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Rights, Wets, and Whites

On December 15, 1791, the United States Bill of Rights became federal law when ratified by the Virginia General Assembly.

On December 15 in 1933, the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution officially became effective, repealing the Eighteenth Amendment that had, by enabling the Volstead Act, prohibited the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol for any other than medical and industrial uses.


December 15 birthdays include that of Pehr Evind Svinhufvud af Qvalstad [pictured above], 1861, first Head of State of independent Finland, serving in this capacity first as leader of the Senate and then as Protector, or Regent. In 1930 he became Prime Minister, and in 1931 was elected President, leaving office in 1937.

During the Civil War of 1918, his anti-socialist refugee government, Valkoiset, or “Whites,” opposed the “Reds,” a Social Democrat Party faction, for control of the government as it transitioned from Russian rule as a Grand Duchy, to independent status.

He died in 1944.

2 replies on “Rights, Wets, and Whites”

The wording of what is called “the Twenty-Third Amendment” is somewhat problematic; it refers to “The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution”.

What is generally called “the Seventh [article of] Amendment” cannot be such, as it violates Article V, which prohibits any Amendment depriving any constituent state of its equal representation in the Senate except with consent of that state. These constituent states are not the voters of their jurisdictions, so popular election of Senators robbed the non-ratifying states of their representation in the Senate.

That means that Prohibition was effected by the seventeenth Amendment, and women were granted suffrage by the eighteenth. Unless we take “The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution” to be and not a description, women lost the right to vote and prohibition of importation, exportation, manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcohol is still the law of the land.

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