Prohibition got my attention today. I checked the Ken Burns film out of the library and watched the whole thing. In the past I have seen bits and pieces on TV, but never whole episodes. My takeaway from the whole thing is that politics can cause insanity. Also, unintended consequences can be enormous. The whole thing was a disaster from start to finish. It was also a lesson that the only thing a politician is interested in is getting elected. Prohibitionist groups basically bought a huge number of politicians. Just think about it, have you ever seen an impoverished politician?

I can hear you asking, "So what?" There are many lessons from the debacle that was prohibition. Legislating human behaviour is a pointless effort. People don't like being told what to do by the government. One of the commentators in the film said that if you want everyone to brush their teeth, just outlaw tooth brushes. Withing days there would be massive demonstrations of people brushing their teeth in defiance.

The point of this harangue today is that we are constantly in danger of repeating the disaster of prohibition but with another subject. The bee in my bonnet today is that TWITTERGOOGLEFACEBOOK are deciding to censor what appears on their web sites. You gotta remember that the First Amendment protects all speech including hateful things. They can't do that. But they do. What is happening is the voices of certain segments of the American people are being squelched and silenced using the excuse of hate speech. That is not good. We don't need laws addressing that, so I certainly hope TWITTERGOOGLEFACEBOOK gets it act together before some politicians start the ball rolling to regulate them.