The State of New York voted to cease enforcing prohibition. This did not repeal Prohibition, which was of course a Federal law, but ceased New York's participation in the effort to enforce it.
Showing posts with label Alcohol. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alcohol. Show all posts
Thursday, June 1, 2023
Monday, May 29, 2023
Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLVIII. Put your nastiness away and have a beer, Steamboat and Red Wing, Repeating history, Dog whistles.
I went to the Black Tooth Brewery in Casper's beer reveal, for their new UW themed beer. I wasn't really interested in going but my wife was, so my wife, daughter and her boyfriend all went.
Secretary of State Chuck Gray was there.
The can has an old style state license plate theme, and therefore it would need cooperation from UW anyway, which owns the trademark for the symbol and jealously guards it. That requires the cooperation of the Secretary of State's office. This is being done as a "partnership" with UW, so there's no doubt that it would have come. One of the employees of the SoS's office was thanked by UW, and to his credit, Secretary Gray thanked the woman as well.
But Gray, who has spent a lot of time touring the state and showing up at political events, just couldn't help but go negative and throw in some nasty line about how we aren't "woke" in Wyoming and referencing Budweiser.
The reaction of the crowd was muted at best. This was a Wyoming beer crowd, not a populist far right gathering, and chances are a lot of the people in the audience were either apolitical or old style Wyoming conservatives. Gray seemed to get the message right away and finished his talk, or whatever it was.
I'm really sick of this behavior. Gray boosted lies as a candidate, and now he runs around trying to pour gasoline on politics and ignite fires when he doesn't need to. Wyoming's politicians never used to do this, and they certainly didn't do it while in office.
What must it be like to have to be angry all the time?
For that matter, what must it be like to wear brand-new Wranglers, a style of jeans designed for people with cowboy bodies, and brand-new thick soled cowboy boots, the type that cowboys don't wear.
Why did people vote for Gray? It's really a mystery. That he's campaigning for the Governor's office right now should be evident to everyone. Wyomingites would really have to be suckers to vote for Gray for that office, but then, they were suckers when they put him in his current office.
But beyond that, what kind of personality do you have to have in order to show up at everything with some right wing screed? Can't anyone just enjoy their day without having to be fed a spoonful of BS?
And at what point does putting on a wrathful show convert your personality to fully wrathful? I know one lawyer who puts on such an act all the time that I think he's truly lost his real personality. At some point, that would occur.
Gray referred to the famous rodeo horse in his speech, Steamboat. That's frustrating but inevitable, particularly as his speech, which short, was rambling, much like a speech by a high schooler whose concluded that he's too smart to prepare a speech. Gray rambled on, something about Steamboat and World War One.
Steamboat was never used by the Wyoming Army National Guard in reality, or as a symbol. That's Red Wing.
That horse on the license plate, everyone knows its Steamboat. Right?
This is never going to get straightened out, but frankly I have a hard time imagining Gray caring, just like I don't think he's going to be flanking any calves while wearing those boots and jeans at branding.
On politics, here's an episode of Jimmy Akin's mysterious world really worth listening to.
The Knights of the Golden Circle (Secret Society, Civil War, John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln, Confederate Gold, Rebels, Slavery) – Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World
It's fascinating history, but beyond that, if you can't see the parallels between today's far right populists and the Knights, you just aren't trying.
The only weekend show that's downloaded for me so far has been Meet The Press, and I didn't listen to it. The theme was the Supreme Court.
"The Supreme Court is corrupt!" is to the American political left what "Trump won the election" is to the populist far right, and they're both based on the exact same thing, a contempt for democracy. The far right wants the election to have been stolen, as that would mean it's not a permanent political minority, and we're never going back to wherever they think we were. The left wants the Court to be corrupt as it might get to boot a couple members off and the country would return to the good old days when the Court decided things rather than state legislatures.
In the case of the Court, the entire claim is based on something that's true, but just is. Positions of power and wealth attract each other. You might not like it, but that's the way the world actually works. That doesn't make it illegal, and it doesn't mean that terrible things are going on behind closed doors.
Last prior edition
Friday, May 12, 2023
Saturday, May 12, 1923. Operations Plan 712.
The Country Gentleman went to press with an illustration of a cow, a fitting illustration for today, which is the day we normally run far related posts.
Sigh. . .
Lieutenant Colonel Earl Hancock "Pete" Ellis died in Palau. He was the author of Operations Plan 712: Advanced Base Operations in Micronesia, which became the basis of the American amphibious campaign during World War Two.
A brilliant career Marine, who had entered the Corp in 1900 as a private, he had been on an intelligence gathering mission in the Far East at the time of his death in Palau, a fact which gave rise to rumors that the Japanese had poisoned whiskey he was drinking. In reality, the whiskey itself was likely the poison, as Ellis was a severe alcoholic who likely finally succumbed to the natural implications of that condition.
Judge went to press with an illustration that featured a play on words.
The Chinese bandit kidnapping drama continued.
Sunday, April 30, 2023
Monday, April 30, 1923. Booze on the High Seas
In Cunard Steamship Co., Ltd. v. Mellon, the U.S. Supreme Court, declared that American ships could sell booze on the "high seas" more than three miles beyond U.S. territory. Foreign ships, however, couldn't dock with it.
The decision was rendered by Justice Van Devanter, which is somewhat ironic as he was appointed to the bench from Wyoming, and it was Wyoming that had put the Volstead Act up over the top.
The decision reads:
U.S. Supreme Court
Cunard Steamship Co., Ltd. v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 100 (1923)
Cunard Steamship Co., Ltd. v. Mellon
Nos. 659-662, 666-670, 678, 693, 694
Argued January 4, 5, 1923
Decided April 30, 1923
262 U.S. 100
APPEALS FROM THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
1. The words "transportation" and "importation," in the Eighteenth Amendment, are to be taken in their ordinary sense, the former comprehending any real carrying about or from one place to another, and the latter any actual bringing into the country from the outside. P. 262 U. S. 121.
2. The word "territory," in the Amendment (in the phrase "the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof") means the regional areas, of land and adjacent waters, over which the United States claims and exercises dominion and control as a sovereign power, the term being used in a physical, not a metaphorical, sense, and referring to areas and districts having fixity of location and recognized boundaries. P. 262 U. S. 122.
3. The territory subject to the jurisdiction of the United States includes the land areas under its dominion and control, the ports, harbors, bays, and other enclosed arms of the sea along its coast, and a marginal belt of the sea extending from the coast line outward a marine league, or three geographic miles, and this territory, and all of it, is that which the Amendment designates as its field of operation. P. 262 U. S. 122.
4. Domestic merchant ships outside the waters of the United States, whether on the high seas or in foreign waters, are part of the "territory" of the United States in a metaphorical sense only, and are not covered by the Amendment. P. 262 U. S. 123.
5. The jurisdiction arising out of the nationality of a merchant ship, as established by her domicile, registry, and use of the flag, partakes more of the characteristics of personal than of territorial sovereignty, is chiefly applicable to ships on the high seas where there is no territorial sovereign; and, as respects ships in foreign territorial waters, it has little application beyond what is affirmatively or tacitly permitted by the local sovereign. P. 262 U. S. 123.
6. The Amendment covers foreign merchant ships when within the territorial waters of the United States. P. 262 U. S. 124.
7. A merchant ship of one country, voluntarily entering the territorial limits of another, subjects herself to the jurisdiction of the latter. The jurisdiction attaches in virtue of her presence, just as with other objects within those limits. During her stay, she is entitled to the protection of the laws of that place, and correlatively is bound to yield obedience to them. The local sovereign may, out of considerations of public policy, choose to forego the exertion of its jurisdiction, or to exert it in a limited way only, but this is a matter resting solely in its discretion. P. 262 U. S. 124.
8. The Eighteenth Amendment does not prescribe any penalties, forfeitures, or mode of enforcement, but, by its second section, leaves these to legislative action. P. 262 U. S. 126.
9. The only instance in which the National Prohibition Act recognizes the possession of intoxicating liquor for beverage purposes as lawful is where the liquor was obtained before the act went into effect and is kept in the owner's dwelling for use therein by him, his family, and his bona fide guests. P. 262 U. S. 127.
10. Examination of the National Prohibition Act, as supplemented November 23, 1921, c. 134, 42 Stat. 222, shows
(a) That it is intended to be operative throughout the territorial limits of the United States, with the single exception of liquor in transit through the Panama Canal or on the Panama Railroad,
(b) That it is not intended to apply to domestic vessels when outside the territorial waters of the United States,
(c) That it is intended to apply to all merchant vessels, whether foreign or domestic, when within those waters, save as the Panama Canal Zone exception provides otherwise. Pp. 262 U. S. 127-129.
