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This isn’t culture war for today. It was between roughly 1918-1930’s. It’s short and about why he quit drinking alcohol. In my opinion he hit all the key points on the subject, his logic is correct, and wrote it in a very concise way.
He does seem to miss drinking alcohol. I have to agree as a mild alcoholic he’s correct. I think he’s also correct that cannabis isn’t the great substitute society now claims it is. Shrooms I am far less sure on.
It’s not culture war today but I’ve grown a lot of respect for the prohibitionists as being basically correct. I also wanted to post this as I felt like it’s a good example of fantastic writing.
https://pmarca.substack.com/p/on-pausing-alcohol?r=h8x
Edit: should we either more explicitly allow less culture war subjects or have another thread. Sitting on an Afghanistan article I found that was good journalism but it’s not heavily culture war
Incidentally, alcohol is a culture war in Finland, or at least a heavily culture-war-type subject that pops up in national politics from time to time. Prohibition is not on the agenda, but the alcohol laws are still fairly tight, and there are set tribes on this topic that keep having the same debates over and over again (with nanny-state leftists and conservative Christians in one camp and various free-marketeers and cosmopolitan 'European' types in the other). Alcohol deaths and its effects on health are a constant worry, though of course the opinions on whether public policy can actually account for this vary.
Underpinning it all is a consistent topic on whether Finns are just culturally unable to handle alcohol without being tightly regulated or whether instead Finnish drinking habits (ie. binge drinking during the weekend, sobriety during the week) could be developed to a more "European" direction of (presumably) not bingeing in the weekend but also having wine and beer during working lunches and so on. During the COVID time, of course, the alcohol policy debates became about whether bar closures etc. are evidence of nanny-statist government hating alcohol so much it is willing to let barkeepers go under, instead of doing some other restrictions or not doing restrictions at all.
In some ways, after following all this closely, it starts looking a bit surprising that alcohol isn't a culture war issue in other countries. Alcohol is, after all, a huge part of the Western culture in general, various alcohol-related fields form a considerable part of economy (ie. not only considering the sales of alcohol as such but its role in restaurants, tourism etc.), alcohol abuse has a vast amount of negative effects on health, crime and such, and the comparable subject of drug policy has certainly been a culture-war issue.
Knowing little of Finland, but knowing how severe alcohol abuse is in your neighbor Russia, would have me siding with the many-state leftist if there was even 5% chance it could get just as bad and possibly irreversible.
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