Menace of Prohibition

The remotest possibility of the success of such an unjust, un-American, illiberal and dangerous form of tyranny in government, should alarm the American people beyond and above every other question, even that of war; and should set them to the task of a close analysis of the subject and trend of Prohibition.

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Excerpt:

John Stuart Mill defines Prohibition in this language: "Prohibition: A theory of 'social rights' which is nothing short of this-that it is the absolute right of every individual that every other individual shall act in every respect exactly as he ought; that whosoever fails thereof in the smallest particular violates my social rights and entitles me to demand from the legislature the removal of the grievance. So monstrous a principle is far more dangerous than any single interference with liberty;-there is no violation of liberty which it would not justify." And in the light of the last sentence, "so monstrous a principle is far more dangerous than any single interference with liberty;-there is no violation of liberty which it would not justify," the writer would especially examine this modern crusaders movement for Prohibition.

Many other writers have viewed the question from sociological, economic, and religious standpoints; but the principle of the thing,-that in which it is based-a "monstrous" principle, which, as Mill says, "is far more dangerous than any single interference with liberty," deserves more serious consideration than any other phase of the question: a principle, in fact, of intolerant coercion as against the great principle of individual liberty so thoroughly established as the inherent right of the citizen at the very inception of this government in the Western world.

To do justice to this particular phase of the question of Prohibition-a principle so dangerous and "monstrous" that there is "no violation of liberty which it would not justify"-it is necessary to be courageous, honest, unafraid, and not "soaked to the pulp in the pseudo-puritanical, moral antiseptic bath of conventional prejudices." Here in America we have had enough of base misrepresentation, rotten hypocrisy, and sugar-coated sentimentality. What we really need now is honesty of purpose and courage of conviction, let the criticizing mob be of "the upper ten thousand or lower," it matters not.