P/prohibition

[iverglas]

Because the concept of "prohibition" comes up so often in this forum, and the alleged analogy between firearms control and alcohol prohibition is dragged up so often in this forum, I thought I would recommend this upcoming miniseries on PBS.

http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/

Now, the description on my on-screen cable menu says it is an examination of alcoholism in the mid-1800s and how families and religious groups fought back. That isn't quite what the description on the PBS site is saying:

The culmination of nearly a century of activism, Prohibition was intended to improve, even to ennoble, the lives of all Americans, to protect individuals, families, and society at large from the devastating effects of alcohol abuse.

But the enshrining of a faith-driven moral code in the Constitution paradoxically caused millions of Americans to rethink their definition of morality. Thugs became celebrities, responsible authority was rendered impotent. Social mores in place for a century were obliterated. Especially among the young, and most especially among young women, liquor consumption rocketed, propelling the rest of the culture with it: skirts shortened. Music heated up. America's Sweetheart morphed into The Vamp. ...

Now, I think the alcohol prohibition / firearms control "analogy" is ludicrous, for all the reasons I've stated in this forum so many times.

But it would be nice if those who advance it didn't base their arguments on such cartoon versions of the events and characters as they always do -- and specifically if they acquired some grasp of (and acknowledged) the genuine horrors that alcohol consumption and alcoholism caused for large numbers of the most vulnerable members of society a century ago, for starters. The notion that Prohibition in the US was no more than a moral crusade is the product of ignorance (at least on the part of those who hold it sincerely; others are more disingenuous in their promulgation of it). It would be nice to dispel some of that ignorance in the interests of more enlightened discourse in this place.

The relevance here, of course, is that the same argument from ignorance/disingenuousness is used against firearms control advocates here: that they are engaged in a moral crusade based on a dogma, etc. etc. etc.

The kinds of measures advocated back then by alcohol prohibitionists and now by firearms control advocates can be argued against without misrepresenting the motivations of either. (And note that out of the prohibitionists' efforts came major regulatory measures that are more in the nature of what firearms control advocates actually advocate at present than is prohibition.)

The program is on PBS on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday nights at 9 p.m. for those interested.

[iverglas]

1. meant to say

My work heated up two weeks ago after a dead summer so I'm pretty busy and not actually inviting argument here; just offering the info for info.

[petronius]

3. How pathetic - what could be more important than arguing here?

My work massively heated up last week too, but it hasn't slowed me down... :eyes:


;)

[gejohnston]

5. I think you missed the point of the comparison

The comparison with Prohibition was not that law abiding hunters and target shooters would start flocking to speak easy gun shops and clandestine shooting ranges. The point is that gangsters and other criminals, the very people "gun control advocates" claim they are targeting, will still get them.

The relevance here, of course, is that the same argument from ignorance/disingenuousness is used against firearms control advocates here: that they are engaged in a moral crusade based on a dogma, etc. etc. etc.

Everyone is for gun control, the only issue is to what degree. That said, I disagree that our side argues from ignorance/disingenuousness. Based on my experience, that is your side. Many on your side are engaged in a moral crusade based on dogma and rarely if use logical or even mature arguments. All one has to do is skim through various threads on the issue. The best ones do make an attempt but land up using logical fallacies. The typical ones include:
complete lack of knowledge of current laws
sophomoric references to penises
regional/class bigotry
guilt by association
demonstrably false propaganda, even when five minutes and a search engine will provide none ideological news services show the opposite (prime examples are the 90 percent myth and the Al Qaida "you can buy machine guns without background checks". The liberal websites who do this choose the dimmest writers to scribble out some nonsense that would not make it in a high school newspaper.
astro-turf funding of questionable studies trying to find conclusions no found by studies not so funded.

[ThatPoetGuy]

9. Oh look, I missed one.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

10. Mikey likes it!!!

[Katya Mullethov]

11. Rolling 90% back to 70 % showed a lack of resolve , weakness

And we will probably be hearing about it for a 100 years too . It's been near that long and people -STILL- think moonshine will make them blind ! I had this show on Tevo already hoping they'd touch on the denaturing regs . The mass * poisonings had several parallels with the Fast and Furious law enforcement technique of causing a problem and then blaming it on someone else . Except now , with the internet....... ITS MUCH EASIER TO GET CAUGHT !!!!

