Explore "The Menace of Prohibition" by Lulu Wightman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
These restrictions by law are eternally increasing, so that it has become almost impossible for a citizen of the republic to live a single day without violating one or more laws. In almost every relation of life the conduct of the American is minutely regulated.
Many of these restrictions are founded upon a muddled conception of the public good: their aim would seem to be to protect the innocent bystander. But we cannot see how the innocent bystander profits, when the free citizen is forbidden to go fishing on Sunday, to smoke in public, to see certain plays, to get Anthony Comstock reports and the Kreutzer Sonata through the mails; to say in public just what he wants to say -- to exercise freedom of speech; to kiss his girl in the parks, or a woman to wear abbreviated skirts, -- = "ad libitum!" =