Hoist With His Own Petard Yet Again

When last I had cause to borrow the famous Shakespearean line in the title of this essay and apply it to Justin Trudeau aka Captain Airhead it was in reference to the scandal known as the "Kokanee Grope." Airhead, as you may recall, had made feminism a key element of his carefully constructed personal image and accordingly had adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards "sexual harassment", insisting that when a woman makes an accusation of sexual harassment she must be believed. He mercilessly enforced this standard on his ministers and MPs and demanded that the leaders of other parties do the same. Then it was revealed that he himself, twenty years earlier, had been accused of making inappropriate sexual advances to a female reporter in British Columbia. The accusation, which had appeared in a BC newspaper within days of the incident and before Trudeau had a political career to sabotage was highly credible compared to many similar accusations that were being made against others at the same time. Although Trudeau had told the press, when he first announced his zero-tolerance policy, that he would hold himself to the same standard, when the time came for him to do so, he instead made an excuse of the sort that he would never have accepted from anyone else. He failed to hold himself to his own standard.


Neither then nor now do I accept as valid the phony standard Airhead was applying to others. It is utter foolishness to say that whenever a woman makes an accusation of sexual misbehaviour against a man she must be believed. I personally know of instances where women have made false accusations of this nature out of spite and vindictiveness and ruined someone's life. I doubt that there is anyone, with the slightest degree of experience in the real world, who, if honest, could not testify to personal knowledge of at least one such case. It is that common. Making this sort of false accusation is a feminine weapon of choice in the "war of the sexes." Anyone who says otherwise is either a liar, someone who has led an extremely sheltered existence, or a stultus damnatus. It is absolutely insane to suggest that women should always be believed when they make accusations of this sort. It is also a huge violation of a long-standing, rightly-venerated, principle of our legal and judicial system that someone accused of a crime has the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a fair trial in a court of law.


Although I have no respect for Trudeau's absurd feminist standard of behaviour - and refuse to pretend otherwise - since Trudeau claimed to believe in it, and made a huge show out of believing it, and of requiring others to adhere to it, it is only right that he be held to his own standard. He ought to have been made to resign the office of Her Majesty's Canadian Prime Minister since he would have demanded the resignation of anyone else in that situation.


My response to the recent revelation of photographs and a video of Captain Airhead in blackface on three separate occasions is no different. I do not accept Justin Trudeau's progressive moral standards in which racism is ranked as the worst of all evils, nor do I accept the progressive idea of what does and does not constitute racism, and, unlike the Conservative Party, its present leader, and "conservative" commentators in the main-stream media I refuse to pretend that I do so. There is nothing inherently and necessarily insulting to the people of one race in a member of another race's dressing up like one of them and incorporating skin colour makeup into the costume. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a moron, a fool, an idiot, and just plain stupid. Perhaps next progressives will be demanding that the actress who plays Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West in Stephen Schwartz’s hit Broadway musical version of Gregory Maguire’s Wicked owes Kermit the Frog an apology for wearing “greenface.”


Progressives, in maintaining that blackface is racist, point to the history of how it was used in the old minstrel shows in the days of slavery and segregation Suppose we concede that in these cases blackface was used to mock black people, kind of like how black comedians mock white people on a daily basis, and further concede that this mockery constituted racism. Note that these concessions are offered merely for the sake of making a point for to accept the progressive judgment that the mockery of blacks by whites is racist but the mockery of whites by blacks is okay requires that we accept progressivism’s application to race relations of Marxist theories that, in their original application to economic classes, have been thoroughly disproven, and are no more valid when re-applied to other areas of life. The concessions having been granted for the sake of argument, it in no way logically follows from blackface’s having been used in the past to mock black people in a racist way that each and every use of skin-darkening cosmetics in cosplay is therefore also racist. There is no way to connect the premise with the conclusion that does not involve a huge leap of invalid inductive reasoning. I defy you to find such a way. You cannot do it because it simply cannot be done. The progressives who insist that we accept the conclusion have never really tried to make the connection. They do not rely upon reason and argumentation but rather upon a form of bullying. "Either you agree with us or you are a racist too."


