Kultur Blog - Alex Charlick

A personal response to "Capping the Bottle"

                        I'm sorry, Germany has a problem with public drunkenness?! Have they ever been to Ann Arbor (or any other American College Town) on a Thursday/Friday/Saturday/Sunday night?! Because I lived that life, and I can tell you the drunkenness isn't that bad; what's really bad is the wild parties till 3 am that happen LITERALLY every night( and many days) in the Summers here.


                      I worked in a 7/11 for a while in Ann Arbor and I can tell you, Drunk kids can actually be economically beneficial; their lower inhibitions and Dad's credit card leads to tons of purchases and the support of local businesses (even though you have to deal with unruly people).

                    I'd also like to add; when has prohibition ever worked? In America it led to organized crime and people getting drunk anyways, our War on drugs even is an absolute flop! with billions down the toilet and yet narcotics still get through (some states have even legalized some of them). Prohibition is ultimately a ridiculous idea, but it doesn't seem like Germany is heading towards one. They instead are calling for a ban of alcoholic beverages from key public spaces, which even then I say, you're not gonna stop public drunkenness, people will just get smashed and then go out in public. All your doing is stopping the average man from being able to have a beer on the train home; which as stated is not the problem facing Germany.

                  What instead should be done is an attempt at mass education and cultural change; Germans are already well known for their sense of civic duty, just broaden that to include avoiding public drunkenness. The force of the law isn't half as powerful as a cultural sense of duty and pride; why need to ban it? When people won't want to do it anyway. The implementation of the "Sofa Room" idea is a step in the right direction, don't make people feel they're being robbed of civil rights.

                             The struggle between individual liberties and maintaining a civil society will always be one that faces democratic nations, but one that should be done through culture and education, rather than by the Government. Germany (and much of Europe) needs to be a model for the rest of the world; and that does not include robing people of their civil liberties.