Hunting Blind Tigers
I've just started reading a great new book by Christopher Snowdon called The Art of Suppression. It's about the history of prohibition in its various manifestations - from alcohol and drugs to the current war on tobacco. Perhaps you know already what a "blind tiger" was but I didn't:
The term 'blind tiger' was coined to describe illicit drinking dens which exploited the loophole in 19th century prohibition laws which permitted complimentary drinks to be served at exhibitions of natural wonders. The 'wonders' being exhibited at such establishments were seldom impressive, as indicated by the later derivation 'blind pig'.
Snowdon is an author you should discover. His previous book, The Spirit Level Delusion was a thorough demolition of one of the more pernicious recent additions to the liberal-left litany of pseudo-scientific nonsense - Richard Wilson's and Kate Pickett's The Spirit Level. I named it the most important book of 2010, for reasons I let Snowdon himself explain:
Apologists for Marxism have made myriad excuses for their ideology's failure to provide the same standard of living and liberty as was enjoyed in capitalist nations. Until recently, few have been so brazen as to claim that lowering living standards and curtailing freedom were the intended consequences, let alone that people would be happier with less of either. In that sense, books like The Spirit Level represent a departure for the left. Limiting choice, reducing wealth and lowering aspirations are now openly advocated as desirable ends in themselves.
His new book promises to be just as good. Like me, he's a libertarian. Like me, he believes prohibition doesn't work. Like me, he thinks circumscribing private behavior is not the state's business. Like me he agrees with HL Mencken that prohibitionists are driven by "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."
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Re: Hunting Blind Tigers
Alas, had you been in San Francisco just a wee bit longer last night, I would've taken you to Bourbon & Branch, a beverage parlor that has fashioned itself in the style of the Prohibition era "speakasy" that actually operated illegally out of that location in the 1920's and early 30's.
Next time!
Re: Hunting Blind Tigers
It's a deal!
Dec '10
Re: Hunting Blind Tigers
Annnnd, here it is!
Apr '11
Re: Hunting Blind Tigers
Ah, the title of the play Sty Of The Blind Pig makes a bit more sense now.