November 9, 2021 • 49 mins
Blue laws are laws that restrict certain activities on certain days. Are they antiquated? Yes! Are they still around? In some places, yes!
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey you, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and of
course the Greatest the Goat Jerry is with us as well.
It's just a quietly lurking in the background, the Greatest Goat, HM,
(00:26):
the Greatest. How you doing, I'm doing good, Chuck, I'm
I'm a little This was one of your picks, but
I think I might be a little more enthusiastic about
this one than you. Why do you say that? Because
I said this is boring, they fully recorded a little
bit that may have something to do with it, and
then me saying, oh, no, I think it's pretty interesting.
(00:48):
Oh I don't think it's really that boring. And it
was my pick, um, Yeah, what made you choose that? Well,
I mean we're talking about blue laws, and just very quickly,
blue laws are our laws from ancient times that have
carried over still in some places to modern day America
and other countries as well. I guess that restrict certain
(01:09):
activities on certain days. But generally in the United States,
we think of blue laws are things that you can't
do on Sundays a lot of time. Their vices like
you can't drink or buy alcohol until sometimes at all,
or until certain times, or maybe restrict working or gambling
or you know, just various things. But uh, we had
(01:30):
our own blue law, one blue law at least on
the books in Georgia until just a few years ago,
you could not buy alcohol on Sunday at all. Yeah.
I think Georgia was the last state to repeal a
full Sunday prohibition on buying alcohol full prohibition. But then
I mean it passed by a ridiculous measure, something like
(01:55):
but you still can't buy booze before I think noon
on Sunday. And that's weird. And it seems like if
you step back, if you were an alien, let's say, right,
and you came down and you're like, that's a great way.
So let's say you're work from work, right, Okay, that's
what you just reminded me of. And you show up
with your super cool block color puffy vest and you say,
(02:18):
I want to familiarize myself with laws. This would makes sense.
This makes sense. What you can't buy alcohol before noon
on Sunday, So that doesn't make any sense. That was
my impression of mark Um. If he dug a little deeper,
it would become obvious that it makes a ton of
sense if you're coming at it from the vantage point
of a Christian in the Western hemisphere who observes Sunday
(02:43):
as the day of um worship and rest. Right outside
of that context, it doesn't make sense. And there in
lies the rub. There's the big push and pull between
people who are like America is founded essentially on the
idea and promise the separation of church and state. We're
supposed to keep those two separate, So we shouldn't have
(03:04):
the state making laws that enthusiastically support one of the
tenets of this one particular church Christianity, which is you
should not be doing a whole lot of stuff on
Sunday and you should probably be going to church. And
other people who say no, no, that's it's actually a
really really good thing to do. This even if you
don't believe in religion, even if you don't go to church,
(03:25):
blue laws actually still help us out right. There have
been arguments, including as we will learn, all the way
up to the Supreme Court, that say, well, it may
have started religious, but there are many secular benefits two, um,
sort of forcing families to all be off work on
the same day at gunpoint, go play together, right, take
(03:50):
a walk. So I propose we talked about the history
of blue laws first and then kind of get into
some of the wackier ones and then talk about legality
and so on, and so you could call what I'm
doing now the table of contents? Do you agree to
this table of contents? Uh? So? Are you saying you
want to skip ahead to the where did blue laws
come from? That is my proposal. Okay, I love you
(04:13):
springing this stuff on me. I am flexible, though I
know nimble, I know crazy. All I have to do
is shuffle some paper. Okay, you're eighteen. I mean it
makes sense because, yeah, if you are an outside observer,
even if you're an inside observer, you might not realize
how ancient that the Blue laws are and that they actually, um,
(04:37):
conceivably they don't necessarily predate Christianity, but they weren't necessarily Um,
they're pretty old. How about that? Well? Yeah, I mean,
anyone who grew up going to church knows about the
ten Commandments and knows that that fourth commandment says, remember
the Sabbath day to keep it holy or and keep
it holy. And depending on what religion you are, that
(05:00):
could be a different day. Judaism Saturday. If your Seventh
day Adventist, that's Saturday. But Christianity at a certain point
between the second and fifth centuries were like, yeah, you know,
let's distance ourselves from Judaism and let's move our day
to Sunday. Uh that way we can have our own day.
(05:20):
We can tell everybody they're observing the wrong day, and
it's a win win. Yeah. There's also, um the knock
on effect of taking over Sunday from the Pagans who
um observed Sunday as the day to worship the Sun Sunday.
So it was basically total and complete encroachment and actually
(05:44):
moving the day, the Sabbath day to Sunday. That that
caused that. It's pretty pretty interesting. I hadn't known that before,
and it's it's so, let's so now we have like
the Christians saying, okay, everybody change the plans like that
guy on the Fidelity commercial change plants. I haven't seen that.
Oh man, it sounds like a Bond villain. It's crazy.
(06:05):
Uh So, So the point was that the Christians said okay, everybody,
the Sabbath is now on Sunday. And then they followed
that up with really enforcing that that originally Jewish um tenant,
which was like basically, observe a day of rest and
worship on the Sabbath and don't do anything else. Right,
(06:27):
And um, we don't know exactly when the first laws
were enacted, but it could have been. And this is
the grabster that helped put this one together for us.
So thanks to add for that. But uh, possibly in
three sixty three, a d at the Council of uh
Ladocia does see you. I would say, Leo to see you,
(06:49):
Leo to see you. That's my I thought that a
might be silent. But weren't you raised Baptists. You don't
know about the council of Leo to see you. I
had never heard of it, truly, you are Joe King.
I am Joey al right, Because that was a meeting
of of leaders in the Christian religion who said we
need to get some laws on the books. I'm surprised
I hadn't heard of it, but I hadn't or possibly
(07:11):
the first laws were from ancient Rome, uh, and I
saw various Roman emperors who could have been responsible for these.
I saw Constantine in three twenty one. Yeah, I think
I saw one of the other dudes. But I got
that from the Valdosta Times. Take that or leave it,
(07:33):
that's right. So so you had a bunch of Christian rulers,
essentially is the upshot of all this that kind of
took over and started issuing these proclamations and new crees
and stuff about observing the Sabbath. Right. Yeah, for like
hundreds of years this happened in various ways, various loss thing.
You can do this, you can't do that. Uh, it
(07:54):
was I think the Protestants were a little less into it,
but not real I mean, they were still into it.
I think it would be disingenuous to say the Protestants
were just fine with it, well supposedly with doing whatever
on Sunday, supposedly, right. I think it wasn't that they
weren't They weren't cool with just not having a day,
a Sabbath day of some sort. It was Martin Luther
(08:16):
wasn't big in following the old time rules, and he
was saying, it doesn't have to be Sunday, don't be ridiculous,
just but do a day a week. Um. But the
irony of the whole thing is that Protestants would come
to be like some of the biggest enforcers and writers
of blue laws in America, especially as Sunday being the
Sabbath day, like defending Sunday in particular, right, and so
(08:41):
you know, these get enacted there. Obviously, when the colonies
are being formed, they make their way over there. The
Puritans were like, oh, great, this is perfect. We're all
about restricting people whenever Sunday. That's fine, we'll restrict people
on Sunday. And by the time the colonies roll around,
they were pretty well ensconced, such that there's even a story.
(09:05):
I think you can really do much of anything on
Sunday's in the colonial times. But there's a story from
Sight nine where supposedly George Washington himself was was tracked
down or at least stopped by a sheriff for going
for traveling on a Sunday, even though he was traveling
to church. Yeah, because the premise was that um, saddling
(09:28):
up your horse or connecting a team of horses to
a carriage or whatever that constituted labor, and you weren't
doing any kind of labor on Sunday. And and speaking
of the colonies, chock I turned up something about James
Town's Blue Laws. Um, they had their first blue law
enacted in sixteen ten, like right out of the gate.
(09:48):
One of the first things they said was, here's some
blue laws. Everybody gather around. So basically you couldn't do
like you were saying, anything on a Sunday. And uh,
tendency at church was mandatory on Sunday. So the blue
laws actually made a lot more sense in that context, right, Like,
but I'm guessing there was that there's probably some sort
(10:10):
of like social you know, people snitching on one another
kind of thing, like you notice who's not here, right, right,
But in that context, the blue law makes more sense
because it's like, you were supposed to be in church
and if you do anything other than church, here are
your punishments. Right, But the punishments were really severe, Like
the first time you were caught doing anything but going
(10:31):
to church on a Sunday, you would go a week
without food. Like they you got your food from like
the village. The village all gathered and shared food. It
was super socialist, right, and you weren't you were disinvited
from that party until the next Sabbath. You did not
get food, and that usually was enough to straighten anybody out.
The second time you would lose your allowance for a week,
(10:55):
and then you would also be whipped at the stake.
The third time, they just told you. The third time
they caught you doing something other than going to church
on the Sabbath, even say after you'd been to church
that day, you they would kill you. That was the
punishment for So they were quite serious about that kind
of thing. Um. But over time that kind of fell
(11:15):
away fell to the wayside, especially as America took up
this project UM that was led by people like Thomas
Jefferson called um disestablishmentarianism, right, yeah, and that's from the
original word disestablishment. And then of course the very famous
(11:35):
longer word that every elementary school student knows and can
spell is the longest weird Is it still the longest word?
I don't know, anti disestablishmentarianism, yes, which I always thought
was just like what does that even mean? Like is
that a real word? But it's a real word, And
now that we know what all this means, it makes
(11:56):
perfect sense. Yeah, because disestablishmentarianism was that movement that basically said, look,
we need to get the government out of the business
of supporting churches because there's a lot more churches than
there used to be when we when we were colonies,
a lot of different Christian sects, and the government shouldn't
really throw its lawt into one against the other. That's
(12:17):
a really English thing to do, because the I think
even in the nineties, there was a movement or there's
still a movement of foot in the UK to basically
be like, okay, state, stop supporting the Anglican Church. It's
not you know, there should be a separation. The Americans
picked up on that very early on, and so that
led to this um like a bunch of laws and
(12:38):
stuff that basically said, we're we're supporting religious freedom, not
casting our lot with one particular sect or religion or another.
