The Left's Many Double Standards

Today's liberals would have you believe they occupy the moral high ground on every political and cultural issue. But have you ever taken inventory of their double standards?

The left's inconsistency in applying their principles based on the party affiliation of those they're judging, gives fuller meaning to the concept of moral relativism. The only thing that's consistent is their reliable inconsistency, whether in the area of economic, social or national defense issues.

Let's consider just a few examples:

— When "bimbo eruptions" threatened to derail Bill Clinton's campaign, his hit squad, the commander in chief of which was Hillary Clinton, eviscerated every accuser, inventing tales to destroy their character and distorting the facts of what occurred. When Ken Starr accused Bill Clinton of lying under oath, liberals turned their venom on him, accusing him of sexual perversion just for delving into the subject.

When Republicans argued that Clinton's serial sexual exploits, some of which had then occurred quite recently, demonstrated poor character, Democrats defiantly dismissed his actions as irrelevant to the performance of his presidential duties. These guardians of the fairer sex — watchdogs of government corruption — didn't care that Clinton's taking advantage of an intern in the Oval Office was a quintessential case of sexual harassment, given the power disparities between his station and that of Monica Lewinsky's. They even defended Clinton's perjury concerning the matter. Some argued that it was almost virtuous that he chose to lie under oath and protect his family rather than take the easy way out and come clean.

Today, liberals are in high dudgeon and probably higher conspiracy over sexual harassment allegations against Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain that supposedly occurred 14 years ago. CNBC's GOP presidential debate moderators pointedly asked Cain and one of his rivals Mitt Romney, whether a man guilty of such conduct had the requisite character to be president of the United States.

— Democrats maligned former President George W. Bush's economy for the better part of his two terms, despite the robust growth, unemployment below 5 percent and a 2007 deficit less than 10 percent of what it is today. They tell us that President Obama's horrendous economy, on the other hand, is not even his fault.

— Frustrated with their inability to succeed in talk radio and the resulting loss of their decades long national media monopoly, liberals have resorted to demonizing conservative talk radio and Fox News Channel, saying they habitually engage in hate speech of a sort that gives rise to violence. Following the Oklahoma City bombing, Bill Clinton himself shamelessly suggested there was a causal connection between that heinous crime and conservative talk. That there was no proof of such a connection didn't deter him and his ideological colleagues even slightly.

Similarly, when Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot, liberals immediately jumped to the unwarranted conclusion that the shooter had been stirred into violence by conservative hate speech and particularly, a bulls-eye image from Sarah Palin. Discovering that the shooter was anything but right-wing didn't keep President Obama from framing his Tucson speech around the theme of civility in our political discourse. If he'd talked about European demographic trends in Late Antiquity, his speech couldn't have been any less relevant. But it would have been less politically inflammatory and exploitive.

Relevance aside, did Obama follow his own gratuitous admonitions to avoid embittered partisan rhetoric? Obviously not. He has repeatedly demonized Republicans both before and after Tucson, his favorite theme being class warfare. Just last week, he branched out from the politics of greed and envy and preposterously accused Republicans of blocking his recklessly wasteful environmental initiatives because they want dirty air and dirty water.

— On a related matter, Democrats have slandered genuine grassroots Tea Partiers as lawless, racist, AstroTurf scofflaws who are sometimes even domestic terrorists, despite the Tea Partiers' peaceful, respectful behavior, no evidence of racism and almost no arrests at any of their events. Liberals pejoratively labeled them Tea Baggers and mocked their legitimate protests against the unprecedented spending of the Obama administration. But when leftist Occupy Wall Street protesters have truly been organized from above, have engaged in lawless and violent behavior leading to many arrests and have spewed anti-Semitic bile, liberals, including President Obama himself, have lionized them and identified with their cause.

— When President Bush attacked Iraq with the Democrats' approval, based on a perceived and possibly actual national security threat, liberals savaged him as a lying warmonger. But when President Obama attacked Libya, let alone Egypt, without any discernible national security interest and without Congress's endorsement, liberals hailed his foreign policy acumen.

— Democrats vilified Bush for enhanced interrogation techniques and domestic surveillance against terrorists, but now glorify Obama for his literal assassinations of terrorist leaders, and they look the other way as he continues many of the Bush era anti-terrorism strategies.

I'll stop here, even though I'm not yet halfway through my list.

David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His new book, "Crimes Against Liberty," was No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list for nonfiction for its first two weeks. To find out more about David Limbaugh, please visit his website at www.DavidLimbaugh.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.