"Regardless of what one's attitude towards prohibition may be, temperance is something against which, at a time of war, no reasonable protest can be made"
About this Quote
King is doing that classic wartime maneuver: turning a messy moral argument into a supposedly neutral piece of national housekeeping. By opening with “Regardless of what one’s attitude towards prohibition may be,” he nods to a live political fracture without touching it. That little concession functions like diplomatic insulation: you can be wet, dry, cynical, or devout; he’s not here to litigate. He’s here to narrow the field of legitimate disagreement.
The pivot is “temperance,” a word that sounds modest, even hygienic. Prohibition is coercive and culturally charged; temperance is self-control, thrift, discipline. In a time of war, those virtues stop being personal choices and become patriotic obligations. King’s real claim isn’t about alcohol. It’s about jurisdiction over citizens’ private appetites when the state is mobilizing bodies, money, and morale.
“No reasonable protest” is the hard edge under the velvet. It doesn’t ban dissent outright; it delegitimizes it. If you object, you’re not just wrong, you’re unreasonable - outside the circle of respectable public speech. That’s a potent tactic in a democracy under stress: define “reason” so it conveniently aligns with policy.
The context matters: early 20th-century Canada was wrestling with prohibition, class politics, and the social-gospel reform impulse, all intensified by wartime scarcity and anxiety. King’s sentence is less an appeal to sobriety than a blueprint for wartime consensus: rebrand regulation as virtue, then treat compliance as common sense.
The pivot is “temperance,” a word that sounds modest, even hygienic. Prohibition is coercive and culturally charged; temperance is self-control, thrift, discipline. In a time of war, those virtues stop being personal choices and become patriotic obligations. King’s real claim isn’t about alcohol. It’s about jurisdiction over citizens’ private appetites when the state is mobilizing bodies, money, and morale.
“No reasonable protest” is the hard edge under the velvet. It doesn’t ban dissent outright; it delegitimizes it. If you object, you’re not just wrong, you’re unreasonable - outside the circle of respectable public speech. That’s a potent tactic in a democracy under stress: define “reason” so it conveniently aligns with policy.
The context matters: early 20th-century Canada was wrestling with prohibition, class politics, and the social-gospel reform impulse, all intensified by wartime scarcity and anxiety. King’s sentence is less an appeal to sobriety than a blueprint for wartime consensus: rebrand regulation as virtue, then treat compliance as common sense.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
|---|
More Quotes by William
Add to List
