George Will: Beer: Is There Anything It Can't Do?

[babylonsister]

:D This made me laugh.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/07/the_essential_beer.html

Beer: Is There Anything It Can't Do?
By George Will


WASHINGTON -- Perhaps like many sensible citizens, you read Investor's Business Daily for its sturdy common sense in defending free markets and other rational arrangements. If so, you too may have been startled recently by an astonishing statement on that newspaper's front page. It was in a report on the intention of the world's second-largest brewer, Belgium's InBev, to buy control of the third-largest, Anheuser-Busch, for $46.3 billion. The story asserted: "The (alcoholic beverage) industry's continued growth, however slight, has been a surprise to those who figured that when the economy turned south, consumers would cut back on nonessential items like beer. ... "

"Non what"? Do not try to peddle that proposition in the bleachers or at the beaches in July. It is closer to the truth to say: No beer, no civilization.

The development of civilization depended on urbanization, which depended on beer. To understand why, consult Steven Johnson's marvelous 2006 book "The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic -- and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World." It is a great scientific detective story about how a horrific cholera outbreak was traced to a particular neighborhood pump for drinking water. And Johnson begins a mind-opening excursion into a related topic this way:

"The search for unpolluted drinking water is as old as civilization itself. As soon as there were mass human settlements, waterborne diseases like dysentery became a crucial population bottleneck. For much of human history, the solution to this chronic public-health issue was not purifying the water supply. The solution was to drink alcohol."

snip//

But that is a potential stew of racial or ethnic sensitivities that we need not stir in this correction of Investor's Business Daily. Suffice it to say that the good news is really good: Beer is a health food. And you do not need to buy it from those wan, unhealthy-looking people who, peering disapprovingly at you through rimless Trotsky-style spectacles, seem to run all the health food stores.

So let there be no more loose talk -- especially not now, with summer arriving -- about beer not being essential. Benjamin Franklin was, as usual, on to something when he said, "Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." Or, less judgmentally, and for secular people who favor a wall of separation between church and tavern, beer is evidence that nature wants us to be.

[Skink]

1. But we gotta do something about beerflation

:beer:

[groovedaddy]

2. Everybody's got to believe in something. Me,

I believe I'll have another beer!

[Bob Dobbs]

3. Alcohol, the source of, and answer to the world's problems.

It's a hell of a drug.

[bananas]

4. "No beer, no civilization."

I'll drink to that!
:toast:

[tomreedtoon]

5. Beer got George Bush elected.

He was the guy you were supposed to be able to drink a beer with - not the gay chardonnay of his opponents. You could say the Bush Administration was the result of a "beer hall putsch."

[madmom]

7. It's also trying to get mclame elected!

[tomreedtoon]

9. But with McCain, YOU have to hold his glass for him.

Or pour the beer in his IV. Or something.

[wtmusic]

6. It can't make George Will smarter. nt

[Demeter]

8. Or More Appealing Sexually

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

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