So here in America you can practice whatever religion you
want and the go you can you can expect the
government not to promote some other rival religion, somebody else's
team over yours, because that's not fair. All right, you
(13:00):
know what, that's a great cliffhanger. Uh, we'll take a
little break here and we'll talk about what that resulted in, right,
after this, all right, So here's where we are. Uh,
(13:39):
the United States gets hit into disestablishment, which basically was, hey,
we can't throw all of our eggs in one denominational basket,
because there are a lot of different denominations here and
we respect them all long as they're Christian. Basically that's
a parenthetical to that song title. And uh, you know what,
(14:01):
what kind of happened was the I guess there's no
other way to say it other than Evangelicals Protestant evangelical said,
you know what, this is a great opportunity for us
to really sort of grab the reins of power and
to put our our morals and our values on everybody
(14:21):
else through law. Yeah, because you know they're every single
average American wasn't like, yeah, government, get out of the
business of supporting churches and get into just freedom of religion.
There are plenty of people and this is the late
eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, first half and nineteenth century, Um,
there are plenty of people who are like, no, I
(14:41):
I you guys have supported my church forever. Let's just
keep doing that. And so in that kind of sense
of probably a certain sense of betrayal or loss of trust.
A lot of religious leaders became political and and stepped
up that that that amazing word anti disestablishmentarianism, which is
(15:02):
fighting against that idea and basically saying, no America supports
um Protestant churches. Basically America is waspy, is what they
were trying to say. Yeah, and it's funny, like if
you think that this sort of thing started happening in
the nineteen eighties, that was just a re establishment, like
(15:24):
it started happening in the seventeen eighties. Really, yeah, that
was the anti disestablishmentarianism revival, that's right. Uh they printed
t shirts for uh, for Christian universities, and they they
sold like hotcakes, I think. But uh so, all right,
here's what they're doing. They're trying to establish power. But
(15:46):
there's a problem and that as America grew, the economy
grew and businesses grew, and it didn't necessarily jibe with
this shut everything down one day of the weak mentality.
They were like, hey, there's there's money to be made
on these days, and there are things to do on
these days off that you're sort of making a stake.
(16:06):
So there was sort of conflict even way back then
between I guess the secular and the religious. Yeah, and
I mean I think that's ultimately the thing that that
is the greatest tension at the heart of this, at
least in America, this idea like, no, the whole the
whole purpose of government, the whole reason for everyone living
(16:26):
is to make a lot of money for certain select
group of people. Serverybody, get back to work. What are
you talking about taking a the day off on Sunday.
That's a full day. You could be making us profit.
And so that that um became diametrically opposed to the
idea of blue laws. And you had two really powerful institutions,
the church or all of the churches that celebrated the
(16:50):
sabboth On on Sunday, versus the captains of industry who
were just now starting to really make on godly amounts
of money during the Second Industrial Revolution in the United States,
that's right, as well as Jewish people and Seventh day
Adventists and just regular secular people who were just like, uh, no,
(17:12):
we shouldn't be doing stuff like this at all. Like
what is separation of church and state all about? If
we're still going to do stuff like this. I'm really
glad you said that too. Because one thing that blue
laws do is make really strange bedfellows. So in league
with the churchy types, you had labor unions and you
still do. Actually, labor unions still typically tend to support
blue laws because religious or not, their workers are still
(17:36):
getting the day off on Sunday with their families. And
on the other side, like you said, it's captains of industry,
along with Seventh day Adventists and Jewish people, along with
secular types. I mean, like those are those are not
groups that you would normally put together on the kickball
field or something, you know, that's right. And they had
(17:56):
a couple of names. The Sabbatarians were the Evangelicals, the
Protestant Evangelicals, Uh, and like you said, labor unions and
groups like that. And then the Anti Sabbatarians were the others.
And you know, they kind of battled it out for
a little while, and in the end, it turns out,
and this should come as no surprise, Uh, there were
more anti Sabbatarians who were like, no, we should not
(18:19):
have these days often, we should separate church and state.
But the Sabbatarians were louder, and they were more um,
they were more fired up basically, and they got people
out to vote more, and they've got people to sign
petitions more and to put more pressure on officials who
decided these things. And so in the end what they
did it was I mean, I don't know if it
(18:40):
was a win win or a lose lose. The blue
laws kind of stayed pretty firmly entrenched on the books,
but the anti Sabbatarians were able to carve out certain
exceptions basically like hey, we should be able to do
this in this and maybe stores can be open. But
then the Sabbatarians are like, yeah, but no alcohol what soever.
(19:00):
So it kind of played out like this. I don't
know calling in a negotiation is the right term, but
a long drawn out battle, let's call it a compromise. Sure.
So the the effect of all of this is that
over time in the you know, it seemed like in
the twentieth century, it really started to get to a road. Um,
(19:22):
these little these exceptions got like bigger and bigger and
carved out more and more of these blanket blue laws
that remember originally started out is basically like you cannot
do anything on Sunday, And then it was like except
you can go and buy ice cream at the beach,
or you can buy milk, but you're not allowed to
buy anything to put milk in. Um, just all sorts
(19:45):
of weird stuff that made the whole thing seem really arbitrary.
And there's this idea like um like, Okay, if you
were if you're going to the beach, you can buy
ice cream at the beach, but if you went into town,
you would not be able to illegally buy ice cream.
How does that make any sense? Well, it does in
(20:06):
a certain way depending on how you look at the
role of government. And in this case, it is arbitrary.
It is it does impact one group in town storekeepers
in favor of another group beach side ice cream vendors. Right,
But if you believe that the role of government is
(20:26):
in part not just to support the economic activity of
the citizens of the United States, but instead to support
their well being as well, then it does make sense
because what they're basically saying is, Okay, we want to
encourage people to take that trip to the beach with
their family on Sunday. And what makes a beach trip
(20:47):
that much more enjoyable ice cream. I don't think I've
ever had ice cream on the beach I haven't either,
but apparently it was like all the rage during the
thirties and forties and fifties. I get it. I mean
it's I bet it's nice. I love ice cream and
I love beaches. We gotta try it sometime. We have
to go to a beach and eat some ice cream
very soon, chunk. Yeah, sure, so it makes sense in
(21:10):
that in that respect. But yes, if you're if you're
one of those people who are like, no, these laws
all need to make sense, they need to follow all
the rules, then you probably have a pretty big problem
with blue laws. Yes, should we talk about a few
of these blue laws still in the books? I think so.
So we mentioned Georgia, Like I said, up until just
(21:30):
a few years ago, it was on the ballot to
be allowed to buy alcohol on the Sundays. But still
if you go to Sunday brunch, and this was the
same in believe it or not in New York until
if you go to brunch on a Sunday you couldn't
buy booze at a bar or restaurant until noon. I
think in New York they changed it to ten. But
(21:51):
I think in Georgia, I don't really do brunch much anymore.
But I think it's still noon. As far as I know,
it's still noon. But yeah, I haven't done brunch a
couple of years now. So if you if you get
the jump on things and you're like, oh, we gotta
beat those brunch crowds and get there at eleven, you know,
there's a reason the brunch crowds come later. And it
ain't church, no, but that is. But church is the
(22:15):
reason why they set that time on Sundays to start
around noon, because it's like, okay, everybody has a reasonable
chance to go to the morning services and then they
can get drunk. Everyone wins. Basically. It's funny. I remember
growing up in the Baptist Church. There were it was
just sort of this implied agreement between the congregation, most
(22:37):
of the congregation, and the preacher that like you wrap
it up by noon because of lunch and football basically,
And it was you know, there were some Sundays where like,
you know, the spirit was was raging within the church
and things would start to you know, he'd be feeling
it and things would start to go a little long,
(22:59):
and uh, you you would really sense the shifting of
bodies and the looking at watches and the unease among
the congregation, usually like the dads that are like all right,
like I'm glad everyone's feeling it and everything, but the
Falcons kick off soon. We need to get out of here. Uh.
And I remember being a kid, like being like twelve
(23:20):
years old and sensing that and being on the side
of football. Yeah, that's funny. I have the opposite experience
where I'm I'm like, I always dread somebody tying it
up and going into overtime and preempting sixty minutes on Sunday.
It happened this past Sunday as recently, is that I
could tell at the beginning of the fourth quarter that
(23:41):
the Cowboys and the Patriots were going to tie it
up and go over time, and I have course right
to wait like an extra hour for sixty minutes. Do
you still watch sixty minutes? Yeah? I watched them more
than ever now. It's really great. I used to watch
it as I believe it or not, as like a
high school student. I was really into it, and maybe
some in college, but I haven't really watched it in
a long time. That's interesting then, because they had around
(24:04):
that time, and like the early nineties, they had a
very um a very famous piece on the Council of
Leo to see you. Do they still use that stop watch? Yeah? Yeah,
oh yeah, totally. Yeah. Alright, good crew they've got they've
got a good crew together. Yeah. Are there any remnants
anyone's still around from the old days? Scott Pelly's on there.
(24:24):
He's been on there for a while. I think, right,
Oh see, that's it shows how long it's been for me.
I'm like, is Morley Safer around? I don't know. I
think Morley Safer might be dead. I think they're probably
all gone. And Indersting Cooper's on there though, he's great too, FONSI.
Everybody on there is fantastic. They should have you on.
There's no need for them to have me on. I'm
(24:45):
just a fan. No, but that could be your next
That could be like your retirement job hosting sixty minutes,
doing pieces on sixty minutes. Yeah, you'd be great. I
don't know if that's true, but I appreciate the voter.
