I’ll remind you that prohibition required a Constitutional amendment, the idea was very popular.
Popular amongst Protestant busybodies with more zeal than sense and outsized influence on politicians, sure, but not necessarily the population in general.
I’ll in turn remind you that it became so unpopular that they passed a new amendment to get rid of it, the only time that ever happened.
It was popular for a reason people don’t understand now: women were getting the shit beaten out of them by their drunken husbands. So a huge number of people, especially women, thought prohibition would stop that. Unfortunately, it just created a whole new kind of violence without reducing the domestic violence.
But the cause was a lot more noble than people give it credit for.
women were getting the shit beaten out of them by their drunken husbands. So a huge number of people, especially women, thought prohibition would stop that
They thought wrong. Typical of conservatives to blame something external and simple for a societal problem rooted in toxic gender roles and family structures.
the cause was a lot more noble than people give it credit for.
Except for the fact that there’s nothing noble about jumping to conclusions and trying to solve the only tangentially related problems of some by depriving everyone else of something that most of them enjoyed more or less responsibly.
a reason people don’t understand now
On the contrary: we still understand that domestic violence is awful and we now also understand that alcohol doesn’t in itself cause it.