"Only one possessing the instincts of a wild beast would desire to kill or make blind the man who takes a drink of liquor, even if he purchased it from one violating the Prohibition statutes," proclaimed Sen. James Reed of Missouri"
...of the same aforementioned shit smears @ Treasury



* Up to 700 deaths a year in NYC

[TheCowsCameHome]

2. Ken Burns produces great programs.

I'll be watching Prohibition and taking it a face value, without letting my imagination run wild.

[Common Sense Party]

4. So, to be clear: You are NOT engaged in a 'moral crusade' against guns?

[iverglas]

7. just to be really clear

... you DON'T beat your dog?

[Common Sense Party]

8. I take that as a Yes.

[ileus]

6. King Mike approves this message.

[one-eyed fat man]

12. It was classic bait and switch.

The Eighteenth Amendment was championed by the women's movement as THE way to keep working men from drinking up their paychecks, beating their wives and abusing their children. The "Noble Experiment" instead, this is what they got, criminal enterprises with so much money they could undermine society by corrupting the police, judges, politicians. Thugs and murderers did become glamorous.

The effects of Prohibition were largely unanticipated. Production, importation, and distribution of alcoholic beverages — once the province of legitimate business — were taken over by criminal gangs, which fought each other for market control in violent confrontations, including mass murder. Major gangsters, such as Omaha's Tom Dennison and Chicago's Al Capone, became rich and were admired locally and nationally. Enforcement was difficult because the gangs became so rich they were often able to bribe underpaid and understaffed law-enforcement personnel and pay for expensive lawyers. Many citizens were sympathetic to bootleggers, and respectable citizens were lured by the romance of illegal speakeasies, also called "blind pigs". The loosening of social mores during the 1920s included popularizing the cocktail and the cocktail party among higher socio-economic groups. Those inclined to help authorities were often intimidated, even murdered. In several major cities — notably those that served as major points of liquor importation (including Chicago and Detroit) -- gangs wielded significant political power. A Michigan State Police raid on Detroit's Deutsches Haus once netted the mayor, the sheriff, and the local congressman.

The Eighteenth Amendment "intoxicating liquors", which most folks took to mean distilled spirits. Many who supported more stringent control on hard liquors were under the impression that beer and wine would be unaffected. The Volstead Act defined intoxicating liquor as any beverage containing more than 0.5% alcohol by volume and superseded all existing prohibition laws in effect in states that had such legislation.

As far as enshrining a faith driven moral code, there were divisions there.

Prohibition was demanded by the "dries" – primarily pietistic Protestant denominations, especially the Methodists, Northern Baptists, Southern Baptists, Presbyterians, Disciples of Christ, Congregationalists, Quakers and Scandinavian Lutherans. They identified saloons as politically corrupt and drinking as a personal sin.

They were opposed by the "wets" – primarily liturgical Protestants (Episcopalians, German Lutherans) and Roman Catholics, who denounced the idea that the government should define morality.

Drunkenness was condemned and punished, but only as an abuse of a God-given gift. Drink itself was not looked upon as culpable, any more than food deserved blame for the sin of gluttony. Excess was a personal indiscretion.

During the notorious 1924 Democratic Party Convention, known as the "Klanbake," the Klan and the 'drys' opposed the nomination of New York Governor Al Smith because Smith was a Roman Catholic and a 'wet.' That the convention ended with a celebratory cross burning, the Klan and the drys won.

From its very inception, the law lacked legitimacy in the eyes of the public who had previously been drinkers and yet completely law-abiding citizens. The public in some instances viewed the laws as being “arbitrary and unnecessary” and therefore were willing to breach them.

Just as some here are perfectly willing to fund tons of dead Mexicans so they can smoke a little harmless weed. Some smaller number object to underwriting murder and mayhem as marketing strategies and grown their own in rooftop gardens or buy certified dead Mexican free hippie harvested dope.

Prohibition, as public policy failed miserably in the 1920's. It is demonstrably an abject failure with marijuana and the War on Drugs. There is nothing that would indicate that if all those whose goal is to outlaw the private ownership of firearms got their wish that it would prove any easier to implement.

