TheAgitator.com
American idealism
Friday, August 15th, 2008Back to the temperance movement. This excerpt follows directly after this one.
The temperance movement’s drift toward extremism is understandable. In the 19th century, temperance advocacy rose in tandem with pushes for both the abolition of slavery and equal rights for women, movements that tended to favor an uncompromising position. Lincoln supported a moderate stance on slavery and still went to war over it. And women either deserved equal rights or they didn’t—although the suffrage and temperance movements were so closely connected that opponents of the latter often opposed the former so women wouldn’t have a chance to vote on alcohol in the way that they’d promised.
By 1812, when Rush published his extremely popular Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind, he’d concluded that drinkers, not just drinks, could be generally innocent. Their will, he writes, was the “involuntary vehicle of vicious actions.” But that didn’t stop him from suggesting, after a little hand-wringing over issues of personal liberty, that alcoholics be confined to “sober houses” in order to effect a “complete and radical cure of their disease.”
The transition from moderation to the radical cure of abstention was further assisted by the Rev. Lyman Beecher, a brilliant orator and evangelist who had no fewer than six children who would make a mark on literary and political history. (Harriet Beecher Stowe of Uncle Tom’s Cabin fame is the most well known today.) Beecher and his children, several of whom were prominent abolitionists, were what we’d now call liberals or progressives. Although Democrats are the ones usually tagged as being “soft on drugs” today, throughout American history, movements against drugs and alcohol have generally come from the left, justified for reasons of common good, public health, and religion. Republican President Warren G. Harding and his attorney general famously played poker and drank bootlegged whiskey during Prohibition, while The Nation magazine, then and now a leader of liberal thought, was a supporter of the 18th Amendment. The Prohibition Party, founded in 1880, was emphatically leftist—it had as a primary goal the implementation of the income tax. It’s only the relatively recent rise of a more secular left that’s altered the dynamic.
In 1814, Beecher delivered a series of six sermons on insobriety designed to appeal to the growing sense of American identity. “Intemperance is the sin of our land, and, with our boundless prosperity, is coming in upon us like a flood,” he preaches. “[I]f anything shall defeat the hopes of the world, which hang upon our experiment of civil liberty, it is that river of fire, which is rolling through the land, destroying the vital air, and extending around an atmosphere of death.”
As Beecher’s and other Second Great Awakening preachers’ words were printed and distributed around the country, the shift to absolutism came rapidly: Within 10 years of its 1836 founding, the American Temperance Society had officially redefined “temperance” to mean “abstinence.” The position cost the movement the early support it had enjoyed from the beer lobby, which then joined forces with the liquor industry against the society.
Beecher’s river-of-fire rhetoric wasn’t necessarily disproportionate to the problem. Despite the hopes of the nation’s founders, drinking had risen steadily in the United States after the revolution, according to drug and alcohol historian David F. Musto. Anti-British sentiment led to a decline in the importation of British beer and an increase in domestic whiskey consumption, which in turn strengthened the temperance movement—the effects of the more potent beverage, it was assumed, being that much more deleterious to society. By the 1800s, the movement had gained enough momentum to force schools to teach D.A.R.E.-style fear-mongering. It demanded that anti-alcohol messages be a part of every child’s education. “The majority of beer drinkers die of dropsy,” children were taught. “When alcohol passes down the throat it burns off the skin leaving it bare and burning. Alcohol clogs the brain and turns the liver quickly from yellow to green to black. Alcohol is a colorless liquid poison.”
Referring to “alcohol” as a “poison” was the culmination of the shift in attitude. Once beer and whiskey and gin had become “alcohol,” they became easier to vilify. Once alcohol had become “poison,” the fight was mostly over. These days, poisonous alcohol is mostly confined to chemistry labs and cleaning agents; the respectable label for the drinkable stuff in educational settings is “drug,” which associates it with something already prohibited. “There were days when we called it Bourbon whiskey and Tom gin, and when the very name of it breathed romance. That time is past. The poor stuff is now called alcohol,” wrote Stephen Leacock in 1918. “I wish somehow we could prohibit the use of alcohol and merely drink beer and whiskey and gin as we used to.”
This is making me thirsty. Just my luck that the bottle of Jack Daniels I keep in my desk drawer is empty.
It must have made their heads spin when someone pointed out that Jesus turned water into wine.
Jesus, Radley – these are some damn amazing selections for guest bloggers. Quality stuff so far.
It must have made their heads spin when someone pointed out that Jesus turned water into wine.
Ah yes, but it was non-alcoholic wine, Mike. This will come as no surprise to most of us here but it should be noted that there are those of certain religious persuasions that actually believe this. It’s bollocks, of course, but their reasoning is that the Lord wouldn’t give them something that would harm them. They never say something that could potentially harm them. For then they would have to get in a big debate over their concepts of freewill . . . which invariably uses their own logic to defeat their arguments. And they just can’t have that. They are quite ignorant of the true reasons why they have an absolute ban on alcoholic beverages and willfully so.