My point, in saying all of this, is not that Trudeau ought to be let off the hook in this latest scandal. I may not respect progressivism’s standards pertaining to racism but Trudeau certainly claims to do so. Indeed, antiracism has been as important an element of his constructed image as feminism, and he has not only professed to respect progressivism’s standards, but demanded that everyone else do so as well. He has been extremely, ahem, liberal in throwing the epithet “racist” at his critics on the right, and his campaign for re-election has largely been built upon the laughably ridiculous suggestion that Andrew Scheer’s Conservative Party is some sort of front for neo-Nazism. If these photographs and video had involved a candidate of either the Conservative or People’s Party, no apology on the part of that candidate would have been good enough for Trudeau, he would have demanded that Scheer or Bernier throw the candidate under the bus, and then, after they had done so, would have continued to throw the photographs in their faces for the duration of the election campaign. I am neither guessing nor claiming access to divine middle knowledge here – it is a simple extrapolation from how Trudeau has always behaved in the past. Trudeau, who has been merciless in his judgement of others accused of racism, deserves no mercy now that these bizarre skeletons have been emerging from his own closet. My point is that Trudeau’s hypocrisy can be condemned without giving credit to progressivism’s absurd standards and rewarding its thuggish behaviour.


It would be most helpful here if we were to consider the nature of hypocrisy. Many think that hypocrisy is the failure to live up to one’s own moral standards. Hypocrisy is more than mere moral failure, however. Nobody perfectly lives up to his own moral standards – unless he has set the bar extremely low. Hypocrisy, as the term’s etymology suggests – it is derived from the Greek word for playing a role on stage – lies not in failing to live up to one’s standards but in pretending that one does so live up to them. It is putting on a big show about how superior and virtuous you are to all others. The word could almost have been coined just to describe Justin Trudeau and his “virtue-signaling.”


It follows, from what we have just seen, that hypocrisy is worse than mere moral failure because it magnifies moral failure by adding a layer of deception. This is not the only reason hypocrisy is worse than moral failure. Hypocrisy has been described as “the tribute vice pays to virtue” but the flip side to that is that fallen human nature being what it is, hypocrisy does not just bring discredit upon the hypocrite but upon moral standards themselves. As St. Paul put it in the second chapter of his epistle to the Romans:


Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonourest thou God? For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you, as it is written. (vv. 23-24)


Consider the generation that brought about the Sexual Revolution, and indeed, the general Moral Revolution, after the Second World War. Their most frequent accusation against older generations was of “hypocrisy.” By making this accusation, however, it was not the failure of their parents to live up to the traditional moral standards that they had inherited and were trying to pass on that the younger generation was attacking but the standards themselves. By contrast, when Jesus Christ condemned the hypocrisy of the Pharisees He upheld the Mosaic moral standards that the Pharisees taught while condemning their sinful actions and self-righteous posturing: “The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.” (Matt. 23:2-3). For an interesting extended discussion of this contrast between these two types of “anti-hypocrisy” see Jeremy Lott’s In Defense of Hypocrisy: Picking Sides in the War on Virtue (2006).


The traditional moral standards that the aforementioned generation used the hypocrisy of previous generations to attack were sound moral standards. They were for the most part the basic standards of Christendom, the rules which Christians and Jews both believe were handed down by God Himself at Mt. Sinai and which Christians believe were most fully explained in the teachings of Jesus Christ. In the teachings of Christianity these standards have the weight of divine authority behind them. They also – at least the commandments governing human interaction such as “thou shalt do no murder”, “thou shalt not commit adultery” and “thou shalt not steal” – are standards which in one form or another, have been a part of most if not all, moral codes in every society throughout human history. They also, therefore, carry the additional weight of a natural, moral, law testified to by near universal human recognition.


The progressive standards that Trudeau has been preaching in the most obnoxious way possible are not like this. “Thou shalt not be racist”, “thou shalt not be sexist”, “thou shalt not be homophobic”, etc. do not have the weight of divine authority. Nor do they, having been newly thought up within the last century, carry the weight of a natural law to which all human societies universally testify. Indeed, the exact opposite is the case. All human societies have historically promoted in-group loyalty, it being somewhat necessary for the cohesion apart from which no society could function. No human society has historically treated outsiders as having an equal claim on the benefits of membership with actual members and would have regarded anyone who suggested that they ought to be treated that way as being crazy.


The acceptance of progressivism’s new moral standards requires the belief that we have undergone some sort of massive, collective, quantum leap forward in moral understanding, starting about seven decades ago. Considering that these same decades have seen the desire to bring future generations into our world decrease dramatically, as indicated by decreasing fertility rates and the demand for contraceptive technology and abortion, the desire to leave this world increase, as indicated by rising suicide rates and the demand for euthanasia, and a huge increase in the use of substances that either induce an artificial euphoria or numb the senses as well as countless other ways of escaping reality, this seems highly unlikely. Leaving aside the consideration of these things as moral issues in their own right, collectively, they are all indicative of a major drop in happiness, which has been recognized since ancient times as the end to which morality is the means. This is hardly consistent with what would be expected from a quantum leap forward in moral thinking. The evidence rather suggests that we have been in a period of serious moral decay.