11. Congress, however, has power to regulate the conduct of domestic merchant ships when on the high seas, or to exert such control over them when in foreign waters as may be affirmatively or tacitly permitted by the territorial sovereign. P. 262 U. S. 129.
12. The antiquity of the practice of carrying intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes as part of a ship's sea stores, the wide extent of the practice, and its recognition in a congressional enactment, do not go to prove that the Eighteenth Amendment and the Prohibition Act could not have been intended to disturb that practice, since their avowed and obvious purpose was to put an end to prior practices respecting such liquors. P. 262 U. S. 129.
13. After the adoption of the Amendment and the enactment of the National Prohibition Act, Congress withdrew the prior statutory recognition of liquors as legitimate sea stores. Rev.Stats., § 2775; Act of September 21, 1922, c. 356, Tit. IV, and § 642, 42 Stat. 858, 948, 989. P. 262 U. S. 130.
14. The carrying of intoxicating liquors, as sea stores, for beverage purposes, through the territorial waters or into the ports and harbors of the United States by foreign or domestic merchant ships is forbidden by the Amendment and the act. P. 262 U. S. 130.
284 F. 890 affirmed.
285 F. 79 reversed.
Appeals from decrees of the district court dismissing, on the merits, as many suits brought by the appellant steamship companies for the purpose of enjoining officials of the United States from seizing liquors carried by appellants' passenger ships as sea stores and from taking other proceedings against the companies and their vessels, under the National Prohibition Act.
MR. JUSTICE VAN DEVANTER delivered the opinion of the Court.
These are suits by steamship companies operating passenger ships between United States ports and foreign ports to enjoin threatened application to them and their ships of certain provisions of the National Prohibition Act. The defendants are officers of the United States charged with the act's enforcement. In the first ten cases, the plaintiffs are foreign corporations and their ships are of foreign registry, while in the remaining two the plaintiff's are domestic corporations, and their ships are of United States registry. All the ships have long carried and now carry, as part of their sea stores, intoxicating liquors intended to be sold or dispensed to their passengers and crews at meals and otherwise for beverage purposes. Many of the passengers and crews are accustomed to using such beverages and insist that the ships carry and supply liquors for such purposes. By the laws of all the foreign ports at which the ships touch, this is permitted, and by the laws of some it is required. The liquors are purchased for the ships and taken on board in the foreign ports and are sold or dispensed in the course of all voyages, whether from or to those ports.
The administrative instructions dealing with the subject have varied since the National Prohibition Act went into effect. December 11, 1919, the following instructions were issued (T.D. 38218):
"All liquors which are prohibited importation, but which are properly listed as sea stores on vessels arriving in ports of the United States, should be placed under seal by the boarding officer and kept sealed during the entire time of the vessel's stay in port, no part thereof to be removed from under seal for use by the crew at meals or for any other purpose."
"Excessive or surplus liquor stores are no longer dutiable, being prohibited importation, but are subject to seizure and forfeiture."
"Liquors properly carried as sea stores may be returned to a foreign port on the vessel's changing from the foreign to the coasting trade, or may be transferred under supervision of the customs officers from a vessel in foreign trade, delayed in port for any cause, to another vessel belonging to the same line or owner."
January 27, 1920, the first paragraph of those instructions was changed (T.D. 38248) so as to read:
"All liquors which are prohibited importation, but which are properly listed as sea stores on American vessels arriving in ports of the United States, should be placed under seal by the boarding officer and kept sealed during the entire time of the vessel's stay in port, no part thereof to be removed from under seal for use by the crew at meals or for any other purpose. All such liquors on foreign vessels should be sealed on arrival of the vessels in port, and such portions thereof released from seal as may be required from time to time for use by the officers and crew."
October 6, 1922, the Attorney General, in answer to an inquiry by the Secretary of the Treasury, gave an opinion to the effect that the National Prohibition Act, construed in connection with the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, makes it unlawful (a) for any ship, whether domestic or foreign, to bring into territorial waters of the United States, or to carry while within such waters, intoxicating liquors intended for beverage purposes, whether as sea stores or cargo, and (b) for any domestic ship, even when without those, waters to carry such liquors for such purposes either as cargo or sea stores. The President thereupon directed the preparation, promulgation, and application of new instructions conforming to that construction of the act. Being advised of this and that, under the new instructions, the defendants would seize all liquors carried in contravention of the act as so construed and would proceed to subject the plaintiffs and their ships to penalties provided in the act, the plaintiffs brought these suits.
The hearings in the district court were on the bills or amended bills, motions to dismiss, and answers, and there was a decree of dismissal on the merits in each suit. 284 F. 890; International Mercantile Marine v. Stuart, 285 F. 79. Direct appeals under Judicial Code § 238 bring the cases here.
While the construction and application of the National Prohibition Act is the ultimate matter in controversy, the act is so closely related to the Eighteenth Amendment, to enforce which it was enacted, that a right understanding of it involves an examination and interpretation of the amendment. The first section of the latter declares, 40 Stat. 1050, 1941:
"Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article, the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited."
These words, if taken in their ordinary sense, are very plain. The articles proscribed are intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes. The acts prohibited in respect of them are manufacture, sale, and transportation within a designated field, importation into the same, and exportation therefrom, and the designated field is the United States and all territory subject to its jurisdiction. There is no controversy here as to what constitutes intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes; but opposing contentions are made respecting what is comprehended in the terms "transportation," "importation" and "territory."
Some of the contentions ascribe a technical meaning to the words "transportation" and "importation." We think they are to be taken in their ordinary sense, for it better comports with the object to be attained. In that sense, transportation comprehends any real carrying about or from one place to another. It is not essential that the carrying be for hire, or by one for another, nor that it be incidental to a transfer of the possession or title. If one carries in his own conveyance for his own purposes, it is transportation no less than when a public carrier, at the instance of a consignor, carriers and delivers to a consignee for a stipulated charge. See United States v. Simpson, 252 U. S. 465. Importation, in a like sense, consists in bringing an article into a country from the outside. If there be an actual bringing in, it is importation, regardless of the mode in which it is effected. Entry through a custom house is not of the essence of the act.
Various meanings are sought to be attributed to the term "territory" in the phrase "the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof." We are of opinion that it means the regional areas -- of land and adjacent waters -- over which the United States claims and exercises dominion and control as a sovereign power. The immediate context and the purport of the entire section show that the term is used in a physical, and not a metaphorical, sense -- that it refers to areas or districts having fixity of location and recognized boundaries. See United States v. Bevans, 3 Wheat. 336, 16 U. S. 390.
It now is settled in the United States and recognized elsewhere that the territory subject to its jurisdiction includes the land areas under its dominion and control, the ports, harbors, bays, and other enclosed arms of the sea along its coast, and a marginal belt of the sea extending from the coast line outward a marine league, or three geographic miles. Church v. Hubbart, 2 Cranch 187, 6 U. S. 234; The Ann, 1 Fed.Cas., p. 926; United States v. Smiley, 27 Fed.Cas., p. 1132; Manchester v. Massachusetts, 139 U. S. 240, 139 U. S. 257-258; Louisiana v. Mississippi, 202 U. S. 1, 202 U. S. 52; 1 Kent's Com. (12th ed.) *29; 1 Moore, International Law Digest, § 145; 1 Hyde, International Law, §§ 141, 142, 154; Wilson, International Law (8th ed.) § 54; Westlake, International Law (2d ed.) p. 187 et seq; Wheaton, International Law (5th Eng. ed. [Phillipson]) p. 282; 1 Oppenheim International Law (3d ed.) §§ 185-189, 252. This, we hold, is the territory which the amendment designates as its field of operation, and the designation is not of a part of this territory, but of "all" of it.
