 100-year war in Iraq. Supporters of each side should hold their own candidates to high standards of veracity.

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  2. So why are you using the alleged dishonesty of Palin as a reason to vote against the McCain/Palin ticket.

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