A Toast to the College Presidents

A hundred college presidents say here that the over-21 drinking limit is a sham that actually promotes binge drinking. I agree.

The Culture Code, by famed marketer Clotaire Rapaille, contains a gripping analysis of America's peculiar relationship with alcohol. Americans view alcohol almost the way fundamentalist jihadists do -- as a naughty instrument of moral rebellion. It's naughty to the MADD crowd, and it's naughty to the frat-boy crowd. The naughtiness is the very fuel for the bingeing.

Europeans don't binge in nearly the same way (except for British dockworkers and football fans), because alcohol isn't "naughty" there. It's something that brings out the taste of good food. Ten-year-olds are given tastes of it and are encouraged to cultivate a sophisticated appreciation of it, and so it becomes demystified.

And after all, anything that mom and dad want you to try can't be all that cool. But if mom and dad and Uncle Sam forbid you from drinking it, now that is cool, and that increases the temptation to do it in feckless abundance.