The defendants contend that the amendment also covers domestic merchant ships outside the waters of the United States, whether on the high seas or in foreign waters. But it does not say so, and what it does say shows, as we have indicated, that it is confined to the physical territory of the United States. In support of their contention, the defendants refer to the statement sometimes made that a merchant ship is a part of the territory of the country whose flag she flies. But this, as has been aptly observed, is a figure of speech, a metaphor. Scharrenberg v. Dollar S.S. Co., 245 U. S. 122, 245 U. S. 127; In re Ross, 140 U. S. 453, 140 U. S. 464; 1 Moore International Law Digest § 174; Westlake, International Law (2d ed.) p. 264; Hall, International Law (7th ed. [Higgins]) § 76; Manning, Law of Nations (Amos), p. 276; Piggott Nationality, Pt. II, p. 13. The jurisdiction which it is intended to describe arises out of the nationality of the ship, as established by her domicile, registry, and use of the flag, and partakes more of the characteristics of personal than of territorial sovereignty. See The Hamilton, 207 U. S. 398, 207 U. S. 403; American Banana Co. v. United Fruit Co., 213 U. S. 347, 213 U. S. 355; 1 Oppenheim International Law (3d ed.) §§ 123-125, 128. It is chiefly applicable to ships on the high seas, where there is no territorial sovereign, and as respects ships in foreign territorial waters, it has little application beyond what is affirmatively or tacitly permitted by the local sovereign. 2 Moore International Law Digest, §§ 204, 205; Twiss, Law of Nations (2d ed.) § 166; Woolsey, International Law (6th ed.) § 58; 1 Oppenheim International Law (3d ed.) §§ 128, 146, 260.
The defendants further contend that the amendment covers foreign merchant ships when within the territorial waters of the United States. Of course, if it were true that a ship is a part of the territory of the country whose flag she carries, the contention would fail. But, as that is a fiction, we think the contention is right.
The merchant ship of one country voluntarily entering the territorial limits of another subjects herself to the jurisdiction of the latter. The jurisdiction attaches in virtue of her presence, just as with other objects within those limits. During her stay, she is entitled to the protection of the laws of that place, and correlatively is bound to yield obedience to them. Of course, the local sovereign may out of considerations of public policy choose to forego the exertion of its jurisdiction or to exert the same in only a limited way, but this is a matter resting solely in its discretion. The rule, now generally recognized, is nowhere better stated than in The Exchange, 7 Cranch 116, 11 U. S. 136, 11 U. S. 144, where Chief Justice Marshall, speaking for this Court, said:
"The jurisdiction of the nation within its own territory is necessarily exclusive and absolute. It is susceptible of no limitation not imposed by itself. Any restriction upon it, deriving validity from an external source, would imply a diminution of its sovereignty to the extent of the restriction, and an investment of that sovereignty to the same extent in that power which could impose such restriction."
"All exceptions, therefore, to the full and complete power of a nation within its own territories must be traced up to the consent of the nation itself. They can flow from no other legitimate source."
"* * * *"
"When private individuals of one nation spread themselves through another as business or caprice may direct, mingling indiscriminately with the inhabitants of that other, or when merchant vessels enter for the purposes of trade, it would be obviously inconvenient and dangerous to society, and would subject the laws to continual infraction, and the government to degradation, if such individuals or merchants did not owe temporary and local allegiance, and were not amenable to the jurisdiction of the country. Nor can the foreign sovereign have any motive for wishing such exemption. His subjects thus passing into foreign countries are not employed by him, nor are they engaged in national pursuits. Consequently there are powerful motives for not exempting persons of this description from the jurisdiction of the country in which they are found, and no one motive for requiring it. The implied license, therefore, under which they enter can never be construed to grant such exemption."
That view has been reaffirmed and applied by this Court on several occasions. United States v. Diekelman, 92 U. S. 520, 92 U. S. 525-526; Wildenhus' Case, 120 U. S. 1, 120 U. S. 11; Nishimura Ekiu v. United States, 142 U. S. 651, 142 U. S. 659; Knott v. Botany Mills, 179 U. S. 69, 179 U. S. 74; Patterson v. Bark Eudora, 190 U. S. 169, 190 U. S. 176-178; Strathearn S.S. Co. v. Dillon, 252 U. S. 348, 252 U. S. 355-356. And see Buttfield v. Stranahan, 192 U. S. 470, 192 U. S. 492-493; Oceanic Steam Navigation Co. v. Stranahan, 214 U. S. 320, 324 [argument of counsel -- omitted]; Brolan v. United States, 236 U. S. 216, 236 U. S. 218. In the Patterson case, the Court added:
"Indeed, the implied consent to permit them [foreign merchant ships] to enter our harbors may be withdrawn, and if this implied consent may be wholly withdrawn it may be extended upon such terms and conditions as the government sees fit to impose."
In principle, therefore, it is settled that the amendment could be made to cover both domestic and foreign merchant ships when within the territorial waters of the United States. And we think it has been made to cover both when within those limits. It contains no exception of ships of either class, and the terms in which it is couched indicate that none is intended. Such an exception would tend to embarrass its enforcement and to defeat the attainment of its obvious purpose, and therefore cannot reasonably be regarded as implied.
In itself, the amendment does not prescribe any penalties, forfeitures, or mode of enforcement, but, by its second section, [Footnote 1] leaves these to legislative action.
With this understanding of the amendment, we turn to the National Prohibition Act, c. 85, 41 Stat. 305, which was enacted to enforce it. The act is a long one, and most of its provisions have no real bearing here. Its scope and pervading purpose are fairly reflected by the following excerpts from Title II:
"Sec. 3. No person [Footnote 2] shall on or after the date when the eighteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States goes into effect, manufacture, sell, barter, transport, import, export, deliver, furnish or possess any intoxicating liquor except as authorized in this act, and all the provisions of this act shall be liberally construed to the end that the use of intoxicating liquor as a beverage may be prevented."
"* * * *"
"Sec. 21. Any room, house, building, boat, vehicle, structure, or place where intoxicating liquor is manufactured, sold, kept, or bartered in violation of this title, and all intoxicating liquor and property kept and used in maintaining the same, is hereby declared to be a common nuisance."
"* * * *"
"Sec. 23. That any person who shall, with intent to effect a sale of liquor, by himself, his employee, servant, or agent, for himself or any person, company, or corporation keep or carry around on his person, or in a vehicle, or other conveyance whatever . . . any liquor . . . in violation of this title is guilty of a nuisance. . . ."
"* * * *"
"Sec. 26. When the commissioner, his assistants, inspectors, or any officer of the law shall discover any person in the act of transporting in violation of the law, intoxicating liquors in any wagon, buggy, automobile, water or air craft, or other vehicle, it shall be his duty to seize any and all intoxicating liquors found therein being transported contrary to law."
Other provisions show that various penalties and forfeitures are prescribed for violations of the act, and that the only instance in which the possession of intoxicating liquor for beverage purposes is recognized as lawful is where the liquor was obtained before the act went into effect and is kept in the owner's dwelling for use therein by him, his family, and his bona fide guests.
As originally enacted, the act did not in terms define its territorial field, but a supplemental provision [Footnote 3] afterwards enacted declares that it "shall apply not only to the United States but to all territory subject to its jurisdiction," which means that its field coincides with that of the Eighteenth Amendment. There is in the act no provision making it applicable to domestic merchant ships when outside the waters of the United States, nor any provision making it inapplicable to merchant ships, either domestic or foreign, when within those waters, save in the Panama Canal. There is a special provision dealing with the Canal Zone [Footnote 4] which excepts "liquor in transit through the Panama Canal or on the Panama Railroad." The exception does not discriminate between domestic and foreign ships, but applies to all liquor in transit through the canal, whether on domestic or foreign ships. Apart from this exception, the provision relating to the Canal Zone is broad and drastic like the others.
Much has been said at the bar and in the briefs about the Canal Zone exception, and various deductions are sought to be drawn from it respecting the applicability of the act elsewhere. Of course, the exception shows that Congress, for reasons appealing to its judgment, has refrained from attaching any penalty or forfeiture to the transportation of liquor while "in transit through the Panama Canal or on the Panama Railroad." Beyond this, it has no bearing here, save as it serves to show that, where in other provisions no exception is made in respect of merchant ships, either domestic or foreign, within the waters of the United States, none is intended.
Examining the act as a whole, we think it shows very plainly, first, that it is intended to be operative throughout the territorial limits of the United States, with the single exception stated in the Canal Zone provision; secondly, that it is not intended to apply to domestic vessels when outside the territorial waters of the United States; and, thirdly, that it is intended to apply to all merchant vessels, whether foreign or domestic, when within those waters, save as the Panama Canal Zone exception provides otherwise.
In so saying, we do not mean to imply that Congress is without power to regulate the conduct of domestic merchant ships when on the high seas, or to exert such control over them when in foreign waters as may be affirmatively or tacitly permitted by the territorial sovereign; for it long has been settled that Congress does have such power over them. Lord v. Steamship Co., 102 U. S. 541; The Abby Dodge, 223 U. S. 166, 223 U. S. 176. But we do mean that the National Prohibition Act discloses that it is intended only to enforce the Eighteenth Amendment and limits its field of operation, like that of the amendment, to the territorial limits of the United States.
