In response to my Starbucks interview, one of my regular non-conservative correspondents writes:

1. Liberals I know have principles, starting with the Golden Rule. The words “bleeding heart” do not spring from nowhere. Neither does the Yiddish word “rachmonas.” You can criticize the utility of the Golden Rule, but don’t tell me it’s not a principle.
2. Hypocrisy is central to understanding the fundamental flaw of conservative political philosophy because one of the bedrock principles of conservative philosophy (the bedrock principle?) is that you are responsible for you. Bill Bennett or Rush Limbaugh will never say, “Ok, I guess I’m a hypocrite when it comes to [insert gambling or drugs here], so I’ll just shut up now.” After all, isn’t that what you’d want Dan Rather to do? “Ok, here I was, telling people for decades how scrupulously devoted to the truth I was, and now I go and let this story about Bush’s guard service get out there without adequate vetting because I really believed it and I wanted to believe it, so I just ought to admit I’m a hypocrite and shuffle off in disgrace.”

Me: Not sure what to say about item 1. I agree that there are many principled individual liberals and I agree that there are some enduring liberal principles. Though there have been many liberals, Herbert Croly for example, who rejected the idea there were, in fact, liberal principles. Regardless, the Golden Rule, I’m not sure is one of them. The rule of do unto others is also a personal rule of ethics and religion which, conservatives would say, we subscribed to just as much as liberals do. Conservatives, however, do not commit the fallacy of translating the Golden Rule into a writ of universal government interference. To the extent the Golden Rule means anything in daily life, it boils down to a niceness rule and — I’m sorry to say — that if niceness is a closely held liberal principle then liberals have a very serious hypocrisy problem.

Which brings me to point #2. I think this steals a great number of bases off a ball hit foul. Hypocrisy is not the great “flaw” of conservatism it is the great insight of conservatism. We are all hypocrites if we hold real principles because all conservative doctrines believe in original sin. We are flawed creatures. A fact government cannot change. Therefore, any principle worth holding is going to be difficult to maintain perfectly and at all times. I find it fascinating the way so many liberals cite hypocrisy as conservatism’s chief flaw not because I consider it a particularly interesting insight into conservatism but because I think it reveals a great deal about liberalism. In both of my correspondent’s criticisms (and he’s a good guy, don’t get me wrong) there’s an underlying belief that the problem with conservatism is that it doesn’t immanentize the eschaton — that it doesn’t subscribe to a totalizing conception of the political which incorporates every virtue and excludes every vice, inconsistency and contradiction. Conservatism’s flaw is that it is uninterested in making a heaven on earth. Conservatives from Kirk to Strauss to Hayek and Oakeshott would scoff at the notion that a political philosophy or orientation worth having could be devoid of hypoocrisy because only angels — to paraphrase the Federalist — are never hypocrites.

Oh, and in the case of Dan Rather. The complaint about him was never really that he was a hypocrite. The complaint was that he was big fat arrogant liar, dunce and show-boater who couldn’t see the evidence of his biases because he was too busy acting on them.

Last, I think it’s revealing that “bleeding heart” liberalism is cited as an example of liberal principles. It’s not. It’s an example of liberal emotionalism, which is often the exact opposite orientation to principled liberalism — or principled anything for that matter. Feeling passionately about something — contrary to the popular culture’s version of politics — doesn’t prove you have principles. It proves you’re excitable and leaves open the possibility you have principles.