Tom DiLorenzo on Yankees, public schooling and Prohibition

The word "Yankee" gained popularity in the early to mid nineteenth century to describe a particular brand of New Englander: arrogant, hypocritical, unfriendly, condescending, intolerant, extremely self-righteous, and believing that he and his were God’s chosen people.

Yankees have never shied away from using the coercive powers of the state to compel others to be remade in their image. That’s why compulsory government schooling originated in New England, as did prohibitionism.  It’s also why Stalinism took hold in the North (especially in New York City) in the twentieth century, as did its offshoot, neoconservativism, in more recent times. Indeed, many of the more notorious neoconservatives openly admit that they were Stalinists in their youth and have never fully abandoned those beliefs.

At the outbreak of the War to Prevent Southern Independence there was a vigorous secession movement in what were known then as the Middle States — Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York, New Jersey. During the war there were thousands of Northern "peace Democrats" who opposed Lincoln and his Yankee cabal. These people, who were essentially Jeffersonians, had one thing in common with the Southern Confederates: they despised the arrogant, pushy, greedy, and insufferably self-righteous Yankees. They were ruthlessly censored and imprisoned by the tens of thousands by the Lincoln government. When they rioted over military conscription, the Yankee army shot them dead in the streets by the hundreds if not thousands (See Iver Bernstein, The New York City Draft Riots).

~ Tom DiLorenzo, "The Myth of the Morally Superior Yankee," LewRockwell.com, February 10, 2004

Ludwig von Mises on the government's attempt to eliminate vices

It is an established fact that alcoholism, cocainism, and morphinism are deadly enemies of life, of health, and of the capacity for work and enjoyment; and a utilitarian must therefore consider them as vices. But this is far from demonstrating that the authorities must interpose to suppress these vices by commercial prohibitions, nor is it by any means evident that such intervention on the part of the government is really capable of suppressing them or that, even if this end could be attained, it might not therewith open up a Pandora's box of other dangers, no less mischievous than alcoholism and morphinism.

~ Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism

Ludwig von Mises on alcohol and drug prohibition

It is an established fact that alcoholism, cocainism, and morphinism are deadly enemies of life, of health, and of the capacity for work and enjoyment; and a utilitarian must therefore consider them as vices. But this is far from demonstrating that the authorities must interpose to suppress these vices by commercial prohibitions, nor is it by any means evident that such intervention on the part of the government is really capable of suppressing them or that, even if this end could be attained, it might not therewith open up a Pandora's box of other dangers, no less mischievous than alcoholism and morphinism.

~ Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism (1927)

Will Rogers on Prohibition

Prohibition is better than no liquor at all.

~ Will Rogers