OT-ish Ken Burns' 'Prohibition'

The first chapter of this three-part series based on Daniel Okrent's book Last Call is fascinating for anyone interested in the history of those who would regulate the morality of others.

It began as a voluntary movement caught up with the religious fervor of the times. In fact, there was a distrust of the Washingtonian movement, because they used the company of other reformed drinkers, rather than invoking Ghod.

However it wasn't until the Progressives got a hold of the movement that it became infused with the belief that others must be forced to change, by law if necessary. The Women's Christian Temperance Union were self described Christian Socialists who saw this as a family issue and voiced it in "save the children" rhetoric.

As with many Progressives, they failed to distinguish between things which promote Negative Rights and those which promote Positive Rights. After a while they were all over the place as a well organized group with many "departments" focussing on a variety of issues; Women's Suffrage, Child Labor, Preschooling, Raising The AOC From 10 To 16....

They're the one's who promoted the idea of outlawing it, and the notion that children weren't safe until this was done. They also provided a lot of miseducational tools for schools which taught that one drop of liquor irrevocably destroys the organs and can cause "spontaneous combustion;" and were therefore pioneers in anti-substance educational propaganda.

However, what it took for Prohibition to get passed was for the transformations wrought by Progressive excess to get torn from the rest of the Progressive platform. The Anti-Saloon League made themselves into a one-concept non-partisan political pressure group which, by the '10s, had the power to make or break candidates based on their stance on one issue alone.

But a look at their rhetoric can't disguise that these were small-town WASPs terrified of the rising powers of the cities and immigration. They were going to remove the blight of alcohol from the newly American Irish, Italian and German immigrants to save them without ever considering what those populations wanted had they been consulted. ( For the children, and for your own good; a powerful anti-formulation. )

The immigrants, particularly the German brewers managed to hold-off the forces of the Anti-Saloon League by promoting the joviality and healthiness of German-American culture. But as soon as WWI started, the Anti-Saloon League were poised to make their implied xenophobia overt. And they successfully crusaded with the notion that being anti-Anti was unAmerican and furthering the enemy.

Its interesting to see how Antis seem unable to invent anything new. Those who wish to erase choice and reform the morality of others ( but never their own ) use the same issues; that immigrants and children are lesser creatures who can't be entrusted with choice, that bad personal choice must necessarily imperil the neighbors and is therefore not a personal issue, that "one drop" ( or one pixel ) corrupts everything around it, that everyone really wants the same things and are only deluded into thinking otherwise, and that if only one hurdle is removed Paradise on Earth is created.

It didn't work then, it doesn't work now.

Dante