A Preface to Politics — CHAPTER II

1. 1. Governments, trained to interpret constitutions rather than life, respond to social evils by passing laws that forbid them, a method as ancient and ineffective as the taboo.
2. 2. Prohibition of suicide is absurd: it punishes those who fail to kill themselves, making the world less attractive for the desperate.
3. 3. Closing dance halls merely drives pleasure into parks, and anti-trust laws coincided with the centralization of industry, showing taboos fail to stop the underlying desires.
4. 4. Reformers must understand that men gamble or drink because these activities satisfy deep-rooted human wants, not to break laws.
5. 5. Mayor Seidel of Milwaukee proposed to compete with the devil by providing municipal dances, recognizing dance halls as an urgent social necessity.
6. 6. Tammany Hall succeeds because it humanizes government for immigrants, providing clambakes, jobs, and friendship, unlike cold efficiency-focused reformers.
7. 7. William James proposed a 'moral equivalent of war'—a conscription against nature—to preserve martial virtues without war's horrors.
8. 8. Evil is a form of desire, not its nature; every lust can be redirected into civilized expression through 'sublimation'.