The "You Always Have To Help Someone Else" Tactic
Yglesias identifies a key strategy for opposing progressive change without openly opposing the underlying goals:
One has to keep in mind the broader picture here, too. The right’s main tactic whenever Democrats want to do something that might be helpful to any group of citizens everywhere is to identify some even more desperately poor group and claim that their opposition to helping out is driven by a die-hard commitment to these truly needy types. Try to help the working class, and the underclass are trotted out for moral blackmail. Try to help the middle class, and what about the poor? But then when push comes to shove, these are the same people trying to cut section eight housing programs, trying to cut food stamps, etc. The only people they’re really serious about helping are the extremely wealthy beneficiaries of their tax cuts.
Exactly. I think my favorite somewhat recent example of this feeble diversionary tactic was David Velleman’s opposition to grad student unionization at NYU on the grounds that janitors in Houston are even worse off. (And, of course, the fact that this unionization might lead to mild restrictions on his own privileges rather than someone else’s is just an amazing coinky-dink!)
Don’t forget the bit about Global Warming. “Why spend money fighting global warming when problem X is more immediate, and can be addressed with less money.”
Yeah, I was about to mention the patron saint of this technique, Bjorn Lomborg.
“You always have to help someone else” tactic is just a variant on the “you guys are hypocrites” accusation that goes like this : if you *really* cared about women’s lives you’d care more about women in country X that I’d like to invade than in country Y whose government gives me free chocolate.”
aimai
Then there’s the whole “They have televisions and granite countertops! They can’t really be poor!” argument.
And then they argue that if you really want to help the poor, you’ll give a bunch more money to rich people.