world than they are. They cannot stop the use of alcohol, nor even appreciably diminish it, but they can badger and annoy everyone who seeks to use it decently, and they can fill the jails with men taken for purely artificial offences, and they can get satisfaction thereby for the Puritan yearning to browbeat and injure, to torture and terrorize, to punish and humiliate all who show any sign of being happy. And all this they can do with a safe line of policemen and judges in front of them; always they can do it without personal risk.
It is this freedom from personal risk that is the secret of the Prohibitionists’ continued frenzy, despite the complete collapse of Prohibition itself. They know very well that the American mob, far from being lawless, is actually excessively tolerant of written laws and judicial fiats, however plainly they violate the fundamental rights of free men, and they know that this tolerance is sufficient to protect them from what, in more liberal and enlightened countries, would be the natural consequences of their anti-social activity. If they had to meet their victims face to face, there would be a different story to tell. But, like their brethren, the comstocks and the
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