Here's something that's been annoying us for a year. It might annoy you as well.

It frequently occurs in debate that one side will accuse the other of inconsistency on a principle. The implication, or express charge, is that an opponent is not taking a position due to some consistent, generally-applied principle, but rather simply because of pure partisanship.

The accused will frequently offer an affirmative defense. "But I always thought such and such a way," they will say, "even when it cut against my partisan interests. Hence, I'm not inconsistent, but rather thoughtful and even-handed in matters of principle."

Examples abound.

Liberals are of course now decrying any inquiry into John Kerry's affair(s). "It's purely personal behavior," they claim, "and furthermore, there's not even a witness on the record. The woman involved denies it, as does Kerry! Therefore, there's no story."

When it's pointed out that many liberals eagerly pursued the alleged affair of George Bush the Elder -- despite the fact that it was, again, "purely personal" behavior if true, and there was no witness on the record, with both parties denying it -- they will quickly claim, "But I was against that too!"

Jeneane Garofalo claimed that she was always against the Kosovo War. She wasn't just against a Republican-led war due to partisan venom; oh no, she asserts, she was against Clinton acting without a UN mandate in Kosovo as well. As she infamously added, she just never really got around to expressing her opinions on Kosovo publically, because it "wasn't too cool" to protest that war.

And in the matter of Texas redistricting, liberals are quite outraged by Republican gerrymandering. When you mention that the Republican gerrymander is no different than previous Democratic gerrymanders, they rebut, "Well, I was against the Democratic gerrymandering too!" So, they're claiming, they're not being simply partisan hacks, but principled advocates for democracy.

Do any of these claims of consistency actually hold up?

First, let us mention the obvious: In all of these cases, the person or persons claiming to have had consistent positions throughout their lives might simply be lying. They might simply be claiming to have had a position in a previous year in order to defuse the charge of partisanship.

Or they may just be deluding themselves. They just be incapable of addressing the possibility that they are being partisan and blatantly inconsistent, so they convince themselves that a fleeting reservation about some previous liberal action actually rose to the level of full and considered opposition to that action.

In 75% of all cases, we suspect that either intentional deceit, or defensive self-delusion, is going on.

But it's relatively easy to call someone a liar, as liberals are proving this election season.

Let us take the harder question-- what about the last 25%? What about those people who actually did have an intellectual opposition to a previous liberal action? Are they actually being consistent on the point?

In some cases, perhaps they are being consistent. But in most cases, they're not.

Because it strikes us that actual "consistency" cannot be defined solely in reference to a purely intellectual position. Consistency on an issue is not only where you come down on an issue-- it's how consistent you've been about expressing that opinion, how consistent you've been in terms of passion about that opinion, how consistent you've been in acting on that opinion, in terms of actually attempting to shape public debate and in terms of timing, i.e., did you actually act to shape opinion when the issue was actually live and current?

Or have you only now gotten around to denouncing a previous bit of bad behavior, now that your denunciation has been conveniently mooted by the passage of years?

Let's address each one by one.

Consistency of Expression. This is a simple one. We're just thrilled that Janeane Garofalo was opposed to the Kosovo War in her own little potato-shaped head, but she admits she never actually got around to publicly expressing her opposition to the Kosovo War. Even if we take her at her word that she did possess such a purely-cerebral reservation, she was not consistent in her willingness or eagerness to actually express this opinion publicly.

A thought confined to one's own head is utterly immaterial in the real world. A thought only counts in the real world if it's actually acted upon, or at least disseminated into the public arena.

By her own admission, this acne-scarred bottom-heavy Weeble of a comedienne was blatantly inconsistent in her willingness to express her alleged opposition to the Kosovo War. The charge of partisan inconsistency remains on the table: even if we think she's honest abut her secret, private reservations about Kosovo (and, for the record, we don't think she's honest at all), she's still inconsistent regarding expressing that opinion. And we think it's very likely that partisanship has something to do with that.

Consistency of Passion. Let's face it, we all are guilty of inconsistency regarding the passion with which we oppose our own side's bad behavior as compared to the passion we show when we oppose the other side's bad behavior. We are humans, after all; some allowance for human weakness must be made regarding passion. You can't easily make yourself passionate about a cause which isn't your own, even if you try to.

Conservatives are willing to admit this. We, for example, just did.

