I’m in Salt Lake City with my daughter and granddaughters this week. The subject of the 1950s and drinking came up. I was there. I was a teetotaler and I drank a martini for lunch up until 1970. My business and corporate companions usually drank two martinis for lunch and had two to three more after work. Social life was centered around “cocktail parties.” By today’s standards, nearly everyone in America was an alcoholic.
What brings this up is the Andrew Sullivan article in TNR about C.A. Tripp’s book on Abe Lincoln. The question the book raises is: how homosexual was Abe? Men regularly slept with each other and wrote loving letters to each other. Navy ships often had bunks for two men.
The problem is that you can’t make useful judgments across time. Certainly not about subjects that are radically different.
We have a major problem with popular ignorance on this subject. The Supreme Court and many lower courts have sitting judges who believe in “Original Intent.” Original intent is the notion that we can try to understand the thinking and motivation of the original writers of a legal document. In most cases these judges are talking about our Constitution and its Amendments.
Our founding fathers, at the Constitutional Convention took five liquor breaks every day. The first break was for rum at 9AM. Considering the common pains of adult men in 1780, from horrible toothaches, headaches, earaches, infections, adult effects of childhood diseases and common problems like club-foot, they had to drink steadily. So how do we, today, look at the original intent of these boozed up snooker-heads?
I would consider “original intent” judges to be morally reasonable and intellectually honest if they came to work every day and took five shots of liquor while they do their job. What does the Fifth Amendment look like at 2 in the afternoon after three shots of gin? There was no Starbucks espresso, Americans drank tea.