Prohibition Redux?

Salon is well known for publishing garbage penned by the literary equivalent of second-rate village idiots, but this article may be the most moronic pile of half-witted prose they've ever released into the wild. Basically, the author thinks that we should bring back Prohibition -- because it worked so well the first time, obviously. Oh, he doesn't want to outright ban the sale of alcohol, (he does, but even he realizes that he can't get it passed as an Amendment again), so he proposes this alternate "solution": "Raise the alcohol tax to a point just shy of where large numbers of people will start making moonshine in their bathtubs."

Oh really? And where, Oh Great And Enlightened Moral Crusader, would that be? Do you have some magic ball which will analyze all of the complex economic, social and criminal factors at play and tell you "Oh Great One, you have reached One Point Shy! Tax no more!" If you do, you really should share it with rest of us.

But wait! There's more!

Though it is true that I was raised in a Muslim household, it is not my intention to impose sharia law on you and yours.

Call it whatever you wish, but using the government to enforce YOUR PERSONAL MORALISM on others is intolerance of the highest order, and I'm not going to let you hide behind the ModerateIslam™ strawman which the gullible leftists in this country have conveniently propped up for you.

As someone who came to drinking late in life, I still marvel at its disinhibiting effects and I genuinely appreciate the good it can do by, essentially, helping awkward people have fun. I also think there is much to be said for psychoactive substances like MDMA, or Molly, which have enormous therapeutic potential.

Oh, so alcohol is bad, but hard narcotics are morally equivalent to a relaxing day in the spa? That's very forward-thinking of you, Mr Follower of an Anti-Semitic Pederast.

But alcohol is crazily dangerous, and it needs to be more tightly controlled. Everyone knows that Prohibition was a disaster. What most of us forget is that the movement for Prohibition arose because alcohol abuse actually was destroying American society in the first decades of the 20th century

I've been studying American history all my life and I've never heard such an assertion. Prohibition was the result of a Fundamentalist Christian moralist movement dating back to the mid 19th century which had found a strange bedfellow with organized criminals around 1900, the latter of whom knew exactly how much money they'd make off of Prohibition. They used their influence across the country and in Congress to see that the Amendment was ratified. When people finally woke up and realized they'd been duped, they sent Prohibition packing like an overstayed house guest. I suggest you read more and make fewer sweeping, unsupported assertions, Mr Salam.

and the strictly-regulated post-Prohibition alcohol market was shaped by still-fresh memories of the pre-Prohibition era.

Oh, so it just didn't last long enough, that was it? Perhaps the people killed by mobsters would have a different opinion, were they still able to voice it.

This country is (or used to be, at least) about freedom of choice. I have no desire to tell anyone how to live their lives. If they wish to drink themselves to death, I will not stand in their way. If you enjoy teetotalling then have at it, but don't come knocking on my door like a newly converted Jesus salesman so you can tell me how empty is my life. I'll thank you to keep your opinions of my lifestyle firmly inside your head and take your holier-than-thou moralistic crusading back where it came from. When you get it there, bury it in a deep hole, because the rest of us just aren't interested.