[iverglas]

13. and therein lies the rub

There is nothing that would indicate that if all those whose goal is to outlaw the private ownership of firearms got their wish that it would prove any easier to implement.

"All those" being countable on one hand and properly disregarded when discussing firearms control, being virtually nothing more than a convenient straw target.

Nonetheless, there are analogies between prohibition and regulated access in some regards -- e.g. tobacco is not prohibited but in many places is highly taxed, and some of the unintended effects of prohibition are felt in that case.

Of course, there is an actual similarity between alcohol and tobacco that there is not between alcohol and firearms, the dissimilarities in that case being substantial and relevant and yet disregarded by everyone trying to portray stringent firearms advocates as engaged in a moral crusade.

In any event, it was that aspect of Prohibition that initially prompted me to suggest this miniseries, in case it does offer any insight into the motivations of its proponents.

I would say that it is obvious that some of the later proponents, as in the 1920s Democratic Party events referred to, were motivated at least as much by anti-Roman Catholic animus as by any concern about access to alcoholic beverages; they were able to hitch themselves to the Prohibition bandwagon as a way of inciting anti-RC feelings. (Just as insurance companies hitch themselves to the anti-choice bandwagon as a way of inciting anti-universal public health insurance feelings, as one example.) That animus was still present 35 years later when John F Kennedy ran for President and alcohol was not on the horizon of political issues.

[friendly_iconoclast]

15. I don't think *all* stringent firearms advocates are engaged in a moral crusade.

The ones that aren't are like Wayne B. Wheeler of the Anti-Saloon League, who was quite open about the power he wielded.

Since the gun control movement is in decline at the moment, the True Believers dominate it by default- and it shows.

[SteveM]

14. You're late to the game, dear:

"Coming Soon! Ken Burns' Prohibition, PBS, October 2nd."

Been posting that for 2 weeks at least.

[MicaelS]

16. I suggest you read Daniel Okrent's book

Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition http://www.amazon.com/Last-Call-Rise-Fall-Prohibition/dp/074327704X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317659968&sr=8-1

I bought it, and it was great. Too much to quote here, but he makes it clear that the WCTC and ASL both were on a Moral Crusade. There were Methodist ministers who went so far as to state that once Prohibition was enacted that "all the jails will be able to be closed and turned in hospitals." That is the kind of naivete this country was dealing with.

And the review quoted from Amazon was accurate.

He unearths many sadly forgotten characters from the war over drink—and readers will be surprised to learn how that fight cut across today's ideological lines. Progressives and suffragists made common cause with the Ku Klux Klan—which in turn supported a woman's right to vote—to pass Prohibition. Champions of the people, such as the liberal Democrat Al Smith, fought side-by-side with conservative plutocrats like Pierre du Pont for its repeal. In the end, as Okrent makes clear, Prohibition did make a dent in American drinking—at the cost of hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries from bad bootleg alcohol; the making of organized crime in this country; and a corrosive soaking in hypocrisy. A valuable lesson, for anyone willing to hear it.

Just a few facts:

Alcohol Prohibition was racist AND classist:

(1)The KKK supported it because they believed it would keep blacks from drinking and thus they wouldn't sexually assault white women.

(2) The White Methodist ministers were in favor of Prohibition because all those darker skinned southern Europeans pouring into the country drank wine, and stronger liquors. People who also happened to be Catholic, and the Methodist loved raving about "Papists".

(3) The rich gave themselves an out as they always do. There was a loophole in Prohibition in that as long as you had alcohol on your personal premises you could drink it. So many rich simply stockpiled as much as they needed in their homes or favorite club, and they drank right through Prohibition while the common man had to suffer.

Were there?

genuine horrors that alcohol consumption and alcoholism caused for large numbers of the most vulnerable members of society a century ago, for starters.

Absolutely there were. But the point is, the cure was worse than the disease.

[iverglas]

18. well, that's fascinating

POV often is.

I taped the program last night and only watched snippets. I saw that it discussed how the women trying desperately to protect women and children from their alcoholic husbands and fathers, in terms of both physical abuse and actual survival, realized that in order to be heard as women, they had to use tactics that stayed within the boundaries of what was permitted for women -- and the religious framework provided them. Women whose actions were defined by biblical references and religious behaviours could not be attacked as women simply making demands in their own interests could.

