Yet it sounds just like them, if you ask me.
University of Texas professor David Oshinsky, in his review of Daniel Okrent’s “Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition”:
Okrent resists the chance to link Prohibition to the current political scene. But the comparisons are tempting, to say the least. About a century ago, a group of determined activists mobilized to confront the moral decay they claimed was destroying their country. Their public demon was alcohol, but their real enemy was an alien culture reflected by city dwellers, recent immigrants and educated elites.
Always a minority, the forces of Prohibition drove the political agenda by concentrating relentlessly on their goal, voting in lockstep on a single issue and threatening politicians who did not sufficiently back their demands. They triumphed because they faced no organized opposition. Americans were too distracted — perhaps too busy drinking — to notice what they had lost. It’s a story with an eerily familiar ring.
Except for the fact that the Prohibitionists were fighting to restrict freedom, while the “determined activists” Professor Oshivsky is referring to —if it’s indeed the same group I think he’s talking about — are fighting to preserve freedom. And if anybody’s been too distracted to notice what we’ve lost……
