X Close

The progressive puritans will fail Noah Rothman: ‘The Rise of the New Puritans’

The fun police are watching you. (Jim Dyson/Getty Images)


August 18, 2022   5 mins

Fun has always carried a little bit of danger in its back pocket: there’s something radical, even anarchical, about having too much of it. “We were just having some fun” could be the thing you say to the neighbours who’ve knocked on the door at 3am to tell you to turn the music down; it could also be what you say as you stand around the prone, bleeding body of a guy who tried to cannonball off the roof after having too many drinks. It’s like our parents used to say, when we started getting rowdy: it’s all fun and games until it isn’t.

In American culture, the role of the cautioning fun-averse parent has been typically played by the political Right. For many years, Republicans were the party of rules and regulations, of just saying no (to drugs, to sex, to a good time in general), of pearl-clutching church ladies waging a perpetual war against smut — a category comprising all sorts of titillating material but also the Teletubbies, who were obviously perverts. The Conservatives of pre-Y2K were out to outlaw everything from skateboarding to South Park to non-missionary-position sex. If you wanted to fight for your right to party, the Right was who you were fighting.

That is not because fun is inherently a Left-wing phenomenon, but rather because it’s anti-ruling-class. The people in power make the rules; the fun-havers have fun by breaking them. “Fun — when your rulers would rather you not have it, and when the agents of social programming insist on stirring non-stop apprehension over the current crisis and the next one, the better to keep you submissive and in suspense — is elementally subversive,” wrote novelist Walter Kirn, as citizens of the US endeavoured to enjoy their first normal summer since 2020.

And if fun is inherently countercultural, then the inverse is also true: when a party finds itself in power, pucker-mouthed puritanism tends to creep up on it.

When it comes to cultural power, the moral majoritarians of my millennial youth have long since been dethroned. Now, the Left holds the keys to the castle, and the punk rockers are all wearing MAGA hats. That the forces of censorship, prudery and conformity have lately shifted their location to the political Left is not a new observation, but The Rise of the New Puritans by Noah Rothman is the first book-length work to identify it explicitly as a “war on fun”. According to Rothman, the progressive impulse toward policing fun is a feature of every puritanical movement, including the original one that gripped the not-yet-United-States back at the turn of the 18th century. History repeats itself: in 1699, Puritan leaders exhorted the public to contain themselves to the paradoxically termed “sober mirth”. In 2020, the height of socially approved comedy was Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette, a stand-up special that is intentionally and explicitly not funny. As Rothman notes: “Perhaps nothing is as important to the promotion of a virtuous society as what you’re allowed to laugh at.”

It’s not just what, but also how much. The rule-makers set the parameters for socially-approved fun; they also seek to quash whatever falls outside them. The content of, say, an HBO comedy special from even ten years ago is legitimately shocking to the sensibilities of our current moment. The edgy comedians of the time, like Sarah Silverman, seem to be telecasting their material not just from the distant past but possibly from another planet entirely. A 2013 standup routine features Silverman espousing the greatness of rape jokes, adding: “Who’s gonna complain about a rape joke? Rape victims? They don’t even report rape. I mean, they’re traditionally not complainers.”

And so the sanitisation of today’s cultural landscape is as much a question of what’s not there anymore: ribald comedy and steamy sex scenes are vanishing from mainstream film. Books are subject to review and rejection at the manuscript stage for “sensitivity”. Fusion restaurants are shuttered for the crime of cultural appropriation — which in many cases is not really about theft, but a lack of reverence for the culture in question. The Rise of the New Puritans keenly points to the prudery at the heart of such complaints, such as the one aimed by journalist Evy Kwong at a Toronto dumpling restaurant whose condiment selections included the cheekily-titled “HOT PHO U” and “JERK ME”. Kwong blasted the restaurant for “sexualizing jerk sauce and pho hot sauce” — which is to say, failing to take these sauces seriously. Irreverent condiment-based sex puns? Not in this house, mister.