The woman's suffrage movement sprang in large part from the efforts of the early temperance activists, who were also active in battling many forms of the abuse and exploitation of women and children.

But let's never, ever mention any of that.

Let's always just talk about how things affect the menz.

[one-eyed fat man]

20. Prohibition was largely the result of the women's movement

Prohibition was supposed to garner "decent" women docile husbands who brought home their paychecks. Not only did that not quite work out like they had planned. The flapper, newly liberate, became glamorous in her drinking and promiscuity making drinking and philandering more fun for the errant husbands.

The unintended consequences of Prohibition by moralistic simpletons haunt us yet. It was crusading women that enabled Al Capone to amass an empire that had 100 million dollars in annual revenue by 1924. To put that in perspective, the War Department budget for 1924, including operating the the Panama Canal was only $157,214,895.78

[Katya Mullethov]

21. It's a lulzy show

2 hours to convict on 3,000 counts of bootlegging , and only 20 minutes for a not guilty of killing a two timing gold digger . I caught at least one requisite jab at " stretched with wood alcohol" and the jamaican jake leg . But no mention of the fed's denaturing diktats yet, which in the pre internet age were a direct (but successful)parallel to the false flags of fast and furious . The way they danced around the klan "thing" you have so eloquently illustrated in the past leaves me little hope in that regard . But it sure would fit well in tonights episode " The hypocrites " .


Did you know that 90% of the "moonshine tested " will make you go blind....at the minimum ?
Maybe it was 70 %................................ of THAT tested

[one-eyed fat man]

22. They did mention the 1924 Convention

They got it pretty correct. They just left out that it had been tagged the Klanbake. Footage of dancing Democrats in their Klan hoods at the big cross burning likely wound up on the cutting room floor.

They also mentioned Capone tossing the mayor down the steps of City hall.

The irony is that those who labeled themselves "Progressives" were generally the most adamant about supporting Prohibition. You must also appreciate the irony of Mabel sending her most trusted investigator, Franklin Dodge, into prison undercover to investigate Remus.

While she was stymied in her efforts to enforce Prohibition Mabel Walker Wiilebrandt remarked on the how widespread the graft and corruption were by her inability to find "...4000 men who couldn't be bought." As with Samson,what money couldn't buy, pussy did. Dodge resigned his job and started an affair with Imogene. Dodge and Imogene liquidated Remus' assets and hid as much of the money as possible, in addition to attempting to deport Remus, and even hiring a hitman to murder Remus for $15,000. In addition, Remus's huge Fleischmann distillery was sold by Imogene, who gave her imprisoned husband only $100 of the multimillion-dollar empire he created.

One can hardly blame Remus for shooting Imogene. Partly because Remus was very popular in the city, the jury deliberated only 19 minutes before acquitting him by reason of insanity. The state of Ohio then tried to commit Remus to an insane asylum since the jury found him insane, but prosecutors were thwarted by their previous claim (backed up by the prosecution's three well-known psychiatrists) that he could be tried for murder because he was not insane.

George Remus later moved to Covington, Kentucky (across the state-line from Cincinnati, Ohio) where he lived out the next twenty years of his life modestly without incident. He died in 1952.

[Katya Mullethov]

24. Resinged and then started an affair ?

It did occur to me that the order might have been reversed , but that would have been improper , and I summarily dismissed that notion . And what became of the hit ?

[Katya Mullethov]

27. And some good news for a change !!

I think I won the bid on the coconut rifle this morning at $89,995 . Sniping is good clean fun !

[iverglas]

23. and what did I expect from you, then?

Exactly that.

There's a lot of conflating going on here.

The women who first organized to try to alleviate the suffering of women and children whose husbands'/fathers' pay packets went straight into the pockets of the saloon owners and liquor producers and distributors had precisely that in mind. This was decades before capital-P Prohibition.

By the time Prohibitin was actually installed in the US, the cause had been co-opted by a lot of people who were using it for their own ends, as has been hammered at in this thread.

Prohibition was supposed to garner "decent" women docile husbands who brought home their paychecks.

Wowsers, you've got that menz thing bad, don't you?

