Facing the important issues of yesteryear

I have been getting on nostalgia kicks lately, and it has long fascinated me how this country survived for so many years when drugs (including highly addictive drugs like heroin and cocaine) were sold freely over the counter or in the mail without prescription. That sort of grotesque liberal excess ended in 1914 with the passage of the Harrison Narcotics Act.

Guns were once treated the same way. Anyone could buy any gun, over the counter or by mail. And that sort of grotesque liberal excess lasted until 1968 with the passage of the Gun Control Act.

Yes, I know these topics are tired, and of interest mainly to libertarians. But it still fascinates me to look back at this country’s culture, when people were left alone by the government in ways that are unimaginable to anyone alive today.

In those days, not only were there no restrictions on drugs or guns, there were no restrictions on what people were allowed to eat. Far from today’s War on Obesity, back in the days of runaway freedom, obesity itself was celebrated!

Check out this cultural artifact from the period:

Unfortunately, the above is a long-since broken bathtub that was installed in the White House for President William Howard Taft.  He left office in 1913, after coming in third in a race between himself, winner Woodrow Wilson, and former ally-turned-arch-enemy Theodore Roosevelt.

He claimed to be a progressive, but his record was attacked as not progressive enough, and the Republicans lost big time to Woodrow Wilson.

Fascinatingly, the left at the time consisted of Big Government social conservatives. Here’s the 1908 election map. Socially conservative leftie William Jennings Bryan was the Democrat loser; Taft was the Republican winner.

The red state/blue state voting pattern is almost the precise inverse of today.

Sigh. Then as now, “we” were really varying shades of purple. But such talk is boring and redundant; what I like about nostalgia is that allows me to focus on more interesting details than getting into ironic political comparisons which generate arguments.

So let’s stick to the salient facts. Not only was Taft the heaviest man to ever occupy the White House, he was the last President to have facial hair while in office.

In contrast, presidents today are supposed to be slim and clean-shaven.

(Whether anyone remembers the time when Newt Gingrich grew a beard is irrelevant to this discussion.)

Such distractions are like elephants, and I’m trying not to think about elephants (even if they are said to be in the room.)

Except Lucy, my childhood favorite.  I love Lucy!