Progressive Puritans

When I started teaching nearly two decades ago, I never thought the term “progressive” would come back in style.

It had been discredited and rightfully dumped into the historical trash heap, that is until leftists figured out “liberal” became so toxic they had to come up with something else.

Thus, the new “progressives” were born, but not with any new ideas or tactics. They simply started acting like the progressives of old. This isn’t a good thing.

The “progressive” rebranding also coincided with the rise of the American secular religion of politics. It wasn’t that Americans didn’t appreciate factions before the early twenty-first century, George Washington warned against them in 1796, but Americans had real theology to worry about for most of United States history.

Not so any longer. Now Americans are more concerned about a child marrying a person with opposite political views than a different religion.

And now progressive dogma has become the new home for religious zealots in America. Cancel culture is merely a way of weeding out the heretics.

This isn’t new. These “progressives” are the new puritans. Back in the seventeenth century, the puritans used to “cancel” anyone who didn’t think like them. They banned books, plays, newspapers, sport, and even Christmas. The puritans often worried that somewhere, someone was having fun they shouldn’t be having.

The closer you were to their communities the worse it became. Take Thomas Morton and his Merrymount community in Massachusetts.

He was not only booted out of Massachusetts (and at one point sentenced to death), but his book that rightfully blasted the puritans for being a bunch of nincompoops was banned because he spoke the truth.

The puritans could be “the squad” or any other Karen running around America (or Europe) today. The puritans invented this type of lunacy.

They also believed in the liberty of the community over individual liberty which is why we get the morons who wear masks while alone in cars or standing in the middle of the wilderness. This is a mental disorder to the nth degree.

Of course, a better term for these people is simply a Yankee. They come in all forms and are found everywhere in America.

I discuss the political puritans in Episode 443 of The Brion McClanahan Show.