The plaintiffs invite attention to data showing the antiquity of the practice of carrying intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes as part of a ship's sea stores, the wide extent of the practice, and its recognition in a congressional enactment, and argue therefrom that neither the amendment nor the act can have been intended to disturb that practice. But in this they fail to recognize that the avowed and obvious purpose of both the amendment and the act was to put an end to prior practices respecting such liquors, even though the practices had the sanction of antiquity, generality, and statutory recognition. Like data could be produced and like arguments advanced by many whose business, recognized as lawful theretofore, was shut down or curtailed by the change in national policy. In principle, the plaintiffs' situation is not different from that of the innkeeper whose accustomed privilege of selling liquor to his guests is taken away, or that of the dining car proprietor who is prevented from serving liquor to those who use the cars which he operates to and fro across our northern and southern boundaries.
It should be added that, after the adoption of the amendment and the enactment of the National Prohibition Act, Congress distinctly withdrew the prior statutory recognition of liquors as legitimate sea stores. The recognition was embodied in § 2775 of the Revised Statutes, which was among the provisions dealing with customs administration, and when, by the Act of September 21, 1922, those provisions were revised, that section was expressly repealed, along with other provisions recognizing liquors as legitimate cargo. C. 356, Title IV and § 642, 42 Stat. 858, 948, 989. Of course, as was observed by the district court, the prior recognition, although representing the national policy at the time, was not in the nature of a promise for the future.
It therefore is of no importance that the liquors in the plaintiffs' ships are carried only as sea stores. Being sea stores does not make them liquors any the less; nor does it change the incidents of their use as beverages. But it is of importance that they are carried through the territorial waters of the United States and brought into its ports and harbors. This is prohibited transportation and importation in the sense of the amendment and the act. The recent cases of Grogan v. Walker & Sons and Anchor Line v. Aldridge, 259 U. S. 80, are practically conclusive on the point. The question in one was whether carrying liquor intended as a beverage through the United States from Canada to Mexico was prohibited transportation under the amendment and the act, the liquor being carried in bond by rail, and that in the other was whether the transshipment of such liquor from one British ship to another in the harbor of New York was similarly prohibited, the liquor being in transit from Scotland to Bermuda. The cases were considered together, and an affirmative answer was given in each, the Court saying in the opinion, p. 259 U. S. 89:
"The Eighteenth Amendment meant a great revolution in the policy of this country, and presumably and obviously meant to upset a good many things on, as well as off, the statute book. It did not confine itself in any meticulous way to the use of intoxicants in this country. It forbade export for beverage purposes elsewhere. True, this discouraged production here, but that was forbidden already, and the provision applied to liquors already lawfully made. See Hamilton v. Kentucky Distilleries & Warehouse Co., 251 U. S. 146, 151, note 1 [argument of counsel -- omitted]. It is obvious that those whose wishes and opinions were embodied in the amendment meant to stop the whole business. They did not want intoxicating liquor in the United States, and reasonably may have though that, if they let it in, some of it was likely to stay. When, therefore, the amendment forbids not only importation into and exportation from the United States, but transportation within it, the natural meaning of the words expresses an altogether probable intent. The Prohibition Act only fortifies in this respect the interpretation of the amendment itself. The manufacture, possession, sale, and transportation of spirits and wine for other than beverage purposes are provided for in the act, but there is no provision for transshipment or carriage across the country from without. When Congress was ready to permit such a transit for special reasons in the Canal Zone, it permitted it in express words. Title III, § 20, 41 Stat. 322."
Our conclusion is that, in the first ten cases, those involving foreign ships, the decrees of dismissal were right, and should be affirmed, and in the remaining two, those involving domestic ships, the decrees of dismissal were erroneous, and should be reversed, with directions to enter decrees refusing any relief as respects the operations of the ships within the territorial waters of the United States and awarding the relief sought as respects operations outside those waters.
Decrees in Nos. 659, 660, 661, 662, 666, 667, 668, 669, 670 and 678, affirmed.
Decrees in Nos. 693 and 694, reversed.
MR. JUSTICE McREYNOLDS dissents.
[Footnote 1]
The second section says: "The Congress and the several states shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." For its construction, see United States v. Lanza, December 11, 1922.
[Footnote 2]
The act contains a provision (§ 1 of Title II) showing that it uses the word "persons" as including "associations, copartnerships, and corporations" when the context does not indicate otherwise.
[Footnote 3]
Section 3, Act November 23, 1921, c. 134, 42 Stat. 222.
[Footnote 4]
The pertinent portion of § 20 of Title III, relating to the Canal Zone, is as follows:
"Sec. 20. That it shall be unlawful to import or introduce into the Canal Zone, or to manufacture, sell, give away, dispose of, transport, or have in one's possession or under one's control within the Canal Zone, any alcoholic, fermented, brewed, distilled, vinous, malt, or spirituous liquors, except for sacramental, scientific, pharmaceutical, industrial, or medicinal purposes, under regulations to be made by the President, and any such liquors within the Canal Zone in violation hereof shall be forfeited to the United States and seized: Provided, that this section shall not apply to liquor in transit through the Panama Canal or on the Panama Railroad."
MR. JUSTICE SUTHERLAND dissenting.
I agree with the judgment of the court insofar as it affects domestic ships, but I am unable to accept the view that the Eighteenth Amendment applies to foreign ships coming into our ports under the circumstances here disclosed.
It would serve no useful purpose to give my reasons at any length for this conclusion. I therefore state them very generally and briefly.
The general rule of international law is that a foreign ship is so far identified with the country to which it belongs that its internal affairs, whose effect is confined to the ship, ordinarily are not subjected to interference at the hands of another state in whose ports it is temporarily present, 2 Moore, Int.Law. Dig., p. 292; United States v. Rodgers, 150 U. S. 249, 150 U. S. 260; Wildenhus' Case, 120 U. S. 1, 120 U. S. 12; and, as said by Chief Justice Marshall, in Murray v. Schooner Charming Betsy, 2 Cranch 64, 118: " . . . An act of Congress ought never to be construed to violate the law of nations if any other possible construction remains. . . ."
That the government has full power under the Volstead Act to prevent the landing or transshipment from foreign vessels of intoxicating liquors or their use in our ports is not doubted, and therefore it may provide for such assurances and safeguards as it may deem necessary to those ends. Nor do I doubt the power of Congress to do all that the Court now holds has been done by that act, but such power exists not under the Eighteenth Amendment, to whose provisions the act is confined, but by virtue of other provisions of the Constitution, which Congress here has not attempted to exercise. With great deference to the contrary conclusion of the Court, due regard for the principles of international comity, which exists between friendly nations, in my opinion, forbids the construction of the Eighteenth Amendment and of the act which the present decision advances. Moreover, the Eighteenth Amendment, it must not be forgotten, confers concurrent power of enforcement upon the several states, and it follows that, if the general government possesses the power here claimed for it under that amendment, the several states within their respective boundaries, possess the same power. It does not seem possible to me that Congress, in submitting the amendment or the several states in adopting it, could have intended to vest in the various seaboard states a power so intimately connected with our foreign relations and whose exercise might result in international confusion and embarrassment.
In adopting the Eighteenth Amendment and in enacting the Volstead Act, the question of their application to foreign vessels in the circumstances now presented does not appear to have been in mind. If, upon consideration, Congress shall conclude that, when such vessels, in good faith carrying liquor among their sea stores, come temporarily into our ports, their officers should, ipso facto, become liable to drastic punishment and the ships themselves subject to forfeiture, it will be a simple matter for that body to say so in plain terms. But interference with the purely internal affairs of a foreign ship is of so delicate a nature, so full of possibilities of international misunderstandings, and so likely to invite retaliation that an affirmative conclusion in respect thereof should rest upon nothing less than the clearly expressed intention of Congress to that effect, and this I am unable to find in the legislation here under review.
The paper also noted the death of Emerson Hough, author and conservationist. Hough had started off as a lawyer, which had taken him to New Mexico, before becoming a professional writer, which is what he did for most of his career.
And it noted the mayor of Powder River had died. Powder River no longer has a mayor, and is now an unincorporated very small town.
IRA Chief of Staff officially called a ceasefire in the Irish Civil War and called on his troops to relinquish their weapons, effectively amounting to a surrender.
Washington, D. C. experienced a major flood.
Monday, April 17, 2023
Bud Light, controversy, and why are you drinking that stuff anyway?
.JPG)
Real beer, made locally.