What, exactly, do you think happened to women and children in the mid-late 19th century whose husbands did NOT bring home their pay?

It was crusading women that enabled Al Capone to amass an empire that had 100 million dollars in annual revenue by 1924.

Stupid women (a tautology, of course): the root of all evil.

Like I've always said: keep it up; fly those true colours.

And let anyone who will tell me that gun militancy and misogyny are not intimate bedfellows.

[one-eyed fat man]

25. You make the leap

That all women are stupid, which is patently untrue. It was the moralistic true believers that thought Prohibition would allow society to close its prisons, and unicorns would rule the earth who are stupid.

Some womyn-born womyn and their turkey basters are still around to defend and protect us from the hell on earth meat eating men have inflicted on the Matriarchy.

[iverglas]

26. you made the ugly assertions you made

They're all yours.

It was women (note: not men, although men were the religious authorities at the time) who sought to preserve women and children from destitution and violence.

Damn them for evil moralizers.

[one-eyed fat man]

28. They got what they asked for...

Prohibition.



They did NOT get what they wanted, "....preserve women and children from destitution and violence."



"Damn them for evil moralizers"......more like misguided simpletons.

[iverglas]

31. you're obviously so fucking smart

What would your solution to the problem of women and children finding themselves left starving and homeless, and/or physically abused, by men who spent their pay each week on liquor?

Remember how most jobs were not open to women at the time? And I am talking THE 19TH CENTURY HERE, the era when the temperance movement arose, not your hokey "Prohibition" times. Women really couldn't go get a job at WalMart to feed and house themselves and their kids. Got a clue?

PROHIBITION, the thing that happened in the US (not in Canada, mind) well into the 20th century, was a completely different thing.

Here's a clue for you again:

http://www.geocities.com/~svpress/articles/fwillard.html

Frances Willard DIED IN 1898; she had nothing to do with Al Capone or the KKK.

... Nothing concerning women escaped Willard's attention. She campaigned for change in prostitution laws, attacking grievous situations that were allowed to flourish. Prostitution in some lumber camps amounted to child slavery. The age of consent in twenty states was a mere ten years of age, and in one it was seven. ...

On the subject of rape, Willard wrote, "... When we reflect that in Massachusetts and Vermont it is a greater crime to steal a cow than to abduct and <rape> a girl, and that in Illinois <rape> is not considered a crime, it is a marvel not to be explained that we go the even tenor of our way, too delicate, too refined, too prudish to make any allusion to these awful facts, much less take up arms against these awful crimes. We have been the victims of conventional cowardice too long."

... In 1886, Willard distributed an address to "Working Men and Women--Brothers and Sisters of a Common Hope." It commended the Knights of Labor, the leading labor group of the time, for its broad platform of mutual help "which recognizes neither sex, race, nor creed." It also praised their tendency to elevate women industrially by claiming "equal pay for equal work."

... By the time Willard assumed the presidency of the WCTU, she was well known as a powerful advocate of women's suffrage ...

The WOMEN who began working to alleviate the suffering of women and children in the 19th century WERE NOT narrow-minded anything. They were certainly not religious fanatics or, for the most part, any other kind of bigots.

That their cause was taken over by MEN with wholly different objectives well into the 20th century says nothing about them.

For the likes of you to call the likes of them "misguided simpletons" makes me fall on the floor in hysterics.

[one-eyed fat man]

32. The likes of me? reading history?

Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1082545.Votes_for_Women

A great part of the temperance movement was to blame alcohol and saloons for all the social ills women suffered. A great number of women were convinced that their troubles would end if their husbands quit drinking. That fervor was certainly co-opted by the Temperance and the Suffrage movements.

Susan B. Anthony was co-founder of the first Women's Temperance Movement with Elizabeth Cady Stanton as President. Stanton remained a close friend and colleague of Anthony's for the remainder of their lives, but Stanton longed for a broader, more radical women's rights platform. Anthony published a weekly journal, The Revolution whose main thrust was to promote women’s right to suffrage, but it also discussed issues of equal pay for equal work, more liberal divorce laws and the church’s position on women’s issues.

In 1869, when the American Equal Rights Association, voted to support the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, granting suffrage to black men, but not women. Anthony questioned why women should support this amendment. It ended her friendship with Frederick Douglass.

