Something Feral

Digging up the flower-beds.


Friday, December 5, 2008

Civil disobedience at it finest


Now there's something I can drink to:
Tonight is the 75th anniversary of the end of Prohibition – of 5 December 1933 when Utah became the deciding 36th state to ratify the 21st amendment to the constitution, and restore to the country's citizens the basic human right to go out and have a drink.
They didn't restore it; that's the totalitarian view of government power, that it may give and take away "basic human rights". Today is a day for the libertarians in the crowd, a day commemorating the end of an idiotic rather than "noble experiment".

Now, if we could hammer out the rest of the mala prohibita in the legal code with the 9th and 10th Amendments, then we'd be on our way to a week-long party celebrating the kind of liberty and justice you can't beg, buy or steal.

Heh. I do dream.

3 comments:

Elusive Wapiti said...

Let's not forget who was behind Prohibition...nanny-state women's suffragettes and fascist (sorry for the redundancy) Social Gospelers.

Triton said...

Particularly this group.

From the article:

The WCTU was instrumental in organizing woman's suffrage leaders and in helping more women become involved in American politics. Willard pushed for the "Home Protection" ballot, arguing that women, being the superior sex morally, needed the vote in order to act as "citizen-mothers" and protect their homes and cure society's ills.

Something Feral said...

STRAW MAN: (high falsetto) Won't someone think of the children?

I should start keeping a list of the atrocious things that were done to the future of liberty in America between years between the McKinley and the Wilson administrations (to be fair, Wilson vetoed, but Volstead was passed anyway; this doesn't excuse his other numerous transgressions). In particular, problems revolving around interventionist foreign-policy, central-banking and drug prohibition are spiraling out of control, and it can all be traced back to the dance down the Path of Good Intentions.

There's not much to be done when the voting public tosses the idea of a republic in favor of an empire, except to stand aside and keep your head down when the excrement hits the fan.