Poor Todd Akin, now he's reallygone and done it. Since the Congress shot down his and Paul Ryan's effort to redefine rape by coining the redundancy, "forcible rape," he's invented a new concept, "legitimate rape," based on his belief that pregnancy is evidence of consent. And, of course, consent is the universal absolvent of crime.
Of course, in the context of legally required vaginal probes, "legitimate rape" is a valid description. And, if the law can authorize the killing of a man, why not the rape of women? After all, even slavery was once legal.
So, what's Todd Akin done that's really in far left field, other than calling attention to the presumptive GOP candidate for Vice President's support for making crime legal whenever it seems convenient? From where I sit, he's put the last nail in the coffin of legitimacy itself. Legality, whether something is legal or illegal, has been stripped of its last tie to moral behavior. "Legal" can no longer be equated with good and has finally been exposed as the opportunistic concept authoritarians rely on to subordinate and subdue. Legality has been found illegitimate in the sense that the law used to be an instrument of justice. If the law is whatever men want it to be, then it has no ethical value.
Legal slavery was an aberration. "Legitimate rape," whether as vaginal probe and visual inspection or as pregnancy validated implied consent, completes the elevation of the idea or human will into a position of primacy over reality. In other words, what people want and intend is more important than what they do. The intent of the agent rules and the victim is left to pay.
I think I've come full circle in my thinking because I'm back to the false equation where cost/benefit are unjust because the costs and benefits aren't a matter of time, but accrue to different entities: one pays the cost; another reaps the benefit. In "legitimate rape," the perpetrator benefits and the victim pays. But, there's a further step. The answer to the question what instigates these uneven or false equations.
Some would have us believe that the victim serves as a prompt and is, therefor, both the beginning and the end of the hateful act. But that's because the agents are unconscious of the genesis of their own actions. Or, even if they are conscious, they are in denial -- denying that the initiating factor is antagonism or hate. Pure hate, for which there is no basis in fact, against both the self and all others. It doesn't need an excuse, but is clever at making them up. It's the power to think implanted in a creature with no self-awareness, the missing link. Its vicarious expression in the Mass or in the theft of money is an improvement.
So, lucrephile is also an oxymoron, but one where the two entities, instead of being in a phrase, are united in one word. The initiating factors are the same -- hate and an absence of self-restraint. We can't do anything about the hate, but we can impose restraints. Is it worth imposing permanent restraints prematurely? Not really. "By their acts shall ye know them." If they don't act, we can't know what evil is. Not "human, all too human," but inhuman -- thought or the idea unrestrained by love. The hubris of the free will.
Or, as the Exxon Mobil ad says about fracking for natural gas, "all it takes is the idea"-- without adding "to generate incalculable damage," if the idea is not tempered by love of the world God made. Which is why "in god we trust" is not enough. It may serve as an explanation for putting no trust in one's fellow man, but this blanket excuse is just likely to distract us from the fact that the untrustworthy man must be closely watched. Some men have dangerous ideas. But, they don't pick them up from the outside. These ideas self-generate and, in the presence of hate, grow to destructive magnitudes until we have such examples as Oklahoma City and, more recently, the slaughter in Norway. The latter by a man wearing a police uniform.
Hate manifest by money hoarding is probably preferable, as long as we don't let it go unchecked. One would not want to give a money hoarder the keys to the Treasury.