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 ...
My husband use to make his own Kalula. Men know such things by instinct I think...:O) and dad was a policeman, he also had a still on Sugar Island where he and the sheriff of the island made shine... Long after prohibition ended...
“Okay, ladies, if you insist...”
Actually, PBS does mention Joe’s affair with Swanson, his shady financial dealings, and the rumors of his rum-running in the 3-hour “The Kennedys” documentary.
Transcript, plus link to watch entire film online:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/transcript/kennedys-transcript/
Fugly women ! I wouldn’t touch their lips with my worst enemy’s lips !
I want to add, a lot of these do-gooders are prevalent especially in the liberal democrat camp. What are the recent micromanagement intrusions have they done ?
1. The 55 mph speed limit, fortunately repealed but for how long ?
2. The National drinking age of 21
3. Seatbelt and helmet laws
4. Food
5. Fast cars and motorcycles
6. Overall - political correctness !
Not only that, voting should be reserved for property owners as originally done. Looking over women in politics, except for a rare occasion, most women are liberal democrats and vote to control pleasures especially enjoyed by men. they vote for traffic laws that have no constitutional basis but imposes more micromanagement on driving especially common sense.
> In old movies there were men who said horrible things like: “women should NEVER vote”, but after reading history, they (and Ann Coulter!) may have been right. I may get flamed here, but women tend to: vote emotionally, do shallow research when they have an agenda, project their faults on mankind, and play the victim.
That actually reminds me of a scene from Marshal Rooster Cogburn with John Wayne.
The young indian scout and Rooster stopped on the hill and Rooster needed a sip and a "corn dodger". When Katherine Hepburn (I don't know her character's name) noticed him drinking she rode up at a gallop, EXCORIATED HIM for his sinful ways and then rode away again.
Rooster smiled, turn to the young scout and said: "God help us if we ever give 'em the vote".
That said, I trust my wife to vote sanely...
Does that sign say “BOOSE”? LOL!
Yeah maybe, but it doesn't taste nearly as good coming back up a few hours later (/bitter experience)
LoL! I hate agreeing with you on some level :-)
It is perfectly legal to make beer and spirits, wine and brandy for one's own consumption -- even to entertain with it. You just cant bottle it up and sell it.
Alexander Hamilton invented the first alcohol tax in the 1790's as his contribution to the "tax that fellow behind the tree" tradition of crapweasel-taxes. The smartass factor was that the tax would fall almost exclusively on farmers beyond the Appalachians who were not very effectively represented in the Congress. He promptly got a tax revolt, and President Washington was troubled to go out to western Pennsylvania at the head of a column of militiamen to restore order. (It was the only time in American history that a president appeared at the head of a column of troops.) Hamilton went with him, no doubt under armed guard!
And then the tax was quietly repealed. Way to go, Alex.
Yes, that's what I was referring to. Perhaps I overdid it with the irony shaker. One needs to be careful with irony and now, apparently, as Will is saying, with salt.
Hate to say it because I am a woman, with the exception of most of the women on Free Republic, and the females in my family lots of females are stupid...:O)
That would be old man Joe. The first of the sucky Kennedy clan...I think Rose Kennedy got her revenge in life for all his affairs....Watch while he had a stoke that left him unable to do lots of things and then outlived him by a decade or two....
Cutty Sark....wonder what Teddy drank...
My father would sip good shine he made himself just like he sipped his scotch...Died at the age of 85 saw him drunk only once in my life....after a big fight with my mother. She went into the bedroom to read and he downed a lot of liquor and went outside put up targets and shot for quite a while.. It was the only time he let me shoot his big old service revolver...(cop, just retired from the police force) Circa 1950's....
Years ago they were souped up Coupes
First sanctioned NASCAR race were the Modifieds, in 1948.
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