So for the last few days there has been a dustup because Sandra Fluke testified before Congress about how she was a law student at Georgetown Law and she and other students had trouble affording birth control pills and the school, which is a Jesuit school, didn’t provide coverage. Then Rush Limbaugh said this:
"What does it say about the college coed who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex?" Limbaugh continued, “It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex."
And then he said this:
“So Miss Fluke, and the rest of you feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.”
And now we see that Limbaugh apologized, which I think is right. Using birth control does not mean she is a slut, unless you think a woman is supposed to be chaste until marriage. And no, this is not prostitution under the D.C. Code or any other jurisdiction that I know of.
But in a way, Obamacare and its mandates make this kind of thing inevitable.
We’ve all been there, 17 or 18 years old, and we get into a fight with our parents or maybe a sibling does. “You can’t control me!” the near-adult says.
And the parent says, “as long as you live under my roof you will do what I say!”
For two hundred years we have understood intuitively that “freedom” and “independence” are closely related concepts. Hell, when Destiny’s Child wanted to make a feminist anthem for the movie Charlie’s Angels, they called it “Independent Woman.”
Gerald Ford once said that “a government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.”* It also means that the government gets to scrutinize everything in your life. It’s inevitable. If someone has to pay for something, they are inevitably going to ask basic questions, like 1) where is this money going to, 2) is this the most economical way to spend the money, and 3) do you really need what I am being forced to buy for you?
Let’s take a less explosive example: Lipitor. It’s a drug that reduces cholesterol. If there was a mandate requiring Lipitor coverage for every single person, then the questions would start. Why do you need it? Are you eating right? Are you exercising? Or more rudely: why would I have to pay for your unhealthy lifestyle.
Or it might get really rude:
(Language warning.)