Cool would that be? I can hear that that ticking
much behind you as you speak. I know it makes
me tense, or it would make me tense if I
actually worked for him, you know, I think I would
(25:06):
ruin sixty minutes. For me, I'd just rather kick back
and watch it, you know, all right, yeah, work so
much some of the other really interesting blue laws. And
we should say too that there are there are blue
laws on the books in a lot of places that
aren't enforced. And then there are blue laws on the
books that are still enforced. Uh in Texas, Illinois, and
(25:28):
I think North Dakota. I think it's North Dakota. You
cannot sell a car or by I guess you. I
guess you could sell one. I wonder if you're breaking
the law if you sell one like on Craiglist or something.
I think there's no car sales whatsoever allowed. And here's why.
(25:49):
Here's why that one. I was like, okay, I do
not get this one, and I have the search pretty
far and wide for why. But apparently it was one
of those things that's like a remnant from when you
couldn't do anything. And then they started making exceptions and
started making exceptions saying, Okay, you can open this kind
of store, you can sell this kind of item, and
cars just never got accepted because the car dealerships didn't
(26:12):
want that any longer, Like it made sense, Like they
wanted a day off. It's really hard work. They wanted
to give time off to their employees. They also didn't
want to have to pay to keep the lights on
and all that stuff an extra day. But if even
one dealership was allowed to stay open, then all of
(26:33):
them would go to So if there was a state
law that said no car dealerships can be open, then
that gave the people in the car dealership industry that
day off that they otherwise definitely would not have had.
So it makes sense in that case, you know what
I'm saying, Like it makes would start selling exactly, and
then everyone's like, you see what McIntyre is doing, we
(26:53):
gotta open up now. And there's even there's In Texas
in particular, they allowed for UM Jewish or Seventh Day
Adventist car dealership owners by saying, okay, you can you can, UM,
you don't have to close on Sunday, but if you
don't close on Sunday, you have to close on Saturday.
So one day out of the weekend your dealership has
to be closed, which helped keep from promoting unfair competition. Right, well,
(27:18):
it's football is big in Texas. I wonder if it
comes down to you into college, you into pro I
saw somewhere that the NFL played on Sunday because early
on they couldn't compete with college games held on Saturday.
But I'm not sure if that's true or not. That
makes sense, and I think now, uh, they are almost
expressly prohibited from having Saturday games in the NFL, yes,
(27:42):
because of an agreement with the n c double A.
But I think there's the exception. I think sometimes at
one point in the playoffs they have like one weekend,
whether it's a Saturday game in like December or something
like that. They're all think that it's like a law.
Isn't that crazy, That's like a federal law. There's like
has something to do with broadcasting or something like that.
(28:03):
You know that the NFL plays in London, uh occasionally
now to like um, and my buddy Justin from London
was wondering. He was like, why are they playing these
games at nine in the morning US time, because like
they could have them at a more appropriate time in England.
And I was like, dude, that means it's because of advertising.
(28:23):
That means from nine am they can lock up the
entire TV day. Yeah, they did, this past weekend, and
they preempted CBS Sunday morning too. That's right, they can
lock it up from nine am till four thirty or whatever.
It was a hell day. Basically, this past Sunday was
hellish for me. It was a hell sabbath. I thought
you like football. No, no, no, I don't really watch
(28:44):
football anymore. And I definitely have never been into pro
I used to be into college. Yeah, all right, but
that's final. I don't poop poo it or anything like that.
I'm just not No. I got you. Uh, Maine, in Virginia,
you're not allowed to hunt on Sundays. Um, Maine is
sort of uh. We love our we manor friends. But
they up until nineteen you couldn't shop in a department
(29:05):
store on Sunday. That one makes sense because department stores
sold so many different items that they said it's just
easier for you to stay closed on Sundays. Yeah. And
it's interesting because you know, there's the case of Bergen County,
New Jersey, which, um, that's here's the deal. That's in
(29:27):
Bergen County. It's a hold over from the old days,
but it has more to do with um helping the
mom and pop stores because in the I guess it
was in the nineteen fifties, Bergen County was one of
the first big suburbs outside of New York and it
was I think one of the first big um areas
of like kind of shopping mall retail experience kind of
(29:49):
thing in the United States. And they I mean, I
was trying to think of a different way to say that,
and the idea was and and still is. And you know,
when I said it a minute ago, we talked about
mom and pop stores on Sundays, like having to pay employees.
That's really what it came down to was mom and
pop stores were willing to close on Sunday so they
(30:10):
could rest and chill out with their family or maybe
go to church, and they wouldn't have to pay their
employees and they wouldn't have to pay as much electricity
and just the cost of operating. But the big box
stores moved in and they didn't care. They could afford
to keep the lights on, they could afford to pay
their employees, and they didn't want to lose that revenue.
So all of a sudden, the mom and pop stores
(30:31):
were getting crushed on Sundays by these larger chain stores
and these shopping malls and so Bergen County still is
the one holdout in the United States in Bergen County,
New Jersey, where you you can't shop basically on a Sunday, right,
And it's and it's come up time and time again,
and they keep saying no. Yeah. I think as recently
(30:52):
as two thousand thirteen they couldn't even get enough signatures
to get it onto the ballot, let alone vote. I
think they just like it. They do, and I saw
it's not just because they know it helps mom and
pop stores or it gives people a day off, but
that UM apparently traffic around there is a living nightmare
every other day of the week. So it's at least
(31:13):
one day we're traffic this one day. Yeah. The North
Dakota ban is really interesting. I think they had one
of the last statewide bands on shopping known as Offenses
against Religion and conscious Conscience repealed in UM. But they
the exceptions are what's always strange. Their exceptions where ice cream, newspapers, cigars,
(31:39):
medicine of course, restaurants, hotels, and owner operated stores with
three employees are fewer. Yeah, that is strange for sure,
but I think it's not necessarily um peculiar. Like I
think that's how most blue laws ended up uh in
states where they have prohibitions on shopping, because over time
(31:59):
a lot abousts would show up and one of their
friends would end up as governor or legislature and they
would get their particular industry carved out as an exception. No,
not that there are exceptions. I just think what's carved
out is always really interesting to me. I found this
article from when they repealed Texas as blue laws. They
were in force from ninety five, and this article was
(32:22):
just talking about how weird they were by and they
said that you could go into a store and you
could buy a blank video tape, but you couldn't buy
one a video tape with something already on it, which
is this just does a little so weird and interesting,
and they made sense in some way. But then I'm
sure somebody was like, you know that that exception was
(32:43):
made before there wasn't even such a thing as videotapes,
And then even now it's even funnier because there's not
videotapes any longer. They're already come and gone, right, But
like you're saying, it's all about who cares, like what
lobby cares the most. Like the cigars thing in North Dakota,
just obviously somebody with a steak in a cigar company
grease the right palms. Yeah. Same in Maryland, Um, as
(33:06):
we'll see, had a lot of laws, a lot of
restrictions on it, but they had all tobacco products were
exempted because it was a huge tobacco state in like
the mid century, during the mid century, last century. All right,
I think we should take another our final break here
and we'll talk about, you know, whether these things are
legal and what the Supreme Court and the Feds have
(33:26):
to say about all this coming up. Okay, Chuck, So
(33:56):
we're talking about legality because, like we said, anybody who
takes even a cursory look at these laws can can
make a pretty great argument that these should not be
on the books. That number one, the government shouldn't be
regulating anything that has anything to do with religion. Certainly
shouldn't be telling people who don't practice religion to to
observe this religious day. It's a big one. But then
(34:20):
also they just don't really make a lot of sense.
And that's another kind of litmus test for laws. They're
supposed to be sensible and apply to basically everyone equally. Sure,
because this is America. Yeah, so you would think then
that the Supreme Court would have taken one look at
these things and been like, get these out of here,
get them out of my face. And that is not
(34:40):
the case, because not only did the Supreme Court get
its shot at um ruling on blue laws as early
as nineteen sixty one, it is pretty much consistently upheld
the legality and the constitutionality of blue laws ever since then. Yeah.
And you know, we should note that these none of
these are federal laws. They are all at the most
(35:03):
state laws, but many times even like local ordinances and
city and kind of county laws. But I think it
was McGowan versus Maryland v. Maryland in nine which went
to the Supreme Court and and this, uh, you know,
it's interesting that Maryland is the one that kind of
keeps getting talked about because of their um, I guess,
(35:25):
their tobacco laws and then their beach their beach scene.
They want to sell that ice cream on the beach definitely,
and floaties and stuff like that, right, uh, And Supreme
I think the they went eight one in Maryland's favor,
saying that blue laws could stand, and Chief Justice Earl
Warren wrote this opinion that basically says, yeah, you know,
(35:47):
it may have started out as religious, but like we
said earlier, it serves the secular society and there's a
benefit to everybody basically to have a regulated day of rest.
And William Douglas this, I think it was the lone
dissenter and basically in his opinion was like, that's a
load of horse manure. We all know what these are
(36:09):
there for, and like, I'm not buying it. No. And
Earl Warren, I don't know if his interpretation would be
constructionalist or what, but in his opinion he basically said,
the Constitution says that the government won't infringe on somebody's
religious rights. And I don't see how anybody who is
saying that they're being forced to take the day off
(36:29):
has their religious rights being infringed upon. And Douglas is like,
come on, man, that's not what anybody's saying. They're saying
that the government is basically supporting this Christian worldview of
Sunday being the sabbath by by allowing these laws that
enforce a day off on the Sabbath and that that
(36:49):
is just how that like, that's the government is supporting
a religion and that's not okay. Um, But the the
Supreme Court is just like consistently upheld Lawren's view that no,
these are actually okay because even if you're not a
religious person, you're benefiting benefiting from them anyway. Yeah, it
(37:10):
seems like William Douglas also wanted to make a point that,
like he was like, we're so firmly ensconced in this
uh Christian nation that like we don't even realize, like
Sunday shouldn't be different than any other day, and we don't.
We don't we have all these things in our society
that treats Sunday different because it was you know, it was.
