A NEW PURITANISM ARISES: THE HYPOCRITICAL MORAL INDIGNATION OF THE LEFT

My ancestor, Captain Charles Barham, fled Puritanism in the 1650's.  Settling in Virginia, Charles became a sheriff and an Anglican vestryman in Surrey County. As a former officer in the King's Horse who had served Charles I, it can well be imagined that it was the intention of Charles Barham to keep as much distance as possible between himself and the Puritans of New England.

Establishing a "dominion of righteousness," the Puritans of New England engaged in hypocrisy of the worst sort.  A society which sought to correct supposed moral deficiencies by the means of the dunking-stool and the whipping post, New England divines presided over their communities in much the same way as those who had authority over the Inquisition in Spain.  Determining what was good and what was evil, the power of the state was coopted to enforce correctness in conduct, expression and feelings.  And lest we forget, Puritan captains led the way in the trade that established slavery in the colonies. In effect, the establishment of an authoritarianism of hypocrisy negatively affected every corner of life, resulting in an aggregate of human beings existing in officially- sanctioned drabness and monotony.

As I consider the Puritan excesses which ended up driving my ancestor from southeastern England in the 17th century, my mind runs to the political correctness which has taken hold in the America of the 21st century.  Nearly everywhere one turns, conformity is demanded by the proponents of a new form of Puritanism, which labels nonconformists as "racists," "homophobes" and "ignoramuses."  Just as Charles Barham sought to avoid 17th century Puritans, so I seek to avoid the new Puritans.   Avoidance, however, is becoming more difficult, as the orthodoxy of the new Puritanism is prevalent throughout the worlds of art, entertainment  and education, and has even spread throughout the 3 branches of our government.

The hypocrisy of the new Puritanism is easily perceived from many views.  Most recently, it was on full display through a cable TV network which  sees itself as a voice of "progressivism,"but for the life of me I cannot imagine what might be progressive about the inanity of the chatter which proceeds from this channel's programming.  However, I fear that I digress.

The network in question is MSNBC, and in the instance to which I m referring a panel of so-called progressives was presided over by a young lady named Melissa Harris-Perry, who purportedly occupies a chair in the Department of Government at Tulane University, which is located in New Orleans.

Led by Professor Harris- Perry, the panel began in most indelicate ways to ridicule the fact that former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has an African-American grandchild. Seeking to follow Professor Harris-Perry's lead and to engage in anti-Republican tirades,  the panelists used a Romney family photograph to lambast the paucity of blacks in Republican ranks. That such racialist diatribes spewed forth is bad enough, but even more peculiar is  that, with a black father and a white Mormon mother, Professor Harris- Perry herself comes from a racially-mixed family.

With a professional background of several decades of experience in the halls of Academe, I remember a time not so long ago when academicians expressed themselves in much more polite terms.  In fact, one of the pleasures of my student days was to engage in dialogue with those of differing persuasions until the wee hours.  We did not cast aspersions on each other, neither did we consider it appropriate to malign competing ideological or philosophical points of view with racist appeals or epithets.  Professor Harris-Perry's presence on a network known for such bad taste merely serves to illustrate the sad state of affairs characterizing too much of higher education in 21st century America.

A CLASS ACT AND ONE NOT SO CLASSY

Hopefully, Ms. Harris-Perry will have learned something from this experience.  She has publicly apologized, and Governor Romney graciously accepted the apology.  Hopefully, too, Ms. Harris-Perry will not be fired for her lack of propriety and good manners.  To lead a crusade to crucify her would smack too much of the recent GLAAD effort to silence Duck Dynasty Patriarch Phil Robertson.  Although, Robertson's words could be considered crude, his remarks were solicited by a progressive journalist, who should have known from what direction Robertson would be coming.  Besides, MSNBC has stated that it has a review board which examines content before airings.  If this is true, then the network was very much aware of how the dialogue with Ms. Harris-Perry and her panelists would flow.

With a stable of talking-heads on the order of Chris Matthews, nothing proceeding from MSNBC should be shocking.  Just a few weeks ago, after Sarah Palin figuratively compared our growing national debt to a form of slavery, Palin was verbally savaged by an MSNBC talk-show personality by the name of Martin Bashir.  For rational human beings, Palin's point that future generations of Americans would find themselves in a type of  debt slavery to China and other nations which have facilitated our government's spendthrift ways was a point well-taken.  However,  attempting to link any "non-progressive" view to racism, Mr. Bashir began to forge a link between Governor Palin's comments and the antebellum variety of the peculiar institution, going so far as to recommend that someone, following an antebellum punishment visited upon uncooperative slaves, should defecate and urinate in the former Alaska governor's mouth.  This was too much even for the MSNBC management staff, as Mr. Bashir was subsequently relieved of his responsibilities at the network.

It is a fact, I am afraid, that racism - or, I  should say bogus charges of racism - drives too many agendas in the U.S. these days.  In effect, "racism" has entered into a politically-correct tandem with "homophobia" to distort, distract and otherwise to drown out alternative points of view.  In quashing legitimate opposition, political-correctness has created an illegitimate orthodoxy which is highly reminiscent  of the doublespeak which has prevailed under communist and fascist dictatorships.  It is all about how one applies certain words.  For example, we hear such words as "multiculturalism" and "diversity" these days; and, to the unthinking individual, they may sound commendable and grand.  But, within the context of 21st century political-correctness, such language may very well connote a Puritan-like exclusion of differing ideas and opinions.  It is more than a little sobering to think that the land to which my 17th century ancestor fled is today succumbing to a mindset similar to that from which he took flight.

Deo Vindice!

God bless Texas, and may the Lone Star State remain forever red!