The progressive new morality is a poor substitute for the old, traditional, morality and not only because of its novelty and artificiality or for the reasons given in the last paragraph. The old rules – “thou shalt do no murder”, “thou shalt not commit adultery”, “thou shalt not steal”, etc. – forbade actions, specific actions, and were clear and unambiguous. While Jesus Christ, in the Sermon on the Mount, taught that these commandments also forbid certain internal thoughts and attitudes, His point was that divine judgement is deeper and more thorough than human judgement. “Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.” (1 Sam. 16:7). Furthermore, to apply God’s commandments to the heart in the way of which He spoke simply means that when the commandment tells you that a particular act is wrong, it is as wrong to commit that act in your imagination as it is to commit it in actual deed. Anyone who knows the literal meaning of sins such as “adultery” and “murder”, can easily grasp what it means to commit these sins in one’s thoughts.


The exact opposite is the case for the progressive new morality. The sins this new morality prohibits – racism, sexism, homophobia, and the like, are first and foremost, thoughts and attitudes of the heart and mind. They are thought crimes. Since they cannot be seen by other human beings except through words and actions, they must be translated into rules governing words and actions. To make the prohibition of a thought crime your starting point, however, and from there extrapolate applications to words and deeds, is to give yourself license to forbid almost anything. In the 1960s the list of things considered to be “racist” was short, and the most prominent items on the list were various laws and other state policies believed to be unjust. Today, the list of things considered to be “racist” is encyclopedic in length, and the most prominent items are personal acts which, if they hurt others, hurt only their feelings. This is why totalitarian governments love to create thought crimes. This is why the prohibition of thought crime is bad morality.


Now, if someone is shown to be a hypocrite is his hypocrisy meliorated or worsened by the worthlessness of the moral standard he has violated?


The answer is that it is worsened. If that seems counterintuitive, remember the first point we made about hypocrisy – that it is not the same as mere moral failure. Mere moral failure may be meliorated if the standard one fails to live up to is not worth living up to in the first place. This is not true of hypocrisy because hypocrisy, the boasting of virtue one does not possess, the bald-faced contradiction of one’s projected image of oneself by one’s personal behaviour, is a composite evil that adds other layers of badness to moral failure, to which the badness of the professed moral standard becomes yet another layer. This is all the more true in this case because the bad moral standard in question exists for the very purpose of enabling progressives to get all puffed up over how much more morally enlightened they are than not only all living non-progressives but all past generations as well. In other words it exists to generate hypocrisy like that of Justin Trudeau.


It was refreshing last Wednesday and Thursday, to watch Captain Airhead finally make an apology for something he had done himself. He had avoided doing so in the Kokanee Grope scandal last year, and refused to do so in the SNC Lavalin scandal earlier this year. He much prefers to offer apologies on behalf of the country collectively for things done by previous generations, usually for things that don’t warrant an apology and to people who do not deserve one. The fact that he did not immediately resign his office and his leadership of the Liberal Party, withdraw from the election, and basically pay the same price he would have demanded of any of his subordinates in the same position, shows, however, that these apologies were as fake as any of the others and therefore, themselves, just further examples of his hypocrisy. When, on Friday morning, he gave a press conference in a desperate attempt to change the conversation, and announced his plan to fight gun crimes in Canada by banning weapons that have been used in high profile mass shootings elsewhere in the world but have not played a significant role in domestic gun violence, he came across as being as smug and self-righteous as ever.


Trudeau’s re-election campaign had, up to this point, largely consisted of throwing accusations of racism and white supremacy against the Conservatives. It is understandable, therefore, and was perhaps inevitable, that the response of the Conservative Party and small-c conservative commentators in the mainstream media to this scandal and the revelation of Trudeau’s hypocrisy could mostly be summarized in the words “Trudeau is bad because he is the real racist.” I firmly believe it to be a mistake to condemn Trudeau in such a way as to affirm the false progressive morality he preaches. The response of Maxime Bernier was the appropriate one. “I am not going to accuse @Justin Trudeau of being a racist”, the leader of the right-populist People’s Party tweeted out, “But he’s the master of identity politics and the Libs just spent months accusing everyone of being white supremacists. He definitely is the biggest hypocrite in the country.”


Quite right. For that reason, and for many others that need no further enumeration here, Trudeau is unfit for the position of Her Majesty’s Prime Minister in Canada. In the spirit of Evelyn Waugh let me add, that if the Liberals, who have been rallying behind the filius canis who is their disgraced leader, get elected again, the bulk of the populace of this, our fair Dominion, will have proven that they do not deserve the right to participate in the selection of Her Majesty’s Ministers.