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The ‘Respectable’ People Continue to Make War on the Rest of Us
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Robert Higgs
Lew Rockwell.com
Friday, July 11, 2008
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, 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, “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.
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Combine this priggish insecurity and moral pomposity with the ideological appeal of the modern therapeutic state and the irresistible attractions of money and power to be seized when governments at every level 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, 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.
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July 11th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Its amazing that pot is illegal and alcohol is legal. Booze is so much more harmful its not even funny. But its all about the money. Just follow it.
July 11th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
I know the church’s are being subsidized, but what is going on at the bars, Ban on smoking has killed off the growds and local drinking holes in three state that I have visited and yet the owners go right along with it like there is no choice. If a person does not smoke he or she can choose not to go to an establishment.
July 11th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
http://www.thereignofchrist.org
Satan has control of all Christian Churches!
The First Coming of Christ was as Man, the Second Coming of
Christ is in man. This is the Eucharistic Reign of Christ on
earth, in man.
You may ask why is there to be a Eucharistic Reign. The answer is
very simple. At the present time Satan has almost total control of
the earth. It is man, Eucharistic man, who will defeat Satan.
The Eucharistic Reign is the command of God in Himself, that is, in
Eucharistic man, to defeat Satan and all of his evil forces and lock
them up in Hell for all eternity.
The Eucharistic Reign is the Triumph of Jesus Christ the King of
All Nations, taking back the entire earth from all the forces of evil.
It is the triumph of God in man, and man in God, in unity and
oneness expelling the ungodly and unbelieving into the exterior
darkness for ever and ever, with no end.
The Eucharist is the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave, to
make known to His servants the things which must shortly come to
pass, for at once they begin, all will be completed in a short time.
The Eucharistic Reign is the unity of the Divine Nature and the
human nature in the new creation, Eucharistic man. The Eucharistic
Reign is the reversal of the Fall of Adam and Eve when the serpent
deceived the first parents and took control of the earth. The
Eucharistic Reign is the victory of man over the devil, and the devil
being cast into Hell for ever and ever, with no end.
July 11th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
http://www.thereignofchrist.org
Jesus told us: “But pray that your flight be not in the winter or on
the Sabbath. For there shall be then great tribulation, such as has
not been from the beginning of the world until now, neither shall
be.”
Consider the likes of nine earthquakes and tsunamis and
tidal waves of even greater magnitude than the Indonesian disaster
of December 2004 happening in the world at the same time. Then
you might have some idea of what disaster the Great Tribulation
will cause.
Two thirds of the world population will perish, that is,
over four billion people will die in a period of three and a half
years. The other two billion people will suffer greatly, but will be
saved.
“There shall be in all the earth, says the Lord, two parts in it
shall be scattered, and shall perish, but the third part shall be left
therein. And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will
refine them as silver is refined, and I will try them as gold is tried.
They shall call on My Name, and I will hear them. I will say: ‘Thou
art My people,’ and they shall say: ‘The Lord is my God’
July 11th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
thank god for people like robert higgs who had the voice to speak what i never could. i was silenced along time ago. im not a christian or even religious however, i do believe in a creator and deserve to be heard whether christian buddhist athiest etc… we all have a common theme- justice.
July 12th, 2008 at 12:44 am
Pfffttt, I got your “respectable” right motherfuckin’ here pal!!!!
July 12th, 2008 at 1:58 am
These people are incredibly stupid if they think they can get away with any of this. Nothing will awake the sleeping giant like taking away their ‘comforts’, and then hell will envy the chaos on earth.
July 12th, 2008 at 2:50 am
yeehaw Hillbilly Jihad. I’m right there with ya.
July 12th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Ask any substance abuse counselor and most of them will tell you that by far the worst drug is
almighty alcohol, and it’s the cheapest. As far as pure addicting substances go, nothing is more
addicting than nicotine. But why worry about it – if you don’t want to do it, don’t, but let others
make their own choice. Same for all drugs. They’re victimless crimes.
July 12th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
The prohibition of marihuana is a malicious conspiracy to hinder man’s ability to remain self-reliant by cultivating fields of hemp.
July 13th, 2008 at 1:09 am
The author is not only right, but well spoken.
Too bad a majority of Americans don’t see this kind of logic in their every day observations of life.
July 13th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Yes I agree but most of the globalist elites are cocaine heads that have it in huge quantities and have cocaine parties!! Their 3 gods are; LUCIFER AND MONEY AND COCAINE!! But don’t worry; the GREAT GOD OF HEAVEN WILL FRY THEM AND THEIR POWDERY god!! AND THEIR BEAST CHIPPING OF BILLIONS WILL COME TO A HORRIBLE END when the Great God of Heaven invades them for 42 months of hell on the EArth for killing HIS MOST PRIZED POSSESSION; HIS CHILDREN !! For we await the FEMA and concentration camps!! OH MY!! RESIST THE NEW WORLD ORDER AND THEIR ZOMBIE MAKING BEAST CHIP!!!
July 14th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
They only outlaw substances that lead to alternative/creative thinking or allow people to have an “awakening”, whether it be spiritual or intellectual. Alcohol is legal because it depresses people and vaporized brain cells, marijuana and hallucinogenics are illegal because they expand your mind.