United Liberty

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.