In one of the absurd American corporate efforts to get on the cutting edge of a social trend, irrespective of whether it's temporary, existentially justified, or related to the product, Budweiser released an advertisement with Dylan Mulvaney, a man claiming to be transgendered and who affects a very girlish persona, badly, in a cartoonish fashion. Indeed, it's an example of how those who claim to be transgendered men sometime affect a much more girlish behavior than girls do, and it's accordingly more than a little cartoonish. It's a pretty extreme example, which raises its own questions.
Mulvaney is apparently an actor, and came to prominence in the play The Book Of Mormon. I haven't seen the play and don't care to. I'm obviously not a Mormon, but I don't like people poking fun of, or making a satire out of, religious beliefs in that fashion. Eye of the Tiber or The Babylon Bee are one thing, but they aren't actually hostile to religion, and indeed the Bee has come to be controversial as it has started being satirical about society in general, from a general Christian prospective. The three person team who are responsible for The Book Of Mormon, however, are out of South Park, which is an aggressively nasty cartoon, and one of them is a stated atheist and the other, a theist who declares religion itself to be silly, something that shows a massive intellectual deficit on his part. It's sort of like saying that you believe in cars but find transportation silly. They aren't coming out of a prospective of love, suffice it to say, and while I haven't seen The Book Of Mormon, South Park is of the National Lampoon brand of humor which is juvenile, self focused, and mean. I don't know if Book takes a mean spirited approach to Mormons, but what I tend to find is that for people who live outside the Rocky Mountain West, the LDS faith isn't understood in any context at all, and people tend to think of them as 1) some sort of Protestant evangelistic faith, maybe like the Baptists, or 2) something that Warren Jeffs defines, or 3) a tiny silly group. None of that would be correct, and in the Rocky Mountain West the LDS church is a major institution, not some sort of odd joke. From a Christian prospective, particularly in from a Catholic one, there are a lot of things that could be taken on, discussed and critiqued about the LDS, but making fun of them in a sophomoric fashion is disrespectful and reflects very poorly on the people doing it and a society that finds it amusing.
My overall view of mine is that if you wouldn't feel comfortable making analogous jokes about Islam, you probably flat out avoid doing it about any other faith. In other words, if you are going to do a Book of Mormon, you ought to follow it up with The Koran in the same fashion.
That's not going to happen, nor should it either, as The Book Of Mormon shouldn't have.
But I digress.
Mulvaney decided he would affect the appearance of a woman, sort of, at some point and has affected an Audrey Hepburn like style, which nobody in this current age does. Hepburn's style was unique to herself, but she was a genuine, lithe, woman, who genuinely defined grace in her own era, and to a large extent still does. She wasn't girlish, but rather very mature while young at the same time, and frankly rising up in popularity as a reaction to the Playboy influenced huge boob actresses of the time, something that would actually see further influence in the 60s while really being limited, however, to movies and television. Mulvaney on the other hand, if truth be told, looks like a really anemic guy trying to look like a girl, and failing at an attempt to affect an appearance of an actress of a prior era, something he's tried to do in a TikTok series apparently called Days of Girlhood. It's really creepy.
For some weird reason, Budweiser thought he'd make a good spokesman for Bud Light.
Bud Light is awful, as are most of the mass-produced light beers. I don't know why anyone drinks it, which brings me to this, something that has nothing really to do with transgenderism.
Light beer, or American Light Lager as beer aficionados like to call it, is so popular in the US that even small local breweries brew it. Small local breweries have gotten really good, and they tend to put out a better product than huge industrial alcohol concerns like AB InBev, which owns Budweiser.
I really don't think average companies have any place in social movements of any kind. I'll make an exception for companies particularly associated with some sort of institution. So, for example, a company that makes backpacking equipment being involved in conservation, etc., makes sense to me. But beer is just beer. If there was a cause associated with beer, it would be combating alcoholism, but a cause like that wouldn't exactly sell more beer.
Here the decision was blisteringly odd. Is AB InBev trying to show its hip cool and down with the times, in a Justice Kennedy type fashion? The beer market is saturated (no pun), and therefore the only real option left is to try to grab somebody else's market share, but do people who claim to be transgendered constitute a self-conscious body when they buy beer, or are they just people buying beer?
I'm guessing they're just people buying beer.
Obviously AB InBev thought there was some market share to grab there, while not losing some, but as market decisions go, it seems like a rather odd one.
Oh well, it's worth noting that this is the same beer brand that once sent out paintings of Custer's Last Stand, although they probably had their actual market right at that time.
Anyhow, just buy local. If a microbrewery is boosting a cause, it's probably a local one, or one that's more focused, and it probably doesn't involve a cynical marketing effort like this does.
And indeed, just this past week I went to a local microbrewery and bought two small growlers of their beer. It actually did have a beer that it had brewed boosting a cause. I didn't buy it, but I did buy two of their other beers, to go with the first grilling attempt of the season. The brots I bought were from a local butcher.
There are other options out there, and given that there are, why would a person, causes aside, go with a bad massed produced beer, ever?
Miscarriages of justice.
From the Cowboy State Daily:
The Romanian man who stole a $7,500 bottle of scotch from a Jackson liquor store by hiding it in his crotch has been sentenced to probation.
Jackson Circuit Court Judge Curt Haws sentenced Marian Firu, 50, to six months of unsupervised probation, according to a court filing that became available this week.
Firu faces a possible 179 days in jail if he violates his probation, according to the judgment and sentence filing.
$7,500 is something of real value (I'll comment on that again in a moment), so why is this reduced to something so minor?
It's a felony. He should do time, and then be sent back to Romania.
Secondly, why are there $7,500 bottles of Scotch? That's obscene and really simply shouldn't be.
Thursday, March 23, 2023
Thursday, March 9, 2023
Friday, March 9, 1923. Communists, Racists & Drinkers.
Lenin suffered a third stroke in less than a year, a clear sign that his remaining time was short.
Thirty members of the NYPD were revealed to be members of the Ku Klux Klan.
The United Kingdom, in a bill introduced by Lady Astor, rose the in premises drinking age from 14 for beer and 16 for hard alcohol to 18. It was the first bill to be introduced by a woman in parliament.
British alcohol consumption, normally associated with beer, has varied considerably over a century, as reflected in this directly linked in graph fro a parliamentary report.
Another British look from 1800 to 1930.
That reported noted:
History of alcohol consumption
| 1550-1650: commercialisation of domestic brewing industry; tobacco a commodity of mass consumption and an accompaniment to drinking; increased market for French wines—higher per head until present day [14] 1650-1750: the period 'when Europeans took to soft drugs', including coffee, tea and chocolate; the intermittent gin craze from the 1730s to the 1750s masks a stabilisation or decline in alcohol consumption over the period.[15] Beer was promoted by many anti-gin campaigners as the patriotic (and sober) alternative to gin. Despite this, beer consumption fell significantly throughout the 18th century, largely due to the increasing popularity of tea, coffee and chocolate .[16] 1750 to 1850: fall in alcohol consumption up to about 1840, particularly wine, increase in tea, which replaced beer as the popular staple of every day consumption.[17] 1850 to late 19th century: large increase in consumption; the 'consumption of beer, wine and spirits all peaked around 1875. The consumption of tea also grew'. These trends were associated with rising living standards.[18] Late 19th century to mid-20th century: decline in consumption per head—associated with temperance movement, alternative leisure activities, including public parks and libraries.[19] Mid-20th century onwards: increase in consumption from 3.5 litres per head to 9.5 (with slight falls in the early 1990s and 2005 onwards) |
That report concluded:
Conclusions and recommendations
29. The history of the consumption of alcohol over the last 500 years has been one of fluctuations, of peaks and troughs. From the late 17th century to the mid-19th the trend was for consumption per head to decline despite brief periods of increased consumption such as the gin craze. From the mid- to the late 19th century there was a sharp increase in consumption which was followed by a long and steep decline in consumption until the mid 20th century.
30. The variations in consumption are associated both with changes in affordability and availability, but also changes in taste. Alternative drinks such as tea and alternative pastimes affected consumption. Different groups drank very different amounts. Government has played a significant role both positive and negative, for example in reducing consumption in the First World War as well as in stimulating the 18th century gin craze by encouraging the consumption of cheap gin instead of French brandy.
31. From the 1960s consumption rose again. At its lowest levels in the 1930s and -40s annual per capita consumption was about 3 litres of pure alcohol; by 2005 it was over 9 litres. These changes are, as in past centuries, associated with changing fashion and an increase in affordability, availability and expenditure on marketing. Just as Government policy played a part in encouraging the gin craze, successive Government policies have played a part in encouraging the increase in alcohol consumption over the last 50 years. Currently over 10 million adults drink more than the recommended limits. These people drink 75% of all the alcohol consumed. 2.6 million adults drink more than twice the recommended limits. The alcohol industry emphasises that these figures represent a minority of the population; health professionals stress that they are a very large number of people who are putting themselves at risk. We share these concerns.
