Political Prostitution

by Laura Thigpen
24 March 2010
http://www.unitedliberty.org/articles/5361-political-prostitution

The late great Pres. Ronald Reagan once famously equated politicians to prostitutes. That little quip drew self-conscious titters from both sides of the political aisle.

But the “Gipper” was wrong, not in principle but in terminology. Politicians aren’t prostitutes. They’re pimps.

Had Reagan lived to see the latest effort in socializing his beloved Republic, the “Gipper” would no longer question which group – peddlers of flesh or influence – is the worst of those willing to trade the sacred for the profane. He’d know.

Because once President Barack Obama signs the so-called health care bill, imposing the most sweeping government devaluation of individual liberty in a generation, he will have legalized a political prostitution Reagan couldn’t have imagined. I suspect Reagan would have watched with growing horror as federal lawmakers dealt away Constitutional freedoms for the scant comfort of executive orders and sweet, home-district bribes.
It’s as if Washington D.C. has become its own red-light district, and prostitution its chief commodity. After all, Democrats hawked their latest bill of health-care goods as a feel-good scheme couched in meaningless phrases of social justice and human rights.

Prostitutes at least have the minimal comfort of knowing that though they’re selling a profoundly intimate and personal value, it is at least theirs to sell. Politicians, on the other hand, act as unprincipled pimps, selling others into the slavery of government dependence with nary a thought for the value they cheapen.

As with prostitution, participation in the bargain sullies both buyer and seller. A buyer of sexual pleasure has to abdicate the same values as the one who offers their body for sale. You can argue that such a transaction is just business, of no import to anyone else, which is true. But there’s no avoiding the reality that such a deal lowers the value of the most private, personal and intimate act to the level of purchasing a loaf of bread.

Likewise, America’s politicians have now debased themselves to the level of corrupt sellers of their constituents’ bodies; pimps who won’t be involved in the final act but intimidate and force others to participate.

Just as a woman (and yes, or a man) loses some intangible sense of value every time she sells her body to pleasure another, those mandated to do the government’s bidding lose a sense of self each time they acquiesce.

Like a prostitute who allows a  pimp to not only control what and to whom she sells her body but to also confiscate part of the proceeds, free-born Americans allow Congress to take a “fair share” of their earnings to provide for an ever- expanding population of government junkies.

Like sex addicts, they clamor for more and more of that which they can’t – or won’t try – to acquire on their own, and look for the pimp to provide their fix. Politicians have for decades pimped out the earnings of an ever-shrinking private sector to win the business (read votes) of insatiable addicts. Supporters of the pimp class include entitlement junkies and public-sector employees who don’t want to give up their easy access to the body politic.

And that leaves the rest of us as the sole source for sating their desire; the cowed prostitutes working for threatening pimps, afraid to say no for fear of taking a beating. 
The only question remaining is how long we’re willing to lay down.