Rothman catalogues how the tentacles of puritanism have wound their way into everything from food to film to football to fashion. This insistence on the dead seriousness of everything is one of the defining elements of our present moment. Everything frivolous must be taken seriously, injected with deep urgent meaning; everything fun must be seen first and foremost as a vehicle for danger, if not literal death then life-altering trauma.

Consider the way we talk about sex — and the way we attempt to scare young people out of having it. The puritans of the Nineties had their own approach to this, predicated on the notion that sex was a fun activity but it had dire consequences for those who attempted it outside of marriage (pregnancy or death from a flesh-eating STD). Today’s ideologues would instead have us believe that sex is damaging in and of itself, abetted by consent rhetoric that imagines the act as a tightrope walk over a vast ocean of potential violation. If you are ever less than 110% enthusiastic about what is happening, we tell young women, you are no longer consenting, but being raped. It’s hard to imagine a more perfect recipe for taking all the fun out of intimacy: how can you abandon yourself to the pursuit of physical ecstasy if you must also, at the same time, maintain a state of constant vigilance lest something go horribly wrong?

And then there’s the pandemic, the impact of which is not addressed in The Rise of the New Puritans, but which certainly helped make the book’s subject go mainstream — much as the Salem witch trials were fuelled by an atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust that arose out of the fear of smallpox. The threat of Covid made explicit the connection between fun and danger, as every enjoyable social activity was recast as a vector for the spread of disease. It’s hard to think of a better example of “sober mirth” than the grim delight of the New Puritans as they padlocked the playgrounds, filled skate parks with sand, or patrolled the beaches in Florida dressed in a hood and a scythe. Forget problematic comedy, irreverent jerk sauce or bad sex. Here was a chance to send the entire world to its room, with a warning: if you attempt to go out and have fun now, you will be literally killing people.

For over two years, the contemporary puritans found their highest calling as pandemic enforcers. But it also seems possible now that this is where the fun police will make their last stand: rather than return to the cancellation trenches, targeting this restaurant or that television show for its offences, many of our most dedicated culture warriors have turned taking Covid seriously into their sole priority, seduced by the potent combination of performative asceticism, high stakes and low effort. Not only can you fight this war from home, your position is that much more unimpeachable if you yourself never leave the house. And they don’t; instead, you will find them online, railing away in the comments sections. Even now, they want to close the schools, ground the planes, mandate the masks. They are, invariably, martyrs to their own cause, which only fuels their righteous anger — if I haven’t gone to the theatre, dined indoors, or hugged my family since March 2020, then why should you?

Here’s the thing: you can only see them online, and here they are preaching to the choir in an otherwise empty church. It is only the true believers who are left, feeding on and off each other, stewing in fear and resentment while everyone else goes outside and has fun. And as loud as they might seem to themselves, and each other, within the confines of their echo chamber, the truth is that outside of it they’re not just irrelevant, but nearly invisible. Their power, and their numbers, are diminished by the mere existence of normal people living normal lives.

And when this movement collapses under the weight of its own joylessness, as it almost certainly must, it’ll be the proverbial tree falling alone in a forest, unnoticed and unmourned. Because while the progressive puritans among us are, to paraphrase the H.L. Mencken quote, tormented by the notion that someone somewhere might be having a good time, the fun-havers are having too much fun to think about them at all.


Kat Rosenfield is an UnHerd columnist and co-host of the Feminine Chaos podcast. Her latest novel is You Must Remember This.

katrosenfield

Join the discussion


Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber


To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.

Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.

Subscribe
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

61 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Alphonse Pfarti
Alphonse Pfarti
2 years ago

Nice essay, but wishful thinking at the end. They’re not just shouting over a cliff online or in a tailspin of decline. Rather, in the UK at least, they are continuing the long march through our institutions and laying waste to civil society. There seems little appetite from the elected government to turn the tide.

