I am having a nice glass of beer. Belgian beer as it turns out. I was trying to read Pete Brown's series on "Answering the Neo Prohibitionists" but I am reflecting on how nice it is to live in a country where there really isn't any organized political outcry against beer as in the UK or any shock and surprise when our leaders have a beer. Nor is there the need to take the sorts of stance Pete feels compelled to take. Consider this:
- No one questions that our soldiers in Afghanistan get a beer ration. Most likely would think they should get more.
- Twice as many Canadians would like to have a beer with our third party left wing socialist leader, Jack Layton, as would vote for him. When you think of it, we don't even have a public outcry when pollsters ask which politician you would rather have a beer with. It's a valid question culturally.
- We think it is important to ask why our Washington embassy has fine wines but crap beer.
- We have a not too private sense of pride that 144,000 glasses of beer was sold at the recent World Junior Hockey Tournament held in Saskatchewan brining in over $1,000,000 in revenue for the event. That's about 43 beers for every 100 tickets sold. The sort of story makes us beam.
We are a funny land. Both egalitarian and reasonably libertarian. Largely urban but the cultural myth is that everyone thinks they live in the woods. We canoe. Beer, like curling and pushing the stuck cars of strangers out of snow drifts, plays the social role of a leveler which is important as we like the level as in middling centrist politics as well as the goal of moderate personal success and security. If we had a palace of historic national treasures like other lands it would like have a hall dedicated to early and significant Canadian beer drinking vessels.
Neo-prohibitionists? Anti-neo-prohibitionist diatribes? No thanks. There's likely curling to watch on TV, a good beer to sip and life is only so long.