Posted on 06/21/2011 4:02:59 PM PDT by AustralianConservative
….But temperance Chicago never created Capone….
To paint Prohibition as a failure is rather simplistic, because it was always a mixed bag. As author Daniel Okrent (no Prohibition lover) explained to Life.com, “People don't realize how much drinking there was in this country before Prohibition. We were awash in booze. In 1830, for example, the per capita consumption of alcohol was three times what it is today -- 90 bottles of booze per year per person over the age of 15. By 1933, drinking was around 70 percent of pre-Prohibition.”
Change isn’t always a straight road. Again, Prohibition was a mixed bag. Jack S. Blocker, Jr, PhD, from the Department of History, Huron University College, University of Western Ontario, explains: “Perhaps the most powerful legacy of National Prohibition is the widely held belief that it did not work. I agree with other historians who have argued that this belief is false: Prohibition did work in lowering per capita consumption. The lowered level of consumption during the quarter century following Repeal, together with the large minority of abstainers, suggests that Prohibition did socialize or maintain a significant portion of the population in temperate or abstemious habits...That is, it was partly successful as a public health innovation. Its political failure is attributable more to a changing context than to characteristics of the innovation itself.”
This is not the message Stossel wants to hear, my guess, but should history be prohibited, to appease libertarian-inspired myths? Another inconvenient truth, noted by Professor Mark H. Moore at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government: arrests for public drunkenness “and disorderly conduct declined 50 percent between 1916 and 1922. For the population as a whole, the best estimates are that consumption of alcohol declined by 30 percent to 50 percent.”
(Excerpt) Read more at weekendlibertarian.blogspot.com ...
Simple common sense tells you that can't be true. Consumption had to fall.
Alcohol dehydrates you, try living while replacing all non-diuretic fluids with alcohol, and see how long it is before thirst drives you to give up, or you die.
That is why during drinking you spend all your time at the urinal (or peeing in the 8 million gallon reservoir), and are supposed to drink lots of water before going to bed.
I had this brought home to me at a 3 day Willie Nelson Picnic (outdoor concert) in Gonzales, Texas, where I was living solely on beer.
Prohibition had two theaters - the legal and the social.
It did help create the “mobs”. It’s hard to imagine the “mobs” becoming as big and well-funded they became, without prohibition.
It also was part of a process whereby “the people” changed attitudes about drinking; where drinking heavily and drinking as an addict received increased negative public sentiment. Over time, drinking in moderation though with some regularity also gained in acceptance. The American people sort of found their median between wanton consumption and abstinence.
So, if the period of prohibition may have helped create, in its wake, our present moderate levels of alcohol consumption, as well financing the mobs, is it not possible the nation is educated enough, alert enough, changed enough and ready for the same type of transition from the War On Drugs, to something else?
If it was so successful, why did the States repeal it?
No, but it was the power of that collectivist government law that turned him into a Hitler.
You know - Hitler, the Corporal who liked to paint.
Until he ran for office.
The Greeks and Romans made very strong and heavy wine which was always, with come ceremony (read the Iliad or the Odyssey), cut with water. I doubt anybody would die from dehydration on a diet of beer, even in a desert. But drink a fifth of 80 proof "Ol' Sunshine" neat while strolling through the Gobi and your point becomes valid.
Alcohol has been a part of human culture since before the invention of writing and the attempt to alter that by force of federal law was a disaster. The "War on Drugs" has been a quieter disaster, but in terms of the money channeled into the pockets of criminals, and on a vast international scale, it makes the grand experiment of the 18th Amendment (1920 to 1933) look puny in comparison.
Think of Prohibition and the mob as parallel to what happened in Black neighborhoods more recently. Back in the 40s and 50s you had mobs running numbers -- small stuff. When drugs hit big, you got the gangsters moving into drug traffic and growing a lot bigger and more dangerous.
So sure, you had protection rackets in Italian neighborhoods before Prohibition, but it was the alcohol ban that made the racketeers so numerous and powerful and dangerous and prominent.
Prohibition was a bad idea, but it's so easy to slam that it's almost mandatory for contrarians to put in a good word for it every once in a while.
duh
follow the $ trail
In The Odyssey, the hero Odysseus had a supply of `dark and unmixed’ wine so strong it had to be `mingled with twenty parts water to one part wine’ to be safe for mortals to drink, and even then it `gave off rare scent and sweetness’ and still caused drunkeness.
When he and his crew were prisoners of the Cyclops and were being eaten one at a time, Odysseus plied the monster with undiluted wine into a drunken stupor, and then put out the wheel eye with a sharpened burning log (ouch).
Anyway, shedding the blood of the grape remains a noble endeavor. Look up the original meaning of the word “libation”.
All you have told us is that your grandfather kept drinking
PERIOD
(from a white ribbon baby)
“It’s really strange to find something like this coming from a site with ‘libertarian’ in the title.”
LOL: Well, it shouldn’t be – at least not for a free speech person. Why live under a strict label or be boxed? The title is “Weekend Libertarian” suggesting part-time, in any case.
I wonder: Do some libertarians have a right to make things up to “prove” their case? Why do they prohibit debates on their websites if they’re for “reason” and “liberty”?
Prohibition wasn’t all bad or all good. Again, if it was so bad, then why are libertarians hiding medical and criminal records, from some periods? I think there is a tendency for some libertarians to blame laws instead of holding thugs accountable, for their actions. Al Capone was evil.
Well, at least you admit libertarians are spinning when they say Prohibition created Capone.
At the end of the day he was responsible for his own actions – to blame the “collectivist government” for making him “Hitler” makes him the victim.
What’s more there have been worse thugs before and after Capone. Were they all products of the “collectivist” government? When do you say: The guy was evil and there’s no excuse for what he did?
“If it was so successful, why did the States repeal it?”
There were many reasons. One professor offers a few, if we read the full piece. But I’m not saying it was all bad or all good. Both sides just see what they want, because they’re guided by emotion, not reason. Perhaps if libertarians stopped censoring alternative views, the big picture questions and answers would emerge more frequently.
Needless to say, there’s no excuse for pretending Capone was created by Prohibition. He had blood on his hands, years before.
Dutch Schulz,Lucky Luciano,Hymie Weiss .
All these small time hoods became major figures because of prohibition
not to mention the extortion ,corruptions,bombings,murders ,booze smuggling,speakeasys and all the rest of the stuff that gave the roaring twenties its name
The writer has no idea what the hell he's talking about
Nice red herring – the piece is about Capone (so when he is exposed you bring up other names). In any case, new research reveals that many of the Prohibition crime figures were deep in crime before Prohibition – so now “libertarians” are madly trying to demonize questioners and critical thinkers.
Crime records contradict your thesis. I’d tell libs to stop making excuses for criminals.
Interesting.
Prohibition did for Al Capone what the wheel did for humanity. To say otherwise is to ignore history. Prohibition made criminal out of one in forty Americans and in the city of Chicago, law and order broke down completly with the city government and the police were in league with the boot leggers.
Think a lot depended on where you lived. My mother lived in rural Kansas and said that everyone made their own beer and the more adventurous their own bathtub gin and moonshine. My father lived in Boston where the booze had to be brought in.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.