A Serious Answer to a Silly Argument

Sometimes people loathe me so much (there'll be another posting on this subject shortly) that they convince themselves that I have various bad personal characteristics.  Some years ago, when I said I drank half a bottle of wine a day, I was assailed by drug lobbyists as if I had admitted to a Bacchanalian nightly debauch, and was a terrible hypocrite for doing this and being against illegal drugs. This nonsensical case emerges from time to time, advanced by people who seem to take it seriously. Worse, others then take it up and the intelligent contributors here (you know who you are)  fail to note its absurdity. So I must oppose it, though I have other better things to do, or people will think it might be valid.

Half a bottle a night has for some years been way beyond me. I'm even quite enjoying Lent, as it gives me a permanent reason to refuse any alcohol at all, and not specially looking forward to being able to resume my occasional small glass of wine or even more occasional pint of beer after Easter.

None the less a couple of anonymous contributors claim that my raucous, alcoholic behaviour stands in the way of policies I desire. This is tripe. I explain why below,  with more patience than I personally think the argument deserves.

I am now told that, to be consistent, and apparently to set an example to a waiting nation, I must give up alcohol entirely.   

I respond to the comment on the 'In Front of Your Nose' topic by Mr 'Think', (a comment which contains many quotations from me) interleaving my responses in his contribution and marking them **

Mr 'Think' begins:' [I am] Not the original questioner but I can see the obvious answers: ((PH asked) ' How, precisely, do I 'help to fuel the demand for alcohol' among other people with my own drinking? What are the mechanisms of this 'help'?'

Mr 'Think' replies: The same way that those who buy and consume other drugs help fuel that demand, an argument you've made several times before.

**Not so, and in fact dead wrong in in several ways. I am not opposed in principle to alcohol prohibition, though I think it impracticable, for reasons many times stated here. If I turned out to be wrong, I would willingly obey a prohibition law. It is precisely because I am an untypical drinker that I doubt that such a thing could be implemented.

I do however frequently call for the reinstatement of the 1915 alcohol licensing laws, the closest this country could (in my view)  reasonably come to prohibition. This does not in any way conflict with my personal drinking habits.

My argument is not that those who take drugs are making drug legalisation more likely, though I do believe their actions are immoral as mine would be immoral if I drank to get drunk or to dull my discontent with an unjust world. . My argument is that campaigners for drug liberalisation are almost invariably drug users, whose motives are self-serving, though they generally don't say so. It is their illegal act which impels them to join this cause, because they would rather it were legal. There is no parallel, for the legal consumer of alcohol, especially a consumer like me, who wants alcohol to be more restricted than it is. To the extent that I campaign on drink laws at all, it is to make them more restrictive. This wouldn't, as it happens,  incommode me one bit.

They disguise their individual self-interest as a supposedly noble, libertarian cause. I do the opposite. I am quite open about my alcohol use, as they are generally not open about their illegal drug use. And I campaign for restrictions on the sale of alcohol, and have said not above a hundred times that I would happily give up alcohol for good if I could be persuaded that by doing so I could diminish the scourge of drunkenness.

Next, alcohol is already legal. Illegal drugs are, er, illegal. By consuming alcohol I don't deliberately defy an existing law, so I neither corrupt myself by deliberate lawlessness, nor do I corrupt others by a bad example of deliberate lawlessness.  Users of illegal drugs do these things, to their own detriment and to the detriment of our society.

(PH said)' If I entirely ceased to drink (a state I have very nearly reached, as it happens) , who would even know, let alone care, let alone be influenced by it?'

Mr 'Think' replies: 'The shops, bars and restaurants that supply you'

**I drink at most two or three glasses of wine a week, and perhaps a pint of beer three or four times a year. I doubt if any of these suppliers would even notice my absence, or my abstinence. Or care.

Mr 'Think' Your friends and family.

**In what way would it influence them if I reduced this minimal consumption to nothing?  Explain.

Mr Think ''Your readers.'

**I must here ask if there is anyone reading this blog who will say honestly and with a straight face that, were I to declare that I will nevermore touch a drop of alcohol, their personal behaviour would alter in any way. If so, how, and can I have it signed on a piece of a paper, with full name and address? Honestly.

(PH quoted again) 'Why is my failure to cease drinking 'one of the reasons why alcohol prohibition is impracticable'.

