LIMBAUGH: Who is a hypocrite?

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By David Limbaugh

COMMENTARY:

Liberals are outraged at the supposed hypocrisy of Sarah Palin (and conservatives) for supporting abstinence-only education and family values generally in light of revelations concerning the pregnancy of her teenage daughter. It's only fair, then, that they should be called upon to explain their own hypocrisy in the compassion, privacy, gender and race departments.

Liberals are sick and tired of conservatives lecturing them about family values. Yet it is liberals who do most of the moralizing and sermonizing, seeming to derive their entire sense of superior self-worth in favorably comparing themselves with heartless, bigoted conservatives.

Liberals claim a monopoly on compassion for the poor, minorities, women and homosexuals. Yet when they get the chance to score political points, they abandon their allegiance to these groups as quickly as Barack Obama threw the Rev. Jeremiah Wright under the bus. Just ask Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice or Michael Steele.

Liberals are fed up with conservatives for trying to regulate their "private" behavior. Yet it is they who want to regulate every minute aspect of our lives, from smoking to eating to weapons to energy consumption to confiscatory taxation to health care to retirement security.

Liberals insist that what a public official does in his private life is irrelevant to his public fitness or conduct. Yet they're now telling us the private conduct even of a relative of a conservative candidate is fair game.

While misidentifying and condemning continued conservative support for Sarah Palin as hypocrisy, they're putting on a disgraceful clinic in what real hypocrisy looks like. They're showing us firsthand how they treat women who refuse to toe the liberal line, just as they've shown us how they treat African-Americans who dare stray from their liberally assigned ideology.

The Washington Post's columnist Richard Cohen, demonstrating his liberal erudition and enlightenment, described Mr. McCain's selection of Mrs. Palin as "a sitcom of a vice presidential choice and a disaster movie if she moves up to the presidency." In mocking Newt Gingrich for defending Mrs. Palin, Mr. Cohen displayed his respect for the fairer sex by comparing her to a horse. "It's a pity Gingrich was not around when the Roman Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, better known by his nickname Caligula, reputedly named Incitatus as a consul and a priest. Incitatus was his horse."

Regaling in smug self-satisfaction for putting it to an impressive, self-made, no-nonsense, but alas conservative woman, Mr. Cohen went on to attack Republican spokesmen for defending Mrs. Palin, which he says betrays "a feeling of consummate contempt for the intelligence of the American people - a contempt that will be justified should Palin be the factor that makes McCain a winner in November."

Mr. Cohen is not the only celebrated media liberal who believes only idiots could support Mrs. Palin. NBC's Andrea Mitchell suggested only uneducated Hillary Clinton voters, "not college-educated ones," could possibly support Mrs. Palin.

In their world of twisted logic and values, liberals believe they've come upon the smoking gun with the Palin pregnancy. They are wholly oblivious to the endearing aspects of this story, from Sarah and Todd Palin's unqualified love and support for their daughter to Bristol Palin's decision to marry the baby's father and give birth to this child.

They see in this pregnancy slam-dunk proof of Sarah Palin's hypocrisy because she supports abstinence-only education - as if she claims abstinence-only is foolproof and as if her opposition to government-supported condom distribution caused this pregnancy. But why should that surprise us when leftists blamed Hurricane Gustav on Mrs. Palin's insufficient deference to the liberals' man-made global warming narrative?

Many liberals can't fathom why this pregnancy isn't damaging Mrs. Palin's and Mr. McCain's credibility as social conservatives. They can't comprehend how anyone could continue to trumpet moral values once he or someone close to him has committed a sin, as if moral perfection is a precondition to upholding moral standards.

The liberal position is morally bankrupt and suicidal to civilization. It is anathema to the Judeo-Christian worldview.

If one were disqualified from advocating moral standards because of his own sinful nature, we could have no moral standards because none of us approaches moral perfection. Thus, the logical consequence of the liberals' attempted intimidation of any sinner (and her mother) for promoting moral standards is the wholesale eradication of those standards.

By taking this absurd position, the liberal exposes his own practical opposition to moral standards and the utter cynicism in his claim to represent values voters.

What truly bothers liberals is that conservative Sarah Palin is living out her compassion, her values, her love of family and her strong womanhood rather than just mouthing empty, self-serving bromides.

If you want a real lesson in liberal compassion, gender-neutrality and rank hypocrisy, stay tuned because they're just getting warmed up.

But so is Sarah.

David Limbaugh is a nationally syndicated columnist and lawyer. His book "Bankrupt: The Intellectual and Moral Bankruptcy of Today's Democratic Party" was released recently in paperback.