Brendan O'Leary
Brendan O'Leary
2 years ago

Not just the UK, but throughout bureaucracies everywhere. Right down to council level and corporate HR.

michael stanwick
michael stanwick
2 years ago

And the Edinburgh Fringe.

E. L. Herndon
E. L. Herndon
2 years ago

Nothing is more subversive than laughter.

Chris Milburn
Chris Milburn
2 years ago

In Canada, unvaccinated healthcare workers are still unemployed, you still have to wear masks on planes, there are still travel restrictions, and in many areas, visits to loved ones in long term care are still verboten. There are rumours that full restrictions and universal masking will return in the fall. The fact that evidence has shown repeatedly that none of this works to slow the spread of the virus doesn’t seem to matter. I’d love to ignore and forget about these puritanical fools, but it’s hard to do so when they control the government and the media. We are forced to attend this church, unfortunately.

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
2 years ago
Reply to  Chris Milburn

Canada does seem to be an extreme case, and appears to be ever more of an outlier. On the whole my life is back to normal. The British government for all its many faults deserves a little credit, as it was significantly better than most in its response (yes, it is a low bar!). We were always allowed out to exercise for example unlike the utterly cruel policies of France, Italy and Spain. In any case I am glad of those who (even quietly) repenteth of their lockdown sins; which includes now most other western countries. Surely we just can’t afford to do that again, whatever the ethical issues?
Of course there remain institutions (especially, but not only in the public sector) simply determined to carry on with the covid theatre – that will be one of the very long term costs, and it is a complete nonsense that you ‘need’ to show you have been vaccinated to board a plane or Eurostar train or plane, but not an actual negative covid test!

Last edited 2 years ago by Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
2 years ago

Yes, but the specific covid / pandemic power grab seems to have ben reversed almost everywhere in Europe at least and in Republican and even most Democratic states in the US. It is just too darned expensive for governments to carry on with lockdowns. I am usually a pessimist, but on this I am cautiously optimistic, despite the absurd hyping up of ‘monkeypox’, a disease seemingly of close physical proximity if not technically a STD, 97% of whose sufferers are gay men!

Penny Adrian
Penny Adrian
2 years ago

Seriously, Kat?
I don’t know what planet you & Rothman live on, but he had to go back 40 years to find feminists who objected to porn.
Feminists today shout the joys of “sex work” polyamory & BDSM from the rooftops.
If you want to have casual sex & revel in hookup culture, go for it.
No one is stopping you.
I hope you have loads of kinky anonymous sex and enjoy it rapturously.
Good for you!
But to slander people who’ve suffered from a lack of cultural guard rails around drug use & casual sex – usually poor & working class people whose lives have been harmed by addiction & sexual abuse – is just plain cruel.
The elite Left continues to celebrate hookup culture, limitless porn, drug use, and “wine moms”. They also “shout their abortions” claim that sex trafficking is a myth, and that “sex work is work”.
You clearly come from a privileged background that allowed you to have lots of risky “fun” without real consequences.
You are the elite Left, Kat – and so is Noah Rothman.

David Baker
David Baker
2 years ago
Reply to  Penny Adrian

Yes, Kat’s articles frequently mix genuinely interesting insights with the boring, oft tread, and poorly reasoned arguments of the managerial elite.

Unfortunately, as you point out, she misses the real problem (both in this article and in her recent article defending the sexual Revolution) with celebrating unrestricted license. Not all desires are pro-social and not all will lead to flourishing, and only some people have the resources to rebound from the damage of indulging yourself and others without thought of the virtue of what you’re doing.

Certainly the bureaucratic solutions forwarded by Progressives and other modern forms of “Puritanism” are no help. But the answer to harms suffered is not to celebrate every passing whim as good. I suspect Kat doesn’t want to indulge this (to my mind) obvious truth because to do so would be to mark oneself with the “stain” of traditionalism, which is verboten in elite circles.

