Progressives Are Modern Puritans
Yep, I've said similar things--yay me!
I mean, there are elements of the right that are also puritan...like...major elements of it--but that's well-known, and they have no power. They don't eve really pretend not to be neo-puritans. Puritanism is basically an open ideal of theirs.
Progressives are in charge of things, and they consider themselves to have only the very most advanced--and utterly non-puritanical--views. Contrary to fact. Hence all the dietary fads, the revulsion at luxury--or, rather, at uncool luxury--cool luxury is fine. The fondness for environmentalism and the constraints it puts on uncool luxury...and don't forget the sex!
Progressivism is a weird combination of libertinism and prudery. For all its wanton "celebration" of certain favored kinds of sex, it also wants ironclad control of it. The personal is political, after all--that's one idea that never seems to change over there. Why, back in my day, liberals--an extinct genus of American political animal, ancestors of progressives--wanted the government and society and other people out of your goddamn bedroom... How retrograde! Currently the idea that the personal is political manifests itself in the idea that there can never be a sufficient degree of consent. (I asked JQ once what she'd think if I insisted on having sex only in accordance with neo-PC standards of consent, and she said, without hesitating, "I'd break up with you"...)
If you want your sex life unregulated...too bad! The alleged requirement that you have to ask for consent at every conceivable point--if you're male--cannot be waived. Progressive feminism doesn't stipulate that you have to ask for consent at every point if you agree to such a constraint. It stipulates that you have to do so no matter what you prefer. Perhaps you don't consent to having illiberal feminists tell you what you have to do during sex--too bad, bigot! All your sex are belong to us! Of course currently this sexual ideology only seems to be enforced at universities--but it'll be enforced everywhere if the progressive left becomes powerful enough to do so. What they implement at universities tells you what they'll implement across society if given the chance.
Again I say: back to liberalism!
I mean, there are elements of the right that are also puritan...like...major elements of it--but that's well-known, and they have no power. They don't eve really pretend not to be neo-puritans. Puritanism is basically an open ideal of theirs.
Progressives are in charge of things, and they consider themselves to have only the very most advanced--and utterly non-puritanical--views. Contrary to fact. Hence all the dietary fads, the revulsion at luxury--or, rather, at uncool luxury--cool luxury is fine. The fondness for environmentalism and the constraints it puts on uncool luxury...and don't forget the sex!
Progressivism is a weird combination of libertinism and prudery. For all its wanton "celebration" of certain favored kinds of sex, it also wants ironclad control of it. The personal is political, after all--that's one idea that never seems to change over there. Why, back in my day, liberals--an extinct genus of American political animal, ancestors of progressives--wanted the government and society and other people out of your goddamn bedroom... How retrograde! Currently the idea that the personal is political manifests itself in the idea that there can never be a sufficient degree of consent. (I asked JQ once what she'd think if I insisted on having sex only in accordance with neo-PC standards of consent, and she said, without hesitating, "I'd break up with you"...)
If you want your sex life unregulated...too bad! The alleged requirement that you have to ask for consent at every conceivable point--if you're male--cannot be waived. Progressive feminism doesn't stipulate that you have to ask for consent at every point if you agree to such a constraint. It stipulates that you have to do so no matter what you prefer. Perhaps you don't consent to having illiberal feminists tell you what you have to do during sex--too bad, bigot! All your sex are belong to us! Of course currently this sexual ideology only seems to be enforced at universities--but it'll be enforced everywhere if the progressive left becomes powerful enough to do so. What they implement at universities tells you what they'll implement across society if given the chance.
Again I say: back to liberalism!
posted by Winston Smith at
6:06 PM
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