Drunk Drivers: America's Most Persecuted Minority

Quick: Which is America's Most Persecuted Minority? No, you're wrong. (And it's not Big Business either: one of Ayn Rand's more ludicrous pronouncements.)

All right, consider this: Which group has been increasingly illegalized, shamed and denigrated first by the Establishment, and then, following its lead, by society at large? Which group, far from coming out of the "closet," has been literally forced back into the closet after centuries of walking proudly in the public square? And which group has tragically internalized the value-system of its oppressors, so that they are deeply ashamed and guilty about practicing their rites and customs? Which group is so brow-beaten that it never thinks of defending itself, any attempt at which is publicly condemned and ridiculed? Which group is considered such sinners that the use of doctored statistics against them is considered legitimate means in a worthy cause?

I refer, of course, to that once proud race, drunk drivers, a group once revered and envied, but now there are none so poor as to do them reverence.

So low has this group sunk in the public esteem that, in rushing to their defense, I am obliged to point out that I myself am not and never have been a drunk driver. Can you imagine having to put in such a disclaimer against special pleading in behalf of the rights of blacks, Jews, or gays against oppression?

The crusade against drunk driving is only the currently most virulent example of one of the most malignant forces in American life: left neo-Puritanism. Puritanism was famously defined by my favorite writer, H.L. Mencken, as "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." The major problem with the Puritans is not so much that they were a dour lot, but that they were believers in the dangerous Christian heresy of "post-millennialism" that is, that it is man's responsibility to establish a thousand-year (give or take a few centuries) Kingdom of God on Earth as a precondition of the Second Advent of Jesus Christ. Since the Kingdom is by definition a perfect society free of sin, this means that it is the theological duty of believers to establish a sin-free society. But establishing a sin-free society, of course, means taking stern measures to get rid of sinners, which is where the rub comes in.

It took archetypical neo-Puritan Woodrow Wilson not only to bring Prohibition to America, and thereby fulfill the post-millennial evangelical pietist's most cherished dreams, but also to take PMEP crusading on to a world scale. For after the Kingdom was established in America, the next holy step was to bring about a worldwide Kingdom. (The Prohibitionist crusaders, however, soon found their dreams of a liquor-free Europe dashed beyond repair.)

The high-water mark of PMEP crusading was, of course, the outlawing of all liquor (and by constitutional amendment, no less!). The result used to be common knowledge in America; absolute disaster: tyranny, corruption, black markets and more alcoholism as people went underground to get more intense "fixes" such as hard liquor rather than beer before the cops could close in. And, of course, organized crime, which was almost non-existent before Prohibition. But now, only groups willing to be criminals were available to supply a much desired and demanded product.

This grim lesson used to be known to all Americans, but it has been lost in the enthusiasm for recent neo-Puritan crusades; against drugs, and now against drunk driving. What is little realized is that the current reason for the crusade was also present during the old PMEP war against liquor. As the decades wore on, the neo-Puritans used both theological and medicinal arguments; liquor will not only send you to Heck, but would also ruin your temporal body, your liver, your body-as-a-temple. Liquor would cause you to beat your wives, have more accidents, and, a little later, injure yourself and others on the road. Increasingly, over the years, the PMEPs married theology and Science in their crusade.

So what happened to the aggressively Christian features of neo-Puritanism, to the emphasis on salvation and on the Kingdom? Interestingly, over the decades, the Christian aspect gradually disappeared. After all, if as a Christian activist, your major focus is not on creed or liturgy but on using the government to shape everyone up and stamp out sin, eventually Christ fades out of the picture and government remains. The picture of the Kingdom of God on Earth becomes secularized or atheized, and, in the Marxist version, the secular sin-free Kingdom is brought about by the terrible swift sword of the "saints" of the Communist Party. We have arrived at the grisly land of Left Puritanism, of a Left Kingdom which proposes to bring about a perfect world free of tobacco, inequality, greed, and hate-thoughts. We have arrived, in short, in the land of The Enemy.

And so, drunk drivers! Are you mice or are you men? Drunk drivers, rise up, be proud, throw off the guilt imposed on you by your oppressors! Stand tall, and drunk drive! Defend your rights! Do you really think that someone can get instantly lose control of their vehicle by drinking a couple of beers? How do you explain the fact that millions of people have drunk driven all their lives without ill effect?

And remember, if today they come for the drunk drivers, tomorrow they will come for you. If today they grab your booze, tomorrow they will seize your junk food, your carbohydrates, your yummy but "empty" calories. And even if you're not a drunk driver, don't think that your liquor is safe either; neo-Prohibitionism has been long on the march, what with "sin taxes" (revealing term, isn't it?), outlawing of advertising, higher drinking ages, and the neo-Puritan harpies of MADD. Are you ready for the Left Nutritional Kingdom, with everyone forced to confine his food to yogurt and tofu and bean sprouts? Are you ready to be confined in a cage, to make sure that your diet is perfect, and that you get the prescribed Compulsory Exercise? All to be governed by a Hillary Clinton National Health Board?

Drunk drivers, if you have the guts to form a Drunk Drivers Defense League, I will be happy to join a Non-Drinking Auxiliary! How about drunk drivers as one important mass base for a right-wing populist counterrevolution?