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Truth Warrior
07-12-2008, 08:26 AM
The 'Respectable' People Continue to Make War on the Rest of Us


by Robert Higgs (http://www.lewrockwell.com/higgs/mailto:RHiggs2377@aol.com)



Scarcely any critical commentator on the "war on drugs" has failed to remark on the striking inconsistencies that permeate the current prohibitionist stance. Contemporary crusaders for social purity ardently seek to outlaw X (e.g., marijuana), yet they cheerfully abide Y (e.g., Chardonnay), whose consumption is at least as harmful and in some cases is manifestly more so. How are we to make sense of such blatant contradictions?

We can see a pattern in the apparent incoherence of the prohibitionists’ position if we recall that the war on drugs, like all the preceding prohibitionist crusades in American history (some of them still continuing), amounts to a defense of bourgeois WASP conventions against persons and classes deemed less respectable. So, SSRIs, yes, ecstasy, no; Benzodiazepines, yes, heroin, no; a pleasant cocktail party, yes, reefer madness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reefer_Madness), no; and so forth. Everything turns on the sort of people who tend to consume the substance.

The better sorts have been waging war for centuries to keep the rabble in line. The self-anointed "respectable" people live in constant anxiety that their beloved way of life faces mortal menace from the disorderly masses, who may be disinclined to toe the line drawn for them. As David Wagner has written in The New Temperance: The American Obsession with Sin and Vice (http://www.amazon.com/New-Temperance-American-Obsession-Vice/dp/0813325692/lewrockwell/), "the Victorian and Progressive Period movements [to ban alcoholic beverages and tobacco cigarettes, among other things] were characterized by what scholarly observers consider an exaggerated . . . notion of their ability to change behavior, by a huge faith in government's ability to regulate every aspect of private life, and by a strong ethnocentric belief in the correctness of white, Protestant, middle-class social norms." The Progressive Era ended, thank heaven, but this twisted puritanical obsession endured.

Combine this priggish insecurity and moral pomposity with the ideological appeal of the modern therapeutic state (http://www.amazon.com/Therapeutic-State-Justifying-Government-Centurys/dp/081475791X) and the irresistible attractions of money and power to be seized when governments at every level (http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=53) throw their vicious violence onto the scales, and you have an insoluble social problem – insoluble because the drugs are only a symptom of the underlying class warfare in which those with the bigger political battalions are constantly tempted to wage preemptive strikes against their "unruly" neighbors, especially if those neighbors are black, brown, red, yellow, poor, foreign-born, adherents of an "alien" religion, or in some other visible respect "strange."

I was struck most recently by this phenomenon while reading – of all things – a catalog sent by the University of Oklahoma Press, where I came upon the announcement of a book by James E. Klein, Grappling with Demon Rum: The Cultural Struggle over Liquor in Early Oklahoma (http://www.oupress.com/downloadflyer/f08flyerscolor/Klein-GWDR-flyer.pdf), to be published in October. (Full disclosure: I was born in Oklahoma, and although my family emigrated from that place when I was seven years old, I am charmed by the idea that books are published there.) Oklahoma banned liquor when it became a state in 1907, and it remained dry until 1959, long after national prohibition had been terminated in 1933.

According to the summary of Klein's book, prohibition's original proponents in the Sooner State "were largely middle-class citizens who disdained public drinking establishments and who sought respectability for a young state still considered a frontier society." They purportedly aimed "to raise moral standards, reduce crime, and improve the quality of life," among other things.

Notwithstanding these uplifter's best efforts, however, the lesser sorts stood steadfastly by their booze. Klein points "to the large number of working-class Oklahomans who patronized saloons, whether legal or not, and focuses on class conflict in the early efforts to control alcohol." The book's advertisement concludes: "In portraying this conflict between middle- and working-class definitions of social propriety, Klein provides new insight into forces at work throughout America during the Progressive Era."

I would go a bit further, to say that Klein gives us still another detailed account of a deplorable social phenomenon that prevailed throughout America before, during, and after the Progressive Era – the war of self-righteous busybodies against the rest of us. Sad to say, it ain't over yet.


July 11, 2008




http://www.lewrockwell.com/higgs/higgs82.html

Truth Warrior
07-12-2008, 11:39 AM
Who's doin' all this readin' but not replyin'?

Lurkers, FBI, NSA, DHS?

bump! :D

RockEnds
07-12-2008, 11:47 AM
I read it and didn't comment.

My daughter got a new sandbox, and I'm playing with her while checking on the March.

