A Paradise of Fools

I just can’t stop finding stuff today. This from the Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco. (A cool site in a lot of ways.) The excerpt below is from a piece called “What Shall We Do to Be Saved?: A Statesman's Patriotic Disquisition on the Juice of the Grape” by one Senator James D. Phelan, writing in San Franciscans Magazine, April 1929:

It is said that there are three sexes -- men, women and clergymen; and I would add that, at that period in our history, there was a fourth, indefinable sex, known as ‘slackers.’ The country was left in charge of people who were essentially impractical and wholly sentimental; also, very often, in a broad sense, in view of the noble structure of the constitution, which should preserve our liberties against trespass, they were unpatriotic and treasonable. As the judge said, ‘The more’s the pity.’

A prohibition government is, indeed, ‘a fool's paradise.’

Here’s the piece in context.