Quote Originally Posted by billnorman1 View Post
Holy crap Jeff Hahn, remind me never to get in an argument with you. That is quite a dissertation and if not plagiarized is profound. I agree with almost all you said, that is the parts I understand. What I have derived from some of it is once the path to addiction has been taken it isn't possible to determine if there was a predilection of an individual being susceptible to drug abuse.
Since nobody can tell, the question addresses a moot point.
Not plagiarized...I cited my sources! The one thing I didn’t go into detail on was Joseph Gusfield’s work. He argued that prohibition was the last great “hurrah” for rural, middle class, Protestant, native born values. Those folks were strongly anti-alcohol and prohibition was enacted as a reaction to the values represented by recent (late 1800’s to early 1900’s) immigrants from Western Europe. Those folks came from societies were alcohol consumption was accepted as a major part of their culture...Irish, Italian, etc. Those immigrants at that time were obviously foreign born, lower class, predominatly Catholic, and living in urban areas. The situation was truly a class of cultures.

I do think that Gusfield underestimated the power of his argument. While the cultural divisions represented by religion (at least between Protestants and Catholics) have diminished significantly, there are still major cultural divides based on foreign vs native born (the current debate over immigration is a great example), class divisions, and particularly urban vs rural values.

In fact, I think that the rural vs urban based value conflict is just as powerful today as it was 100 years ago. As an illustration, look at the map of the US broken down by how counties voted in the last several Presidential elections. It’s clear that we still have a major rural vs urban distinction in values. That distinction in values underlies a variety of current political issues like gay rights, abortion, tobacco use, abolition of the electoral college, etc. The term “deplorables” was used by those who hold urban values as a derogatory term for those who hold values rooted in rural culture, just as “metrosexuals” is a term used by those with rural values to describe those who hold urban values. Maybe the meme showed Phil Robertson and Pajama Boy best captured this rural vs urban division.