Speakeasy Monarchists

Sing a song of sixpence,
A case full of rye;
Four-and-twenty Yankees
Started going dry.
When the case was opened,
The yanks began to sing,
To Hell with the Stars-and-Stripes
And God save the King!
-Reputed Prohibition-Era Drinking Song
via Charles Coulombe

Coulombe scores another rhetorical point:

Now it might well be objected that smoking does indeed pose a threat to an individual’s health, and this I cannot and will not dispute. But it must be submitted that the governments who are so interested in the health of the taxpayer on this point have interesting lacunae elsewhere. Statistically, an active participant in certain “risky” forms of behavior is far likelier to contract AIDS than a ten-pack-a-day smoker is to come down with lung cancer. Yet the Supreme Court has ruled that such behavior is a human right, and cannot be outlawed.