Hell's Puritans

With most other conversations, I have been amused watching New York Governor Andrew Cuomo get hoist on his own petard.  Always ready to condemn others for Political Incorrectness, he now finds his political future in mortal danger from the very P.C. harpies he championed.  It couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy.

But we should not let our Schadenfreude override the fact that Hell’s Puritans are a growing menace to everyone, or at least everyone white, male, and straight.  What is commonly known as political correctness and is actually cultural Marxism is attempting to outlaw broad aspects of reality, including the reality that in humans as in other species, the male initiates most of the sexual encounters.  The fact that the male takes the initiative does not mean the female does not welcome his attentions.  Often, she does, including when, among people, one or both are married or they are in a professional setting.  But now, if the woman does not welcome such attention, or does at the time but has second thoughts later, the male is crucified.  How ironic that Governor Cuomo was one of the many politically correct men to declare, “The woman must always be believed.”  Yes, indeed, women have been known throughout history and literature as creatures who never tell a lie.

That this Puritanism has its roots in Hell is betrayed by the fact that it is nihilist.  It seeks simply to bring everything down: “negative dialectics”, as the originators of cultural Marxism, the members of the Frankfurt School, put it.  It does so by forbidding aspects of human behavior that are hard-wired in human brains, then destroying anyone--“canceling” is the new synonym for “liquidating”--in whom nature triumphs over its commands.  But nature will always triumph, meaning that the level of tension, anger, and finally despair grows in a society to the point where that society turns inward and devours itself.  We see that happening in a broad swath of what used to be called Christendom.

It is not only in relations between the sexes that Hell’s Puritanism makes demands that cannot be met and that rip society apart.  Another field is race, ethnicity, and culture.  The new Puritans demand we pretend that all races and ethnic groups are interchangeable and all cultures are happy, innocent, peaceful cultures except for our own Western culture, which is evil and oppressive.  The fact that it was overwhelmingly white Europeans shaped by Western culture who turned a vast wilderness into the modern United States of America, the best place and time to live through all of history, must never be stated.  Nor dare one say that, for example, the black rate of incarceration is proportional to the black crime rate, which is many times the white rate.  No, “systemic racism” is why all those young black males end up in jail.  And cops regard young black males the way they do because cops are all evil “racists”, not because a young black man is far more likely to commit a violent crime than is an Asian grandmother.  Not how in all the howling about the killings of Asians, only the Wall Street Journal has dared mention the fact that most of those assaults are carried out by young black males.

Again, the goal of penalizing by “canceling” anyone who dares mention more and more aspects of reality is to rip society apart, to create a war of all against all where only mass violence will release the pent-up fury of people who must conform their behavior to rules that contradict human nature.  This is “Critical Theory” at its most powerful, where constant criticism of every aspect of traditional culture crosses over into setting new rules no one can follow, then destroying them when they do not.  That is why Governor Cuomo’s political body twisting slowly in the wind is so entrancing, because he too fell to the impossibility of obeying the very rules he championed.  The secret of Hell’s Puritanism stands revealed: no man can meet its demands except by self-destruction, either internalized or externalized.  Your choice is suicide or execution.

And so, in the hands of the “woke” Left, America has been saddled with a Puritanism without God and without virtue, the worst of all Puritanisms, nihilistic Puritanism.  Hell no doubt rubs its hands in glee.  But as the 17th century English Puritans discovered, Puritanism soon runs its course.  People return to the old ways again with relief and joy, looking back on their former Puritan times and saying, “How did we ever believe all that crap?”

Let us answer Hell’s Puritans with a 17th century ditty I enjoyed playing on my harpsichord, “on the King's Birthday, May 29”, the day when a restored King Charles the II entered London:

Welcome, welcome, royal May, Welcome long desired day!

Many Springs and Mays we’ve seen Have brought forth

What’s gay and green,

But none like this glorious Spring Which brings forth our gracious King;

Then banish care, and let us sing, We have our laws, and we have our King!

Amen.