(37:33):
It's such a Christian nation and like even though their
separation of church and state, like we don't even realize
that we're biased either for or against Sunday for those reasons. Yeah.
A really good thought experiment I stumbled on was imagining
the government decreeing Tuesday is the day of rest for everybody. Yeah, exactly,
and how bizarre that would seem to almost every single
person in America. Yeah, our podcast would be over because
(37:56):
that's when, Yeah, but that would be that like that
that really kind of um supports Douglas's point, like no,
like you guys are really coming from this, like it's
so entrenched into your your worldview that you can't imagine
Sunday is not a day of rest, like that's the
day of rest. But that is a Christian belief. It's
an ancient one, but that is at its root of
(38:18):
Christian belief. And that that if you are a separation
of church and state type like that will drive you
up the wall. That there are such thing as blue
laws and they have been deemed constitutional. But see, I'm
that way too, Like that stuff drives me crazy. But
as a as a secularist, Now, if I had a
dollar for every time I complained about like, oh, come on,
(38:40):
it's a Sunday. We all we all use Sunday as
either as an excuse to not do something or an
excuse to do something, like it's just become the national day.
I feel like, well, you're a warrant fan and you
don't even know it. I read this really interesting article
in box that was basically endorsing Warren's opinion is by
(39:02):
this economist named Lyman Stone. It's called why we Need
Blue Laws. I think the title is a little longer,
but if you search, that will turn this up. And um,
Lyman Stone was basically saying, like what what Chief Justice
Earl Warren is saying is actually a really progressive view
of the role of government. And it was what I
was saying earlier that the that that there's this interpretation
(39:25):
that government can exist as help support the well being
of its citizens. And one way to do that is
to say, hey, you know, yes, Sundays a Christian day. Yeah,
the churches are really making out like bandits with these
blue laws. Bully for them. You over here, come, come
talk to me over here. You're still getting a lot
out of this because you get the day off and
(39:46):
your whole family gets the day off all at the
same time. And trust me, you do not want to
work seven days a week. This is a really great
way for us, in a roundabout way, to make sure
you have the day off. And that is something that
that is going to help you and we as the
government interested in you not going crazy and shooting up
your workplace because you work too much. Right Ed points
(40:10):
out something too that I agree with a bit of
a paradox though with the Blue laws. If you're giving
people this day off together as a family, but you're
also closing businesses that you know, if that's your day
to do stuff or to get stuff done, even then
that's a paradox because all right, I've got Sunday off
with my family, but I can't go to the mall
(40:31):
if that's what you want to do if I live
in Bergen County. Right, So lyman Stone has an answer
for that as well. What does the stoner have to say?
Stoner says as follows. Basically, ts like, yeah, the post
office is closed on Sunday, go go take some time
and mail it another day, which, on the one hand,
it's like there's a lot of people who have to
(40:52):
take the bus and have to actually take time off
of work and could conceivably get fired from their job
for needing to go mail a package. Um. I think
lyman Stone would say, well, you should keep the post
offices open on Saturday. But the bigger risk, to liman
Stone is that if you keep some stuff open, like
restaurants or something like that, you actually create a second
(41:13):
class of workers who exist to serve the upper class
of workers who get Sunday off. And after all, isn't
that like pretty undemocratic and terrible to to kind of
separate people like that? Why not just close everything and
and give everybody everybody the same day off. That's the stone.
I feel that way sometimes when I'm doing something on
(41:36):
a Sunday and someone has to work, and I remember
having to work on Sunday and I hated it. It
comes home for me most done like say like Thanksgiving
or something where people have to work for Black Friday
or stuff like that like that, that to me, it's
it's the same thing. But but that's when it really
sticks out to me. Well, this is something, my friend,
that you would think that there are studies about commerce
and economics, and surely they have proven one way or
(42:00):
the other which is the best way forward, right right
the end, Well, they have done some studies, and it
kind of depends on what study you're looking at as
as far as quantifying these effects and how they're measured.
But when it comes to alcohol, they have shown their
studies have shown that, um, there are not more car
(42:22):
accidents happening because people can drink on Sundays. And that's
you know, some people argue like, hey, people aren't drinking.
They may not be drinking and driving and then getting
in car crashes, but that hasn't really turned out that way. Yeah,
now that's pretty surprising too, um, because a lot of
these studies have turned up kind of counterintuitive things. Um.
(42:42):
There was a study conducted in Georgia that, um looked
like Georgia's a great test case because there's so many
counties that have blue laws and other counties that don't
have blue laws, so you can like just compare these
really similar populations with one another. And they found that, Um,
if you have a county that has a blue law
and one that doesn't, there's virtually no difference in alcohol
(43:03):
consumption between the two. But there are like little tiny changes, like, um,
the employees in the county without a blue law might
make slightly more money because they can work on Sundays. Um,
Or in counties that do have blue laws, liquor stores
make a little bit less than their counterparts and counties
without blue laws. Stuff you kind of expect. But the
(43:26):
difference in alcohol consumption, I thought that was a little interesting.
I guess people just load up more on Saturday night
than they would if they lived in the county that
wasn't dry on Sundays. Maybe maybe they're hungover on Sunday.
Maybe they just take it a little easier on Sundays
after work on Monday. Another counterintuitive effect as far as
shopping goes in places like Bergen County, UM is they
(43:49):
have found that people it doesn't decrease the overall retail
experience in terms of dollars. I love that term now,
the retail experience. Uh, you know, because some people argue like, oh,
if we close on Sundays, then you know, we're just
gonna lose out on business. But I think they have
found that when these laws are in place and people
(44:09):
know that they're closed on Sundays, they just do their
shopping Monday through Saturday, and they still buy the same
amount of stuff. Um. I found one study from two
thousand and eight from M I. T that was almost
like cartoonish in its results. Are you ready for this?
They studied fifty years of repeal blue laws, and they
found that blue laws. Repealing blue laws decreases church attendance
(44:33):
and church donations significantly, although there's no other change in
charitable activity. It's just churches who are basically now competing
against um other pastimes and activities, and the churches lose
big time unless they have state enforced support for people
to go to them in the form of blue laws.
(44:54):
And they also saw that repealing blue laws led to
an increase in drinking and drug use. And the increased
drinking and drug use was most pronounced in those people
who used to attend church but then stopped attending church
after the blue laws were repealed. So basically everything that
if you were into blue laws were afraid of this
(45:16):
two thousand eight m I T study said like, yeah, absolutely,
it's it's as bad as you think, maybe even worse.
Isn't that interesting? That's super interesting. Yeah. I guess the
last thing we need to cover is where the why
they're called blue laws. Uh, there are a lot of theories.
It says no one knows for sure, and I think
that's probably true. But the one I've seen most often,
(45:38):
although it is the Internet, so that really means nothing,
is that the Puritans. I saw that they wrote their
laws in general on blue paper. Then I also saw
where they wrote their Sunday laws specifically on blue paper.
That one makes sense more than the other. Yes, the
thing is is no historian ever in the world has
ever turned up example of one of these things, right,
(46:02):
so that one might be apocryphal. There's another one that,
um it makes a really good point that there's some
slang terms that were in existence around the time that
these laws started being called blue laws about the end
of the eighteenth century, and the two slang terms were
blue nose and blue stocking, and both of them basically
referred to a prudish, rigid person who was so miserly
(46:26):
that they just saved money anyway they could. The one
had a blue nose because they wouldn't, you know, cough
up money for like heating in the winter time, so
their nose term blue, and the other was that they
had blue stockings because they use blue yarn to med
their socks rather than getting new ones. But either way,
it kind of like paints a pretty pretty good picture.
(46:47):
Something tells me, if you like, saw somebody's tip they
left and you're like, nice tip, blue nose, right, that
they would probably think that's super like offensive or something.
Probably probably, and I'm not convinced there's not some really
bad offense in there somewhere that we're just not seeing.
It's possible isn't there some something to be taken offense too?
(47:09):
And everything? Probably Blue knows ouch you got anything else?
I do not, sir, Well, if you want to know
more about Blue laws, start studying them. They are hilarious
and entertaining. And since I said hilarious and entertaining, it's time,
of course for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this
(47:30):
follow up to I don't know about that. Yeah, I
think it was during um the research bias episode. I
talked about a certain breed. I'm sure it happens everywhere,
but there's a certain breed of Southerner. When they're being
debated and presented with literal facts, they just go on,
I don't know about that, and that's sort of the
end of things. And so this is from Rebecca. I
(47:51):
was glad to see this email. Chuck talked about how
much he hated it when people say I don't know
about that when presented with evidence that contradicts their worldview.
There's a term for that. It's called a thought terminating cliche,
almost aid circle, which is a dismissive tactic as a speaker,
and they will use it to end a debate when
they encounter cognitive dissonance, or when someone presents them with
(48:13):
facts that run counter to their established beliefs. Other examples are, boy,
I hate all these let's agree to disagree. Yeah, that's
sometimes it's like that's the only way to end a conversation. No,
I think, just say it a different way. There's something
about that that I just don't like. Oh so it's
the cliche part you don't like more than the thought
(48:34):
terminating part. It's both, but definitely if it was said
in another way, I'd probably be more apt to accept it.
How About let's continue to not agree on this forever,
but both be okay, what's that? Yeah, yeah, there you can. Uh,
that's just your opinion is another one, and it's all good.
That's the worst, especially when that's followed by bro and
(48:58):
said by somebody who has a sole path. I unfortunately
don't know what what tactics there are to respond to
such cliches and reopen discussion. But maybe an episode on
intentional fallacies would be a great way to educate listeners
on the rhetorical tactics the journalist, politicians, and debaters used
to sway the course of an argument. Anyway, it's all good,
(49:20):
and that is a great email. That's from Rebecca in Chicago.
Thanks Rebecca, that was indeed one of the tops as
far as emails we've received goes. Thank you for it.
