The Appeal of Repeal
Dec. 5 was Repeal Day, a historic event whose date I had not noticed in the past despite teaching American history. On Dec. 5, 1933, the 21st Amendment repealed the 18th Amendment – Prohibition. Friends and I joked about whether they deliberately restored the fifth on the Fifth, but the event is even more important for its serious meaning.
Prohibition was the only amendment to the Constitution that limited the rights of the people. Some other amendments dealt with other issues (preventing ties in the Electoral College, limiting the terms of presidents or the pay raises of Congress), but most increased the rights of the people – establishing the bill of rights, freeing slaves, providing for direct election of Senators, extending the right to vote to African-Americans, women, those unable to pay poll tax and 18-year-olds. (I voted in the N.C. primary at 17 because the state qualified anyone who would be eligible to vote in the general election.)
Only Prohibition took away rights. The effect of that Amendment was, among other things, the rise of the Mafia in the Roaring Twenties. It was an idea whose time had gone. Congress proposed the Amendment in February, and Utah’s – Utah’s! – approval on Dec. 5 ratified it.
Those who favor constitutional amendments that would limit rights in our time should take a lesson from the history. In the past 20 years or so, there have been drives to ban abortion, prohibit flag-burning and outlaw gay marriage by constitutional amendment. Their failure demonstrates the wisdom of the Founders in making amendment so difficult – two-thirds of both House and Senate, three-fourths of states. The high threshold also sank the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s, but it is unclear to me that the change in the Constitution would have given women more rights than they have now. And this is not a comment on whether we should have abortion, gay marriage or flag-burning – it’s a comment on the role of the Constitution in our life.
Amendments to the Constitution define who we are as a society. Limiting rights of people is a way of excluding them from the society. With Prohibition, the effect was that a vast number of people, previously upstanding citizens, became outlaws, and they learned to behave like outlaws. The behavior of drinking should not have been criminalized. The state is quite able to legislate against behaviors that result from drinking that are harmful to society, such as drunk driving, and prosecute those who so endanger others. But no right of the teetotaler is violated by his neighbor’s mixing a cocktail, no right of the married couple is violated by their same-sex neighbors’ property arrangement, and no right of the citizen is violated by another citizen’s burning of the flag. (Abortion is an entirely different matter – the right of the aborted baby to life is being violated – but it still doesn’t seem to me that the Constitution is the right place to solve this: What penalty is to be imposed on the mother?)
We are in perilous enough shape these days when it comes to dividing ourselves up and otherizing those who are not like us. One candidate for president says the Constitution established a “Christian nation” (any high school freshman knows better), and another argued that a “religion” thin enough to identify his with everyone else’s should have a favored place in the public square (I could hardly add anything to David Brooks’ column on Romney’s speech in the New York Times, or the paper’s editorial). So far from defining ourselves constitutionally in such exclusive ways, we should move into the other direction. I don’t think the E Pluribus Unum motto means that everybody becomes alike. I think it means we become different parts of a healthy body.
So, cheers to Repeal Day! However you choose – wine or water, martini or milk, Scotch or soda. And may there never need to be another.
Dec. 5 was Repeal Day, a historic event whose date I had not noticed in the past despite teaching American history. On Dec. 5, 1933, the 21st Amendment repealed the 18th Amendment – Prohibition. Friends and I joked about whether they deliberately restored the fifth on the Fifth, but the event is even more important for its serious meaning.
Prohibition was the only amendment to the Constitution that limited the rights of the people. Some other amendments dealt with other issues (preventing ties in the Electoral College, limiting the terms of presidents or the pay raises of Congress), but most increased the rights of the people – establishing the bill of rights, freeing slaves, providing for direct election of Senators, extending the right to vote to African-Americans, women, those unable to pay poll tax and 18-year-olds. (I voted in the N.C. primary at 17 because the state qualified anyone who would be eligible to vote in the general election.)
Only Prohibition took away rights. The effect of that Amendment was, among other things, the rise of the Mafia in the Roaring Twenties. It was an idea whose time had gone. Congress proposed the Amendment in February, and Utah’s – Utah’s! – approval on Dec. 5 ratified it.
Those who favor constitutional amendments that would limit rights in our time should take a lesson from the history. In the past 20 years or so, there have been drives to ban abortion, prohibit flag-burning and outlaw gay marriage by constitutional amendment. Their failure demonstrates the wisdom of the Founders in making amendment so difficult – two-thirds of both House and Senate, three-fourths of states. The high threshold also sank the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s, but it is unclear to me that the change in the Constitution would have given women more rights than they have now. And this is not a comment on whether we should have abortion, gay marriage or flag-burning – it’s a comment on the role of the Constitution in our life.
Amendments to the Constitution define who we are as a society. Limiting rights of people is a way of excluding them from the society. With Prohibition, the effect was that a vast number of people, previously upstanding citizens, became outlaws, and they learned to behave like outlaws. The behavior of drinking should not have been criminalized. The state is quite able to legislate against behaviors that result from drinking that are harmful to society, such as drunk driving, and prosecute those who so endanger others. But no right of the teetotaler is violated by his neighbor’s mixing a cocktail, no right of the married couple is violated by their same-sex neighbors’ property arrangement, and no right of the citizen is violated by another citizen’s burning of the flag. (Abortion is an entirely different matter – the right of the aborted baby to life is being violated – but it still doesn’t seem to me that the Constitution is the right place to solve this: What penalty is to be imposed on the mother?)
We are in perilous enough shape these days when it comes to dividing ourselves up and otherizing those who are not like us. One candidate for president says the Constitution established a “Christian nation” (any high school freshman knows better), and another argued that a “religion” thin enough to identify his with everyone else’s should have a favored place in the public square (I could hardly add anything to David Brooks’ column on Romney’s speech in the New York Times, or the paper’s editorial). So far from defining ourselves constitutionally in such exclusive ways, we should move into the other direction. I don’t think the E Pluribus Unum motto means that everybody becomes alike. I think it means we become different parts of a healthy body.
So, cheers to Repeal Day! However you choose – wine or water, martini or milk, Scotch or soda. And may there never need to be another.
posted by Gene Stowe at 10:31 PM
3 Comments:
How about Scotch and soda!
Cheers from a Baptist who seriously regrets this particular part of the legacy.
It's interesting to study the teetotalism movement, though. It's often forgotten that it was a part of the wider social gospel movement. I did a paper on it as it manifest itself in 19th century American literature.
I'm glad to see healthy skepticism toward all these attempts to change the Constitution.
I'm especially glad to see this from devout Christian folks.
My mother was a participant in the John the Baptist Charismatic Community in San Francisco in the early 1970s. (She knew Charlie Fraga of People of Praise.) We moved east, and our family was effectively ostracized from the church after my parents' divorce.
My father and I rejoined the charismatic movement in the 1980s, but I quit over the movement's march toward partisan politics.
So I'm very happy to see some restraint here. Many thanks.
Oops, I need to clarify: We did not move east to join People of Praise. We moved to upstate New York. It was the conservative churches there that we left and/or were pushed out of.
Best wishes to you.
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