EXPLOIT IS NOT A DIRTY WORD

EVERY day it seems one hears of people "exploiting" others. We have the Center for Missing and Exploited children. To exploit has come to mean to defile, to rape, to pillage. How dare anyone exploit!! This is what happens when we let people dick with the language for their own purposes (and ironically they are precisely exploiting the language when they do this).

If we did not mine coal and/or drill for oil and gas, we would all freeze in the dark. But these activities are demonized by calling them "exploitation of natural resources"; as if energy producers were rapists of pure virgin Mother Nature. The exploiter is evil, in the modern lexicon. And those who promote this usage do so using among other things the talents of poets and musicians.

But the poet and the musician are themselves exploiters. They exploit their own talents AND the desires of others to be entertained. In fact, everyone is an exploiter of one stripe or another. The workman exploits his employer's need for help quite as much as the employer exploits the worker's need for the wherewithal to have a living.

The leftist agenda to pervert the neutral meaning of the verb "to exploit" is clear. The oilman and the miner are no better than the molestor and rapist, to hear them talk. And those among us who use others are indeed exploiters of a very bad sort and are properly called cheats, con-men, molestors, robbers, swindlers, scoundrels, rogues and that sort. But there is nothing wrong with exploiting natural resources or human talent to a good end.