Uh and if you want to see if you can
pull one up on Rebecca, let's hear it, you can
send us an email to stuff podcast did iHeart radio
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
(49:43):
iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the
iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey you, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and of
course the Greatest the Goat Jerry is with us as well.
It's just a quietly lurking in the background, the Greatest Goat, HM,
(00:26):
the Greatest. How you doing, I'm doing good, Chuck, I'm
I'm a little This was one of your picks, but
I think I might be a little more enthusiastic about
this one than you. Why do you say that? Because
I said this is boring, they fully recorded a little
bit that may have something to do with it, and
then me saying, oh, no, I think it's pretty interesting.
(00:48):
Oh I don't think it's really that boring. And it
was my pick, um, Yeah, what made you choose that? Well,
I mean we're talking about blue laws, and just very quickly,
blue laws are our laws from ancient times that have
carried over still in some places to modern day America
and other countries as well. I guess that restrict certain
(01:09):
activities on certain days. But generally in the United States,
we think of blue laws are things that you can't
do on Sundays a lot of time. Their vices like
you can't drink or buy alcohol until sometimes at all,
or until certain times, or maybe restrict working or gambling
or you know, just various things. But uh, we had
(01:30):
our own blue law, one blue law at least on
the books in Georgia until just a few years ago,
you could not buy alcohol on Sunday at all. Yeah.
I think Georgia was the last state to repeal a
full Sunday prohibition on buying alcohol full prohibition. But then
I mean it passed by a ridiculous measure, something like
(01:55):
but you still can't buy booze before I think noon
on Sunday. And that's weird. And it seems like if
you step back, if you were an alien, let's say, right,
and you came down and you're like, that's a great way.
So let's say you're work from work, right, Okay, that's
what you just reminded me of. And you show up
with your super cool block color puffy vest and you say,
(02:18):
I want to familiarize myself with laws. This would makes sense.
This makes sense. What you can't buy alcohol before noon
on Sunday, So that doesn't make any sense. That was
my impression of mark Um. If he dug a little deeper,
it would become obvious that it makes a ton of
sense if you're coming at it from the vantage point
of a Christian in the Western hemisphere who observes Sunday
(02:43):
as the day of um worship and rest. Right outside
of that context, it doesn't make sense. And there in
lies the rub. There's the big push and pull between
people who are like America is founded essentially on the
idea and promise the separation of church and state. We're
supposed to keep those two separate, So we shouldn't have
(03:04):
the state making laws that enthusiastically support one of the
tenets of this one particular church Christianity, which is you
should not be doing a whole lot of stuff on
Sunday and you should probably be going to church. And
other people who say no, no, that's it's actually a
really really good thing to do. This even if you
don't believe in religion, even if you don't go to church,
(03:25):
blue laws actually still help us out right. There have
been arguments, including as we will learn, all the way
up to the Supreme Court, that say, well, it may
have started religious, but there are many secular benefits two, um,
sort of forcing families to all be off work on
the same day at gunpoint, go play together, right, take
(03:50):
a walk. So I propose we talked about the history
of blue laws first and then kind of get into
some of the wackier ones and then talk about legality
and so on, and so you could call what I'm
doing now the table of contents? Do you agree to
this table of contents? Uh? So? Are you saying you
want to skip ahead to the where did blue laws
come from? That is my proposal. Okay, I love you
(04:13):
springing this stuff on me. I am flexible, though I
know nimble, I know crazy. All I have to do
is shuffle some paper. Okay, you're eighteen. I mean it
makes sense because, yeah, if you are an outside observer,
even if you're an inside observer, you might not realize
how ancient that the Blue laws are and that they actually, um,
(04:37):
conceivably they don't necessarily predate Christianity, but they weren't necessarily Um,
they're pretty old. How about that? Well? Yeah, I mean,
anyone who grew up going to church knows about the
ten Commandments and knows that that fourth commandment says, remember
the Sabbath day to keep it holy or and keep
it holy. And depending on what religion you are, that
(05:00):
could be a different day. Judaism Saturday. If your Seventh
day Adventist, that's Saturday. But Christianity at a certain point
between the second and fifth centuries were like, yeah, you know,
let's distance ourselves from Judaism and let's move our day
to Sunday. Uh that way we can have our own day.
(05:20):
We can tell everybody they're observing the wrong day, and
it's a win win. Yeah. There's also, um the knock
on effect of taking over Sunday from the Pagans who
um observed Sunday as the day to worship the Sun Sunday.
So it was basically total and complete encroachment and actually
(05:44):
moving the day, the Sabbath day to Sunday. That that
caused that. It's pretty pretty interesting. I hadn't known that before,
and it's it's so, let's so now we have like
the Christians saying, okay, everybody change the plans like that
guy on the Fidelity commercial change plants. I haven't seen that.
Oh man, it sounds like a Bond villain. It's crazy.
(06:05):
Uh So, So the point was that the Christians said okay, everybody,
the Sabbath is now on Sunday. And then they followed
that up with really enforcing that that originally Jewish um tenant,
which was like basically, observe a day of rest and
worship on the Sabbath and don't do anything else. Right,
(06:27):
And um, we don't know exactly when the first laws
were enacted, but it could have been. And this is
the grabster that helped put this one together for us.
So thanks to add for that. But uh, possibly in
three sixty three, a d at the Council of uh
Ladocia does see you. I would say, Leo to see you,
(06:49):
Leo to see you. That's my I thought that a
might be silent. But weren't you raised Baptists. You don't
know about the council of Leo to see you. I
had never heard of it, truly, you are Joe King.
I am Joey al right, Because that was a meeting
of of leaders in the Christian religion who said we
need to get some laws on the books. I'm surprised
I hadn't heard of it, but I hadn't or possibly
(07:11):
the first laws were from ancient Rome, uh, and I
saw various Roman emperors who could have been responsible for these.
I saw Constantine in three twenty one. Yeah, I think
I saw one of the other dudes. But I got
that from the Valdosta Times. Take that or leave it,
(07:33):
that's right. So so you had a bunch of Christian rulers,
essentially is the upshot of all this that kind of
took over and started issuing these proclamations and new crees
and stuff about observing the Sabbath. Right. Yeah, for like
hundreds of years this happened in various ways, various loss thing.
You can do this, you can't do that. Uh, it
(07:54):
was I think the Protestants were a little less into it,
but not real I mean, they were still into it.
I think it would be disingenuous to say the Protestants
were just fine with it, well supposedly with doing whatever
on Sunday, supposedly, right. I think it wasn't that they
weren't They weren't cool with just not having a day,
a Sabbath day of some sort. It was Martin Luther
(08:16):
wasn't big in following the old time rules, and he
was saying, it doesn't have to be Sunday, don't be ridiculous,
just but do a day a week. Um. But the
irony of the whole thing is that Protestants would come
to be like some of the biggest enforcers and writers
of blue laws in America, especially as Sunday being the
Sabbath day, like defending Sunday in particular, right, and so
(08:41):
you know, these get enacted there. Obviously, when the colonies
are being formed, they make their way over there. The
Puritans were like, oh, great, this is perfect. We're all
about restricting people whenever Sunday. That's fine, we'll restrict people
on Sunday. And by the time the colonies roll around,
they were pretty well ensconced, such that there's even a story.
(09:05):
I think you can really do much of anything on
Sunday's in the colonial times. But there's a story from
Sight nine where supposedly George Washington himself was was tracked
down or at least stopped by a sheriff for going
for traveling on a Sunday, even though he was traveling
to church. Yeah, because the premise was that um, saddling
(09:28):
up your horse or connecting a team of horses to
a carriage or whatever that constituted labor, and you weren't
doing any kind of labor on Sunday. And and speaking
of the colonies, chock I turned up something about James
Town's Blue Laws. Um, they had their first blue law
enacted in sixteen ten, like right out of the gate.
(09:48):
One of the first things they said was, here's some
blue laws. Everybody gather around. So basically you couldn't do
like you were saying, anything on a Sunday. And uh,
tendency at church was mandatory on Sunday. So the blue
laws actually made a lot more sense in that context, right, Like,
but I'm guessing there was that there's probably some sort
(10:10):
of like social you know, people snitching on one another
kind of thing, like you notice who's not here, right, right,
But in that context, the blue law makes more sense
because it's like, you were supposed to be in church
and if you do anything other than church, here are
your punishments. Right, But the punishments were really severe, Like
the first time you were caught doing anything but going
(10:31):
to church on a Sunday, you would go a week
without food. Like they you got your food from like
the village. The village all gathered and shared food. It
was super socialist, right, and you weren't you were disinvited
from that party until the next Sabbath. You did not
get food, and that usually was enough to straighten anybody out.
The second time you would lose your allowance for a week,
(10:55):
and then you would also be whipped at the stake.
The third time, they just told you. The third time
they caught you doing something other than going to church
on the Sabbath, even say after you'd been to church
that day, you they would kill you. That was the
punishment for So they were quite serious about that kind
of thing. Um. But over time that kind of fell
(11:15):
away fell to the wayside, especially as America took up
this project UM that was led by people like Thomas
Jefferson called um disestablishmentarianism, right, yeah, and that's from the
original word disestablishment. And then of course the very famous
(11:35):
longer word that every elementary school student knows and can
spell is the longest weird Is it still the longest word?
I don't know, anti disestablishmentarianism, yes, which I always thought
was just like what does that even mean? Like is
that a real word? But it's a real word, And
now that we know what all this means, it makes
(11:56):
perfect sense. Yeah, because disestablishmentarianism was that movement that basically said, look,
we need to get the government out of the business
of supporting churches because there's a lot more churches than
there used to be when we when we were colonies,
a lot of different Christian sects, and the government shouldn't
really throw its lawt into one against the other. That's
(12:17):
a really English thing to do, because the I think
even in the nineties, there was a movement or there's
still a movement of foot in the UK to basically
be like, okay, state, stop supporting the Anglican Church. It's
not you know, there should be a separation. The Americans
picked up on that very early on, and so that
led to this um like a bunch of laws and
(12:38):
stuff that basically said, we're we're supporting religious freedom, not
casting our lot with one particular sect or religion or another.
