Tax-payer funded Viagra is a logical outcome of liberalism

A moderately libertarian columnist who publishes at conservative magazines replied to my item about Viagra:

Viagra is a recreational drug. I have NO idea why any of it is taxpayer-funded.

It just gets stranger and stranger, doesn’t it?

I replied:

Yes, but it’s also a logical development of liberalism/libertarianism.

The basic idea of liberalism and libertarianism is that there is nothing higher than man that matters socially; that man has the ability through his own unaided reason, without God, and without the accumulated wisdom and experience of a shared way of life, to organize his own life.

This leads to the idea that there is nothing higher than human desire and the providing for its fulfillment. A society in which the president says that illegal aliens crossing the border from Mexico are doing it out of love for their families and that therefore we should welcome them, is a society that will have trouble saying no to any human desire, including the desire of welfare recipients to get Viagra. And, in fact, we do live in such a society right now, don’t we?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 25, 2005 12:40 AM | Send