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 ...
I have had some shine. Burns all the way down! As for Chevis, keep it. I can’t drink the stuff. If I can’t get a good single malt I prefer Famous Grouse to pretty much any blended malt.
Years ago, I had an old magazine I found in an antique shop in Maine on the subject of prohibition. One of the articles (and if I'm not mistaken a letter from a reader) made that exact point.
No Clintons, Boxers, Snowes, Pelosis, Obamas, etc.
I like the idea of male propery owners being able to vote and run for office, as was originally intended.
You say that like it is a bad thing.
And thus enjoyed a boon during Prohibition, when smuggled in illegally. Making things illegal or taxing them to death always increases the price and prfit margins.
[ I like the idea of male propery owners being able to vote and run for office, as was originally intended. ]
Just property owners, most women I know who own property are very conservative.
Think about how much better life would be.
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