What will the Provider State not provide?

Here’s another item showing how under liberalism the state becomes the all-purpose facilitator of desire, or, in this case, the facilitator of a chemically induced simulacrum of desire. According to a Fox Five news broadcast (yes, I actually turned on the tv for a few minutes this evening, and my reward was hearing this delightful news), 198 of New York State’s worst-level sex offenders who are out of prison, including child abusers, are receiving Viagra free of charge through Medicaid. The segment showed various office holders and men-and-women on the street reacting in horror and disgust to the news; but none of the outraged citizens and politicos (at least as far as their reactions were edited for the program) objected to the underlying, astounding fact that Viagra is paid for by Medicaid.

Let us note that while Viagra was originally announced as a treatment for impotence, all the advertising for it, played constantly during dinner-hour network news programs and “conservative” radio talk shows (which is one of the reasons I’ve virtually stopped listening to either tv or talk radio in the last few years) stresses it as simply a super erection enhancer, not as a medicine for men who have an actual medical problem. The upshot is that it’s the responsibility of the state to provide for hours-long chemically induced erections for men who are on welfare or who otherwise can’t afford to pay for the chemical on their own, giving everyone the equal right to feel like a great stud, or, as I’ve said, like a simulacrum of a great stud, since apparently Viagra does not produce additional desire or sensation but only the long-lasting erection itself. The program didn’t question this entitlement, only the fact that it’s been granted to the worst level sex offenders.

That’s the way liberalism works. It takes us so far into sickness and evil that people can only react to the latest, most extreme stage of the sickness and evil, thus implicitly normalizing all the stages leading up to it. Anything less sick than the sickest thing anyone has ever heard of, is ok.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 22, 2005 10:21 PM | Send