Watching freedmen, whom she considered ignorant and superstitious, Julia Wilbur confessed she felt "a little jealous-the least bit humiliated." In the mid-1860's, words like "humiliation" and "degradation" became common in one strand of woman suffrage rhetoric. Suffrage priorities--whether or not to support the Fifteenth Amendment giving black males the right to vote without mentioning women-- split reformers.

Some things haven't changed. Some modern feminists have expressed thinly veiled hostility that a Black MAN was able to be come President before a white woman.

The women's movement campaigned for almost a century to get alcohol sales banned. They "sold" it by virtually claiming men would be loving and nurturing husbands but for 'Demon rum.' The fight for woman's suffrage was concomitant. They got their wishes, Prohibition with the signing of the Eighteenth Amendment, and the vote with the signing of the Nineteenth.

It seems pretty safe to say the none of the positive outcomes that were supposed to occur by ending the production and sale of alcohol came to pass and many more social ills the women and temperance crusaders' never foresaw were at least as damaging, or arguably worse than society had been before.

[iverglas]

33. you really do have a bad case of it, don't you?

How do you stand having a woman in your home?

... or do you have a woman in your home?

Some modern feminists have expressed thinly veiled hostility that a Black MAN was able to be come President before a white woman.

Actually, some modern feminists were revolted by the way an experienced woman politician was treated in the race against an inexperienced man, and how women were told to sit in the back of the bus yet one more time, while the woman in question was the target of some of the most misogynist attacks imaginable.

Interesting analogy you draw though, isn't it? Black men before women of any kind, always.

I once attended a speech by Desmond Tutu. He lost me when he described his ... how did that go? ... humiliation and degradation at knowing that an 18-year-old white "girl" could vote and he couldn't ...

"Suffrage priorities--whether or not to support the Fifteenth Amendment giving black males the right to vote without mentioning women-- split reformers."

I give up ... if women were permitted to carry firearms in public and you weren't ... ? You'd be happy as Larry and not feel the least bit "jealous" or humiliated, you would.


They got their wishes, Prohibition with the signing of the Eighteenth Amendment, and the vote with the signing of the Nineteenth.

As I have pointed out repeatedly -- but hey, you can pretend to ignore it all you like -- the women who founded the temperance movement, because of the horrific conditions suffered by women and children as a result of men's alcohol abuse, were LONG DEAD when your Prohibition was installed.

Your Prohibition was ushered in by a coalition of forces who had virtually nothing to do with the temperance/women's rights activists of the previous century.

But don't blame the white menz behind it. Blame the women, the ones with all the social and economic and political power in society.

Damn. With all that power, why didn't they just go after, oh, equal pay or universal health care? Obviously they would have got them.

[one-eyed fat man]

35. On this issue,

Women were the deciding force, both to help inflict Prohibition and to end it.

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/us_history_1929_1945/73412

During a 1928 congressional hearing on national prohibition, Pauline Morton Sabin, niece of the Morton Salt founder and wife of the chairman of the board of Guaranty Trust Co., listened as Ella Bolle, president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, roared "I represent the women of America." Sabin leaned back and thought, "Well lady here's one woman you don't represent." Sabin knew the evils of alcohol, but she also knew that until national prohibition became law most people practiced temperance; prohibition had spawned a hip-flask society that disrespected the law and corrupted America's youth. So in order to protect American homes, children, and the Constitution, Sabin founded The Woman's Organization for National Prohibition Reform(WONPR). Sabin's WONPR then joined with The Association Against the Prohibition Amendment (AAPA), the original anti-prohibition group, to spearhead the drive to do what seemed impossible--repeal the Eighteenth Amendment.

Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker Willebrandt, chief enforcer of the Volstead Act unleashed a one person crusade against Al Smith in 1928 appearing before church groups with speeches that were but thinly veiled religious bigotry. The 'Drys' absolutism, their all or nothing intransigence, helped get the 21st Amendment passed and ratified in less than ten months. Congress formally proposed the repeal of Prohibition on February 20, 1933. It was ratified by the requisite three-quarters of the states on December 5, 1933.