So here in America you can practice whatever religion you
want and the go you can you can expect the
government not to promote some other rival religion, somebody else's
team over yours, because that's not fair. All right, you
(13:00):
know what, that's a great cliffhanger. Uh, we'll take a
little break here and we'll talk about what that resulted in, right,
after this, all right, So here's where we are. Uh,
(13:39):
the United States gets hit into disestablishment, which basically was, hey,
we can't throw all of our eggs in one denominational basket,
because there are a lot of different denominations here and
we respect them all long as they're Christian. Basically that's
a parenthetical to that song title. And uh, you know what,
(14:01):
what kind of happened was the I guess there's no
other way to say it other than Evangelicals Protestant evangelical said,
you know what, this is a great opportunity for us
to really sort of grab the reins of power and
to put our our morals and our values on everybody
(14:21):
else through law. Yeah, because you know they're every single
average American wasn't like, yeah, government, get out of the
business of supporting churches and get into just freedom of religion.
There are plenty of people and this is the late
eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, first half and nineteenth century, Um,
there are plenty of people who are like, no, I
(14:41):
I you guys have supported my church forever. Let's just
keep doing that. And so in that kind of sense
of probably a certain sense of betrayal or loss of trust.
A lot of religious leaders became political and and stepped
up that that that amazing word anti disestablishmentarianism, which is
(15:02):
fighting against that idea and basically saying, no America supports
um Protestant churches. Basically America is waspy, is what they
were trying to say. Yeah, and it's funny, like if
you think that this sort of thing started happening in
the nineteen eighties, that was just a re establishment, like
(15:24):
it started happening in the seventeen eighties. Really, yeah, that
was the anti disestablishmentarianism revival, that's right. Uh they printed
t shirts for uh, for Christian universities, and they they
sold like hotcakes, I think. But uh so, all right,
here's what they're doing. They're trying to establish power. But
(15:46):
there's a problem and that as America grew, the economy
grew and businesses grew, and it didn't necessarily jibe with
this shut everything down one day of the weak mentality.
They were like, hey, there's there's money to be made
on these days, and there are things to do on
these days off that you're sort of making a stake.
(16:06):
So there was sort of conflict even way back then
between I guess the secular and the religious. Yeah, and
I mean I think that's ultimately the thing that that
is the greatest tension at the heart of this, at
least in America, this idea like, no, the whole the
whole purpose of government, the whole reason for everyone living
(16:26):
is to make a lot of money for certain select
group of people. Serverybody, get back to work. What are
you talking about taking a the day off on Sunday.
That's a full day. You could be making us profit.
And so that that um became diametrically opposed to the
idea of blue laws. And you had two really powerful institutions,
the church or all of the churches that celebrated the
(16:50):
sabboth On on Sunday, versus the captains of industry who
were just now starting to really make on godly amounts
of money during the Second Industrial Revolution in the United States,
that's right, as well as Jewish people and Seventh day
Adventists and just regular secular people who were just like, uh, no,
(17:12):
we shouldn't be doing stuff like this at all. Like
what is separation of church and state all about? If
we're still going to do stuff like this. I'm really
glad you said that too. Because one thing that blue
laws do is make really strange bedfellows. So in league
with the churchy types, you had labor unions and you
still do. Actually, labor unions still typically tend to support
blue laws because religious or not, their workers are still
(17:36):
getting the day off on Sunday with their families. And
on the other side, like you said, it's captains of industry,
along with Seventh day Adventists and Jewish people, along with
secular types. I mean, like those are those are not
groups that you would normally put together on the kickball
field or something, you know, that's right. And they had
(17:56):
a couple of names. The Sabbatarians were the Evangelicals, the
Protestant Evangelicals, Uh, and like you said, labor unions and
groups like that. And then the Anti Sabbatarians were the others.
And you know, they kind of battled it out for
a little while, and in the end, it turns out,
and this should come as no surprise, Uh, there were
more anti Sabbatarians who were like, no, we should not
(18:19):
have these days often, we should separate church and state.
But the Sabbatarians were louder, and they were more um,
they were more fired up basically, and they got people
out to vote more, and they've got people to sign
petitions more and to put more pressure on officials who
decided these things. And so in the end what they
did it was I mean, I don't know if it
(18:40):
was a win win or a lose lose. The blue
laws kind of stayed pretty firmly entrenched on the books,
but the anti Sabbatarians were able to carve out certain
exceptions basically like hey, we should be able to do
this in this and maybe stores can be open. But
then the Sabbatarians are like, yeah, but no alcohol what soever.
(19:00):
So it kind of played out like this. I don't
know calling in a negotiation is the right term, but
a long drawn out battle, let's call it a compromise. Sure.
So the the effect of all of this is that
over time in the you know, it seemed like in
the twentieth century, it really started to get to a road. Um,
(19:22):
these little these exceptions got like bigger and bigger and
carved out more and more of these blanket blue laws
that remember originally started out is basically like you cannot
do anything on Sunday, And then it was like except
you can go and buy ice cream at the beach,
or you can buy milk, but you're not allowed to
buy anything to put milk in. Um, just all sorts
(19:45):
of weird stuff that made the whole thing seem really arbitrary.
And there's this idea like um like, Okay, if you
were if you're going to the beach, you can buy
ice cream at the beach, but if you went into town,
you would not be able to illegally buy ice cream.
How does that make any sense? Well, it does in
(20:06):
a certain way depending on how you look at the
role of government. And in this case, it is arbitrary.
It is it does impact one group in town storekeepers
in favor of another group beach side ice cream vendors. Right,
But if you believe that the role of government is
(20:26):
in part not just to support the economic activity of
the citizens of the United States, but instead to support
their well being as well, then it does make sense
because what they're basically saying is, Okay, we want to
encourage people to take that trip to the beach with
their family on Sunday. And what makes a beach trip
(20:47):
that much more enjoyable ice cream. I don't think I've
ever had ice cream on the beach I haven't either,
but apparently it was like all the rage during the
thirties and forties and fifties. I get it. I mean
it's I bet it's nice. I love ice cream and
I love beaches. We gotta try it sometime. We have
to go to a beach and eat some ice cream
very soon, chunk. Yeah, sure, so it makes sense in
(21:10):
that in that respect. But yes, if you're if you're
one of those people who are like, no, these laws
all need to make sense, they need to follow all
the rules, then you probably have a pretty big problem
with blue laws. Yes, should we talk about a few
of these blue laws still in the books? I think so.
So we mentioned Georgia, Like I said, up until just
(21:30):
a few years ago, it was on the ballot to
be allowed to buy alcohol on the Sundays. But still
if you go to Sunday brunch, and this was the
same in believe it or not in New York until
if you go to brunch on a Sunday you couldn't
buy booze at a bar or restaurant until noon. I
think in New York they changed it to ten. But
(21:51):
I think in Georgia, I don't really do brunch much anymore.
But I think it's still noon. As far as I know,
it's still noon. But yeah, I haven't done brunch a
couple of years now. So if you if you get
the jump on things and you're like, oh, we gotta
beat those brunch crowds and get there at eleven, you know,
there's a reason the brunch crowds come later. And it
ain't church, no, but that is. But church is the
(22:15):
reason why they set that time on Sundays to start
around noon, because it's like, okay, everybody has a reasonable
chance to go to the morning services and then they
can get drunk. Everyone wins. Basically. It's funny. I remember
growing up in the Baptist Church. There were it was
just sort of this implied agreement between the congregation, most
(22:37):
of the congregation, and the preacher that like you wrap
it up by noon because of lunch and football basically,
And it was you know, there were some Sundays where like,
you know, the spirit was was raging within the church
and things would start to you know, he'd be feeling
it and things would start to go a little long,
(22:59):
and uh, you you would really sense the shifting of
bodies and the looking at watches and the unease among
the congregation, usually like the dads that are like all right,
like I'm glad everyone's feeling it and everything, but the
Falcons kick off soon. We need to get out of here. Uh.
And I remember being a kid, like being like twelve
(23:20):
years old and sensing that and being on the side
of football. Yeah, that's funny. I have the opposite experience
where I'm I'm like, I always dread somebody tying it
up and going into overtime and preempting sixty minutes on Sunday.
It happened this past Sunday as recently, is that I
could tell at the beginning of the fourth quarter that
(23:41):
the Cowboys and the Patriots were going to tie it
up and go over time, and I have course right
to wait like an extra hour for sixty minutes. Do
you still watch sixty minutes? Yeah? I watched them more
than ever now. It's really great. I used to watch
it as I believe it or not, as like a
high school student. I was really into it, and maybe
some in college, but I haven't really watched it in
a long time. That's interesting then, because they had around
(24:04):
that time, and like the early nineties, they had a
very um a very famous piece on the Council of
Leo to see you. Do they still use that stop watch? Yeah? Yeah,
oh yeah, totally. Yeah. Alright, good crew they've got they've
got a good crew together. Yeah. Are there any remnants
anyone's still around from the old days? Scott Pelly's on there.
(24:24):
He's been on there for a while. I think, right,
Oh see, that's it shows how long it's been for me.
I'm like, is Morley Safer around? I don't know. I
think Morley Safer might be dead. I think they're probably
all gone. And Indersting Cooper's on there though, he's great too, FONSI.
Everybody on there is fantastic. They should have you on.
There's no need for them to have me on. I'm
(24:45):
just a fan. No, but that could be your next
That could be like your retirement job hosting sixty minutes,
doing pieces on sixty minutes. Yeah, you'd be great. I
don't know if that's true, but I appreciate the voter.
