Carrie's Nation.

On this day in 1929, Congress passed the Jones Act, beefing up federal enforcement of the 18th Amendment, otherwise known as Prohibition.  The amendment would be repealed within 5 years, but the criminal syndicates that had sprung up to satisfy alcohol demand lived on, as did the image of one Carrie Nation, the lady with the hatchet who had a vision from God that she needed to stop hymn singing at saloons and start him-smacking, or at least booze smashing.  The joyless female castrator could not wish for a more perfect physical embodiment.

One could argue that Nation's get-tough attitude toward a social problem (and alcoholism was a very serious problem at the time) also lives on in the Three Strikes law of the U.S. "War on Drugs."  But "Three Strikes" and "War" are couched in masculinity, and masculine games (If it's good enough for baseball, by golly, it's good enough for drug abusers!)  And female leadership of the social conservative movement, at least the ones who have emerged so far, take care to soften their physical edges if not their verbal and ideological ones.  

So here's your extra credit question:  What if Carrie Nation had looked like Lilly Langtry, the British actress who was Nation's contemporary and who gave a whole new meaning to the word "smash" in her American tours? 

Nation wanted to clean up America.
Langtry cleaned up with her stage
shows and her pitchmanship.  Could
she have sold America on alcohol
abstinence?