re: #665 buzzsawmonkey

Which “they” are you referring to?

It is not “hypocrisy” to believe that one should not have sex before marriage and fail to live up to one’s beliefs. A personal failure to live up to one’s standards does not make one a hypocrite. “Hypocrite” is defined as someone who pretends to beliefs that s/he does not have—and at no time did anyone in the Palin family disavow the notion that premarital pregnancy was not something they approved of. That said, they also did not reject their daughter for falling short of the ideal they believed in, which to me shows large-heartedness rather than “hypocrisy.”

The Palins also oppose abortion, and they were true to that belief by not having the pregnancy terminated—something which got lost in gleeful crooning over Bristol’s supposed “hypocrisy”, largely because the fact that the Palins held true to their beliefs in this regard enraged those who accept the validity of abortion for convenience.

I think you said earlier up-thread that those who take joy in labeling conservatives as hypocrites for falling short of their standards are people who have no standards.
The fact that the standards of the much decried ‘50’s and earlier are today looked at with disdain and contempt speaks volumes about our slow degradation as a society. Those standards which are criticized as unrealistic and corny at least set the goal high. Not everyone or even most could reach the goal but even when they missed they were still generally in the target area.
When the standards were lowered during the ‘60’s and ‘70’s all of society’s goals were lowered and not surprisingly many of us are hitting the target, or very close to it. And society in general suffers from a coarsening of everything.