Talk:Temperance movement

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[edit] not just US?

I don't think it was only in the US - I believe that there was a similar movement in Australia around the same time. --Robert Merkel 01:42 Jan 23, 2003 (UTC)

The movement is not quite limited to english-speaking countries, as the article says. I don't know about the rest of the world, but all scandinavian countries had "avholdsbevegelser" or temperance movements. They were very popular here in norway, since alcoholism was a HUGE problem in the past. (Advocates against racism will often quote a text denouncing these perpetually drunk, backward people that will never amount to anything, before revealing that the people in question is nineteenth-century norwegians, as seen by british) The norwegian total abstention movement (DNT) was founded by the quaker Asbjørn Kloster, I don't have the year, but not long after the international order of good templars (IOGT) also appeared. In the beginning they mainly resisted the traditions that said to drink alcohol at every conceivable excuse, but they quickly became a reform movement of note. On prohibition, a significant faction led by Sven Arrestad wanted a gradual strategy of forcing alcohol sale into local monopolies, and then vote (in local referendums) to get rid of them entirely. Arrestad was particularly sensitive to economic considerations, and worked hard (he was a MP) to make sure that the profits from possible monopoly alcohol sale didn't end in local politicians' coffers. However, the majority wanted a national prohibition of liquor, and they won the resulting national referendum by a large majority - not suprising, since women could vote for one of the first times. (aside, the movement was very early in supporting equal rights for women)

Largely due to protest from wine-importing trade partners, a new referendum was held 5-10 years later(?), in which prohibition was removed.

But why was it this way?

[edit] Ku Clutz Klan

Someone did an interesting edit to the Ku Klux Klan article today regarding its temperance activities. Although I reverted the edit because there were a lot of problems with it, I assume there is at least some truth to the claim that the Klan was heavily involved in temperance.--Bcrowell 03:41, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] { { attention } } marker

I've marked the page as needing attention, both because it's way too short for such an important topic, and because people's comments on this talk page seem to indicate a problem with its US focus.--Bcrowell 03:56, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright

I've just removed the following text:

"Please note: This preliminary editing uses much material from my website (www.alcoholinformation.org), to which I hold the copyright. ```` David Justin"

Perhaps if I could address David directly; by submitting your text to Wikipedia you have agreed for the text to be released under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, a fact that is clearly stated at the bottom of every edit page. It's true that you do still hold the copyright, but there's no need for this to be stated on the page itself. "In the first case, you retain copyright to your materials. You can later republish and relicense them in any way you like. However, you can never retract the GFDL license for the versions you placed here: that material will remain under GFDL forever." --Dom 11:26, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] hard stats

"Social control over alcohol abuse declined, anti-drunkenness ordinances were relaxed and alcohol problems increased dramatically."

The case study on the US needs less repititions of dramatically, and more statistics. in this particular quote, isn't it true drinking more than halved from 7+ gallons of hard liquor per capita in 1830, to less than 2 gallons/capita by the mid-1840s, about the level of today? i have no time right now, someone please double check this. --Karch 12:26, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Fascism and Nationalism

Article says:

Nationalism and Fascism have also been strongly connected to the cause in instances.

I'd like to know what the grounds for that are. As far as I know, the temperance organisations have rather been intertwined with the workers' movement - at least here in Sweden. To me, that looks like an odd attempt to discredit temperance. -- Jobjörn 02:35, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

