The Rise of the New Puritans

May 1, 2022
A conservative writer attempts to link modern leftist moralizing and asceticism with the austere ideals of the Colonial Puritans. Granted, the Puritans of yore believed in the perfectibility of humans, attained, in some instances, by regimes of social policing and self-denial. One might make a metaphorical stretch that pillorying someone on Facebook is the moral equivalent of putting them in the stocks. Rothman, associate editor of Commentary magazine, takes that stretch well past its breaking point in this denunciation of modern progressivism and those spoilsports who don't like eating meat or jokes that play on ethnic slurs. To his credit, the author notes that moral policing was once the province of conservatives, but in his depiction of the modern left as a legion of fun-haters and life-deniers, he forgets that modern right-wingers are doing every bit of their part in keeping the culture wars going. "What I set out to do when I began to write this book was have some fun," he writes, but his book is anything but. The author repeats his leftists-are-Puritans thesis to dulling effect (if anything, the true proponents of "cancel culture," whether left or right, might be better likened to Red Guards), and his taunts about gender fluidity, veganism, taking a knee, and cultural appropriation wear thin very quickly. Indeed, the best glosses on much of Rothman's material come not from him but from interlocutors such as the comedian Judy Gold, who remarks of potentially transgressive comedy, "When intent and context and nuance are taken out of the equation, it's no longer a joke." The author concludes by hoping his book gets publicly cancelled in order to boost sales. It's perhaps likelier that it lands in the hands only of fellow true believers and won't make much of a dent among anyone but them. Readers already convinced that leftists are the Orwellian thought police will find merit. Everyone else can pass.

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