Anti-Climacus

QUOTE: Peter Beinart, with, to my mind, the definitive take on Bill Bennett and his critics:

"Take Joshua Micah Marshall, the author of the deservedly respected talkingpointsmemo.com, a sometime TNR contributor, and a friend. He writes, "For my part, I'd say leave everyone's [private] issues to them and theirs. ... But those aren't the Bill Bennett rules, are they? Now he wants them to be. Too bad." But isn't the point that they are Marshall's rules? And isn't the definition of a rule something that applies universally, whether the person you're applying it to believes in it or not? We don't justify racial discrimination against bigots. To allow Bennett to determine the standards by which he is judged affords him an authority he doesn't deserve.

In Slate, Michael Kinsley, the dean of smart liberalism, makes basically the same argument. He posits a Bennett defender who argues that "his gambling never hurt anyone else." Kinsley responds, "This is, of course, the classic libertarian standard of permissible behavior, and I think it's a good one. ... [But] Bennett can't plead liberty now because opposing libertarianism is what his sundry crusades are all about." Like Marshall, Kinsley is arguing that, because Bennett is a hypocrite, we can destroy him for gambling, even if in general gambling is nobody else's business."