Posted on 12/12/2020 2:13:10 PM PST by spacejunkie2001
Most people today regard America’s experiment with alcohol prohibition as a national embarrassment, rightly repealed in 1933. So it will be with the closures and lockdowns of 2020, someday.
In 1920, however, to be for the repeal of the prohibition that was passed took courage. You were arguing against prevailing opinion backed by celebratory scientists and exalted social thinkers. What you were saying flew in the face of “expert consensus.”
There is an obvious analogy to Lockdowns 2020.
My first inkling of this prohibition history came in reading transcripts of the then-famous Radio Priest James Gillis from the 1920s. He was against prohibiting alcohol production and sale on grounds that the social costs far outweighed the supposed benefits. What surprised me was the defensiveness of his comments. He had to assure his listeners that he was personally for temperance, that alcohol was indeed demon rum, that it’s true that this nasty stuff had caused terrible things to happen to the country. Still, he said, outright bans are too costly.
Why was he so cautious in his rhetoric? It turns out that during the 1920s, he was one of the few famous American public figures (H.L. Mencken was also among them) who dared to speak out against what was obviously a disastrous policy. Reading this sent me down a rabbit hole of literature at the time in which it was argued by many leading intellectuals that Prohibition made perfect sense as a necessary step to clean up the social order.
(Excerpt) Read more at aier.org ...
Stop asking questions and just wear your mask.
The “Expert Consensus” Also Favored Alcohol Prohibition.
Yeah, sure, right. Outlaw booze...again and legalize weed.
“Expert Consensus”, my ass.
Consensus is just good marketing. It doesn’t make anything true.
That’s the new attack. It’s because alcohol, while it can have really bad effects, also makes you more talkative, more likely to think outside the box (for better or for worse) and less inhibited about defending yourself. Therefore our new masters hate it.
They want everybody to take up smoking dope, where you’re cool, everything’s groovy, you can’t talk and cause trouble because you’re too stoned and stupid to do so,
Love it! I want one of those.
She has beautiful eyes. I’ll bet she’s someone worth knowing.
It’s not about science and safety. It’s about obedience and control.
Sorry, but alcohol prohibition followed the constitutional precepts. It garnered a super majority of states support for the measure. This is far different than any “mandate“ that might be issued by any autocratic government official.
***Sorry, but alcohol prohibition followed the constitutional precepts.***
While we were diverted by war news...
The unhappy couple.
http://amanda-regan.com/digitalprogressiveera/items/show/94
We at least got The Untouchables TV show.
In the time of prohibition an idea was put forward that perhaps society would be better off if alcohol were controlled and an effort made to replace it’s use with another, safer intoxicant that could be imbibed.
The idea never caught on...but if it had the likely intoxicant that would have been chosen would have been marijuana. It can be easily processed to be active orally and could have made delightful cocktails.
Switching to THC would not have been a cure for those suffering with a physical addiction to ethyl alcohol but would have saved many alcoholism-prone people from ever needing to try alcohol.
But people were stupid then and are stupid now so the idea of legal, relatively safe, intoxicants being made available for public use was refused.
Chloral hydrate (the Mickey-Finn drug)..an easily made intoxicant, was toyed with during prohibition but was too dangerous for even bootleggers to roll out to the public.
Another drug considered in later years as an alcohol replacement/treatment is GHB. But GHB, Gamma Hydroxybutyrate, has it’s own problems and is capable of causing death by overdose.
THC could have prevented the evils of prohibition but was so tainted at the time as being the drug of choice for low-class types i.e. Mexicans and Blacks...that it was rejected out-of-hand.
Not to say THC is problem-free but it seems so compared to alcohol.
p.s. Other legal intoxicants were played with during prohibition. The inhalants chloroform (liver-toxic) and diethyl-ether (dangerously explosive) were found to be too dangerous. BTW, diethyl-ether and ethyl-alcohol are virtually the same drug. Alcoholics who had developed tolerance to ethyl-alcohol were very hard to anesthetize using ether...the difference between effective and lethal dose were too close together for safety.
The Pandedmic Prohibitionists of Pennsylvania:
March 16 - Governor Wolf closes Wine & Spirits Stores for 2 months.
March 16 - Governor Wolf closes bars & restaurants
November 25 - Governor Wolf suspends bar & restaurant alcohol sales 5 PM - 8 AM “just one day”
December 11 - Governor Wolf suspends bar & restaurant alcohol sales and in person dining until January 4.
“IT’S DEJA-VU ALL OVER AGAIN!”
Pot makes you stupid. That’s why our masters love it.
From what I’ve read, giving women the vote almost guaranteed prohibition. The temperance movement marched in lock step with female suffrage, and remarkably, men were convinced to go along.
See? It was all for our own good.
Unlike today's substance prohibitions.
Ditto for today's marijuana prohibition pipedream.
The 18th Amendment occurred before the 19th Amendment naturally, however, in several States, women were allowed to vote for certain public offices, just not Federal elections so your point still stands. State legislatures for instance were intimidated by the first wave of turbo feminists.
Not really so remarkable as you depict. Men were on board with suffrage because, in line with the moral underpinnings of the time, women were still unarguably cookie cutter extensions of their husbands. Suffrage simply magnified the husband’s vote times two. Those not married were still overwhelmingly under some other male authority, usually the father, and were reliable similar votes.
All legislatures at the time were 100% male (I may be missing some extreme outlier exceptions.) Are you saying that they were beholden to some women in heir lives to pass prohibition?
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