The New Puritans
by Andy Postema
Context is everything. It’s the difference between admiring the seventeenth century Puritans, who settled New England’s rocky terrain, as paragons of integrity, self-reliance, and productivity—and despising their intellectual heirs, four centuries later, as busybodies who parade their purity before us with shameless exhibitionism. Make no mistake about it: today’s scolds, who castigate us for smoking fat cigars, knocking back a six-pack, sinking our teeth into a bloody red steak, and otherwise indulging in the “impurities” that make life pleasurable, are the descendants of that ancient breed of American. The new Puritans have the same self-righteous self-regard of those long-dead pioneers, without any of the hardships that tempered the pioneers' penchant for moralizing.
The original Puritans were driven by a cultic Christianity to build a New Jerusalem in America—and that they did. They laid the foundation for the greatest experiment in human liberty, The United States of America. The new Puritans are also driven by a cult. It is the cult of "authenticity," obsessed with driving out of one's life all the "impurities" produced by a modern, capitalistic culture. For the new Puritan only the authentic self is pure and true, and so he’ll scourge himself of all that corrupts the “real me.” It’s Calvin meets Rousseau.
To strip himself of all the barnacles of modern life, the new Puritan must first stop repressing himself. All of those contrived courtesies and customs that suppress honest emotion for the sake of greasing the skids of social intercourse must go. When these now unsuppressed emotions are ugly ones (as they usually are, hence their repression), the new Puritan then must engage in a rigorous self-examination to eliminate them as corruptions implanted in him by the modern world. To cleanse himself of corruption, he must bare his soul and publicly confess how he let such impurity invade him, usually through an addiction. Finally, the new Puritan must renounce his addictions while refusing to accept any imposition that represses his now purified authentic self. Unfortunately, that often means letting fly with reminders to us of how he has purified himself of his addictions.
That’s the problem with the new Puritans. They can’t keep their enthusiasm to themselves. They are proselytizers. Because they have embraced their "authentic" selves, all of us must do so. The New Puritans reason that—because the happiness they thought would be found by releasing their authentic selves has eluded them—the problem must lie with the rest of us impure beings polluting the world around them. So they psychologize us, and reveal the addictions we will not admit. Where we find small pleasures in a smoke and drink, the new Puritans see only poison to be purged. Where we find relaxation in common entertainments, they see only decadence to be avoided. Where we find release in anger and joy, they see only stress to be eliminated. Where we find dignity in keeping our foibles to ourselves, they see only rot to be cleansed by a public confession. Where we find happiness in untidy lives lived lustily, they see only candidates for a twelve-step program.
To fix all this, the new Puritans love to devise programs to reform us. In the past, they would use that ol’-time religion to justify their reforms. The Prohibition of the early twentieth century was one disastrous result. Today, the new Puritans have replaced religion with science. Now, they use psychology and public health as rationales for making us get with the program. The Objectivist knows none of this would matter a whole lot, except that there now exist an overweening welfare state, reeducation camps for our children (ahem, I mean, the public school system), and a pack of hyenas called the trial bar. The new Puritans can exploit these institutions to make our lives as miserable as theirs.
So what’s an Objectivist to do? Simple. Enjoy the pleasures that a modern capitalist society has to offer. Blow a little smoke from that stogie you’re chomping on into the face of the next new Puritan you meet, and invite him to discuss his plans to reform you over a bottle of whiskey at the casino’s lounge.
And never forget, living well is the best revenge.
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