We should be allowed to look down on Spitzer
With regard to Eliot Spitzer, a defense is springing up all over the MSM and the liberal blogosphere: it’s stupid to make prostitution criminal; therefore, Spitzer shouldn’t be in trouble for paying for prostitutes. In response to this defense, I would point out that whether it should be criminal is not the issue here. The fact is that it is criminal. If Spitzer thinks prostitution should be legal, he should use his bully pulpit to change that fact legislatively. What he did was to break the law. Jonah Goldberg has also correctly grasped that there is nothing wrong with showering shame on Spitzer regardless of ones views about laws prohibiting prostitution (h/t Earl):
Intellectually I can understand the argument for legalized prostitution, even if I disagree with it. And, I can understand, even sympathize, with the view that there should be more than a rice-paper thin Japanese teahouse wall between one’s private life and public life, even for politicians.
So let me concede, for the sake of argument, that Andrew is right that the law is an ass when it comes to prostitution (though if we are going to be loyal to Dickens, shouldn’t that be “a ass”?) Let us also concede that it is something like a private matter for a married man to visit a prostitute (though obviously it isn’t private for the wife and the kids — or for the prostitute if, as in many circumstances, she’s forced into such work).
Still, to say that something is a “private matter” is not the same thing as saying something is beyond the scope of our judgment. If Tom is a drunk, it may be a private matter but that hardly means I must approve of his “lifestyle.” If one of my married friends was repeatedly visiting hookers, I might say for the sake of social peace that it’s none of my business, but I would still think much less of him. And, if he became more and more brazen — and hence more and more humiliating for the man’s wife and family — the more likely it would become that I would feel compelled to say something.
Goldberg has more in this same vein, which you will find here.