Mr 'Think' :'You argue that alcohol should be outright banned, but cannot be because it is culturally ingrained.'

** This is a mixture of error and half-truth. I don't argue that 'alcohol should be outright banned'.  I have no moral objection to the moderate consumption of alcohol. I argue that it should be more restricted. The fact that a drug which is already legal cannot easily be banned is part,  but not all,  of my argument. It also cannot be banned because, thanks to being culturally ingrained, it has been legal for centuries, and making things illegal that ahve been legal for centuries is notoriously difficult if not actually impossible, however Draconian the law .(see modern Iran)

Mr 'Think' :'You are one of those who drinks it, who contributes to that culture.'

**But as I keep saying, I have no principled opposition to alcohol prohibition. I simply believe it to be impracticable. I could live my life without alcohol, missing only the taste of a glass of good Burgundy with a cold steak and kidney pie or of a pint of good ale drunk after a 50-mile bike ride. My life would be slightly, but not vastly, different. Were there to be a serious campaign for prohibition, which there is not,  I would not oppose it on principle. I don't think there will be such a campaign, but I have made this statement several times and would abide by it if there were.

Were it to be enacted, I would abide by it. How is this in any way comparable to someone who a) defies the law to use a stupefying drug and b) campaigns selfishly to change the law to suit himself?

Note also that the campaign to destroy the drug laws currently exists (as a campaign for alcohol prohibition curerently does not and has not for many years) and the drug decriminalisation campaign is close to irreversible success ( rather unlike the non-existent campaign for alcohol prohibition, which my minor drinking is supposed  somehow to be influencing, though how one can influence the outcome of a non-existent campaign, I am not able to say).

Mr 'Think' asserts :' You are part of the barrier to the total prohibition you'd apparently ideally like to see.'

To which I retort that actually I wouldn't 'like to see 'total prohibition', however it may 'appear' to Mr 'Think' that I would. I am sorry for him if he sees apparitions of this kind.  I wouldn't 'like to see' it because I believe it to be impracticable. And I would add  that nobody else of any significance is campaigning for it either. So how can I be an obstacle to something that nobody (including me) is asking for? An obstacle, to be an obstacle, surely has to have something to obstruct.  What is it obstructing? Who is calling for this? 

(PH quoted again);'Who, with any influence over laws and events, is even considering such a measure?'

Mr 'Think' alleges ' You considered it, you considered it would be desirable, but you considered it would be impractical. Because of people like yourself, whose culture it is to buy and consume alcohol.';

**No, not because of people like me, for whom alcohol is a minor pleasure which we could easily abandon if we wanted to, but because of  people quite unlike me for whom alcohol has become a central pleasure of their lives, which, like illegal drug-takers, they would never consider giving up for the greater good. And the fact that I have considered and rejected it means that I am no longer considering it.

(PH quoted again) 'Even if they were, what difference would my actions make?'

Mr 'Think' asserts :'You would stop funding drug suppliers.'

** This is an abuse of language. Like it or not, alcohol is legal in this country and those who sell it are not 'drug suppliers' in the sense intended here. They are undertaking a legitimate business. I am not 'funding' them. I am legally buying their legal product.

More, if they relied on me to sustain them, they would long ago have gone out of business (as it happens, both my local wine merchants have shut down in the last two years, but I don't think it's my fault, I just think that good-quality wine is not the most popular form of alcohol in my particular suburb, and I wonder why that is,  if my habits are so influential?) .

Mr 'Think' asserts again ' You would be setting an example.'

**And I repeat my point above, an example of what, to whom?

He claims : ' You would be taking a step to change a culture you apparently disagree with, but join in with nonetheless.'

**Wrong. I would be taking a step of no significance, in support of a cause I don't even endorse.

Mr 'Think again:' You would stop appearing as a hypocrite.'

Well, I can't stop *appearing* as a hypocrite to people who loathe me so much for opposing them that they are laboriously determined (see above) to believe that I am a hypocrite whatever I do or say. That is beyond my power to influence, as the *appearance* is in their minds, not in my actions, and is not susceptible to correction by facts or logic, as it is motivated by hostility. As i say, I hope he doesn't see too manyof these apparations. It's a bad sign.

But, as I explain above, my actions do not in any way conflict with my opinions. so I am not (in this matter at least ) a hypocrite.