R K Jones eschews the crudity of opening a can of whoop ass and prefers to see rebellion served up in shot glasses
Those obsessed with fine whiskeys are perhaps already familiar with Malt Advocate magazine. Those with functioning livers may think of it as the Guns & Ammo for the discerning tippler. Each issue contains detailed looks at the international trade in liquor, almost always with an anti-regulatory bent. People expect to see reasoned support for free trade in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, or (sometimes) The Economist, but a drinks trade magazine? One doesn’t expect to buy a glossy, high-end specialty liquor magazine for the political commentary, but the current quarter’s issue (sadly, only teasers are available on-line) is worth a look. Any forum where a prominent American distiller opens his portion of a panel discussion (concerning regulation and taxation of the industry) with the words…
We need another Whiskey Rebellion
…is worthy of support.
Given the international, and free trading character of the liquor industry, I suppose the only real surprise should be that the paper mache puppet head brigade hasn’t yet begun picketing distilleries. Does the tone of the magazine mean anything about a change in attitude in the world? Or am I deceiving myself? I don’t know, but writers of a libertarian bent going back as far as Ayn Rand (and further) have been criticizing businessmen for a lack of ideology. Thus it is nice to see an industry niche publication that ‘gets it’.
Self-deception may be central to the human condition, and not exclusively confined to libertarians. However we often seem to have a particularly wide streak of it when it comes to looking at the world around us for signs that others may some day come round to sensible views. Just the same, it is always pleasant to see indications precisely that may indeed be happening.
RK Jones
However I would rather see a rebellion which actually succeeded at resisting the encroachment of the state than the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794
It’s “whup ass” not “whoop ass”.
Cut him some slack.
He’s probably British and trying to enunciate the unfamiliar vernacular American.
Fred
And the term ‘whup ass’ does sound a lot better when it is written in an American accent.
Oh, I dunno. I think “whoop ass” has a high-living sort of wild party tone that fits in nicely with the liquor biz.
People expect to see reasoned support for free trade in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, or (sometimes) The Economist, but a drinks trade magazine?
The alcoholic drinks business is a very special case, and people in any way involved with it usually support free trade and deregulation, simply because suffering the sorts of regulations that apply to the industry for even a short time is enough to send almost anyone completely insane.
In my experience of reading journals devoted to alcoholic drinks, reasoned support for free trade and less regulation is par for the course. If you buy (say) Wine Spectator, you will often find tirades against an American federal law that prohibits individuals from having wine shipped interstate. This makes it impossible (say) for a citizen in Nevada to have wine shipped to him from a winery in California, and also makes mail order and internet wine businesses close to impossible to run.
The amusing thing about looking at the regulation of alcoholic drinks is that the world is full of really strange laws that have been supposedly introduced to protect public morality, but that these are entirely different in every jurisdiction that you can name. In most cases they have just turned into a means of protecting vested interests, but “public morality” is the way these vested interests usually defent them.
(This is sometimes really bizarre stuff, along the lines of “If you buy a beer from an establishment with such and such a licence type, you shall be committing a crime if you then drink it when standing up”, or “In such an such a jurisdiction, spirits may only be sold in miniature bottles”, or “In the afternoon on a Sunday, it shall be an offence to sell beer in quantities of less than two dozen bottles”, or worse).
– To which I would add the previous booze regime in Scotland under which one buy a drink in a Scottish hotel on a Sunday, but not in a Scottish pub – hence the disproportionate number of pubs calling themselves hotels. And the curious state-controlled booze shops in Finland – the only country I’ve ever visited where the stuff was more expensive than it is in Britain. Actually I went to Finland expecting these state “offies” to be grim, censorious joints, but in fact they were very smart & modern. Just horribly expensive.
Re “whup ass”: surely no-one outside Nebraskan cowboy circles, or teenagers who’ve seen too many Vietnam movies, uses this expression? “Whoop ass” sounds like a gay endearment…
Tony H:
The reason why you had to buy booze in a Scottish hotel on Sundays was because it was deemed to be acceptable if you were a “bona fide” traveller undertaking a journey of more than 3 miles. People using hotels were assumed to be travelling. To prove this one had to fill in a register giving name and details of the voyage. By the time the law was changed, almost every Sunday drinker signed in as “Mickey Mouse” or “Donald Duck” and was travelling from Scotland to Hollywood.
In England an 11pm closing hour was established during world war 1, which still haunts us to this day. Australia and New Zealand adopted similar laws, but chose a closing hour of six O’Clock. This applied on all of Australia until the 1950s, and survived in a couple of states until the late 1960s. Hence the expression “The six O’clock swill” in Australian English. This was what you did between leaving work at 5pm and the pubs closing at 6pm. Despite this being gone, Australian liquor laws still have their eccentricities, the worst part being that in Sydney, there is a finite number of both pub licences and bottle shop licences, and these are traded like New York taxi plates. (This means that such things as small wine bars are not possible, as if you have a pub licence you have to make the pub as big as possible to make a return on what you paid for it). And there are the peculiar laws about drinking in restaurants. (You may not buy a drink in a restaurant unless you “intend to dine”, which means that having a drink, paying, and leaving without eating is technically legal if you intended to dine but your intention changed for some reason). And supermarkets are not permitted to sell alcoholic drinks.
There are a million different ways to make alcohol licensing laws stupid. And all of them seem to have been tried somewhere.
Michael,
“[…]people in any way involved with it usually support free trade and deregulation, simply because suffering the sorts of regulations that apply to the industry for even a short time is enough to send almost anyone completely insane. Tell me you didn’t mean it the way you wrote it…
My favourite British licensing law is the one that forbids bar-staff from serving anyone who is intoxicated.
Er, yes. I do see what you mean. Let’s just say these sort of laws drive people to a particularly sane form of insanity.
Tony H, I think you’ll find the Finnish practice of having alcohol only sold in special shops dates from their time as a Swedish colony, and I think Sweden still has state-run alcohol shops also. Absolut Vodka is a Swedish-government-owned brand, no?
Off topic, Here’s a shop that sells Gadsen “Dont Tread On Me” T-shirts…Link