What with our latter-day prohibitionists marching up and down and blowing their trumpets, finding ever more things that need banning, restricting and de-normalising, and their new campaign to claim victimhood, I sought relief from debating them with a few quotes from H.L. Mencken, who knew a thing or two about prohibition and its vile champions:
Yikes! What's that in his mouth? Another photo they will need to censor"Puritanism - The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."
“The real victim of moral legislation is always the honest, law-abiding, well-meaning citizen—what the late William Graham Summer called the Forgotten Man. Prohibition makes it impossible for him to take a harmless drink, cheaply and in a decent manner. In the same way the Harrison Act puts heavy burdens upon the physician who has need of prescribing narcotic drugs for a patient, honestly and for good ends. But the drunkard still gets all the alcohol that he can hold, and the drug addict is still full of morphine and cocaine."
"Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of all the favorite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished."
"A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank."
“The real victim of moral legislation is always the honest, law-abiding, well-meaning citizen—what the late William Graham Summer called the Forgotten Man. Prohibition makes it impossible for him to take a harmless drink, cheaply and in a decent manner. In the same way the Harrison Act puts heavy burdens upon the physician who has need of prescribing narcotic drugs for a patient, honestly and for good ends. But the drunkard still gets all the alcohol that he can hold, and the drug addict is still full of morphine and cocaine."
"Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of all the favorite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished."
"A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank."
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule."
7 comments:
Ombibulous?
"I'm ombibulous. I drink every known alcoholic drink and enjoy them all."
H.L.Mencken
Mencken is consistent and reliable gold - top guy.
DP,
yep, I had to hold off on the quotations, or else I could have gone on a long time.
I posted a YouTube video of a radio interview with him some time back, which is worth digging up. I think it's the only recording of him speaking. He's talking about his life, I recall.
http://englandsfreedome.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/1000-years-ago.html
there you go.
My Favorite: "The fact is that the average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth. He is not actually happy when free; he is uncomfortable, a bit alarmed, and intolerably lonely. Liberty is not a thing for the great masses of men. It is the exclusive possession of a small and disreputable minority, like knowledge, courage and honor. It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty — and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies."
Jan Eirik
Are you going to the ACTA proteste tomorrow btw?
J E,
that's an excellent quote.
I plan to be there tomorrow, hopefully see you there.
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