— by Odysseus
A curious shift has come about in the American political left over the last 25 years, and one that challenges the notion that its adherents should be called “liberals”. Since the 1970s, their whole raison d’être seems to have shifted, and we now find them the inheritors of the American puritanical impulse, rather than a party of “liberalness” or freedom of individualism. They have become a movement that demands only sexual freedoms, but is intolerant of most everything else that individuals may choose to do with their own lives or even their own bodies.
Alhough New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is putatively a Republican, his efforts against the “Big Gulp” and cooking oils fall squarely in line with the Democrats’ talking points and their efforts to create a governmental role in dictating our eating habits and their notion that government even has legitimate role. Not only in the Big Apple, but also around the country, it is the left that has been been advocating, even during the Clinton years, for a governmental role in legislating or regulating our “morality”. It is a version of morality which would not be wholly unfamiliar to Carrie Nation or other spiritually-driven advocates of using government to force citizens to live “cleaner, more morally upright lives, free from filthy habits or pernicious vices”.
In the 1990s, liberals vigorously pursued the extermination of tobacco use and the tobacco industry (except when Bill himself was promoting innovative means of cigar usage). Also, during this time, feminist law professor Catharine McKinnon was being feted for writing about an active government role against pornography, trying to define it as “violence” against women. During this period, they transformed themselves from advocates of hippie-like freedom to one that criticized everything from advertising campaigns to clothing choices as “sexist”.
What liberals seemed offended by, and desired to legislate or regulate against, has been increasingly indistinguishable from the aims of the Puritans at Plymouth or the evangelical prohibitionist temperance movement politicians of the late 1800s. The leftist leaders in America of the 21st century seem to be in the full time business of railing against “vice”, as they define it. They have already taken positions against tobacco, firearms, pornography (of women only, homosexual pornography is apparently perfectly legitimate, and suitable for government subsidy by National Endowment of the Arts grants), and are now moving into the realm of opposing “gluttony”.
The campaign against “gluttony” comes in the more obvious forms of opposing various foodstuffs or dietary choices, but also in more subtle ways. Opposing beef consumption and advocating varying degrees of vegetarianism are obviously tied to concerns about the sin of gluttony. Yet, the same thought process and arguments are used in areas seemingly unconnected to food.
The liberals’ attack on the American use of petroleum and energy is really an argument against “gluttony”. In their railing against the sports utility vehicle and in moments of honesty about private passenger vehicle use, in general, the root of their position is always that Americans “consume too much”. This carries over to their remonstrations about how we keep our homes too warm/cool, how much paper we use, and how much trash we generate. All of this is really preaching against “gluttony”.
This campaign shares with medieval Christianity the assumption that human needs and desires are somehow inherently wicked and God’s natural world is somehow perfect, although they leave out the part about “God” nowadays. This shift seems very strange for a political group that is so militantly atheistic. These moralistic jeremiads have historically been associated with offending “God”. Historically, the accompanying push for the self deprivation and of adopting a monastic lifestyle as inherently holy was a means to achieve a holy or more godly state. The modern left is advocating the same type of privation as somehow inherently good (whether it is railing against sinful tobacco, sinful drunk driving, sinful ownership of guns or sinful use of bikini-clad models in marketing), without even promising any reward in an afterlife.
Liberals capitalize on a certain segment of humanity’s seemingly eternal desire for self punishment and the belief that some wickedness is inherent in joy/happiness/comfort in the same way that religious movements did in the past. They are the inheritors of the dialectic mantle of the flagellants and the ascetics. It is, seemingly, an odd choice for a political party and movement, led by aging hippies who enjoyed a largely hedonistic existence in their own youth. They now seem disturbingly lustful to regulate and control the minutiae of everyone else’s lives and to deny them choices of their own behavior.
Even free speech is an arena seemingly abandoned by the left. Liberals have defined their own forms of prohibited speech or thought, which are different than what the Puritans may have espoused, but they pursue them with equal zeal. Whereas a Puritan or evangelical of the past may have opposed cursing or taking the Lord’s name in vain and may have advocated for strong sinecure of those who publicly denied belief in divinity, the left has its own “mortal sins”. It has its own lists of impermissible and blasphemous words. Its “political correctness” and “insensitivity” language is every bit as restrictive of discourse as ancient restrictions protecting Christianity.
Liberals even hold certain scientific theories as holy, and, to question them, is treated as, at least, worthy of public condemnation and, often, a reason for a kind of secular excommunication from universities, organizations or academic associations. Galileo would have found their methods most familiar. Their secular church has its own doctrine for which violations are not tolerated. Interestingly, the aim of these doctrines seem to parallel ancient Christian objectives, decrying frivolity and comfort while advocating austerity, asceticism, privation, and misery as having some inherent value. Whereas Christianity promised eternal happiness in an afterlife, in exchange for privation today, the secular left makes no such promise. Instead, the benefit is supposed to accrue to “the world”.
The sole area where the left continues to defend individual freedom of choice, in how to expend their own resources and how to manage their own bodies, is in sexual intercourse. The left continues to advocate for all forms of birth control, homosexual activity, abortion, and is showing signs of drifting towards permissiveness towards even some of the most aberrant forms of sexual behavior. It is as though they are a sect of austere pilgrims, who discovered in their scripture narrow exception clauses regarding sexual intercourse and the belief in God.
This puritanical impulse seems to run deep in many individuals in various societies, being found in sects of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, and several Eastern ascetic disciplines. However, that it should be embraced in this wide-reaching form by the American political left is jarring when viewed in its totality. One finds it odd that it is the “right” and the Republicans who are defending the individual’s rights to smoke tobacco, drink alcohol, have gun, ogle cheerleaders, drive luxury cars, speak openly about any subject, eat to excess whatever one finds tasty, and enjoy retention of one’s own wealth. Yet, this is the same party that is popularly accused of being “preachy” about other people’s moral choices. Conversely, for a group called “liberals”, the left does not seem so interested in individual liberty (aside from sex issues). Amazingly, for all their talk about “God” and morality, it is the Republicans and conservatives who seem content to let any judgment of individual choices be left to a higher authority than any legislature, bureaucracy or badge-bearing thought policeman.