Cool would that be? I can hear that that ticking
much behind you as you speak. I know it makes
me tense, or it would make me tense if I
actually worked for him, you know, I think I would
(25:06):
ruin sixty minutes. For me, I'd just rather kick back
and watch it, you know, all right, yeah, work so
much some of the other really interesting blue laws. And
we should say too that there are there are blue
laws on the books in a lot of places that
aren't enforced. And then there are blue laws on the
books that are still enforced. Uh in Texas, Illinois, and
(25:28):
I think North Dakota. I think it's North Dakota. You
cannot sell a car or by I guess you. I
guess you could sell one. I wonder if you're breaking
the law if you sell one like on Craiglist or something.
I think there's no car sales whatsoever allowed. And here's why.
(25:49):
Here's why that one. I was like, okay, I do
not get this one, and I have the search pretty
far and wide for why. But apparently it was one
of those things that's like a remnant from when you
couldn't do anything. And then they started making exceptions and
started making exceptions saying, Okay, you can open this kind
of store, you can sell this kind of item, and
cars just never got accepted because the car dealerships didn't
(26:12):
want that any longer, Like it made sense, Like they
wanted a day off. It's really hard work. They wanted
to give time off to their employees. They also didn't
want to have to pay to keep the lights on
and all that stuff an extra day. But if even
one dealership was allowed to stay open, then all of
(26:33):
them would go to So if there was a state
law that said no car dealerships can be open, then
that gave the people in the car dealership industry that
day off that they otherwise definitely would not have had.
So it makes sense in that case, you know what
I'm saying, Like it makes would start selling exactly, and
then everyone's like, you see what McIntyre is doing, we
(26:53):
gotta open up now. And there's even there's In Texas
in particular, they allowed for UM Jewish or Seventh Day
Adventist car dealership owners by saying, okay, you can you can, UM,
you don't have to close on Sunday, but if you
don't close on Sunday, you have to close on Saturday.
So one day out of the weekend your dealership has
to be closed, which helped keep from promoting unfair competition. Right, well,
(27:18):
it's football is big in Texas. I wonder if it
comes down to you into college, you into pro I
saw somewhere that the NFL played on Sunday because early
on they couldn't compete with college games held on Saturday.
But I'm not sure if that's true or not. That
makes sense, and I think now, uh, they are almost
expressly prohibited from having Saturday games in the NFL, yes,
(27:42):
because of an agreement with the n c double A.
But I think there's the exception. I think sometimes at
one point in the playoffs they have like one weekend,
whether it's a Saturday game in like December or something
like that. They're all think that it's like a law.
Isn't that crazy, That's like a federal law. There's like
has something to do with broadcasting or something like that.
(28:03):
You know that the NFL plays in London, uh occasionally
now to like um, and my buddy Justin from London
was wondering. He was like, why are they playing these
games at nine in the morning US time, because like
they could have them at a more appropriate time in England.
And I was like, dude, that means it's because of advertising.
(28:23):
That means from nine am they can lock up the
entire TV day. Yeah, they did, this past weekend, and
they preempted CBS Sunday morning too. That's right, they can
lock it up from nine am till four thirty or whatever.
It was a hell day. Basically, this past Sunday was
hellish for me. It was a hell sabbath. I thought
you like football. No, no, no, I don't really watch
(28:44):
football anymore. And I definitely have never been into pro
I used to be into college. Yeah, all right, but
that's final. I don't poop poo it or anything like that.
I'm just not No. I got you. Uh, Maine, in Virginia,
you're not allowed to hunt on Sundays. Um, Maine is
sort of uh. We love our we manor friends. But
they up until nineteen you couldn't shop in a department
(29:05):
store on Sunday. That one makes sense because department stores
sold so many different items that they said it's just
easier for you to stay closed on Sundays. Yeah. And
it's interesting because you know, there's the case of Bergen County,
New Jersey, which, um, that's here's the deal. That's in
(29:27):
Bergen County. It's a hold over from the old days,
but it has more to do with um helping the
mom and pop stores because in the I guess it
was in the nineteen fifties, Bergen County was one of
the first big suburbs outside of New York and it
was I think one of the first big um areas
of like kind of shopping mall retail experience kind of
(29:49):
thing in the United States. And they I mean, I
was trying to think of a different way to say that,
and the idea was and and still is. And you know,
when I said it a minute ago, we talked about
mom and pop stores on Sundays, like having to pay employees.
That's really what it came down to was mom and
pop stores were willing to close on Sunday so they
(30:10):
could rest and chill out with their family or maybe
go to church, and they wouldn't have to pay their
employees and they wouldn't have to pay as much electricity
and just the cost of operating. But the big box
stores moved in and they didn't care. They could afford
to keep the lights on, they could afford to pay
their employees, and they didn't want to lose that revenue.
So all of a sudden, the mom and pop stores
(30:31):
were getting crushed on Sundays by these larger chain stores
and these shopping malls and so Bergen County still is
the one holdout in the United States in Bergen County,
New Jersey, where you you can't shop basically on a Sunday, right,
And it's and it's come up time and time again,
and they keep saying no. Yeah. I think as recently
(30:52):
as two thousand thirteen they couldn't even get enough signatures
to get it onto the ballot, let alone vote. I
think they just like it. They do, and I saw
it's not just because they know it helps mom and
pop stores or it gives people a day off, but
that UM apparently traffic around there is a living nightmare
every other day of the week. So it's at least
(31:13):
one day we're traffic this one day. Yeah. The North
Dakota ban is really interesting. I think they had one
of the last statewide bands on shopping known as Offenses
against Religion and conscious Conscience repealed in UM. But they
the exceptions are what's always strange. Their exceptions where ice cream, newspapers, cigars,
(31:39):
medicine of course, restaurants, hotels, and owner operated stores with
three employees are fewer. Yeah, that is strange for sure,
but I think it's not necessarily um peculiar. Like I
think that's how most blue laws ended up uh in
states where they have prohibitions on shopping, because over time
(31:59):
a lot abousts would show up and one of their
friends would end up as governor or legislature and they
would get their particular industry carved out as an exception. No,
not that there are exceptions. I just think what's carved
out is always really interesting to me. I found this
article from when they repealed Texas as blue laws. They
were in force from ninety five, and this article was
(32:22):
just talking about how weird they were by and they
said that you could go into a store and you
could buy a blank video tape, but you couldn't buy
one a video tape with something already on it, which
is this just does a little so weird and interesting,
and they made sense in some way. But then I'm
sure somebody was like, you know that that exception was
(32:43):
made before there wasn't even such a thing as videotapes,
And then even now it's even funnier because there's not
videotapes any longer. They're already come and gone, right, But
like you're saying, it's all about who cares, like what
lobby cares the most. Like the cigars thing in North Dakota,
just obviously somebody with a steak in a cigar company
grease the right palms. Yeah. Same in Maryland, Um, as
(33:06):
we'll see, had a lot of laws, a lot of
restrictions on it, but they had all tobacco products were
exempted because it was a huge tobacco state in like
the mid century, during the mid century, last century. All right,
I think we should take another our final break here
and we'll talk about, you know, whether these things are
legal and what the Supreme Court and the Feds have
(33:26):
to say about all this coming up. Okay, Chuck, So
(33:56):
we're talking about legality because, like we said, anybody who
takes even a cursory look at these laws can can
make a pretty great argument that these should not be
on the books. That number one, the government shouldn't be
regulating anything that has anything to do with religion. Certainly
shouldn't be telling people who don't practice religion to to
observe this religious day. It's a big one. But then
(34:20):
also they just don't really make a lot of sense.
And that's another kind of litmus test for laws. They're
supposed to be sensible and apply to basically everyone equally. Sure,
because this is America. Yeah, so you would think then
that the Supreme Court would have taken one look at
these things and been like, get these out of here,
get them out of my face. And that is not
(34:40):
the case, because not only did the Supreme Court get
its shot at um ruling on blue laws as early
as nineteen sixty one, it is pretty much consistently upheld
the legality and the constitutionality of blue laws ever since then. Yeah.
And you know, we should note that these none of
these are federal laws. They are all at the most
(35:03):
state laws, but many times even like local ordinances and
city and kind of county laws. But I think it
was McGowan versus Maryland v. Maryland in nine which went
to the Supreme Court and and this, uh, you know,
it's interesting that Maryland is the one that kind of
keeps getting talked about because of their um, I guess,
(35:25):
their tobacco laws and then their beach their beach scene.
They want to sell that ice cream on the beach definitely,
and floaties and stuff like that, right, uh, And Supreme
I think the they went eight one in Maryland's favor,
saying that blue laws could stand, and Chief Justice Earl
Warren wrote this opinion that basically says, yeah, you know,
(35:47):
it may have started out as religious, but like we
said earlier, it serves the secular society and there's a
benefit to everybody basically to have a regulated day of rest.
And William Douglas this, I think it was the lone
dissenter and basically in his opinion was like, that's a
load of horse manure. We all know what these are
(36:09):
there for, and like, I'm not buying it. No. And
Earl Warren, I don't know if his interpretation would be
constructionalist or what, but in his opinion he basically said,
the Constitution says that the government won't infringe on somebody's
religious rights. And I don't see how anybody who is
saying that they're being forced to take the day off
(36:29):
has their religious rights being infringed upon. And Douglas is like,
come on, man, that's not what anybody's saying. They're saying
that the government is basically supporting this Christian worldview of
Sunday being the sabbath by by allowing these laws that
enforce a day off on the Sabbath and that that
(36:49):
is just how that like, that's the government is supporting
a religion and that's not okay. Um, But the the
Supreme Court is just like consistently upheld Lawren's view that no,
these are actually okay because even if you're not a
religious person, you're benefiting benefiting from them anyway. Yeah, it
(37:10):
seems like William Douglas also wanted to make a point that,
like he was like, we're so firmly ensconced in this
uh Christian nation that like we don't even realize, like
Sunday shouldn't be different than any other day, and we don't.
We don't we have all these things in our society
that treats Sunday different because it was you know, it was.
(37:33):
It's such a Christian nation and like even though their
separation of church and state, like we don't even realize
that we're biased either for or against Sunday for those reasons. Yeah.
