{"id":73412,"date":"2026-02-01T01:00:41","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T06:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=73412"},"modified":"2026-02-01T12:15:04","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T17:15:04","slug":"qotd-dont-bother-accusing-progressives-of-hypocrisy-thats-a-category-errror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/02\/01\/qotd-dont-bother-accusing-progressives-of-hypocrisy-thats-a-category-errror\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Don&#8217;t bother accusing progressives of hypocrisy &#8230; that&#8217;s a &#8220;category error&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; padding: 0px 0px 10px 25px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>We have to start, I think, by rejecting the Donatist heresy. As usual I&#8217;m framing this discussion in Catholic terms because it&#8217;s easier to mesh up the discussion with Escriva that way, but you don&#8217;t have to be a theologian to see that Clown World has given itself entirely over to a version of Donatism:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>Donatists argued that Christian clergy must be faultless for their ministry to be effective and their prayers and sacraments to be valid.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strike><span style=\"color:red\">Donatists<\/span><\/strike> Democrats are the <em>real<\/em> racists, amirite? In Clown World, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hypocrisy\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">hypocrisy<\/a> is a category error:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>Hypocrisy is the practice of engaging in the same behavior or activity for which one criticizes another or the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one&#8217;s own behavior does not conform. In moral psychology, it is the failure to follow one&#8217;s own expressed moral rules and principles. According to British political philosopher David Runciman, &#8220;Other kinds of hypocritical deception include claims to knowledge that one lacks, claims to a consistency that one cannot sustain, claims to a loyalty that one does not possess, claims to an identity that one does not hold&#8221;. American political journalist Michael Gerson says that political hypocrisy is &#8220;the conscious use of a mask to fool the public and gain political benefit&#8221;.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The underlying assumption here is that there exists a standard outside of oneself. What SJW believes that? If you want a learned citation for it, get our main man Marcus Aurelius back up in here: Of each particular thing ask, what is it in itself? What is its nature?<sup>1<\/sup><\/p>\n<p>SJWs are nihilists. Hypocrisy requires an external standard, and they don&#8217;t have one. All they have is their <em>self<\/em> \u2014 which they hate, and long to extinguish, along with everything else that reminds them of their hated, hateful self. Their every thought, word, and deed aims only at that \u2014 extinction \u2014 whether they recognize it or not.<\/p>\n<p>In practice, then, SJW &#8220;hypocrisy&#8221; is a tool, a tactic \u2014 a really valuable one. They want to kick down some pillar of ambient civilization. And they&#8217;ve got all the time in the world to do it, because while they&#8217;re just getting on with it, their putative &#8220;opponents&#8221; are shrieking about <em>hypocrisy<\/em>! Often with some blather about &#8220;Chesterton&#8217;s Fence&#8221; or similar for good measure.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s Donatism, PoMo version. &#8220;If you&#8217;re going to tear down the fence, first you must explain how it got there, and what it was supposed to do, and then what you&#8217;ll be replacing it with.&#8221; No. Category error. They don&#8217;t care. They have <em>never<\/em> cared. The fence isn&#8217;t the point. Neither is the fence&#8217;s <em>replacement<\/em>, or whatever might be <em>behind<\/em> the fence, or anything else. They&#8217;ve never given any of that a second&#8217;s thought, because <em>destruction<\/em> is the point.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s the <em>only<\/em> point. Always. They have no other.<\/p>\n<p>Thus we must reject Donatism. It doesn&#8217;t matter how flawed your &#8220;priest&#8221; is. The work is bigger than the man. The work <em>transcends<\/em> the man.<\/p>\n<p>Severian, <a href=\"https:\/\/foundingquestions.wordpress.com\/2022\/05\/01\/the-way-chapter-2-guidance\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;The Way, Chapter 2: Guidance&#8221;, <em>Founding Questions<\/em><\/a>, 2022-05-01.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<ol>\n<li><em>A PoMo in joke. That&#8217;s not Aurelius, it&#8217;s Hannibal Lecter. But it&#8217;s an accurate paraphrase of Aurelius. Can you believe there was once a time when a bestselling thriller could make an allusion to Marcus Aurelius a small but important plot point? That time was 1988, for the record.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We have to start, I think, by rejecting the Donatist heresy. As usual I&#8217;m framing this discussion in Catholic terms because it&#8217;s easier to mesh up the discussion with Escriva that way, but you don&#8217;t have to be a theologian to see that Clown World has given itself entirely over to a version of Donatism: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,53,41,11,13],"tags":[360,480,577,1020,1462,997],"class_list":["post-73412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","category-quotations","category-religion","category-usa","tag-christianity","tag-hypocrisy","tag-nihilism","tag-progressives","tag-severian","tag-socialjustice"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-j64","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73412"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100647,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73412\/revisions\/100647"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}