Adam Bartlett
Adam Bartlett
2 years ago
Reply to  Penny Adrian

With respect Penny, there’s a double movement going on regarding progressive feminists and their attitudes to sex. A significant proportion have indeed long been very pro sex. But also quite a few are the opposite. Unherd’s own Julie Bendel is a strong example – unquestionably feminist and of the Left, but has always been strongly anti sex work, and at least historically (& I think still now) anti porn. In recent years, an increasing number of progressives have indeed shifted towards puritanism just like Kat suggests. That said, I’d sadly agree it’s to a degree an elite trait to be able to have lots of risky fun without consequence.

John Riordan
John Riordan
2 years ago
Reply to  Penny Adrian

But to slander people who’ve suffered from a lack of cultural guard rails around drug use & casual sex – usually poor & working class people whose lives have been harmed by addiction & sexual abuse – is just plain cruel.”

Addicts do not suffer from “a lack of cultural guard rails around drug use”, they just suffer from the drug use itself. Taboos on the use of drugs make no difference except possibly to make the addiction problem worse.

Peter Johnson
Peter Johnson
2 years ago
Reply to  John Riordan

I disagree. Activists have been relentlessly normalizing drug use and the drug lifestyle. There is a reason we stigmatized drug use – it is a horrible thing to do to yourself – and once you are an addict you go on to a life of crime and to be a drag on the taxpayer.

John Riordan
John Riordan
2 years ago
Reply to  Peter Johnson

This is really mostly nonsense. Addiction has got far worse as a social problem the more strict the legal prohibitions against drug use are. It may be true that activists and social commentators have been pushing for decriminalisation and normalisation more recently, but the explosion of addition itself correlates with the introduction of prohibition at the far earlier times of the mid-20th century.

And really, do all drugs users become addicts, and do all addicts become criminals? Rubbish. Stop reading the Daily Mail.

Last edited 2 years ago by John Riordan
Derek Swanson
Derek Swanson
2 years ago
Reply to  John Riordan

Look at Portland and San Francisco, who is now shutting down open air drug markets in an effort to lower crime.

Last edited 2 years ago by Derek Swanson
T. Lister
T. Lister
2 years ago
Reply to  Penny Adrian

Don’t put all feminists in the same basket b/c we are not a monolith and have differing opinions about this and other topics.

Douglas Proudfoot
Douglas Proudfoot
2 years ago
Reply to  Penny Adrian

If you’re the guy involved, get a signed consent form, dated ad time stamped, particularly on campus.

harry storm
harry storm
2 years ago
Reply to  Penny Adrian

A killjoy of the earlier stripe.

Ronald Ruschman
Ronald Ruschman
2 years ago
Reply to  Penny Adrian

When you look like Kat, you can get away with a lot. I for one a 53-year old highly respected Paleontologist, still hornier than a 3-weinered rabbit in a bowling alley, find her smoking hot for a lib.

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
2 years ago
Reply to  Penny Adrian

Not all feminists think exactly the same way! Isn’t Julie Bindel a feminist? She would certainly say so!

Lennon Ó Náraigh
Lennon Ó Náraigh
2 years ago

Fusion restaurants are shuttered for the crime of cultural appropriation — which in many cases is not really about theft, but a lack of reverence for the culture in question.

The “crime” of cultural appropriation is a mob-style racket – you call out some artist / restaurant / novelist for their lack of “sensitivity” to that day’s particular celebrated cause, they get cancelled / closed down / rejected, you swoop in with your own “authentic” product and corner the market.

Linda Hutchinson
Linda Hutchinson
2 years ago

Cultural appropriation only goes one way, though, as I’ve seen a great number of appropriations of European cultural aspects (food, theatre, legends etc.) taken and re-vamped for a different context. For my own part, more power to their elbows, I have nothing against any appropriation, it only becomes objectionable if it is used to insult another party, and giving silly, juvenile names to sauces hardly qualifies as an insult.

Nicky Samengo-Turner
Nicky Samengo-Turner
2 years ago

the word ” culture” is so misused: it now means ‘ lack of any actual culture whatsoever”..

