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109 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 1 (1923)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0109 and id is 1 raw text is: The Relationship of Alcohol to Society and to
Citizenship
By EUGENE LYMAN FISK, M.D.
Medical Director, Life Extension Institute

J  AT is citizenship?   It can only
arise when two or more people
are close enough for their lives to touch.
A single individual on a desert island or
otherwise removed from his fellows is
not a citizen, but an inhabitant. Let
another individual land on that island
and a convention must arise and citizen-
ship is called for. This necessarily in-
volves a restriction of personal liberty
-so called.
WHAT Is PERSONAL LIBERTY?
In the story of creation, Adam is
merely an inhabitant until Eve appears
and then Adam becomes a citizen; and
along with his rib, he loses a consider-
able part of his personal liberty, never
to be regained by any of his male de-
scendants except Robinson Crusoe.
Just what is personal liberty? Ab-
solute personal liberty is the right to do
anything that one has the power or in-
clination to do, regardless of the conse-
quences to one's self or to others. This
is not a prerogative of citizenship in a
free republic. This is a truth that
needs to be burned into the brains, not
only of aliens who seek citizenship
under our Constitution, but of every
existing citizen who really loves his
country.
There is always more personal liberty
in a despotic monarchy than in a free
republic, paradoxical as this may seem.
In a semi-civilized or despotic monarchy
there is less law, less restraint upon the
lawless, more license and arbitary ex-
ercise of power than is possible in an
enlightened and well-governed repub-
lic. In fact, the despot and his satel-
2

lites and the innumerable little despots
that flourish in a semi-civilized state
are examples of the nearest approach to
personal liberty that exists in human
society. But even the despot must
yield to certain conventions, supersti-
tions or traditions, and dare not over-
step certain lines laid down by the
customs of his people. Many years
ago Huxley, one of the most ardent ad-
vocates of individual freedom of speech,
thought and action, wrote:
It is a necessary condition of social ex-
istence that men should renounce some of
their freedom of action. There is no coun-
try or nation in which an adult man has
exclusive possession of himself. In fact,
the very existence of society depends on the
fact that every member of it tacitly admits
that be is not the exclusive possessor of
himself and that he admits the claim of the
polity of which he forms a part, to act to
some extent as his master.
THE SELF-INDULGENT
There is much talk in these days of
personal liberty. Is this cry raised in
behalf of freemen, of men who stand
out as types of rugged, independent
spirits untrammeled by the chains of
habit, bowing to no petty tyrant such
as bracers, appetizers, pick-me-
ups, and other slave-holding indul-
gences?  Not so. The cry is raised in
behalf of a limited section of our popu-
lation, which includes as its core the
self-indulgent men who really have
less personal liberty than they who
are physically free because they are
healthy, because they are not bound in
the shackles of some indulgence and
can dig up out of their inner resources
1

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