The difference between a glass of wine and a gun

BY KEVIN BIRMINGHAM

By now, you've probably heard the rumors: Broadway Liquor has been busted for selling alcohol to underage Yale students. At some point, the New Haven Police (as if they didn't have enough to do) decided to forget about the shootings and crack sales in the immediate area and focus on the insidious, underground world of Yale drinking. It's not clear what the police are trying to accomplish. Underage Yalies are going to drink. Most don't even care about the Broadway bust. It's little more than an inconvenience for students as they simply find alternative ways to obtain alcohol. In the weeks to come, when (surprise!) students under 21 continue to drink, it will be clear that the authorities' crusading crackdown on Broadway Liquor will only result in yet another bankrupt store in the downtown area.

I'm sure all you moralists out there are disgusted by the fact that someone could ridicule the police for doing their job. After all, selling beer to a 20-year-old is illegal. It's not the specific case of Broadway Liquor that's so objectionable; rather, it's the prudish ideology behind America's paranoia of alcohol that's so absurd. It seems as if we are still contending with the vestiges of puritanical New England thought.

Let's face it, America's value system is laughable. We can't allow a 20-year-old to enjoy a beer, yet we have no problem with an 18-year-old buying a gun at a "family" superstore such as Wal-Mart. What's the logic behind this? Young adults exposed to the intoxicating effects of alcohol might suddenly be transformed into uncontrollable beasts seeking mindless sex and relentless destruction. On the other hand, you have the right to stroll down to your neighborhood sporting goods store and pick up a shiny, new .38, an instrument that's specifically designed to produce large holes in a person's body.

In our political culture, we are obsessed with freedom as an ideal. Americans boast of how our country is founded on this inalienable principle. Yet we frantically restrict and censor movies, TV shows, and the press while the Europeans tolerate what we consider "social ills." Apparently, our method is to put all potentially harmful things out of sight and out of mind so that we can shelter our nation's youth from evil. And the results? Are German and Italian 15-year-olds drunkenly staggering through the streets in reckless abandon? Are Irish and French kids wreaking havoc in an inebriated haze? Is alcohol the cause of all that is wrong in European society? Are European youth now doomed to a life of sin and wretchedness? I don't think so, and neither do their parents.

Most Europeans who visit the states can't understand our restrictions. What's more, they find our obsession with drinking ridiculous. A liberal approach to alcohol consumption has done for the Europeans what America has failed to do with her overly-protective and pious approach. Because the average European kid has never been denied a drink, he or she typically has a more mature approach to alcohol. I'm not saying that foreign college students don't indulge in their share of wild nights. I just imagine that their obsession with Century Clubs and Beer Pong isn't nearly as intense as ours.

Everyone knows that college students drink; it's considered part of being in college. For most, the law is but a technicality. The signs next to the drinks at any given Yale party proclaiming, "You must be at least 21 years of age in the state of Connecticut to consume alcohol" are comical, a derisive poke at the absurdity and inconsistency of our values. It's time to stop kidding ourselves. It's time to stop worrying about the trivial things and begin focusing on more immediate and pressing problems. Let us live. After all, The Good Book itself proudly proclaims that, "A man hath no better thing under the sun than to eat, and to drink and to be merry" (Eccles. 8:15).

I'll drink to that.

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