Douglas Proudfoot
Douglas Proudfoot
2 years ago

See Hamilton, with all Bipoc cast for historically white figures.

Rita Falwell
Rita Falwell
2 years ago

I find it increasingly distracting to see black actors stuck randomly in everything, a favorite being Viking stories…sigh

George Connery
George Connery
2 years ago

Absolutely everything about this is a one-way street. “Whitewashing” is a cultural crime, but a black James Bond or female Ghostbusters? Right on!
This was perfectly illustrated a couple of years ago on a Canadian news article. An Indigenous millennial woman was being interviewed about the offensive use of First Nations garb as Halloween costumes. She would have had more of a point had she not have had dyed blonde hair and wearing the latest Lululemon outfit.

Douglas H
Douglas H
2 years ago

I’ve not heard of fusion restaurants being shut down for cultural appropriation. I think they close because their food is poor quality.

Johnny Ramone
Johnny Ramone
2 years ago
Reply to  Douglas H

Happened here famously in Portland Oregon. Two white gals shut down their taco truck after being protested (by white people) for “stealing” recipes from Mexican families they had visited in Mexico – and thus ‘exploiting’ them. Easy to Google.

Last edited 2 years ago by Johnny Ramone
laurence scaduto
laurence scaduto
2 years ago
Reply to  Johnny Ramone

Two young women I know set up on the beach selling chocolate covered frozen bananas. Does that count?
They made a bundle!

Aphrodite Rises
Aphrodite Rises
2 years ago

I had a very buxom friend who in the seventies sold melons topless on the beach in the south of France. Her melons were much in demand.

Last edited 2 years ago by Aphrodite Rises
Nicky Samengo-Turner
Nicky Samengo-Turner
2 years ago

now with LBGT she would have to be accompanied by a man, bottomless, selling pineapple, or in French ananas?…

Mike Michaels
Mike Michaels
2 years ago

You can have a multicultural society, or you can have the concept of cultural appropriation. You can’t have both.

Johnny Ramone
Johnny Ramone
2 years ago
Reply to  Mike Michaels

It’s still rock and roll to me.

Lennon Ó Náraigh
Lennon Ó Náraigh
2 years ago
Reply to  Mike Michaels

Indeed. The only country with no cultural appropriation is North Korea. Meanwhile, on behalf of my fellow Irishmen (and women), I apologize to the good indigenous peoples of South America for our cultural appropriation of the potato. My own ancestors who died in the potato famine would also have been similarly repentant for their shocking white privilege, if only they had survived the typhus/hunger/mass evictions.

Last edited 2 years ago by Lennon Ó Náraigh
Douglas H
Douglas H
2 years ago

I wish this article were right but it doesn’t address structural (i.e. widespread if not universal) issues of risk aversion and perceived legal liability that drive businesses and public bodies to impose super-cautious “safe” restrictions. That fear of legal and moral liability is the big driver of safetyism.

Judy Englander
Judy Englander
2 years ago

In an interesting synchronicity, yesterday I read a very moving article about the erasure of fun from the Univ of Stanford campus (google ‘Stanford’s war on social life’). It tells the story of the closing of the frat and theme houses – communities created from the bottom up, places of anarchy, creativity, comradeship, nuttery and sheer joy – their houses clinically rebadged with letters and numbers and students allocated by a top down bureaucracy on the basis of ‘fairness’. It’s the triumph of po-faced administrators over spontaneous self-organisation.

Last edited 2 years ago by Judy Englander
harry storm
harry storm
2 years ago
Reply to  Judy Englander

Never been a fan of frats but getting rid of them in this way is far far worse than anything frats are capable of doing.

Judy Englander
Judy Englander
2 years ago
Reply to  harry storm

I hope you read the article, harry. My comment doesn’t do justice to the issues it raises – particularly student isolation and anomie. The ‘cancellation’ of brotherhood/sisterhood and joy may explain why some have become so aggressive. The author claims that the suicide figures have increased since the frat and theme houses were closed.

