Prohibition

Is everyone watching the PPS special, Prohibition by Ken Burns? Are you watching with a big glass of booze in your hand? Wow what an eye opener.

I'm not sure which was worse - that we were such a nation of boozers before... or that the constitutional amendment banning the sale and transport of alcohol actually happened. The final segment airs tonite and I"ll be glued to the TV for sure.

A couple things jumped out at me - besides the glaring hypocrisy... I thought that the temperance movement to get anti-alcohol "education" into the schools was just stunning. While some of the curriculum provided in the text books was true-ish... the flat out lies were just shocking. Makes you wonder what is being taught to kids these days...and who's agenda is being worked.

The other thing that was interesting to me was the unintended consequences of well meaning folks - the rise of organized crime, the justice system being both overwhelmed and corrupted, and the millions and millions of tax free dollars that benefited no one but the "criminals" who learned to work the system.

The best quote from last nite's segment from Winston Churchill who refused to aid the US in its fight with illegal booze coming from Canada or the Caribbean... he said something along the lines that "Prohibition was an affront to the whole history of mankind."  I'd raise a glass to that for sure.

Of course it also made me think about how some folks think that their way is the only way - well meaning or not. Anybody else shake their heads when the media started talking about those poor folks who got sick from listeria from commercially grown, harvested, and distributed cantaloupes?  It seemed to me that locally grown produce would not have had such a widespread reach and would have been more contained than the current outbreak which spans many states.  I guess all their "best practices' that "they" know how to better than the rest of us didn't really work out the way they thought.

But heaven forbid if you wanna grow some food in your own yard. In an updated report I read that the charges had been dropped 'for now' - but its also the end of the growing season. I'm guessing that they are waiting for her to plant a few seeds next spring so that the SWAT team can swoop down and haul off this obvious criminal.

And what about all you soon-to-be criminals out there harboring good ol' light bulbs.... the electric police may be gunning for you soon. Hopefully you won't be billed for a broken bulb when the EPA has to come out and sweep up the mercury. Or get a headache from the CFL's like I do... but the real tragedy was the folks who lost their jobs here in the States when the manufacturing plants went dark. Guess who still makes those good old bulbs? Right. China.

Of course you know my feelings on the Gestapo-type tactics that your government is using on farmers who are selling the most dreaded of all contraband... raw milk. While I can kinda get that raw milk on a large scale could be unwieldy... that you don't have the right to consume milk from your own cow on your own land? That just ain't right.

To me it sounds like the New Prohibition is on food.

Ecclesiastes rightly says that "there is nothing new under the sun" (Ecc 1:9) and looking back at Prohibition and looking just over the horizon at the coming "food prohibition".... I think that old Solomon was right.

Get out there and get those gates and fences up, Farm Pirates... next they'll be coming in and hauling off the goats and the chickens and handing us food stamps for our government approved "food."