Liberals never make such an admission. Liberals will never, never make the slightest gesture towards an admission that they are being less than Perfect Little Angels in any debate or with regard to any issue.

Despite the allowances we might make for human weakness, there are some cases where someone's outrage about alleged Republican bad behavior must be compared to his or her lack of such outrage when it comes to perfectly analogous Democratic bad behavior.

Yes yes, it's hard to get oneself emotionally lathered up about the bad behavior of one's own allies. But even if that actual emotion can't be channeled, one can at least use the same sort of strong language to denounce the bad behavior one one's own side. Even if a liberal was obviously not actually passionate about denouncing the bad behavior of liberals, we'd credit him for being as consistent in terms of passion if he actually used strong language to denounce liberal bad behavior and thereby tried to gin up a bit of passion.

But they almost never do. They use only the weakest, most acquiescent language to "denounce" their own team.

(Note how they similarly "denounce" Saddam Hussein in intentionally weak terms. How many times have you heard Hussein -- a mass murderer, a war criminal, a mass rapist, a genocidal tyrant -- "denounced" by liberals as being a quote bad guy unquote? "Bad guy?" A bad guy is someone who cuts me off in traffic. A bad guy is someone who behaves caddishly towards women. Saddam Hussein is not a "bad guy," liberals.)

People who are outraged about the Texas redistricting are not being consistent on the point unless they denounced the previous Democratic gerrymanders in strong language as well. Again, the purely intellectual "I was against that too, I guess" cannot rebut the charge of inconsistency of passion.

Consistency of Action and Timing. Look, if you marched against the Iraq War, but never marched against the Kosovo War, you have not been consistent. Even if you honestly held similar purely-intellectual reservations about the Kosovo War, you certainly can't claim you're being consistent in terms of your willingness to actually act to further your beliefs in both cases.

Closely related is the issue of timing. This one especially bugs us. Liberals seem to be forever suddenly discovering their previous deeply-held reservations about issues that are now dead, conveniently now only part of the historical record, utterly mooted by the passage of months and years.

We're very happy that Ellis Hennican, for example, might be "just as outraged" by the press' scrutiny into Bush the Elder's alleged affair as he his by the press scrutiny into Kerry's night moves.

But we can't help pointing out-- his timing is a little different in the two cases.

With regard to Bush the Elder, his sudden "outrage" is entirely ineffectual, incapable of shaping public opinion during the critical period when the Bush "affair" was actually a live issue. That's more than twelve years ago now-- and unless Ellis Hennican has access to Wesely "TimeRanger" Clark's ultratech prototype Temporal Displacement Machinery, his denouncing of the liberal rumor-mongering a decade gone by is, conveniently enough for him, utterly incapable of actually helping Bush the Elder.
Whatever damage that story did to Bush the Elder is already done; whatever advantage the liberals gained by the rumor-mongering is safely in the bank-vault that is the unchangeable past historical record.

Ellis might also have opinions about whether Tommy the T-Rex was behaving ethically when he ate all the eggs of Velma Velociraptor's brood; but it would seem that any criticism of Tommy the T-Rex is purely a matter of historical analysis. It certainly cannot be considered political advocacy.

And so we'd like to point out to the meticulous metrosexual Ellis -- your claimed position on Bush the Elder's right to privacy is nice and all, but it seems to come safely at a time when it cannot actually aid him or discourage other liberals from further dmaging him.

We're sure, sure, that that is purely an oversight on Ellis' part. We're just positive that he didn't remain silent on the issue when it was not, in fact, mooted by the passage of a full decade, in order to allow liberals to gain whatever advantage they could from the rumor-mongering.

So there you go. We're just sick and tired of these claims of "consistency" that fly in the face of simple commonsense. To actually be "consistent" on a point requires more than one's claim of simply holding a purely personal, secret position in the conveniently-distant past, about a conveniently-mooted issue.

True consistency requires that you express and act upon your opinion with something approaching a consistent level of passion without regard to partisan advantage, and that you do all this at the time your opinion could actually have a chance of influencing the outcome of a dispute.

And that's that.

Are we always so consistent?

No. We frequently are inconsistent due to partisanship. We try to be consistent, but we often fail.

But we're willing to admit that.

Try to get your liberal friends to make a similar admission on any currently-important topic.

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