Don't know what to say. I don't drink. I don't take prescription medication. I don't support the war on drugs. Prohibition is dumb.

Uh, I don't have a cover for my sandbox, and it's starting to rain, but I'm not the FBI.

amy31416
07-12-2008, 11:53 AM
Similarly to RockEnds, I'm checking in and out b/c of the march while working on my garden. No response mostly because it's preachin' to the choir as far as I go.

That said, I'm with the ATF. And yes, I have one of those cool jackets.

Truth Warrior
07-12-2008, 11:58 AM
I read it and didn't comment.

My daughter got a new sandbox, and I'm playing with her while checking on the March.

Don't know what to say. I don't drink. I don't take prescription medication. I don't support the war on drugs. Prohibition is dumb.

Uh, I don't have a cover for my sandbox, and it's starting to rain, but I'm not the FBI.
Whew, that's a relief! :D

Are you a self-righteous busybody?

Happy sandbox!

FWIW, we like the Green plastic turtle sand box w/lid included. It keeps out the neighbor's cat poop. 23 years now, and still just going on strong. ;) I turned it into a kinda mobile mini Zen garden.

Thanks for the thread bump. :)

RockEnds
07-12-2008, 12:03 PM
Whew, that's a relief! :D

Are you a self-righteous busybody?

Happy sandbox!

FWIW, we like the Green plastic turtle sand box w/lid included. It keeps out the neighbor's cat poop. 23 years now, and still just going on strong. ;) I turned into a kinda mobile mini Zen garden.

Thanks for the thread bump. :)

:p No. With two grown boys and a three-year-old daughter, I don't have much time to worry about anybody's business but my own. And the store was out of the green turtle, so I bought a small swimming pool. It should hold the rain water well. :rolleyes:

Truth Warrior
07-12-2008, 12:06 PM
Similarly to RockEnds, I'm checking in and out b/c of the march while working on my garden. No response mostly because it's preachin' to the choir as far as I go.

That said, I'm with the ATF. And yes, I have one of those cool jackets.
Those jackets make very good targets. :D

Just ask the branch Davidian "survivors". ;)

amy31416
07-12-2008, 12:09 PM
Those jackets make very good targets. :D

Just ask the branch Davidian "survivors". ;)

Indeed. I'd just love to have one though and wear it to random places to see the sort of reaction it merits. Yeah, I'm easily amused.

Truth Warrior
07-12-2008, 12:13 PM
:p No. With two grown boys and a three-year-old daughter, I don't have much time to worry about anybody's business but my own. And the store was out of the green turtle, so I bought a small swimming pool. It should hold the rain water well. :rolleyes:

Super! ;)

"Surprise" daughter? BTW, they're great too. I know.

Look out for the cat poop, etc.! :eek:

Our's are grown too. Got a new grandson though.

Good luck!

Truth Warrior
07-12-2008, 12:14 PM
Indeed. I'd just love to have one though and wear it to random places to see the sort of reaction it merits. Yeah, I'm easily amused. Lock and load! ;)

RockEnds
07-12-2008, 12:20 PM
Super! ;)

"Surprise" daughter? BTW, they're great too. I know.

Look out for the cat poop, etc.! :eek:

Our's are grown too. Got a new grandson though.

Good luck!

Big surprise. :confused::o:eek::)

She's my sweetie. I have a grandson 7 weeks younger than her. As I said, quite enough trouble of my own. . . . :p

Good article, though.

Truth Warrior
07-12-2008, 12:26 PM
Big surprise. :confused::o:eek::)

She's my sweetie. I have a grandson 7 weeks younger than her. As I said, quite enough trouble of my own. . . . :p

Good article, though.

I still call mine "Sweetie" too. Almost 22 now, in just a couple of weeks!

Yikes! :eek:

:cool:

Uncle Emanuel Watkins
07-12-2008, 04:12 PM
The 'Respectable' People Continue to Make War on the Rest of Us


by Robert Higgs (http://www.lewrockwell.com/higgs/mailto:RHiggs2377@aol.com)



Scarcely any critical commentator on the "war on drugs" has failed to remark on the striking inconsistencies that permeate the current prohibitionist stance. Contemporary crusaders for social purity ardently seek to outlaw X (e.g., marijuana), yet they cheerfully abide Y (e.g., Chardonnay), whose consumption is at least as harmful and in some cases is manifestly more so. How are we to make sense of such blatant contradictions?

