Of Pharisees and INOs

My hero, Pogo (well - Walt Kelly), said that there is so much bad in the best of us and so much good in the worst of us, that it's hard to tell who should be reforming who. He must have been referring to the INO debate. INO - In Name Only; as in RINO (Republican in Name Only) and DINO (Democrat in Name Only). According to the hyper-partisans, INOs aren't good enough to be pure party members. The partisans put up with INOs for the little bits of good (like money) they can provide. So what is the social phenolphthalein we can pour on people to see if they are bright red or deep blue?

One answer is the Pharisee test. In the earthly days of Christ Jesus, the Pharisees were a political party in Jerusalem. Mostly they were good people who tried to keep the Law of Moses. But they had one big problem - they thought that keeping the Law meant obeying every nit-picking regulation that some other Pharisee said was a law. By doing so they failed to follow the true Law. To apply the Pharisee test to a modern party member, ask what it takes to be a faithful and pure party member. If he gives you a string of requirements, he's probably a pharisaically pure party hack. But if he has only a few important principles, he may be an INO.

Does this sound like I favor INOs? Yabetcha!