Posted on 07/08/2010 2:16:11 PM PDT by neverdem
The evening of Jan. 16, 1920, hours before Prohibition descended on America, while the young assistant secretary of the Navy, Franklin Roosevelt, drank champagne in Washington with other members of Harvard's Class of 1904, evangelist Billy Sunday preached to 10,000 celebrants in Norfolk, Va., : "The reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be only a memory. . . ." Not exactly.
Daniel Okrent's darkly hilarious "Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition" recounts how Americans abolished a widely exercised private right -- and condemned the nation's fifth-largest industry -- in order to make the nation more heavenly. Then all hell broke loose. Now that ambitious government is again hell-bent on improving Americans -- from how they use salt to what light bulbs they use -- Okrent's book is a timely tutorial on the law of unintended consequences.
The ship that carried John Winthrop to Massachusetts in 1630 also carried, Okrent reports, 10,000 gallons of wine and three times more beer than water. John Adams's morning eye-opener was a tankard of hard cider; James Madison drank a pint of whiskey daily; by 1830, adult per capita consumption was the equivalent of 90 bottles of 80-proof liquor annually.
Although whiskey often was a safer drink than water, Americans, particularly men, drank too much. Women's Prohibition sentiments fueled the movement for women's rights -- rights to hold property independent of drunken husbands; to divorce those husbands; to vote for politicians who...
--snip--
Women campaigning for sobriety did not intend to give rise to the income tax, plea bargaining, a nationwide crime syndicate, Las Vegas, NASCAR (country boys outrunning government agents), a redefined role for the federal government and a privacy right -- the "right to be let alone" -- that eventually was extended to abortion rights. But they did...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Interesting ping.
bfl
-—pass the salt , please, my fries with the hamburger are toobland——
The most interesting thing about that article is that women through the prohibition movement gave rise to NASCAR! LOL. If that’s true then I thank them at least for that.
Well, yeah, because of Prohibition, rumrunners and bootleggers came into existence. Good ol’ boys would oufit their cars to make them as quick as possible to beat the police. They were the forerunners of todays NASCAR.
I knew NASCAR originated from running shine but I just never made the connection to the prohibition movement and the fact it was primarily a women’s movement.
In the name of "good" they will take your liberty.
Junior Johnson was moonshiner even as he drove in NASCAR. Well, until he was caught and convincted in 1956.
/mark
But don’t worry, the prohibition of the currently illegal drugs is both necessary and good with no unintended consequences.
If I were writing this article, I could not have helped myself from asking the question, if not for prohibition the Godfather of the Kennedy crime family, Joe Kennedy, would not have made his fortune as a bootlegger.
And without that bootlegging fortune, it is unlikely that the Kennedy brothers would have had much effect on the American political scene.
Add smoking to the alcohol issue. Women like being bosses and they’ll say anything to win.
No problem!
I’m not sure that Joe Kennedy actually “made his fortune” by bootlegging. He made lots of money on Wall St. by engaging in what would now be illegal insider trading. One way or another, the Kennedy fortune was based on crime, and scions like Ted K. went on to an even bigger racket: unconstitutional Federal govt.
“I’ve actually never tasted illegal alcohol. I’ve never had moonshine, white-lighning, or home brew. Friends of mine who have had the stuff claim it’s garbage. It’s sole purpose it to get you drunk. It’s not exactly Chivas Regal or a good micro-brew.”
Moonshine and White Lightning are the same thing. Home brew is beer. I make some pretty fine beer myself and have tasted some pretty fine corn likker.
I’ll drink to that.
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