Responding to you about reason and temperance:  I think temperance, at
least in the early part of the 19thc, had a
contradictory position on
reason.  On the one hand, religious reformers in the early
movement were responding to the rise of Deism and saw a dire need to
defend the sacred against secular powers in government and the fragmentation
of Protestant belief into competing sects.
The spread of French "infidel philosophies" among credible actors in
government was a definite threat to their world view.  On the other hand,
they believed in a kind of faith sought through rational reflection, reasoningq
and human discipline.  This tendency came from Puritanism. This is why they
were so put off by the ecstatic spiritual practices of the revivalists and
rising evangelical churches.  Drunkenness was a definite barrier to
individual salvation, as well as to
the fulfillment of their vision of the good society because it compromised
the capacity for rational reflection that would lead to awakening.
 
I guess my feeling about this is
that systems of ideas don't have to be perfectly consistent in order to
be useful to human actors.  I have never seen one that is.
The internal contradictions allow diverse
groups to sign on to a project of collective action and work together
towards ideals that at least they think are held in common.  Of course,
somebody can always come along later and point out these inconsistencies and
wonder why the contradictions didn't seem to matter to actors at the time.
Some of this is
discussed in my paper in the Journal of Studies on alcohol, Jan 1995.
Some commentary on the paper will be coming out in the journal soon.
L. Schmidt.