blog.drunkard.com

Is the Pendulum Finally Swinging Back In Our Direction?

June 11, 2008 11:53 am Frank In the News

According to Reason Magazine, the Fourth Great Awakening may be on the wane. We may be about retake some ground and perhaps even be teetering on the edge of a grand new era of unbridled boozing. Though probably not as grand as previous eras. And I quote:

“By 1790 only 5 percent to 10 percent of the adult population belonged to formal churches. Both the democratic spirit and the call of the frontier loosened American morals. In their 1982 book Drinking in America, the historians Mark Edward Lender and James Kirby Martin described the period from the 1790s until the early 1830s as “probably the heaviest drinking era in the nation’s history.” In 1800 the mean absolute alcohol intake for Americans 15 years and older was 5.8 gallons per year. By 1830 that had risen to 7.1 gallons per person, of which 4.3 gallons were hard liquor and 2.8 were beer, cider, or wine. The historian W.J. Rorabaugh argued in The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (1979) that post-Revolutionary Americans regarded heavy drinking as their right as free people. As Lender and Martin summarized Rorabaugh’s argument, “a personal binge…was in a sense an assertion of individuality, a freedom from communal restraints. Even the drunkard, in essence, was a pluralist—free under the laws of the nation to pursue his or her own lifestyle no matter what others thought.”

Read the entire article, it’s brilliant, not to mention heartening.

Condition: Just a Taste emoticon Just a Taste

2 Responses

The Sd :

Date: June 13, 2008 @ 3:26 pm

A great article, as you say. I have a feeling things will have to get worse before they get better for us drinkers, but I share your gut feeling that the pendulum will soon start swinging our way. People are just fed up of being nannied and treated like children. The booze riot on the London tube recently proved that.
Gabriel :

Date: July 9, 2008 @ 7:39 pm

The critics only mire themselves in the ornate mask of their critiques, but once the lay become the enlightened, more and more will these enablers of the police-state be horrified by their inaction.

Another round of Tom Collins drinks for the pine riders, before big brother implements Soviet peace-keeping initiatives.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Sep
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30

Is the Pendulum Finally Swinging Back In Our Direction?

The Sd :

Gabriel :

Blogroll

Recent Posts

Archives