The Case for Hypocrisy

By Daniel Rigney

I rise to speak on behalf of my client, Hypocrisy. Your honor, we will attempt to show that the only people on earth who are never guilty of hypocrisy are those who have no ideals to betray.

Those who do have ideals often miss their mark. Who among us has never lived a contradiction between lofty word and baser deed? As Walt Whitman wrote, “Do I contradict myself? Then I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.” His contemporary, Ralph Waldo Emerson, observed that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

Leaving Whitman and Emerson aside, if it please the court, let us turn to the wisdom of the spiritual teacher Jesus, who is said to have said, “Let those among you who are without blame cast the first stone.”  Or in loose translation, people who live in glass houses shouldn’t accuse others of hypocrisy.

We often hear that ours is an age of moral relativism, and yet many among us – the young  in particular –  become strict moral absolutists at the slightest hint of hypocrisy.  Even the smallest discrepancy between what grownups say and what they do can fill a teenager with indignation. Yet verily I say unto them, wait until you’re an adult, and see how long your commitment to moral perfection and absolute consistency lasts.

Politicians, too, are quick to note the seeming discrepancies of word and deed in their adversaries, and equally slow to recognize their own. They fail to heed the wit and wisdom of the philosopher Jesus when he urged us to remove the log from our own eyes so that we may see more clearly the specks in the eyes of others.

To reiterate , your honor, we submit that the only human beings on earth who are not guilty of hypocrisy are those who have no ideals or core values to betray.  Shall we then abandon all ideals, and thereby avoid any charge of hypocrisy?  And is hypocrisy the only evil in the moral universe, or the worst?

Furthermore, inasmuch as moral vanity is a shortcoming, are those who vainly accuse others of hypocrisy not themselves guilty of a double hypocrisy, being hypocrites who call others hypocrites?

We acknowledge, your honor, that hypocrisy is a matter of kind and degree, and that some hypocrisies are more egregious than others. We do not seek utter exoneration. But we are all imperfect creatures;  and is perfectionism not itself a kind of imperfection?

We submit these considerations for your review, and we humbly throw our client, Hypocritical Humanity, upon the mercy of the court.