Posted on 08/04/2020 5:30:05 AM PDT by Kaslin
Students of American history will recall the colorful figure of Carrie Nation, who in her enthusiasm for the temperance movement, took to whacking up saloons with a hatchet. The six-foot-tall Nation would later go on to earn her a living from her notoriety by selling small axes as souvenirs.
Nation’s avid co-laborers in the temperance movement would later succeed in passing legislation prohibiting all alcohol consumption.
The broad sweep of what she and others saw as a deleterious influence on individual and national health and welfare accomplished little in the way of removing the scourge of alcoholism.
But the temperance movement did assist in accelerating the rise in criminal enterprises, fostering a general contempt for civil authorities and an undermining of civil authority, particularly in the big cities; which saw a tremendous explosion of criminal enterprises interested in supplying booze to the thirsty American public. Law enforcement was often diverted from pursuit of serious criminality and government corruption while officers’ energies were consumed by arrests of alcohol-consuming citizens and smashing barrels of beer.
But in addition to nearly decapitating law and order, Prohibition eliminated something enormously important to American democracy, as John Grinspan pointed out in his New York Times article, titled, “The Saloon, America’s Forgotten Democratic Institution.”
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Puritans were teetotalers and prohibitionists is an urban legend...
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In all the world at the time, the water wasn’t potable. Every society drank a weak beer and watered wine as a matter of course, instead.
Strong ale, wines and whiskies were available and that may have been the dividing line between acceptance and disapproval.
WHAT!!!
Mea Culpa. I was unaware there were witch trials elsewhere. Virginia didn't execute anybody and the only ones who did were in nearby Connecticut. Not sure how this helps the reputation of the Puritans for fanaticism, intolerance etc.
Very nicely done article—and on point.
I do think we can piggy-back on colloquialisms that are not meant to be historically accurate, believing them to be wrongly valid.
You are sadly confused between your right to abstain without evoking raised eyebrows—and the righteousness of forcing everyone else to abstain.
I think the final line of this article might be intended for you.
Hypo F crites
Certainly founding colonies, before the 1770s, ruled as self-contained colonies as they should have. These were colonies founded by people who all had the same religious approach.
If someone wanted a different religion, they were completely free to create their own colony or become a part of one that they did agree with in principle.
What’s the issue? Do you also think men’s clubs have to accept women and transexual pedophiles? Inquiring minds want to know.
Oh, you poor baby. How do you cope? I suggest counseling.
Bug off, turd. You’re one of the ones I was mentioning.
Sure almost all of them did but they were notoriously slack about enforcement....except for the Puritans. Why should somebody have to subscribe to a certain religion to live in a place? That's the very thing they were supposedly against. Oh! That's right! They were only against it when THEY were on the receiving end of the discrimination. As long as they could dish it out to others, the Puritans were all in favor of it.
Quite a lot like the statistics on COVID.
“Why should somebody have to subscribe to a certain religion to live in a place?”
Why should anyone not in your family be allowed to live in your home or on your property?
Really, you have strange arguments.
“Sure almost all of them did but they were notoriously slack about enforcement....except for the Puritans.”
Uh, not exactly:
“Yet, despite Puritanism’s severe reputation, the actual experience of New England dissenters varied widely, and punishment of religious difference was uneven. England’s intervention in 1682 ended the corporal punishment of dissenters in New England. The Toleration Act, passed by the English Parliament in 1689, gave Quakers and several other denominations the right to build churches and to conduct public worship in the colonies.”
https://www.facinghistory.org/nobigotry/religion-colonial-america-trends-regulations-and-beliefs
How many others had a colony break away from them in order to gain religious and personal liberty? None. Just the Puritans. You know why Canada isn't part of the US? A HUGE part of it was that the Catholic Quebecois took one look at the Puritans and decided no way in hell did they want to be in the same country as those people. They sided with England instead.
An entire colony is not like a family home. Yours is the strange argument. Most Americans prefer freedom.
“You know why Canada isn’t part of the US? A HUGE part of it was that the Catholic Quebecois took one look at the Puritans and decided no way in hell did they want to be in the same country as those people.”
LOL! You are the first person on Free Republic to make the argument that the Puritans saved us from those dang Quebecois!
Good for that!
Alright as concerns the Quebecois, I concede the point. :^)
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