Watching the extremists concerning abortion and gun rights has led me to wonder just how long America can cling to profoundly bad ideas. (I know. Too long.).
Our history is pockmarked with horrible ideas: Slavery, Jim Crow laws, the warping of the 14th Amendment to give corporations human rights and Prohibition, to name just a few.
Prohibition become the law of the land after members of the temperance movement had been demonstrating for decades. When it was enshrined in the U.S. Constitution opponents despaired, saying the country would stay dry for at least a century. But outlawing alcohol lasted nearly 14 years before national revulsion reversed it. Temperance as a movement became not only dead, but ridiculous. The movement’s moment of peak influence was also its death knell.
So, when I hear the repulsive political rhetoric defending onerous restrictions on abortion and unfettered rights for any warm body to own a gun, I can only hope that we are watching examples of overreach that will also, someday, be corrected.
During Prohibition the Drys (as proponents of temperance were called) were triumphant. They included President Herbert Hoover, who used his Inaugural Address to outline his intention of strengthening law enforcement against illegal selling of alcohol and to lecture citizens of their duty not to buy booze. (No wonder he wasn’t re-elected). It took years of overreach and the resultant anger on the part of most rational people to end Prohibition. Against all expectations, and for the first and only time, Americans passed a constitutional amendment (the 21st) to repeal another amendment, in this case the 18th Amendment that outlawed liquor.
So when will we, the majority, be fed up enough to demand change from the acts of extremists banning abortion no matter what the circumstances, and the guns-at-any-cost crowd?
Consider the statements of right-wing lawmakers in the last few weeks in the wake of the latest mass shooting, this one in Nashville, Tennessee.
Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Florida, said the Second Amendment was, “the bedrock of our nation.” He said talk of legislation in response to the tragedy was “premature,” and that the assault weapons ban that the nation had until 2004, “didn’t really do anything.”
Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., said in response to the killing, “We’re not going to fix it. I don’t see any real role that we could do other than mess things up, honestly.”
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem assured attendees at the National Rifle Association convention soon after the shooting that her 2-year-old granddaughter has “already has a shotgun and she already has a rifle.” “The girl is set up,” Noem bragged.
Even in 2017, then-Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly called the horrific mass shooting at a Las Vegas music festival, “the price of freedom.” Fifty-nine died and 520 were injured. Other conservatives have made similar statements.
Funny, isn’t it, how such an astronomical cost of freedom is OK as long as the price is paid by the death of strangers’ children?
The extremists are also busy concerning abortion. In South Carolina, Republicans have proposed a bill that would subject women who have abortions to the death penalty or to a minimum of 30 years in prison.
Lawmakers in Oklahoma and Arkansas want to remove barriers to prosecuting women who undergo abortions. There’s no question in my mind that we will see similar ghastly efforts elsewhere in months to come.
Which brings me back to Prohibition.
It seemed like a grand idea to some who managed to get it approved - until cases highlighting its unfairness began to turn the majority of public opinion against it, as Daniel Okrent explains in his excellent book, “The Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition.”
One such incident in 1927 was the death of several people and illness and blindness of hundreds of others in New York after they had consumed drinks that contained wood alcohol, which is poisonous and attacks the retina. Wayne Wheeler, the head of the Anti-Saloon League, the nation’s most powerful temperance organization, was unmoved. ”The government is under no obligation to furnish the people with alcohol that is drinkable when the Constitution prohibits it. The person who drinks this alcohol is a deliberate suicide.” Public backlash against his remark was swift.
Another spasm of outrage followed the 1928 arrest of Mrs. Etta Mae Miller, in Lansing, Mich., where Drys in the legislature were becoming increasingly extreme. They passed a law mandating life in prison for a fourth violation of liquor laws. Miller’s fourth violation occurred when she sold two pints of moonshine to an undercover cop. Despite having ten children, a jury took 13 minutes to convict her. She was sent to prison for life. Again, public outrage swept the nation. Time Magazine wrote, “In the same courtroom, on the same day” that Miller was sentenced to life in prison,“ a bellboy had pleaded guilty to manslaughter and had been fined $400 and freed.”
But certain of the rightness of the cause, a spokesman for the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals said, “Our only regret is that the woman was not sentenced to life imprisonment before her 10 children were born.” After 15 months, Michigan’s state Supreme Court threw out Miller’s conviction.
People chafe under minority rule. That is the situation of most Americans today.
Prohibition may seem like a tangent when discussing the increasing number of mass shootings in America and the lax gun laws that make the massacres possible. It might also appear irrelevant when considering some states’ harsh abortion laws. But the thread that connects all three issues is public support. People chafe under minority rule. That is the situation of most Americans today. A century ago, it became clear that the majority of Americans didn’t support outlawing alcohol, any more than they currently support outlawing abortion or gun rights with no restrictions.
The question I ask myself all the time is this: When will the tipping point occur? When will the sickened majority decide it is fed up?
There are signs that the electorate is moving. The sleeping giant of young voters, traditionally the least politically active, is awakening; the 2022 elections had their second-highest voter turnout in at least 30 years. I love the progressive organization Run For Something, which helps neophytes get elected and says on its website, “You’re qualified to run for office. We’re here to help.”
Such things give me hope, as do the lessons of history: When Americans decide they are done, the pendulum swings. When it comes to the current, maddening issues of gun violence and abortion rights, the pendulum can’t swing fast enough.
So relevant and so hopeful the pendulum will swing back to sanity...and soon.