Freddie Hypocrisy Watch

So, as I was commenting at Daniel Larison's blog Eunomia, it occurred to me that I am being an enormous hypocrite regarding what Kaus "really thinks"; this is the kind of thinking that I have long been deeply critical of. The existentialist project is one that acknowledges the inevitability of self-definition, and I don't agree as a matter of principle in assuming bad faith of anyone. So this post about Kaus was deeply hypocritical of me. Of course, whether or not I'm a hypocrite has no bearing on the question of whether Kaus is actually a liberal or not. But you (my enormous throng of readers) deserve better, and I should expect better from myself.

By the way, this post might make it seem that an existentialist is deeply vulnerable to all kinds of dishonesty. I should say that it isn't the case that an existentialist can't recognize that people say one thing and do another. (In fact, bad faith is inherently a notion of dishonesty.) But I've made it my rule not to engage in supposition about what people secretly think, because I don't think that you can have any kind of constructive dialogue without an assumption of good faith. Also, there's no real world referent that we can appeal to in order to make sure that someone thinks what they say they think. I can't reach into Kaus's brain and check and make sure that he believes what he claims to believe. And I shouldn't try.