32. One of the biggest changes over the last 60 years has been in the drinking habits of young people, including students. While individual cases of student drunkenness are regrettable and cannot be condoned, we consider that their actions are quite clearly a product of the society and culture to which they belong. The National Union of Students and the universities themselves appear to recognise the existence of a student binge drinking culture, but all too often their approach appears much too passive and tolerant. We recommend that universities take a much more active role in discouraging irresponsible drinking amongst students. They should ensure that students are not subjected to marketing activity that promotes dangerous binge drinking. The first step must be for universities to acknowledge that they do indeed have a most important moral "duty of care" to their students, and for them to take this duty far more seriously than they do at present.
33. Since 2004 there has been a slight fall in total consumption but it is unclear whether this represents a watershed or a temporary blip as in the early 1990s.
The British government has been actively working in recent years to address British drinking.
Friday, February 24, 2023
Another reason to be a distributist. Remote cooperation with evil.
I'm not drinking Heineken.
I'm not drinking because I'm boycotting it for Ukraine, however. I just don't like it. It's skunky, in my view. The same, I'd note, is true of Stella Artois, in my view, fairly frequently. I love Stella's ads, but the beer. . . not so much.
I will say that Heineken's "NA", alcohol free, beer, if that's truly a beer, is really good. This is probably explained by the fact that Heineken's trademark green bottles allow real beer to deteriorate, while the NA beer does not. It's the effect of ultraviolet light on the beer, through the bottles, and is why most beer is bottled in dark brown bottles. Heineken knows this and could bottle its beer in better bottles, but apparently its fans like to drink skunk water.
Canned Heineken, on the other hand, is pretty good.
Anyhow, I'm actually not drinking any beer at all right now as it is, as I've suspended doing so for Lent.
Others are foregoing Heineken for Ukraine, however.
Recent protest internet poster (I guess it's a poster), very cleverly done.
In March 2022, Heineken promised to leave Russia. Lots of businesses were doing so at the time. This fall, however, its Russian unit. . . yes the Dutch brewer has a Russian unit, instead launched 61 new soft drinks in the country which Coca Cola nad Pepsi Cola had excited.
And now, a Boycott Heineken movement is on.
Let's be fair, let's hear from Heineken first.
So, in essence, Heineken decided to leave, but the fear of its assets being taken combined with a fear that it'd be declared by Russia to be bankrupt has caused it to stay. It's selling its holdings there.
Fair enough.
But how did Heineken get in this mess? Did it just decide to ship some of its skunky green bottled product to Moscow and sell it on the streets?
Not hardly. Heineken is a giant international suds manufacturer with "global" and local brands. It's global ones are:
Amstel, billed, bizarrely, as “The world’s most local beer.”
Sol, its Mexican beer.
Dos Equis, another Mexican beer.
Laguinitas, a once time local California microbrew.
Tiger, its Singaporean beer.
Birra Moretti, its Italiani beer.
Edelweiss, whose name recalls the Alps.
Red Stripe, a one time Jamaican brand.
Dačický, a Czech brand that had been independent from 1573 until Heineken bought it and closed the brewery that had been in operation all that time.
According to Wikipedia, it owns the following breweries:
Brasseries du Maroc, Morocco
Al Ahram Beverages Company, Egypt
Amstel Brewery, Jordan
Harar Brewery, Ethiopia
Bralirwa, Rwanda
Brarudi, Burundi
Brasserie Almaza, Lebanon
Brasseries de Bourbon, Réunion
Bralima, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Consolidated Breweries, Nigeria
Groupe Castel Algérie, Algeria
Nigerian Breweries, Nigeria
Société nouvelles des Brasseries SONOBRA, Tunisia
Sierra Leone Brewery Limited, Sierra Leone
Sedibeng Brewery, South Africa
Tango Brewery, Algeria
Cambodia Brewery Ltd (CBL) in Cambodia
Shanghai Asia Pacific Brewery in China
Hainan Asia Pacific Brewery Company Ltd in China
Guangzhou Asia Pacific Brewery in China (under construction)
Multi Bintang Indonesia in Indonesia
Lao Asia Pacific Brewery in Laos
Sungai Way Brewery in Malaysia
DB Breweries in New Zealand
South Pacific Brewery Ltd (SPB) in Papua New Guinea
Asia Pacific Breweries in Singapore
Asia Pacific Brewery Lanka Limited (APB Lanka) in Sri Lanka
Thai Asia Pacific Brewery in Thailand
Heineken Vietnam Brewery Co Ltd in Vietnam
Heineken Hanoi Brewery Co Ltd in Vietnam
United Breweries Ltd Bangalore in India
Brau Union Österreich in Austria
Syabar Brewing Company in Belarus
Alken-Maes in Belgium
Zagorka Brewery in Bulgaria
Karlovačka pivovara in Croatia
Starobrno in the Czech Republic
Federation Breweries in Gateshead, England (closed 2010)[23]
H. P. Bulmer in Hereford in England
John Smith's in Tadcaster, England
Royal Brewery in Manchester, England
Heineken France:
Brasserie de l'Espérance in Schiltigheim
Brasserie Pelforth in Mons-en-Baroeul
Brasserie de la Valentine in Marseille
Brasserie Fischer in Schiltigheim (closed 2009)
Brasserie Adelshoffen in Schiltigheim (closed 2000)
Brasserie Mutzig in Mutzig (closed 1989)
Athenian Brewery in Greece
Heineken Hungária in Hungary
Heineken Ireland at Lady's Well Brewery in Cork, Ireland
Heineken Italia in Italy
Heineken Nederland in the Netherlands
Żywiec Brewery in Poland
Central de Cervejas in Portugal
Heineken Romania in Romania
Heineken Brewery LLC in Russia
Heineken Srbija in Serbia
Caledonian Brewery, Edinburgh, Scotland
Heineken Slovensko in Slovakia
Heineken España in Spain, with breweries in Seville, Valencia, Jaén and Madrid
Heineken Switzerland in Switzerland
Calanda Bräu in Switzerland
Pivovarna Laško Union in Slovenia
Brasserie Nationale d'Haiti in Haiti
Commonwealth Brewery in the Bahamas
Cervejarias Kaiser in Brazil
Cervecería Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma in Mexico
Cervecerías Barú-Panama, S.A. in Panama
Desnoes & Geddes in Jamaica
Lagunitas Brewing Company in the United States
Windward & Leeward Brewery in Saint Lucia
Surinaamse Brouwerij in Suriname
And hence its problem.
Pity poor Heineken, it's so freaking big that it can't really do much. If it decides to back up and go back to Holland, the Russians will cause it all sorts of problems. Now it has to sell at something like a loss just not to have more of a loss. And in Russia where all opposition to Putin and the war has been shut up, which has sent its army into a neighboring land to kill and rape, as Russian troops seem to commonly do, and which is kidnapping children, at least the locals can still order a bottle of skunk.
Now, its not as if the Russians couldn't get a beer, if they wanted one, anyhow, although reportedly the Russians are very bad at brewing beer. Given that, actually, they might very well not get a beer but for Western companies with actual know how coming in to do it for them. Goodness knows that current Russian industry seems to have not moved on much from decades ago in actual technology, so there's no real reason to figure to suppose they would have figured beer out, which everyone else on earth seems to have done.
Now, I don't think depriving Russians of a bad bottle of beer is going to win the war in Ukraine, but it is an interesting example of the remote cooperation with evil. Once things get too big, their choices are too painful. They can't pull back, or out, without potentially falling to their deaths, much like certain Russians have been doing recently.
And, oddly, by pulling the top on a glass of Dos Equis in Denver, you are helping to keep things sort of normal, just a bit, in Russia.
A problem that wouldn't arise at all if you just bought a draft of beer brewed by your local friends and neighbors, which is now perfectly possible to do.
And that's just one reason to buy local beer.
Wednesday, February 22, 2023
Lex Anteinternet: Secular suffering for nothing & on Ash Wednesday
A couple of reruns. for the first day of Lent, Ash Wednesday, 2023, from a couple of years ago: Lex Anteinternet: Secular suffering for nothing.
Secular suffering for nothing
Today is Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent.
While Catholic observances tend to at least somewhat baffle those who are not familiar with them, and therefore reinterpret them either though the bigoted Anglicization of popular history they've received, or through their own broken lenses on the world, lots of people are at least somewhat familiar with them. One of the things they're somewhat familiar with is fasting.
