What kind of hypocrite should voters choose as their next leader? The question seems utterly cynical. But, as David Runciman suggests, it is actually much more cynical to pretend that politics can ever be completely sincere. Political Hypocrisy is a timely, and timeless, book on the problems of sincerity and truth in politics, and how we can deal with them without slipping into hypocrisy ourselves. Runciman draws on the work of some of the great truth-tellers in modern political thought--Hobbes, Mandeville, Jefferson, Bentham, Sidgwick, and Orwell--and applies his ideas to different kinds of hypocritical politicians from Oliver Cromwell to Hillary Clinton. He argues that we should accept hypocrisy as a fact of politics--the most dangerous form of political hypocrisy is to claim to have a politics without hypocrisy. Featuring a new foreword that takes the story up to Donald Trump, this book examines why, instead of vainly searching for authentic politicians, we should try to distinguish between harmless and harmful hypocrisies and worry only about the most damaging varieties.
A critical assessement of the problems of sincerity and truth in politics argues that we should accept hypocrisy as a fact of politics without resigning ourselves to it or embracing it, drawing on the lessons of such thinkers as Hobbes, Mandeville, Jefferson, Bentham, Sigwick, and Orwell.
Internationally celebrated, America's Declaration of Independence resounds throughout the earth, proclaiming to all who will listen the self-evident truth that "all men are created equal." Under President Lincoln, this historic proposition gave rise To The Fourteenth Amendment To The United States Constitution, a unique legal mandate that commands no person in this country shall be denied "equal protection of the laws."Combining transcendent political principle with sublime rule of law, this extraordinary ethic is personified in the statue of the Goddess Liberty; standing colossal and defiant in Upper New York Bay, her torch ever illuminating the heavens, she announces to all the world, by day and by night, America's solemn pledge that the tired and poor of distant lands shall, upon reaching these shores, find the elusive, coveted sanctuary heartlessly denied To The by all others.However, For many years now, In gross breach of this majestic national faith, and on a scale so massive it denies precedent, The American government has routinely, methodically, and with unspeakable cruelty, inflicted acute suffering upon hundreds of thousands of poor misfortunate souls who, hopelessly downcast, naively raised their eyes To The United States, expecting from her People the integrity to fulfill the promise of their open pledge.Who are these anonymous, unsuspecting victims of American dishonor? They are the poorest, weakest, and most helpless members of our society- the desperate and destitute paupers from other nations who, inexorably impelled by a state of extreme, unimaginable privation, migrate here in courageous disregard of unjust laws that Dr. King, were he alive today, would surely censure with prophetic severity as "morally wrong and sinful."In flagrant violation of the United States Constitution, federal immigration agents in collusion with state law-enforcement officers, daily acting under the color of governmental authority, have for years now been summarily arresting, secretly detaining, illegally imprisoning, and unilaterally extraditing these people, all in brazen disregard of the rule of law as ratified by the Founding Fathers and upheld for more than two centuries of Anglo-American jurisprudence..In 1855, Abraham Lincoln insisted that to suggest the proposition "all men are created equal" does not apply to foreigners is akin To The suggestion that the latter glorious principle does not apply to Negroes or Catholics; such a notion, declared America's greatest president, Is "hypocrisy."
In the dark says since the attack on the World Trade Center, the question that many Americans have asked is: Why? Why do 'they' hate us as they do? Is it, as our leaders would have us believe, because they hate our freedom? To understand what others find objectionable in us, we must take a long and brutally honest view of how we act, versus what we like to say about ourselves. The facts, as this book demonstrates, are incontrovertible: Our history is an unbroken progression of atrocities, betrayals of trust, and abuses of the rule of law, both to our global neighbors as well as our own citizens. Since the arrival of the first settlers, we have cheated and swindled, committed the most sweeping genocide in history (100,000,000 members of the indigenous populations), attacked civilian populations with nuclear weapons, promoted conflicts at home and abroad, supported brutal right-wing regimes, bullied those weaker than us, and performed gruesome experiments on the most defenseless of our own citizens: poor southern blacks, retarded teens, and pregnant women. These, sadly, are the facts, and are what others see when we say our proud slogans about peace and promoting democracy. But who among us is actually responsible for this ignominious state of affairs? As Perni argues, all of these iniquities can be traced to three sources: big business, fundamentalist, right-wing Christians, whom he characterizes as our own domestic Taliban, and a corrupt government that serves the corporations while manipulating the easily swayed voters.
Selling America To The Highest Bidder: Hypocrisy Is Not Democracy! is a novel of political discovery in which a man and a woman, working together and arguing about what they find, fall in love as they expose destructive forces at work in a search for political integrity in America.
"Mazzone has focused our attention on an important and underappreciated topic; the way hypocrisy suppresses the complaints of the oppressed and poses a particular threat not just to our politics but to democracies as a whole. The topic could hardly be more urgent." -- Ekow N. Yankah, Thomas M. Cooley Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, USA Unconfessed by definition, hypocrisy is one of the most used and abused polemical categories, even today, to denounce the "masked cynicism" of certain social actors, especially when they hold public office. But has hypocrisy always been just that? Should we really always be wary of it and challenge its every manifestation? What forms of hypocrisy can we distinguish? What kind of relationship exists between hypocrisy and the lack of self-critical attitude of those who are used to challenge the conduct of others? And above all: what relationship exists between this common vice, democratic politics and the institutional reproduction of different forms of oppression and domination? These are just some of the questions that inspire this philosophical journey back into the history of one of the most chameleonic concepts of Western culture. In Mazzones conception, democratic hypocrisy includes argumentative strategies used by institutional actors to refuse any kind of responsibility when their decisions, actions or roles are called into question by the protests of citizens in a democratic context. He reveals the relationship that exists between such apologetic narratives and the institutional reproduction of different forms of oppression and domination. Ultimately, the book urges civic vigilance against underhand wannabe authoritarians, who as a group are evolving to find new ways to trick people into opposing democracy. Leonard Mazzone is Research Associate in Social and Political Philosophy at the Department of Social and Political Sciences of the University of Florence, Italy.
The Hypocrisy Of Democracy: How The American Dream Became The African American Nightmare, is a unapologetic view of what American democracy is through the eyes of black people. In this book, the author goes into great depth about the true identity of black Americans and their oppression, before, during, and after the Transatlantic Slave Trade. He explains how America purposefully made so called "African-Americans" into a nation of consumers rather than producers in various ways. For instance, instead of reparations and restitutions for chattel slavery, black Americans were giving "Black Codes," "Jim Crow Laws," "Mass Incarceration," "Convict Leasing," "Lead Water," "GMO Food" and most importantly a miseducation. On top of that, black Americans regularly have to deal with job discrimination, bank discrimination, and housing discrimination. Yet, somehow, America wants black Americans to see this as the "Land of the Free." How is that possible? This book explains how African Americans can no longer lie to themselves and each to other for the sake of appeasing their white peers. The author offers solutions to combatting these forces through scholarship, knowledge of self, and mastering group economics.
"This surprising and informative expose examines what the Gospels actually say about social and family values, demonstrating how far they deviate from evangelical "Christian" values. The book explores how evangelicals use their values to establish a political, social, and economic ideology that exerts great power on American culture, politics, law, and policy in a way that threatens our freedoms and form of government."--Back cover.