Now either the eighty years of crusading done by women to get Prohibition passed was ineffective and inconsequential as they were all political dupes and window dressing manipulated by men or they were a social force of true believers who really did expect that if men could not drink the miseries of neglect and abuse would end.

[iverglas]

36. either ... or ...

Now either the eighty years of crusading done by women to get Prohibition passed was ineffective and inconsequential as they were all political dupes and window dressing manipulated by men or they were a social force of true believers who really did expect that if men could not drink the miseries of neglect and abuse would end.

... or you're still spinning and misrepresenting as fast and furious as you can, apparently because you have so much invested in this distorted portrayal of women, which one can only imagine arises out of some early childhood experience ...

I caught a little bit of episode 3 when I woke up early this morning (I was taping it on west coast PBS; missed episode 2). It happened to be saying exactly what I had said here: that the forces aligned behind Prohibition had no relationship at all with the temperance and women's rights movement of Frances Willard. The pictures and biographical bits I saw in a few minutes were all about ... men.

[one-eyed fat man]

38. Plenty of colorful characters

In an 1869 speech Elizabeth Cady Stanton described men as destructive, self-aggrandizing, loving war, conquest, and acquisition and bringing about discord, disorder, disease, and death.

Women are needed to exalt purity, virtue, morality, true religion, and to lift men to a higher level of thought and action.

In 1871 the flamboyant Victoria Woodhull, at the NWSA convention in New York, made a speech in spoke on free love, marriage, divorce, and prostitution. Mrs. Stanton declined to criticize her radical promiscuity; but at the next NWSA meeting in 1872 Susan Anthony would not allow Woodhull to speak.

Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly, became notorious for publishing controversial opinions on taboo topics, advocating among other things sex education, free love, women's suffrage, short skirts, spiritualism, vegetarianism, and licensed prostitution. The paper is now known primarily for printing the first English version of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto in its December 30, 1871 edition.

Abortion and Eugenics

"The rights of children as individuals begin while yet they remain the foetus".

"Every woman knows that if she were free, she would never bear an unwished-for child, nor think of murdering one before its birth. It is because she is not free that these prevail. It is the children who are conceived in enforced commerce, and those whom mothers fail to kill before birth, who recruit the ranks of the vicious and criminal classes. No child conceived in love and born in hope was yet a criminal."

"The best minds of today have accepted the fact that if superior people are desired, they must be bred; and if imbeciles, criminals, paupers, and otherwise unfit are undesirable citizens they must not be bred."

[MicaelS]

37. Spare us the White Feminist complaints

First Wave White Feminists didn't give a fuck about black women or men. First Wave White Feminists treated black women like shit. First Wave White Feminists were opposed to giving black men the vote because it might not let the First Wave White Feminists get the vote.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-wave_feminism

Many white women excluded black women from their organizations and denied them the right to participate in events because they feared that the racist attitudes of Southern voters would affect their support of the women's movement. One notable instance of black exclusion was at a Washington parade in 1913, when activist Alice Paul did not allow the black feminist Ida Wells-Barnett to march with the other white women; instead, Paul told her that she could march at the back of the procession with the other black women

The following is a post written by a Black Woman in response to an article about when Geraldine Ferraro stuck both feet in her mouth during the 2008 election.

From the Huffington Post. I saved it because it was such a great post about race and gender.

Obama Ferraro Race Flap Roils Race

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/11/obama-ferraro-race-flap-r_n_91047.html?

The poster's handle was sophia33. Direct link to her post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/sophia33/obama-ferraro-race-flap-r_n_91047_11933183.html

What Geraldine Ferraro did this week was no different than what too many white feminists have done to people of color for centuries in this country. When Ida B. Wells, a black feminist who also fought against lynching in the south, went to Alice Paul excited about joining the suffrage movement, Paul told Wells that her (Wells) participat­ion in the suffrage movement would muddy the waters for women to get the right to vote. Essentiall­y, because blacks did not have the right to vote, the white feminists did not want the black feminists to join with them because it would raise the issue of ALL blacks having the right to vote. One only need to read the writings of Paula Giddings and bell hooks or the essays of Angela Davis or Alice Walker to see how white women in the women's rights movement all but ignored the issues faced by women of color.