See, for example, Preventing Alcohol Abuse: Alcohol, Culture, and Control. Westport, Ct: Praeger, 1995 and "Prohibition: the Era of Excess. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1962.
Considering that alcohol was prohibited - or heavily regulated - in the Soviet Union and that social democratic countries like Sweden have had a long tradition of regulating alcohol consumption, should it Socialism be added? Jobjörn 11:29, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
You got it absolutely wrong. Alcohol was never regulated in USSR/Russia, because it was so ubiqitous. Gorbachew only WANTED to ban it, but did not succeed. All other times in russian/ussr history, vodka was literally the only human right the state guaranteed to its citizens. In fact the entire tsarist Russia and USSR was run on vodka to make the people forget their misery via drinking.
Why Sweden and Finland regulate alcohol access so heavily is exactly because they do not want to meet the same fate of their neighbour Russia, where the entire population drinks itself to death and chinese immigrants fill their place! (And It has nothing to do with socialism, both Finland and Sweden are bloodiest capitalist market economies and have always been. Nokia, the mobile phone giant is finnish, Volvo and Ikea is swedish. The Ikea's single owner is among the top10 richest capitalist people in the world!)
Otherwise the desire to drink alcholics in high latitude countries is easy to understand. During the long autumn and winter there is very little natural light and this makes people depressed via melanin shortage. When you can't get outside due to damn cold and darkness, you either have sex or drink (watching TV becomes boring very soon). Considering that alcohol is easier to get than a sexy chic, most people end up drunk constantly. 195.70.32.136 10:49, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
No. In at least Sweden, temperance politics are closely tied to the left-right scale of politics, with the Christian Democrats being the exception. The Left Party are proponents of a highly restrictive alcohol policy. The Social Democrats - and the CD - are slightly less bent on state regulations on alcohol. Thereafter follows the centre party, the peoples' party and the moderates, the third being more liberal than the second and the second being more so than the first. Jobjörn (Talk ° contribs) 23:15, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV

This article is pretty slanted towards the teetotalers. It reads almost like a fable, and completely neglects to point out the problems that prohibition caused (increase in organized crime, highlighting the impotence of law enforcement, etc) A few points of note:

"The movement's major success" "prohibition remained a dream in England." "the movement achieved a number of successes" "The referendum was won" "The future looked bright for the young movement" "some stalwart leaders persevered in pressing their cause"

Liu Bei 19:14, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

The word prohibition has become a loaded expression used by those who campaigm for the decriminilisation of illicit drugs.A reading of original US congress records, tend to highlig the spin put on prohibition by those who had a vested interest in ending prohibition. It can be argued that the alleged increasein crime duing US prohibition is largely a product of Hollywood script writing. Golions 05:06, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Capitalisation of Page Name

Should the page be "Temperance Movement" or "Temperance movement".

In other words is the title of the organisation, even a generic title the "Temperance Movement" or is it "just a movement" which is about temperance?

I know I can just be bold and create a redirect page form "Temperance Movement" to "Temperance movement", but it seems to e to be better to make sure the right page has the article and the other page is the redirect.

Fiddle Faddle 21:23, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

It is "just a movement" about temperance. Jobjörn (Talk ° contribs) 12:57, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge from Temperance organizations

Well, the main reason for me proposing this merge is this AfD. It's been lying around for a long time now, and the list is quite useless - it's a category, and most of it is probably redundant to this article. It's very US-centric, too. Any thoughts? Jobjörn (Talk ° contribs) 00:17, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Equation in text

I see the following equation at the beginning of the 2nd paragraph in this entry:
3.14 * 89 + 85(4962.36 + 6972)

The equation does not appear in the "edit this page" tab. I haven't really delved into editing the Wiki, so I hope you'll pardon me if I'm showing my noobness. (I also haven't posted in the "discussion" tab before, so I hope I'm doing this correctly.)

Wjc3 03:02, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

EDIT: Nevermind, the equation has now disappeared.

Yes, it was removed by me yesterday. You were probably watching a cached version of the article. Next time something similar happens, you should do a hard refresh in your browser: Ctrl + F5 will do in both Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. Command + R if you are using safari. Jobjörn (Talk ° contribs) 12:55, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Kevin Rudd

Should Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's comments over the last few days be noted in the article? Seeing as he's trying to bring back prohibition... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.138.104.191 (talk) 08:05, 21 February 2008 (UTC)