"It is invigorating to realize you've been dead wrong about
something. That's why we read history. It's an antidote to smug self-
righteousness, which makes us insufferable. You learn about this from
books. I can't think of any movie or song that changed my mind about
anything, but books of history certainly have. You sit down and read
about the temperance movement of 19th century America, which brought
about Prohibition, which you always thought was a foolish attempt by
blue-nosed puritans to repress bonhomie, which was the view of the
satirists of the 1920s, but there is another point of view: The
temperance cause was a protest movement by women who, having been
shut out of higher education and relegated to menial jobs, were
economically dependent on men and therefore terribly vulnerable to a
man's alcoholism. The temperance crusader Carrie Nation, famous for
busting up saloons with a hatchet, was the wife of a raging alcoholic
who had destroyed her life. The Women's Christian Temperance Union,
which you had thought of as a joke, has certain heroic dimensions and
helped pave the way for women's suffrage."
I'll drink to that.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/20/opinion/edkeillor.php