Laney R Sexton
Laney R Sexton
2 years ago
Reply to  Judy Englander

My husband lived in a Russian House when he went there. Lots of theme parties, sounded really fun. There were French houses and Spanish etc.
Imagine getting into a nice school and not being able to have any fun? Lame.

Sophy T
Sophy T
2 years ago

Theres a piece in the Times today about the opposing views of JK Rowling and Joanne Harris which also mentions Philip Gwyn Jones from Picador and his Stalinist forced apology for pointing out the damage done by modern censorship ( an apology which didn’t save his job
I agree heartily with the various commenters who want to know who forced this apology from him and under what conditions. Maybe Unherd which is brave about taking on today’s censors could investigate it.

Andrew Raiment
Andrew Raiment
2 years ago

Reminds me of the Lenny Bruce joke about Je5us.

“A lot of people say to me, ‘Why did you kill Chr1st?’ I dunno, it was one of those parties, got out of hand, y’know”.

Cantab Man
Cantab Man
2 years ago

Great article that speaks the truth, Kat. This is why rowdy Libertarians and Classic Liberals are making common cause with traditional conservatives who are the “deplorable” among us. All of these groups of folks see the danger of the Matriarchal push by radical progressives in power who would rather that we all be encompassed in bubble-wrap on the couch at home next to our mom rather than skinning a knee, roughhousing, or being offended by a verbal jousting match with someone who disagrees with us.

Douglas McNeish
Douglas McNeish
2 years ago
Reply to  Cantab Man

“The matriarchal push by progressives in power.” This is the syndrome which dare not speak its name – at least without censoring by the gatekeepers of speech. Women tend to err on the side of caution, since as child-carers for millennia, their first instinct is to control the environment in the name of protection. A prime example is Jessica Ardern of hermetically sealed NZ.

Rod Robertson
Rod Robertson
2 years ago

Excellent piece. Thanks.

John Riordan
John Riordan
2 years ago

Great article, and I dearly hope the concluding prediction comes to pass. In fact, I’m hoping the late 2020’s may become the same backlash we saw in the 1990’s and all the young people collectively say “F*** this” and go out partying. And no, they won’t be stopped because they can’t afford it: the early raves were the cheapest night you could possibly have back then: it was a fiver to get in, a tenner on ecstasy and you just drank water all night.

Anyway, one minor niggle here is that I think it’s somewhat sad that Puritans, at least the original ones, have been cast as history’s fun police in the modern imagination. I suspect that what Puritanism really was, in the beginning, was an adaptation serving the need to maintain society in the face of extraordinary hardship and want. It wasn’t that Puritans rejected joy and fun, it was that none was available without colossally damaging costs and therefore an alternate, ascetic mode of existence was required to prevent everyone collapsing out of boredom and despair.

That’s not to say that we aren’t afflicted in the modern age by joyless, humourless morons who instinctively hate the sight of other people living their lives freely: of course they exist and they are tedious and trying to a degree that is sometimes almost unbearable. But I think they deserve to be re-labelled something else: fascists is a possible candidate, though there may be better ones. Puritans, I maintain, isn’t the most accurate label.

Last edited 2 years ago by John Riordan
Paul Nathanson
Paul Nathanson
2 years ago
Reply to  John Riordan

What you say about the original Puritans is largely correct, although their mentality wasn’t all that different even back home in England (which presented them with other life-and-death problems). At any rate, the Puritans (who had enough sex to produce many children) didn’t go nearly as far as more ascetic communities such as the Shakers (who banned all sexual activity). And I doubt that we can explain those big Puritan families entirely by the need for labor and the high rate of infant mortality.
But why does no one, at least so far, leave any room at all for a world that promotes moderation–a mentality that’s neither mindless hedonism nor joyless asceticism?
And why does everyone assume that sex means nothing other than “fun.” It does mean that, of course, but it can also mean so much more than that. For some people, sex is a venue of holiness. For all people, until very recently, sex is has been the sine qua non of marriage and family life–ideally, that is, of enduring intimacy and communal continuity.

