Hypocrisy

[adamdray]

According to the Washington Post, the Senate will soon vote on a new endangered species law that will give private landowners more protection against the government's ability to claim their land for wildlife protection. For a moment, set aside your feelings about whether or not the government should be allowed to do that.

Recall that at the end of

Comments

[lfett]

Can I claim I am an endangered species if they come to take my house?

[steam]

Senate says one thing.

SCotUS says something else.

That's disagreement, not hypocrisy. Who supporting is takings in one place but not the other?

[seattlesparks]

Not that I'm thrilled by this decision, nor would I be /surprised/ if the federal government took a wildly hypocritical tone on this, steam is right. Unless some specific party is pushing both, that is.

Now, that said, if both end up on the books, someone had best do something to resolve the conflict between the two. And frankly, this is an incredibly stupid precedent to set, and -- taken at the big-picture level -- reflects badly on this administration. But the government is not a homogenous whole, and one element of government making a decision one way, and another pushing for a contradictory decision... that's not hypocrisy.

That's democracy.

Disorganized, maybe, and making stupid decisions, but still... :)

[glishara]

That's the advantage of being involved in politics in the United States.

You don't need to be consistent. As long as you can come up with an argument that sounds surface-plausible at the moment, the vast majority of people will accept it.

Grr. Democracy really needs an educated, informed populace to work. The failure of our free press causes me so much pain.

[yeloson]

What? You mean we can't support democracy in other countries by installing puppet dictators to support our international corporations?

Sometimes, I feel like I'm trapped in a car accident between Machiavelli and the Simpsons...