This is not the first time I’ve run into this idea that all’s fair as long as you restrict it to conservatives. Although the exact post seems to be lost to the mists of Internet time, I’ll never forget when a woman at a major feminist site accused me of holding the political opinions I do because — wait for it — I was trying to catch a man. Or the liberal men too numerous to count, or at least bother counting up over the years, who have hailed me with every misogynist slur you could imagine, and a few I’m sure you couldn’t.

This is the exact opposite of the way things should work. If you want to argue for a principle, you need to embody that principle consistently — at least, if you want to convince anyone else. Libertarians who argue that private charity can make up for government safety nets should be giving more of their income to private welfare charities than any other group. Conservatives who think that abortion should be completely illegal should not go and obtain them for their own daughters. People who oppose school choice should not send their children to private schools or relocate to an affluent suburb when they have kids. And feminists who are against sex shaming should be outraged when it happens to people whose ideas they despise, as outraged as they certainly are when it happens to one of their own. Otherwise, people just smirk at your “principle” and see it for what it is: something between sheer tribal hypocrisy and a lie.