Delegitimizing Government Power

Al Gore excoriates us on how we need to restrict our wasteful lifestyles and limit our "carbon footprint" while flying around the world in private jets, using orders of magnitude more energy than any of us little people.

Barrack Obama attacks the "fat cats" and nags us for not being generous enough – requiring the government to spread the wealth around – while making millions of dollars, giving little to charity, and traveling on exorbitant vacations.

Leftist politicians claim that they support the "99 percent" crowd of the Occupy Wall Street protests, though they personally tend to be among the wealthiest and the most involved in the kind of fascist crony capitalism that is most oppressive to regular citizens.

These are all examples of world-class hypocrites. They say one thing and do another. They go around telling everybody else how to live while they themselves indulge their own appetites.

People in positions of power are very susceptible to behaving in ways that contradict their own public dictates. And the more legitimate they believe their power to be, the more brazenly they will do what they tell others not to do. These are the findings of a study by Lammers, Stapel and Galinsky, "Power Increases Hypocrisy: Moralizing in Reasoning, Immorality in Behavior."

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