We can see a pattern in the apparent incoherence of the prohibitionists’ position if we recall that the war on drugs, like all the preceding prohibitionist crusades in American history (some of them still continuing), amounts to a defense of bourgeois WASP conventions against persons and classes deemed less respectable. So, SSRIs, yes, ecstasy, no; Benzodiazepines, yes, heroin, no; a pleasant cocktail party, yes, reefer madness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reefer_Madness), no; and so forth. Everything turns on the sort of people who tend to consume the substance.

The better sorts have been waging war for centuries to keep the rabble in line. The self-anointed "respectable" people live in constant anxiety that their beloved way of life faces mortal menace from the disorderly masses, who may be disinclined to toe the line drawn for them. As David Wagner has written in The New Temperance: The American Obsession with Sin and Vice (http://www.amazon.com/New-Temperance-American-Obsession-Vice/dp/0813325692/lewrockwell/), "the Victorian and Progressive Period movements [to ban alcoholic beverages and tobacco cigarettes, among other things] were characterized by what scholarly observers consider an exaggerated . . . notion of their ability to change behavior, by a huge faith in government's ability to regulate every aspect of private life, and by a strong ethnocentric belief in the correctness of white, Protestant, middle-class social norms." The Progressive Era ended, thank heaven, but this twisted puritanical obsession endured.

Combine this priggish insecurity and moral pomposity with the ideological appeal of the modern therapeutic state (http://www.amazon.com/Therapeutic-State-Justifying-Government-Centurys/dp/081475791X) and the irresistible attractions of money and power to be seized when governments at every level (http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=53) throw their vicious violence onto the scales, and you have an insoluble social problem – insoluble because the drugs are only a symptom of the underlying class warfare in which those with the bigger political battalions are constantly tempted to wage preemptive strikes against their "unruly" neighbors, especially if those neighbors are black, brown, red, yellow, poor, foreign-born, adherents of an "alien" religion, or in some other visible respect "strange."

I was struck most recently by this phenomenon while reading – of all things – a catalog sent by the University of Oklahoma Press, where I came upon the announcement of a book by James E. Klein, Grappling with Demon Rum: The Cultural Struggle over Liquor in Early Oklahoma (http://www.oupress.com/downloadflyer/f08flyerscolor/Klein-GWDR-flyer.pdf), to be published in October. (Full disclosure: I was born in Oklahoma, and although my family emigrated from that place when I was seven years old, I am charmed by the idea that books are published there.) Oklahoma banned liquor when it became a state in 1907, and it remained dry until 1959, long after national prohibition had been terminated in 1933.

According to the summary of Klein's book, prohibition's original proponents in the Sooner State "were largely middle-class citizens who disdained public drinking establishments and who sought respectability for a young state still considered a frontier society." They purportedly aimed "to raise moral standards, reduce crime, and improve the quality of life," among other things.

Notwithstanding these uplifter's best efforts, however, the lesser sorts stood steadfastly by their booze. Klein points "to the large number of working-class Oklahomans who patronized saloons, whether legal or not, and focuses on class conflict in the early efforts to control alcohol." The book's advertisement concludes: "In portraying this conflict between middle- and working-class definitions of social propriety, Klein provides new insight into forces at work throughout America during the Progressive Era."

I would go a bit further, to say that Klein gives us still another detailed account of a deplorable social phenomenon that prevailed throughout America before, during, and after the Progressive Era – the war of self-righteous busybodies against the rest of us. Sad to say, it ain't over yet.


July 11, 2008
http://www.lewrockwell.com/higgs/higgs82.html

Another hateful, irresponsible essay that blames other people for our problems.

CCTelander
07-12-2008, 08:33 PM
Another hateful, irresponsible essay that blames other people for our problems.

:rolleyes:

Truth Warrior
07-13-2008, 01:07 AM
Another hateful, irresponsible essay that blames other people for our problems.
Our problems? You got a mouse in your pocket?

Hit a sensitive nerve there, did I? :cool: We got one! :D

Great progress on post length, BTW. Congrats! :D

Still lots of work necessary and required on that whole coherency thingy we spoke of previously though.<IMHO> :rolleyes:

A problem well defined is half solved.<IMHO> I'd call the essay "well defined" as well as a few other things. :)

BTW, "Another hateful, irresponsible essay" just ain't cuttin' it as a valid nor meaningful general critique. ;)

Beware, very serious UEW "tome" fatigue syndrome here! :D

Hint: You MAY instead just type in < "insert OP here" > as a short cut alternative to Quote.

Just an FYI. ;)