We've dealt with this before, but Latin Rite Catholics have a minimal duty of fast and abstinence during Lent. And it is indeed very minimal. The fast days are now down to two. There are more days of abstinence during Lent.
And this post isn't about that.
Rather, this post is about American secular suffering and its pointless nature.
I'm occasionally the accidental unwilling silent third person in a long running conversation between two people on diets, which they're constantly off and on. The oddity of it is that neither of the two people involved have any need whatsoever to be on a diet. They aren't even ballpark close to being overweight. None the less, they'll go on diets and the diets tend to be based on pseudoscience.
I don't want to be harsh on people for this as there's now so much pseudoscience in American culture it's simply mind boggling. We've gone from a society that in the 1960s and 1970s emphasized science to one that now abhors it and goes for non scientific faddism. There are so many examples of this that actually going into all of it would require a blog the size of the Internet at this point. Food faddism is common.
Not a day goes by when I don't get a bunch of spam posts (and how ironic that they'd be called "spam" devoted to dietary bullshit, most of which has to do with eating something that will "melt away fat", probably overnight so that you don't have to be inconvenienced while watching television during the day. It's not going to do that. A wild example of that is one that bills itself as some sort of ice cream, with the photographs in the spam showing chocolate ice cream. Chocolate ice cream is disgusting in the first place, and it's not going to make you think.
Anyhow, these two fit people are constantly on diets of the faddish variety, involving such things as "cleanses" and the like. None of that does anything, at least not in the way a person thinks. Some of it might, accidentally, such as abstaining from alcohol. That'll do something, but not in a cleanse fashion. And some of it probably does something as it approaches a sort of low yield style of intermittent fasting.
I've now watched people on diets for decades, and I'm wholly convinced that none of them doing anything whatsoever. I've watched people on Keto lose weight and then balloon back up to just as heavy as they were before, for example.
Nothing ultimately escapes from the basic fact that weight=calories in-calories out. That's it.
So you can be on keto, but if you eat bacon and eggs for breakfast, a ham for lunch, and then go eat a big dinner, you're going to be really heavy if you are an office worker. Pretty simple.
That is why, I'll note, intermittent fasting actually does cause people to lose weight, but it's not a diet, it's fasting. I'll also note that I'm not a doctor and I'm not telling you to fast to lose weight. If you need to lose weight, see your doctor. A real doctor. Not the homeopathic doctor of Burmese weight loss and orthopody. No, not him. A real bonafide physician. They exist.
Anyhow, I don't think that a lot of people need to go on diets at all, including the folks I just noted.
Now, some people really do. A lot of Americans are really, really, heavy. Some say a majority are overweight. I get that. But none the less I'd guess about 60% of the people I see on diets or discussing diets are not overweight. I don't think they go on diets, deep down, as they're overweight.
They do it as they need to be suffering for something.
Now, this gets back to Lent. Catholics don't fast and abstain in order to suffer. They do it in order to focus and build discipline, and sacrifice for their sins. If it involves an element of suffering, well so do a lot of things.
But devoted Catholics accept suffering as part of life. It's inescapable. Life is full of suffering. Part of that suffering is brought about by license.
The irony of freedom is that freedom to chose isn't freedom. License doesn't actually equal liberty. The freedom to chose is the freedom to chose wisely, and that brings a sort of real freedom. It doesn't mean, kid like, that I can choose to eat ice cream for dinner, and it doesn't mean, modern society like, that I chose all the members of the opposite sex, or whatever, that I might fancy at the moment.
And indeed, that sort of "freedom" leads not to freedom but to slavery. People become enslaved to their wants. A massive amount of American culture is now presently completely devoted to slavery of this type, particularly sexual slavery of both an intellectual and actual kind. The entire pornography industry is a type of "white slavery", involving the prostitution of women and the enslavement of men to lust.
Catholic fasting ties into freedom as it has as an element the concept of building resistance to enslavement. If you can say no to food you can also say no to alcohol, or tobacco, or to vice. It might take practice, hence the discipline of fasting.
Which is also why the slow Latin relaxing of fasting and abstinence rules was, in my view, a real mistake. The concept of the Church in North American, for example, that relaxing abstinence on Friday's throughout the year would result in the substitution of a meaningful personal substitute was, frankly, largely wrong.
And it achieves, of course, more than that.
Fasting, experienced as a form of self-denial, helps those who undertake it in simplicity of heart to rediscover God’s gift and to recognize that, created in his image and likeness, we find our fulfilment in him. In embracing the experience of poverty, those who fast make themselves poor with the poor and accumulate the treasure of a love both received and shared. In this way, fasting helps us to love God and our neighbour, inasmuch as love, as Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches, is a movement outwards that focuses our attention on others and considers them as one with ourselves.
Pope Francis, Lenten message, 2021.
Secular fasting doesn't actually achieve anything. But then, much of modern American life is aimless and directionless. It's been wholly focused on materialism and nothing else. People aren't rooted to place or people as those things interfere with "freedom". They aren't bound by traditional rules of right and wrong, obligation and duty, service to country and community, or the obligations imposed by law outside of the civil law, those being the walls of canon law and natural law, and biological law. They aren't even accepting of the final binds of death, which Americans don't acknowledge as real, and which provides the reason that at 40 years old you aren't going to be the physical specimen you were at 20, and things will certainly be different at 60.
Now, to be sure, most Catholics are no different in the modern world than anyone else. A people who were once outside of the culture as they were different, where they were a minority, and were outside the world in a way as they were distinct from it even where they were a majority, now fall prey to all the modern vices that are portrayed as virtues, and self excuse those that are regarded by the Church as sins. Some of the Church religious itself, mostly older baby boomer aged whose time is past but they don't realize it, still campaign to overthrow Church law in the name of temporal freedom, not realizing that they propose to bring in the chains of slavery. None of that, however, changes the basic point.
Humans sense that abundance can be slavery. They also reject so often the breaking of their chains. But even when they do, they reach out, darkly, to the disciplines that would free them. They sense they have to do something, and often substitute suffering, vaguely, for the practices that would open the manacles.
And one on Ash Wednesday itself:
Ash Wednesday
Today is Ash Wednesday for those churches that follow the Catholic Latin Rite's liturgical calendar, which includes a fair number of Protestant churches.
Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent for Western Christians, Lent being the (approximately) forty day long penitential season preceding Easter. Great Lent, the Eastern Christian seasons, precedes Ash Wednesday and commences on Clean Monday for Eastern Christians on the new calendar, but not on the old calendar which has, of course, which departs from the calendar we're otherwise familiar with. The day is named for the Catholic practice, which is observed by at least some Anglicans and Lutherans as well, of placing ashes on the foreheads of those who come to the Ash Wednesday service, with the reminder being made that from ashes you were made, and from ashes you will return.*
For Latin Rite Catholics, Ash Wednesday is a day of fast and abstinence. I.e, they eat only one full meal on this day and it can't include meat, which under Latin Rite Catholic rules does not include fish. For Eastern Christians a much stricter Lenten fast and abstinence set of rules applies. This sacrifice serves the purpose of being penitential in nature.
It also serves to really set Catholics apart, as fasting and abstinence are the rage in the west now, but for purely secular purposes, not all of which square with science or good dietary practices.
For the members of the Apostolic faiths, Lent also serves as a time in which for penitential reasons they usually "give up" something. A lot of people have a really superficial understanding of this, assuming that Catholic "give up" desert or chocolate or something, and in fact quite a few people do something like that. Indeed, as an adult I've been surprised by how many Catholics (usually men) give up drinking alcohol, which means that frequent consumption of alcohol is pretty common society wide in a way that we probably underestimate.
Indeed, just recently, on that, I was asked by an exuberant Catholic Midwestern expat, who seemingly has no boundaries at all, on what I was "giving up" for Lent. This was the week prior to Ash Wednesday at which time I wasn't particularly focused on it myself. The same fellow asked at least one Protestant what she was giving up, with that Protestant being a member of one of the American millennialism religions, to receive a totally baffled reply. Indeed, I'm sure they don't celebrate Lent at all, so the question was odd. Anyhow, he was giving up alcohol and asked if I'd like to join him, to which I absent mindedly said sure. Later he was wondering if I thought it would be tough, which I'm sure it won't be at all and I'll have to find something else to mark Lent really. But that sort of "giving up" line of thinking is very common.
