Fluke’s No Fluke; Sisters Love Uncle Sam

Rush Limbaugh has pride-of-place in the annals of conservative serial stupidity. A matter concerning constitutional principles fell into his large lap. But the conservative movement’s Mouth pimped those principles.

Sandra Fluke, a privileged Georgetown University law-school student, went before a “nonofficial” coven of Democrats to “argue” that Sugar Daddy Sam should compel Americans who toil in the insurance industry to provide women with The Pill.

As the story goes, some Democrats dissolved in tears as Fluke spoke of sisters with cysts—the ovarian kind—forced to turn away from the pharmacy counter for lack of funds.

Perhaps this cloistered cow and the Democrats in attendance should decamp to Darfur for a taste of deprivation!

As sincere as she is in her conviction that a woman’s “reproductive rights” are the responsibility of other taxpayers, Sandra Fluke is no statistical fluke. Sisters love the state.

Andrew Kohut, head of the Pew Research Center, dates the statism of American women to the 1980s, a function of “Ronald Reagan’s assertive foreign policy,” but also of the female affinity for bigger government. Kohut confirms that, “Then, as now, women [have] tended to favor a larger role for government programs than do men.”

John Derbyshire traces remarks about the ladies’ lack of proclivity for liberty to 391 B.C.

“That was the year Aristophanes staged his play ‘The Assembly women,'” Derbyshire documents in “We are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism.” “In the play, the women of Athens, disguised as men, take over the assembly and vote themselves into power. Once in charge, they institute a program of pure socialism.”

George Orwell, whose insights into these matters were very deep, also noticed this. He has Winston Smith, the protagonist of ‘1984,’ observe: ‘It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of orthodoxy’ (p. 88).

Having lived in communist China “in the years just after Mao,” Derbyshire seconds Orwell. “If you wanted to hear … utterly unreflective parroting of the Party line, a woman was always your best bet.”

Libertarians like to imagine that their constituency is differently derived than that of the Republicans. However, the fantasy that women flock to liberty is just that, a fantasy. I’ve attended those libertarian gatherings in which, after “subtracting the dragged-along wives and girlfriends from these events, the normal male-female ratio of the remainder is around ten to one.”

Granted, among the fair sex, Rep. Ron Paul fares better than his Republican rivals—no doubt because of his trenchant opposition to the Warfare State. But Obama beats Paul handily. “Against Mr. Paul,” notes the Wall Street Journal, “Mr. Obama …wins among women by 18 points and loses among men by four points.”

So how did a flaccid fool like Fluke become a folk hero overnight? Leave it to Limbaugh.

Despite ample practice, Limbaugh flunked badly against Fluke. If you recall, Limbaugh had launched a similar sneering assault on a deformed Michael J. Fox. The Talker opted to ape the actor’s Parkinson’s-induced spasms, when he should have, instead, slammed Fox’s unconstitutional petition to Congress.

Limbaugh followed his somewhat entertaining slurs about Fluke with comments far more sinister than “slut” and “prostitute, paid to have sex.” Rush’s request to view online videos of Fluke having public-sponsored sex made him sound like a dirty old man.

Rush’s request for sexy footage of Fluke called into question both his morality and rationality, since the premise of this voyeuristic wish was that he who pays for something must also partake in the action. (Since when? We pay for the Welfare State. Must we therefore become welfare-dependent?)

Game. Set. Match, Sandra Fluke. Limbaugh not only lost the argument to this inconsequential woman, but also helped anoint a future, handmaiden to the feminist socialist, Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Florida).

As with Michael J. Fox, Rush ought to have read Fluke her constitutional rights. No taxpayer, coerced by Congress or the President—who has grabbed inordinate powers via ObamaCare—should be made to fork over for Fluke’s personal choices, good or bad. Not if the letter and spirit of the framers’ Constitution means anything.

Decent people are sick and tired of conservatives in their bedrooms and liberals in every other room. Fluke has the right to screw herself silly. Trojans or Trivora, Rush should have told her that she and her Pill-deprived pals have the right to purchase the stuff, but not to rope other Americans (including insurers) into supplying it.

The underlying truth of this very public tiff remains this: On the whole, extending the franchise to females was in furtherance of egalitarianism, not freedom.