Christians who want to ban everything don’t even understand what being a Christian truly means. We’ve given up following ‘the law’ as the Jews do, we are just supposed to do the Lord’s will. We are supposed to understand that man is a fallen/sinful creature and will never be able to completely live a sinless life. Most people can’t even tell you what the two trees in the Garden of Eden are or what they represent. They usually say something stupid like ‘The Good Tree and the Bad Tree?’
“Although Democrats are the ones usually tagged as being “soft on drugs” today, throughout American history, movements against drugs and alcohol have generally come from the left, justified for reasons of common good, public health, and religion.”
A point that I have striven to make clear on various ‘leftist’ blogs…and received pointed ‘radio silence’ about…or been castigated for.
They become especially incensed when you point out that this occurred during the so-called ‘Progressive Era’. And that their inaction on examining the laws, divining their inherent racism, and then failing to see how those laws are causing enormous damage to their political base via voter disenfranchisement courtesy of drug law violations (which did not exist prior to the ‘Progressive Era’). And by failing to do so and act upon that, it’s partly why future national elections can be expected to be fiercely contested issues instead of exercises in ennui.
But…they don’ wanna hear it.
Well said, James. Of course, Christians are completed Jews. The New Covenant dispenses with a good portion of the old ways, just like the Old Testament says it would. It makes you wonder why they (they being the Christians who haven’t a clue) kept the fire and brimstone and left out the forgiveness and mercy. It sickens me at times to know that it is such a simple philosophy at it’s core and yet so few truly understand it. Kind of like libertarianism.
Correction:
Christians are supposed to be completed Jews.
My bad.
Great stuff, the temperance movement has always been a topic that interested me and your posts have been fantastic. Keep it up!
Correct Danno49, I didn’t mean to imply I was against Jews or anything crazy like that. I just meant what you said much more clearly. They are still the original ‘Children of God’.
Also, the only issue with libertarians and Christians is that there seems to be quite a few atheist libertarians so you can see why they might not ‘mingle’ so well.
James,
Naw, I didn’t think you were saying anything against the Jews, good sir.
I hear you on the issue with the atheist libertarians and Christianity. In my opinion, the whole simplified maxim of live and let live regarding libertarianism is akin to the Golden Rule, a fine way of going about your business no matter what tree you sit under.
I often have arguments with my father (and other Christians who are important to me) about the finer points and he says there is no way I can be Catholic and a libertarian as well. To me, it’s quite simple: if one takes away the ability to do what is considered sinful, then there is no freewill to be exercised and then you have no choice but to be good or suffer the consequences. There is no choice to make when morality is legislated. I have always been skeptical of the idea of God not wanting us to be robot and choosing the path for ourselves. When there is one path laid out before you, what are you but a robot? He rolls his eyes at me when I say legalize them all (vices), half the people indulge in what is considered sinful behavior because they are told not to. The natural rebel in us all then takes over. I guess I’m the only one who understands what I think and talk about most of the time but then again, I am also the guy who thinks that evolution and creationism aren’t mutually exclusive so what does that say about me? You should hear the discussions I’ve had about that.
Anyway, I think being a true Christian is all about living by and through example (not that I would be one for folks to emulate, that is for sure) and not making an example of those we think don’t adhere to principles of morality set forth in the guidelines of our belief system. This can be applied religiously across the board. It’s a great big world out there with many paths to heaven. One just needs to choose one and stay on it as best they can and hope for the best.
And now that I have sufficiently confounded you and others who may have decided to read my drivel, I will retire for the weekend and bid you a happy Friday.
[...] 15, 2008 in Uncategorized by Jeff Fulcher Over at the Agitator, Ryan Grim is taking a really interesting look at [...]
[...] 15, 2008 in Uncategorized by Jeff Fulcher Over at the Agitator, Ryan Grim is taking a really interesting look at the early temperance movement. Grim points out [...]
A reading:
“Only one thing is certain: dictatorship cannot take hold in America today. This country, as yet, cannot be ruled — but it can explode. It can blow up into the helpless rage and blind violence of a civil war. It cannot be cowed into submission, passivity, malevolence, resignation. It cannot be ‘pushed around.’ Defiance, not obedience, is the American’s answer to overbearing authority. The nation that ran an underground railroad to help human beings escape from slavery, or began drinking on principle in the face of Prohibition, will not say ‘Yes, sir’ to the enforcers of ration coupons and cereal prices. Not yet.”
Ayn Rand wrote that in 1971. (excerpted from “Don’t Let It Go” — chapter 18, “Philosophy: Who Needs It”)
Read that second sentence again.
I’m convinced that her first stated condition is no longer true, but the second one still is, now, for the reasons stated in the rest of the paragraph.
Yes, happy Friday … I learned already not to get into internet discussions about Evolution/Creation :)
[...] More temperance. This section follows after this one… [...]