A really good thought experiment I stumbled on was imagining
the government decreeing Tuesday is the day of rest for everybody. Yeah, exactly,
and how bizarre that would seem to almost every single
person in America. Yeah, our podcast would be over because
(37:56):
that's when, Yeah, but that would be that like that
that really kind of um supports Douglas's point, like no,
like you guys are really coming from this, like it's
so entrenched into your your worldview that you can't imagine
Sunday is not a day of rest, like that's the
day of rest. But that is a Christian belief. It's
an ancient one, but that is at its root of
(38:18):
Christian belief. And that that if you are a separation
of church and state type like that will drive you
up the wall. That there are such thing as blue
laws and they have been deemed constitutional. But see, I'm
that way too, Like that stuff drives me crazy. But
as a as a secularist, Now, if I had a
dollar for every time I complained about like, oh, come on,
(38:40):
it's a Sunday. We all we all use Sunday as
either as an excuse to not do something or an
excuse to do something, like it's just become the national day.
I feel like, well, you're a warrant fan and you
don't even know it. I read this really interesting article
in box that was basically endorsing Warren's opinion is by
(39:02):
this economist named Lyman Stone. It's called why we Need
Blue Laws. I think the title is a little longer,
but if you search, that will turn this up. And um,
Lyman Stone was basically saying, like what what Chief Justice
Earl Warren is saying is actually a really progressive view
of the role of government. And it was what I
was saying earlier that the that that there's this interpretation
(39:25):
that government can exist as help support the well being
of its citizens. And one way to do that is
to say, hey, you know, yes, Sundays a Christian day. Yeah,
the churches are really making out like bandits with these
blue laws. Bully for them. You over here, come, come
talk to me over here. You're still getting a lot
out of this because you get the day off and
(39:46):
your whole family gets the day off all at the
same time. And trust me, you do not want to
work seven days a week. This is a really great
way for us, in a roundabout way, to make sure
you have the day off. And that is something that
that is going to help you and we as the
government interested in you not going crazy and shooting up
your workplace because you work too much. Right Ed points
(40:10):
out something too that I agree with a bit of
a paradox though with the Blue laws. If you're giving
people this day off together as a family, but you're
also closing businesses that you know, if that's your day
to do stuff or to get stuff done, even then
that's a paradox because all right, I've got Sunday off
with my family, but I can't go to the mall
(40:31):
if that's what you want to do if I live
in Bergen County. Right, So lyman Stone has an answer
for that as well. What does the stoner have to say?
Stoner says as follows. Basically, ts like, yeah, the post
office is closed on Sunday, go go take some time
and mail it another day, which, on the one hand,
it's like there's a lot of people who have to
(40:52):
take the bus and have to actually take time off
of work and could conceivably get fired from their job
for needing to go mail a package. Um. I think
lyman Stone would say, well, you should keep the post
offices open on Saturday. But the bigger risk, to liman
Stone is that if you keep some stuff open, like
restaurants or something like that, you actually create a second
(41:13):
class of workers who exist to serve the upper class
of workers who get Sunday off. And after all, isn't
that like pretty undemocratic and terrible to to kind of
separate people like that? Why not just close everything and
and give everybody everybody the same day off. That's the stone.
I feel that way sometimes when I'm doing something on
(41:36):
a Sunday and someone has to work, and I remember
having to work on Sunday and I hated it. It
comes home for me most done like say like Thanksgiving
or something where people have to work for Black Friday
or stuff like that like that, that to me, it's
it's the same thing. But but that's when it really
sticks out to me. Well, this is something, my friend,
that you would think that there are studies about commerce
and economics, and surely they have proven one way or
(42:00):
the other which is the best way forward, right right
the end, Well, they have done some studies, and it
kind of depends on what study you're looking at as
as far as quantifying these effects and how they're measured.
But when it comes to alcohol, they have shown their
studies have shown that, um, there are not more car
(42:22):
accidents happening because people can drink on Sundays. And that's
you know, some people argue like, hey, people aren't drinking.
They may not be drinking and driving and then getting
in car crashes, but that hasn't really turned out that way. Yeah,
now that's pretty surprising too, um, because a lot of
these studies have turned up kind of counterintuitive things. Um.
(42:42):
There was a study conducted in Georgia that, um looked
like Georgia's a great test case because there's so many
counties that have blue laws and other counties that don't
have blue laws, so you can like just compare these
really similar populations with one another. And they found that, Um,
if you have a county that has a blue law
and one that doesn't, there's virtually no difference in alcohol
(43:03):
consumption between the two. But there are like little tiny changes, like, um,
the employees in the county without a blue law might
make slightly more money because they can work on Sundays. Um,
Or in counties that do have blue laws, liquor stores
make a little bit less than their counterparts and counties
without blue laws. Stuff you kind of expect. But the
(43:26):
difference in alcohol consumption, I thought that was a little interesting.
I guess people just load up more on Saturday night
than they would if they lived in the county that
wasn't dry on Sundays. Maybe maybe they're hungover on Sunday.
Maybe they just take it a little easier on Sundays
after work on Monday. Another counterintuitive effect as far as
shopping goes in places like Bergen County, UM is they
(43:49):
have found that people it doesn't decrease the overall retail
experience in terms of dollars. I love that term now,
the retail experience. Uh, you know, because some people argue like, oh,
if we close on Sundays, then you know, we're just
gonna lose out on business. But I think they have
found that when these laws are in place and people
(44:09):
know that they're closed on Sundays, they just do their
shopping Monday through Saturday, and they still buy the same
amount of stuff. Um. I found one study from two
thousand and eight from M I. T that was almost
like cartoonish in its results. Are you ready for this?
They studied fifty years of repeal blue laws, and they
found that blue laws. Repealing blue laws decreases church attendance
(44:33):
and church donations significantly, although there's no other change in
charitable activity. It's just churches who are basically now competing
against um other pastimes and activities, and the churches lose
big time unless they have state enforced support for people
to go to them in the form of blue laws.
(44:54):
And they also saw that repealing blue laws led to
an increase in drinking and drug use. And the increased
drinking and drug use was most pronounced in those people
who used to attend church but then stopped attending church
after the blue laws were repealed. So basically everything that
if you were into blue laws were afraid of this
(45:16):
two thousand eight m I T study said like, yeah, absolutely,
it's it's as bad as you think, maybe even worse.
Isn't that interesting? That's super interesting. Yeah. I guess the
last thing we need to cover is where the why
they're called blue laws. Uh, there are a lot of theories.
It says no one knows for sure, and I think
that's probably true. But the one I've seen most often,
(45:38):
although it is the Internet, so that really means nothing,
is that the Puritans. I saw that they wrote their
laws in general on blue paper. Then I also saw
where they wrote their Sunday laws specifically on blue paper.
That one makes sense more than the other. Yes, the
thing is is no historian ever in the world has
ever turned up example of one of these things, right,
(46:02):
so that one might be apocryphal. There's another one that,
um it makes a really good point that there's some
slang terms that were in existence around the time that
these laws started being called blue laws about the end
of the eighteenth century, and the two slang terms were
blue nose and blue stocking, and both of them basically
referred to a prudish, rigid person who was so miserly
(46:26):
that they just saved money anyway they could. The one
had a blue nose because they wouldn't, you know, cough
up money for like heating in the winter time, so
their nose term blue, and the other was that they
had blue stockings because they use blue yarn to med
their socks rather than getting new ones. But either way,
it kind of like paints a pretty pretty good picture.
(46:47):
Something tells me, if you like, saw somebody's tip they
left and you're like, nice tip, blue nose, right, that
they would probably think that's super like offensive or something.
Probably probably, and I'm not convinced there's not some really
bad offense in there somewhere that we're just not seeing.
It's possible isn't there some something to be taken offense too?
(47:09):
And everything? Probably Blue knows ouch you got anything else?
I do not, sir, Well, if you want to know
more about Blue laws, start studying them. They are hilarious
and entertaining. And since I said hilarious and entertaining, it's time,
of course for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this
(47:30):
follow up to I don't know about that. Yeah, I
think it was during um the research bias episode. I
talked about a certain breed. I'm sure it happens everywhere,
but there's a certain breed of Southerner. When they're being
debated and presented with literal facts, they just go on,
I don't know about that, and that's sort of the
end of things. And so this is from Rebecca. I
(47:51):
was glad to see this email. Chuck talked about how
much he hated it when people say I don't know
about that when presented with evidence that contradicts their worldview.
There's a term for that. It's called a thought terminating cliche,
almost aid circle, which is a dismissive tactic as a speaker,
and they will use it to end a debate when
they encounter cognitive dissonance, or when someone presents them with
(48:13):
facts that run counter to their established beliefs. Other examples are, boy,
I hate all these let's agree to disagree. Yeah, that's
sometimes it's like that's the only way to end a conversation. No,
I think, just say it a different way. There's something
about that that I just don't like. Oh so it's
the cliche part you don't like more than the thought
(48:34):
terminating part. It's both, but definitely if it was said
in another way, I'd probably be more apt to accept it.
How About let's continue to not agree on this forever,
but both be okay, what's that? Yeah, yeah, there you can. Uh,
that's just your opinion is another one, and it's all good.
That's the worst, especially when that's followed by bro and
(48:58):
said by somebody who has a sole path. I unfortunately
don't know what what tactics there are to respond to
such cliches and reopen discussion. But maybe an episode on
intentional fallacies would be a great way to educate listeners
on the rhetorical tactics the journalist, politicians, and debaters used
to sway the course of an argument. Anyway, it's all good,
(49:20):
and that is a great email. That's from Rebecca in Chicago.
Thanks Rebecca, that was indeed one of the tops as
far as emails we've received goes. Thank you for it.
Uh and if you want to see if you can
pull one up on Rebecca, let's hear it, you can
send us an email to stuff podcast did iHeart radio
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
(49:43):
iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the
iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com