In a lot of Catholic cultures the Lenten penitential observations have traditionally been much stronger, which helps explain Mardi Gras as we just discussed. Even well after the Latin Rite rules were very much relaxed, in many Catholic areas, including Catholic areas of the United States, people engaged in much more extensive penitential observations with the "giving up chocolate" type thing really sort of an introduction to the practice. In Louisiana, without going into it too deeply, there was traditionally a big spike in births nine to ten months after Easter, which reflected a very widespread serious observation among Catholic couples as to their penitential practice, for example.
Some of that is really coming back, which reflects an interesting trend towards a deeper understanding of their faiths by members of the Apostolic faiths and even a return of Lenten traditions in some Protestant ones. During the full "Spirit of Vatican Two" era there was a lot of attention devoted to not giving anything up but rather to work on some spiritual need. I.e, be self reflective and work on what that lead you to. At the same time, the misuse of the word "fasting" became very common, with there being advice, even from the clergy, to fast from things other than food or drink. You can't really fast from sinful behavior, or from narcissism, for example. You can't even "fast" from the Internet, although "giving it up" for Lent might be a darned good idea (one that I really ought to consider, probably).
A lot of that is now passing and there's been a real return to more traditional observations of Lent, including fasting but also forms of dedicated worship and observation.
Which brings me to the next thing about "giving up". One feature of this season is that many Apostolic Christians, as it is the season of repentance, have used the season to break bad conduct when there's support, spiritual and temporal, for doing it. People with alcohol problems will use it to break them, smokers will quit smoking during Lent so they can quit smoking. And sometimes people with serious attachments to sin take it head on during Lent, with some people I've known even announcing the renouncement of what are very serious sins from a Christian purpose over Lent in the hopes of breaking from the permanently. And many who do that, succeed at doing that.
Which in turn takes us to our final observation. This season, which is lead by the Apostolic faiths but which is observed by at least some of the Protestants as well, tend to turn the self indulgent retained Puritan abstinence on its head. I've noted this before, but North American and the Northern Europe may have strayed enormously from Calvinist influence in terms of faith, but not in terms of the concept that public suffering is really necessary. That retained concept explains in large part the real focus in these lands, as opposed to others, in "giving up" something for no real purpose other than the sense it must be done. People give up all sorts of things that Apostolic Christians around the world give up for forty some days, and often on a declared permanent basis (they fail at it more often than not), with it being notable that the purely secular nature of that makes it shallow from the onset. Indeed, plenty of people who will spend Lent scoffing at Catholics for Lent will spend part of the season or all of it on some no carb, or no meat, or whatever, diet, for no real reason other than a constructed one. Suffering, in many instances, is the ultimate goal of those efforts, but suffering without something to redeem it.
For Apostolic Christians, all fasts are followed by feasts, and that's something to remember.
_________________________________________________________________________________
*I don't think this is a practice in the East and its not a requirement for Catholics, something that in fact even confuses some Catholics. Ash Wednesday is widely observed by Catholics and the placing of the ashes isn't restricted to Catholics. Perhaps for that reason quite a few Catholics assume it is a Holy Day of Obligation.
One thing of note here is that Ash Wednesday also serves to point out to everyone who is a Catholic, as if a person has ashes on their head, they're probably Catholic, although not necessarily. By the same token, if you are known to be a Catholic and don't make it to Ash Wednesday you'll tend to get comments about it.
Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent for Western Christians, Lent being the (approximately) forty day long penitential season preceding Easter. Great Lent, the Eastern Christian seasons, precedes Ash Wednesday and commences on Clean Monday for Eastern Christians on the new calendar, but not on the old calendar which has, of course, which departs from the calendar we're otherwise familiar with. The day is named for the Catholic practice, which is observed by at least some Anglicans and Lutherans as well, of placing ashes on the foreheads of those who come to the Ash Wednesday service, with the reminder being made that from ashes you were made, and from ashes you will return.*
For Latin Rite Catholics, Ash Wednesday is a day of fast and abstinence. I.e, they eat only one full meal on this day and it can't include meat, which under Latin Rite Catholic rules does not include fish. For Eastern Christians a much stricter Lenten fast and abstinence set of rules applies. This sacrifice serves the purpose of being penitential in nature.
It also serves to really set Catholics apart, as fasting and abstinence are the rage in the west now, but for purely secular purposes, not all of which square with science or good dietary practices.
For the members of the Apostolic faiths, Lent also serves as a time in which for penitential reasons they usually "give up" something. A lot of people have a really superficial understanding of this, assuming that Catholic "give up" desert or chocolate or something, and in fact quite a few people do something like that. Indeed, as an adult I've been surprised by how many Catholics (usually men) give up drinking alcohol, which means that frequent consumption of alcohol is pretty common society wide in a way that we probably underestimate.
Indeed, just recently, on that, I was asked by an exuberant Catholic Midwestern expat, who seemingly has no boundaries at all, on what I was "giving up" for Lent. This was the week prior to Ash Wednesday at which time I wasn't particularly focused on it myself. The same fellow asked at least one Protestant what she was giving up, with that Protestant being a member of one of the American millennialism religions, to receive a totally baffled reply. Indeed, I'm sure they don't celebrate Lent at all, so the question was odd. Anyhow, he was giving up alcohol and asked if I'd like to join him, to which I absent mindedly said sure. Later he was wondering if I thought it would be tough, which I'm sure it won't be at all and I'll have to find something else to mark Lent really. But that sort of "giving up" line of thinking is very common.
In a lot of Catholic cultures the Lenten penitential observations have traditionally been much stronger, which helps explain Mardi Gras as we just discussed. Even well after the Latin Rite rules were very much relaxed, in many Catholic areas, including Catholic areas of the United States, people engaged in much more extensive penitential observations with the "giving up chocolate" type thing really sort of an introduction to the practice. In Louisiana, without going into it too deeply, there was traditionally a big spike in births nine to ten months after Easter, which reflected a very widespread serious observation among Catholic couples as to their penitential practice, for example.
Some of that is really coming back, which reflects an interesting trend towards a deeper understanding of their faiths by members of the Apostolic faiths and even a return of Lenten traditions in some Protestant ones. During the full "Spirit of Vatican Two" era there was a lot of attention devoted to not giving anything up but rather to work on some spiritual need. I.e, be self reflective and work on what that lead you to. At the same time, the misuse of the word "fasting" became very common, with there being advice, even from the clergy, to fast from things other than food or drink. You can't really fast from sinful behavior, or from narcissism, for example. You can't even "fast" from the Internet, although "giving it up" for Lent might be a darned good idea (one that I really ought to consider, probably).
A lot of that is now passing and there's been a real return to more traditional observations of Lent, including fasting but also forms of dedicated worship and observation.
Which brings me to the next thing about "giving up". One feature of this season is that many Apostolic Christians, as it is the season of repentance, have used the season to break bad conduct when there's support, spiritual and temporal, for doing it. People with alcohol problems will use it to break them, smokers will quit smoking during Lent so they can quit smoking. And sometimes people with serious attachments to sin take it head on during Lent, with some people I've known even announcing the renouncement of what are very serious sins from a Christian purpose over Lent in the hopes of breaking from the permanently. And many who do that, succeed at doing that.
Which in turn takes us to our final observation. This season, which is lead by the Apostolic faiths but which is observed by at least some of the Protestants as well, tend to turn the self indulgent retained Puritan abstinence on its head. I've noted this before, but North American and the Northern Europe may have strayed enormously from Calvinist influence in terms of faith, but not in terms of the concept that public suffering is really necessary. That retained concept explains in large part the real focus in these lands, as opposed to others, in "giving up" something for no real purpose other than the sense it must be done. People give up all sorts of things that Apostolic Christians around the world give up for forty some days, and often on a declared permanent basis (they fail at it more often than not), with it being notable that the purely secular nature of that makes it shallow from the onset. Indeed, plenty of people who will spend Lent scoffing at Catholics for Lent will spend part of the season or all of it on some no carb, or no meat, or whatever, diet, for no real reason other than a constructed one. Suffering, in many instances, is the ultimate goal of those efforts, but suffering without something to redeem it.
For Apostolic Christians, all fasts are followed by feasts, and that's something to remember.
_________________________________________________________________________________
*I don't think this is a practice in the East and its not a requirement for Catholics, something that in fact even confuses some Catholics. Ash Wednesday is widely observed by Catholics and the placing of the ashes isn't restricted to Catholics. Perhaps for that reason quite a few Catholics assume it is a Holy Day of Obligation.
One thing of note here is that Ash Wednesday also serves to point out to everyone who is a Catholic, as if a person has ashes on their head, they're probably Catholic, although not necessarily. By the same token, if you are known to be a Catholic and don't make it to Ash Wednesday you'll tend to get comments about it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)