Second Wave White Feminism didn't give a fuck about anyone but themselves, either. As long as they got careers and got "fulfilled" they didn't give a fuck about the poor women of color who cleaned their fine homes, cooked their meals and cared for their children.

Then sophia33 speaks to the Hypocrisy of Second Wave White Feminism:

Bet­ty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique is still heralded as having paved the way for contempora­ry feminist movement - it was written as if these women did not exist. Friedan's famous phrase, "the problem that has no name," often quoted to describe the condition of women in this society, actually referred to the plight of a select group of college-ed­ucated, middle and upper class, married white women - housewives bored with leisure, with the home, with the children, with buying products, who wanted more out of life. Friedan concludes her first chapter by stating, "We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: 'I want something more than my husband and my children and my house." That "more" she defined as careers. She did not discuss who would be called in to take care of the children and maintain the home if more women like herself were freed from their house labor and given equal access with white men to the profession­s. She did not speak to the needs of women without men, without children, without homes. She ignored the existence of all non-white women and poor women. She did not tell readers whether it was more fulfilling to be a maid, a babysitter­, a factory worker, a clerk, or a prostitute­, then to be a leisure class housewife.

She made her plight and the plight of white women like herself synonymous with a condition affecting all American women. In so doing, she deflected attention away from her classism, her racism, her sexist attitudes towards the masses of American women. In the context of her book, Friedan makes clear that the women she saw as victimized by sexism were college-ed­ucated, white women who were compelled by sexist conditioni­ng to remain in the home...

In essence, to many of the staunch feminists have always asked people of color and the poor to step aside so that they can have what they want. With the false promise that when they get in the power position they will not forget about the masses. That overtone is still present today. Hillary with her claim of making Obama VP is a perfect example. Too many of these staunch feminists are fine with equality as along as people of color are second fiddle to them. Ferraro's real rant is that, "Obama has no right to be ahead of Hillary." That is Hillary's assertion too. While not explicitly stated, that is the definite overtone. As a woman of color, I am not surprised by this. It is to be expected. Having worked in a corporate environmen­t for many years, I experience­d this elitism of white women in positions of power.

What First and Second Wave Feminism really ought to be called is Bored White Woman Syndrome.

It's so ironic that you try to claim the mantle of being "forced to the back of the bus" when THAT is exactly what White Feminists have done for so many years to others. What you are really trying to do is trade on White Privilege to get a White Woman elected President because you think you are OWED one. And let me clue you in on a fact: White Women aren't owed a woman President. They were owed NOT one in 2008, and they won't be owned one in 2012. If anyone was owed anything it's Black Men. Black Men volunteered for every war the US ever fought, in an attempt to gain recognition as being equal to White Men.

In other words you are playing the White Feminist Privilege Race Card.

White Feminists remind me of a warped version of Libertarian and Conservatism:

"As long as I have mine, fuck everyone else."

[SteveM]

29. H-h-h-heh,heh,heh. H-h-heah, heah. She said 'menz thing.'

[Katya Mullethov]

19. Stockpiled ...yeah

And had it delivered .

Hiram Walker& Sons 1900 . Prohibition provided a lot of economic stimulus for Walkerville , for a while . Kinda like Mexico .

[DreamSmoker]

17. The so called Drug War is no different

This parallels the so called Drug Way by the Federal Government...
All these years of Bull and lies to eradicate Cannabis and arrest the users..
And most of all.. The Political Machine involved is virtually the same...
History shows America is not righteous at all but self serving..
Its about Votes and support any way you can..
Not about the People and what they want...
Screw Them...

[SteveM]

30. And no different from the impending prohibition of tobacco...

Here's the high-dollar T.V. ad in Austin:

An 18 wheeler full of cigarette smoke drives up. A man in haz-mat suit gets out with a flex-tube and pumps smoke all over a couple on a park bench, on folks jogging through a park, on people walking the street; all the while the narrator warns of the harm of cigarette smoke. What is not said but is visually obvious?

All the scenes are out of doors, in public.

Tobacco smoking IS prohibition-in-waiting.

[-..__...]

34. "Who the hell are you trying to tell me how to live"?

Accept it... live with it, or accept the mistakes and consequences of the past.

Just finished watching the 3rd installment.

Great epilogue... excellent documentary.