Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy Audiobook (Free)

Prominent liberals support a whole litany of policies and principles: progressive taxes, affirmative action, greater regulation of corporations, raising the inheritance tax, rigid environmental regulations, children’s rights, consumer legal rights, and more. But do they in fact live by these values? Peter Schweizer decided to investigate the personal lives of politicians like the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi, the Kennedys, and Ralph Nader; commentators Michael Moore, Al Franken, Noam Chomsky, and about Perform As I Say (Not As I Do): Information in Liberal Hypocrisy Cornel West; entertainers or philanthropists Barbra Streisand and George Soros. Using publicly-available real estate records, IRS profits, courtroom depositions, and their very own published statements, he searched for to examine whether they lived with the principles they so forcefully advocate.

What he found was a long list of contradictions. Many of these proponents of organized labor had developed various solutions to sidestep spending union wages or avoid employing unions altogether. These were also adept at avoiding taxes; invested heavily in corporations that they had denounced; got advantage of international taxes credits to use non-American labor abroad; espoused environmental causes while opposing the ones that might influence their own residence rights; hid their investments in trusts in order to avoid paying estate tax; denounced oil businesses but quietly owned them.

Schweizer’s conclusion is easy: liberalism in the long run forces its adherents to become hypocrites. They adopt one present in public, but when it comes to what matters most in their very own lives-their real estate, their privacy, and their children–they jettison their liberal principles and adopt traditional types. If these concepts don’t work for the very individuals who promote them, Schweizer asks, how can they function for the country?