DA Johnson
DA Johnson
2 years ago
Reply to  Paul Nathanson

Thank you for a serious, adult observation.

Michelle 0
Michelle 0
2 years ago
Reply to  John Riordan

Excellent observation. Agree 100%.

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
2 years ago

Reminiscent of a moment at the Clinton inaugural. As military jets flew in formation over the proceedings, then-leftist actor Ron Silver said “those are our planes now”.

Douglas Proudfoot
Douglas Proudfoot
2 years ago

A group called Citizens for Sanity in the US has noticed that Progressive Puritans are ridicuous. They are buying billboard ads pointing the ridiculous positions out.

“Protect pregnant men from climate change.”
“Don’t let the radical right put our neighborhood street gangs behind bars.”
“Too much freedom is a bad thing. Get your IRS audit today.”
“Open the jails. Open the borders. Close the schools! Vote progressive!”
“If you don’t like being audited, you’re the problem.”

Progressive Puritans will be destroyed by their own internal contradictions, to borrow a phrase.

Douglas McNeish
Douglas McNeish
2 years ago

Brilliant humour those billboards!

Ben Dhonau
Ben Dhonau
2 years ago

Human nature means the neo-puritans are bound to fail in the end as they always have in the past. Look at how the Cromwellian Commonwealth was succeeded by the Restoration and licentious society of Charles 2nd for instance..

laurence scaduto
laurence scaduto
2 years ago

Early in the pandemic they decided to close the beaches.
I was heartened (and amused) to see that, at least on the South Shore of Long Island, where I grew up and where my favorite beaches are, they were roundly ignored. Everyone went anyway.
So I’ve been wondering ever since, in how many places and situations was casual non-obedience the normal thing throughout? Were the progressive puritans failing all along while the big media outlets were telling everyone the opposite?

Vici C
Vici C
2 years ago

Well, I do see puritanism but not in the same way. I see it in the minds of the population who are affronted enough by minor rule breaking and not very good lies, to oust a prime minister. It would have been a more appropriate reaction to sexual abuse, treason or massive fraud. Where I don’t see it is on the sexual scene. I wish I did because the present attitude to casual sex actually has demeaned it. Fun is not all about rule breaking, were it so the PM would still be here.

Nicky Samengo-Turner
Nicky Samengo-Turner
2 years ago

We have a new commercial and political Pooteresque senior clerk line manager ruling class, overseeing the great majority of office ” keep yer’ nose” clean” worker ants behind computers, who have no freedom of speech or expression, not route of challenge in their daily lives, and will ” anything for a quiet life/ to keep my job”: is it any wonder that nu britn has turned into a giant version of head office of ” Leounge Settee Heoldings PLC”?

michael stanwick
michael stanwick
2 years ago

But what is the grounding morality and emotion(s) that are the fuel within the puritanism?

Johnny Ramone
Johnny Ramone
2 years ago

Envy

0 0
0 0
2 years ago

“It is only the true believers who are left”
I suspect that it was always thus; unfortunately, they are also the ones with the squeaky wheel. And what’s that old saying about a squeaky wheel?

Last edited 2 years ago by 0 0
E. L. Herndon
E. L. Herndon
2 years ago

Wowsers all.

The Gries
The Gries
2 years ago

all puritans are doomed to fail!!….as they should ….they can only keep their lips pursed together and their assholes sucked up for so long….

Mark M Breza
Mark M Breza
2 years ago

Touché Kat you are on the zeitgeist & all the poo pop comments sure missed the uproar over all the Fun in Finland.

Mark M Breza
Mark M Breza
2 years ago

BTW
Why did Laura Hadeed censor me ?
She writes on Unheard also; does she take herself too seriously ?