democracy is hypocrisy

Hypocrite: a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion or a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings. I think a better definition would in fact be a human being. We are all hypocrites to some extent, some more than others. I fully admit to my own hypocrisy. I think that the government should have little or no say in my personal life, basically I’m a libertarian. I however am upset when the government does nothing to prevent oil companies and large corporations from exploiting their monopoly on the market. Religiously “right conservatives” are very anti government welfare because they want the government to stay out of their wallets. But yet they are extremely liberal in the sense that they want the government to stay deeply involved in people’s bedrooms trying to stop gay marriage and abortion. The same could be said about those who say government should have a bigger say in society, and that it’s the government’s role to make sure the “ethical” thing happens with the treatment of the poor. However the government should not have grounds to say that gay marriage is in fact immoral. I know a lot of people who deep down inside believe in marriage equality (I guess that’s what they're calling it), but their religion is very against it so they side with their religious beliefs as so to not go to hell. Let’s take the religion I grew up in for instance Mormonism. Mormonism a while back practiced polygamy and the ONLY REASON (I bold this because it’s actually written in cannon by the prophet who stopped the practice that this is the reason) is because the government was intolerant of the practice. Now the church has an official statement about the recent DOMA decision as follows: “Regardless of the court decision, the Church remains irrevocably committed to strengthening traditional marriage between a man and a woman, which for thousands of years has proven to be the best environment for nurturing children.” I’m pretty sure within the last thousand years the church practiced a non-traditional marriage between a man and women, and they seem to think that that is the way a celestial system works. So why are they trying to take away those who are untraditional trying to get gay married rights’ when they so complained about society's intolerance of their own self defined untraditional marriages between a man and women. I feel that if you are intolerant of gay marriage, you have no right to say that the early Mormon pioneers were “persecuted because of their faith.” Perhaps early Mormons were persecuted because they were in fact immoral people, and were destined for hell (that’s what I’m sure a lot of the early persecutors saw those early Mormons as). Now I’m not trying to say that polygamy is bad, nor am I trying to say that homosexuality is bad. In fact shocking I know, but I’m OK with BOTH. Why should I care if they are all consenting adults that are happy with what they are doing? I shouldn’t, and neither should the government. Those are my actual views, and I’ve decided to stick with them. Sorry to go off on this subject, but I’ve had a lot brewing in me for a long time. Anyways, so back to how we are all hypocrites. I once served a mission for the LDS (mormon) church and I was pushed to make sure that I had so many “progressing investigators”. In other words I had to have a certain number of people that were getting ready to be baptized. So instead of being sensitive to peoples beliefs and lifestyles, their personal backgrounds, and their own personal feelings I taught them that the only way to be with their family forever and to have the happiest life in the hereafter is to be baptized and follow a ton of commandments. My personality is very against doing something like that, I like to be open minded, and I like others to respect that. I don’t like to be forced to commit myself to something I hardly know anything about. I, however, shoved by beliefs that I thought “I knew with a surety” down other people’s throats because I am in fact a hypocrite. What drove me to do it?: a mix between peer pressure, a childhood of believing that’s what “righteous” missionaries did, and a slight personal conflict between believing in my church and believing in my gut instincts. This is not the only thing I’m a hypocrite about. I don’t believe in the government taking my money away, just to give to other people, but every tax season I get a big fat check from the IRS giving me sometimes more money than what I paid the federal government (I am in the lowest tax bracket and get student tax benefits as well). You never hear me complain about that, but I should, it’s against my own principles. I hate it when roommates leave their dishes in the sink, but I’m guilty of the same thing all the time. I try and give examples from my own life, because no one ever really looks at themselves if someone is attacking what they do. They tend to get defensive. But when someone says “hey I’m doing this wrong, but I’m trying to change to be better” most people react positively with the same type of self-reflection. So I just want to say, we are all hypocrites. I don’t feel it’s innately bad, we all have acne some worse than others. Can’t really help the fact we have it, but we can take showers and eat a healthy diet to avoid it. In the same way we can try to be a lot more aware of ourselves and our personal world view. If you believe something stick to it, no matter what religion, your parents, or society tells you. However understand that other people also believe things, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. If you are truly sincere and honest about your beliefs and are understanding of others, I’m sure they’ll show the same courtesy. If not they are just ignorant bigots, and didn’t deserve to hear your thoughts in the first place ;). I sincerely hope that we can all (including myself) have more self-reflection and discover our own beliefs. Also I hope that we can accept that others have their flaws and have patience with them. If we can all at least accept that we are all hypocrites I feel that’s the first step to recovery.