Scharlach was surprised at the honesty of Ken Burns’ Prohibition, which links the unpopular movement with abolition and women’s suffrage:
Sailer points out in today’s Taki column that the coupling of women’s suffrage and prohibition seems odd to us today. If we expand the coupling to a trifecta — women’s suffrage, prohibition, abolition — the one in the middle seems even more out of place. If we expand it even further — women’s suffrage, prohibition, abolition, federal income tax, democratic election of senators, labor laws — then we have the pantheon of the early progressive religion. But only one of them failed. And today, ironically, prohibition, the progressive failure, stands in many people’s minds as the example par excellence of inappropriate (read: conservative) federal intrusion into local life. That abolition, federal income tax, labor laws, or women’s suffrage might likewise be examples of federal intrusions into local life is an insane right-wing suggestion.
If you control the message — media and academia, especially historians — then you can impose your spin on the majority of the populace, who are not willing to spend the time and energy to look behind the curtain.
If you accept that Burns presents the matter accurately, the US women’s movement was born in those New England towns when housewives went to their pastors to deal with the “crack epidemic” of the 1820′s — cheap whiskey.
The solution that worked was to convince men to change laws to benefit women. A housewife pleading with a bartender works for a day, but let’s face it, sheriffs with guns works much better.
Women push the same buttons today to get lawmakers to pass laws that benefit women. Men are violent pigs — protect us! Never mind that the origin of this campaign was during innocent men’s encounter with cheap whiskey; and yes, I’m sure some of those men got drunk and disorderly. But that was 1827 and this is 2013.
I loved the 19th century prohibition handbill that showed a drunk and disorderly black man with a bottle of rum in one hand and a gun in the other. I guess when associating your movement’s goal with ending slavery works, you use that, but when racism furthers your cause, you go ahead and use that.