Tiny Progress, But Some

by Tibor R. Machan
by Tibor R. Machan

Nearly ten years ago I left Auburn, Alabama, to move to Southern California and take up a new and more exciting line of work – actually several lines. During the ten years I lived in Auburn and taught at the university there – with some short visiting stints elsewhere – there had been some unique little tyrannies I used to fume about, if only to make the point that despite being minor, they should be stopped. One of these petty tyrannies was that stores were prohibited from selling any alcohol on Sundays, even wine and beer.

I kept forgetting this ban routinely and sometimes loaded up my cart with a bit of booze only to be turned away at the cash register and ordered to get rid of the stuff. Which then gave me the opportunity to deliver an eloquent speech about fascism, both petty and massive, to the annoyance of all the other people attempting to get through their Sunday shopping and the staff who had no interest in any of this. They all, like so many millions of people, were perfectly willing to put up with this minor but true police state policy, even if now and then they too were annoyed with the pushy authorities and the coercive policies they imposed on us all. But, well, it wasn’t Auschwitz, nor the Soviet gulags, not even South Africa, so why make a fuss!?

Not me. I figured one value of having been raised under Hungarian communism, even of the more or less "Goulash" variety, as well as by a Nazi father, is never to accept that it’s OK for other people, especially governments, to limit one’s liberty, never. So, I made my impassioned and eloquent protest each time I got the chance.

I visited back in Auburn a while ago and, lo and behold, massive progress became evident to me. Now the government forbids you to buy alcohol only until about Sunday noon in Alabama, not throughout the entire day. Wow. Talk about gains in human liberty! No, not massive gains, perhaps, nor all that significant ones but even this minor progress should be welcome, I believe. Of course, it is interesting to consider why there was liberation for human beings only for Sunday afternoons, not the whole day. And even the health center appears to be under a mandate to be closed until the afternoon, so it isn’t just alcohol purchase that suffers from restraint of trade.

The reason, of course, is that people must be "encouraged" to attend church in Alabama, via the forces of the state. The fear among the faithful political class is that if they were to be able to purchase some liquor on Sunday mornings, sure enough no one would show up in church. Thousands would be standing in line for alcohol and the churches would be empty. And this is not to be tolerated. Not only that, but health conscious citizens, who may not be hell bent on an early alcohol buying spree, would, however, be out there exercising to their hearts’ content and miss church that way, so the health club must also be kept out of reach. Such temptations must simply be eliminated or the good people of the state of Alabama would all fall prey to temptation – or that is what the thinking appears to be down there in Montgomery.

It is sad, a kind of confession of desperation, all this prohibition, if you ask me. If Alabamians aren’t sufficiently devoted to forego alcohol purchase and physical workout on Sunday mornings so they can attend service, what does their faith amount to anyway? If they must be coerced into church attendance it bodes rather ill for the state of religion in this Bible belt community. What kind of commitment does all this evidence?

Or perhaps the politicians and ministers who decided on this policy, in the famous blue law tradition that has been with America from way back, may be drastically underestimating the strength of faith of Alabamians. Perhaps the good religious folks down there would not only have no trouble resisting any temptations to miss church for the sake of booze and exercise but they very likely aren’t even tempted to do any such thing. No one can be sure, of course, since they aren’t being trusted with the matter by those politicians and others who support all this.

Still, we should probably celebrate the tiny progress made in Alabama whereby adult men and women are now free to make their own decisions as to whether to buy liquor or work out most of the time and, now, even on Sunday afternoons. In the past, after all, they were cruelly deprived of this liberty for all of Sunday. That, at least, is no longer so.

June 21, 2005

Tibor Machan [send him mail] is R. C. Hoiles Professor of business ethics at Chapman University, Orange CA. He is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and advises Freedom Communications, Inc., on libertarian issues. He is author of 30+ books, most recently, Objectivity: Recovering Determinate Reality in Philosophy, Science, and Everyday Life and his memoir, The Man Without a Hobby.

Copyright © 2005 Tibor Machan

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