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 ...
In fact, it was such a gigantic failure it should be taught in every law school as an example of what not to do. I can not envision a clearer case for the failure of the liberal belief that making laws will positively change behaviors.
I further contend that a written and oral discussion of the failure of Prohibition should be part of every bar exam. Anyone who believes that Prohibition was a success should never be allowed to “practice before the Bar”.
But alcohol wasn’t banned under Prohibition – the sales were. I personally see good and bad parts to Prohibition, but wouldn’t support it for alcohol. That doesn’t mean my opponents are idiotic though.
Over the mind and body the individual is sovereign.
I think moderation is the key. That said there were good and bad aspects to Prohibition. What’s more, we don’t live in a perfect libertarian world. Many temperance women were being bashed silly by drunks, so talking about private lives and choices is subjective. Are all laws bad? LSD lollipops for kids, anyone? Is prevention better than a cure?
What I am saying is that you will die of dehydration if you drink only beer or an equivalent wine.
Even in a long day of drinking beer, look at how your urine color starts reflecting the dehydration.
At your next overnight beer keg party, try to keep all the pass outs away from water or replacement fluids the next morning, and you will see the effects of true thirst on the dehydrated.
Best thing to come from Prohibition: Boardwalk Empire! Best drama on TV!
“If respect for the right of adults to run their own lives and manage their own affairs is worth anything, Prohibition was a complete, abysmal failure of government.”
I tell some people they need to read more about women who were no longer bashed by their formerly drunk husbands. It will give them a less black and white view.
Alcohol prohibition to westerners was impossible, because alcohol has been a most fundamental part of our culture, society, business, romance, religious life, entertainment, recreation, medicine, and family life for thousands of years.
Hard liquor may dehydrate you, but beer does not. Beer is less than 5% alcohol and the dehydration effect of the alcohol is overwhelmed by the the water content.
Excuse me. Did you read what the professors said and their statistics? They’ve offered more than pro-censorship libertarians who censor other voices to promote their selective liberty-centric philosophy.
new research ?
Its been know for decades that Capone,ect got their start in organized crime,some of these guys were hardened criminals by 14
Nice red herring – the piece is about Capone (so when he is exposed you bring up other names
No red herring just facts,its Prohibition that made the other people, Capone included some of the richest and powerful men in the country
this article just flys in face of historical fact
So we are to ignore Capone’s pre-Prohibition victims because questioning libertarian doctrines is “crap”? Okay. Criminals must love your excuses!
See post 45.
Drink a case of beer Friday night, and see whether you are thirsty for water, or more beer, the first thing the next morning.
Sounds like a good book. I’ll look it up.
If I drank a case of beer Friday night, I wouldn’t be able to tell if I was hydrated or not the next morning.
Capone had blood on his hands years before Prohibition. Crime in many states fell dramatically too during Prohibition. There were far bigger criminals before and after him though, but some libertarians always have an excuse for criminals. They need to mother them. It’s maternal.
Maybe not? I refuse to ignore the blood on Capone’s hands before Prohibition. People are responsible for their actions before and after temperance. Extreme libertarians are free to build an anarchy island and move to it though. See how that works.
Trust me, your craving for water would be so strong, that you would find it by hook or by crook.
Can you say “revisionist history”??
I knew you could!
In order to become a nation driving cars we needed Prohibition. But before the national Prohibition became a constitutional amendment 65% of the nation was already under state bans on alcohol.
Operation of individual motor vehicles REQUIRES sobriety. Horses are immune to a man’s drunkenness, they are safe to operate in all but a few cases of drunkenness.
Because of the all the state prohibitions of the same era it’s not clear that we needed a national prohibition. Yet that the Constitution needed an amendment to enact a Prohibition it is a mighty argument against nearly all modern Federal regulation that does not have any Constitutional warrant.
There’s no amendment that allows Congress or an Executive Branch regulation limit the flow in our showerheads and toilets.
Any study of the criminal gangs that wielded so much power during the prohibition shows that the gangs started long before the Prohibition, most or all arising out of the Five Points area of New York in the mid and late 1800’s.
Yet to deny that the Prohibition did not greatly increase the size, power and influence of criminal syndicates is to ignore the very strong example of that same dynamic we have today. The rise of the Mexican Narcoistas into a power that challenges the national government of Mexico, and that dominates some of the most affected Estados there is a Prohibition based dynamic!
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.