Published this last summer, author Noah Rothman (of Commentary magazine) wrote “The Rise Of The New Puritans” as a cathartic response to the year that was 2020. In it, he first proclaims “This is a book for grown-ups” as he begins to compare and contrast the Puritanism that first helped shape what became America in its founding, to the “New Puritans,” who are attempting to remake the culture with the same tactics all over again.

Rothman approaches the topic in systematic fashion, and the introductory chapter reads more like the introduction to a sociology textbook. As a result, this book does not start off as an “easy” read, but more like an academic one. However, as Rothman works through the chapters – entitled after virtues that the Puritans of old would have recognized, like “Piety,” “Prudence,” “Austerity,” and “Temperance,” among others – and begins to break down what Puritan values and social compacts existed, and compares them to the far-left “woke” progressivism that cloaks itself in all the trappings of religion. As Rothman writes in his “Introduction”:

Like their puritanical forbearers, the progressive activism explored in this book does not abide forms of pleasure that distract from the great work of our time. The puritanical progressive’s project – the perfection of the social compact – is not going to be fun. It is work. Its pursuit is supposed to be accompanied by discomfort, sacrifice, and quiet contemplation about the abject state in which we find ourselves.”

Like their forefathers, the progressive puritans are committed to waging war on decadence, frivolity, and pleasure for its own sake. They believe that to be a mark of their seriousness, but it looks more to the uncommitted observer like fanaticism. In pursuit of what they believe will be a better world, its pursuers are making fools of themselves and immiserating their compatriots in the process.” (page xiii)

The examples that Rothman brings up in each chapter are ones that we have even covered on this blog at different times. From the stripping of Laura Ingalls Wilder off an award named for her, to the odious “Race2Dinner” lecturing that progressive white women willingly pay for, to the entire Colin Kaepernick saga and Nike cashing in on his status, and ESPN deciding to bring politics into sports coverage, to the left’s annual complaints about “cultural appropriation” around Halloween, there were so many examples for Rothman to dig through and discuss in the context of “progressive puritanism.” (I found myself wishing that the book hadn’t been published before the eco-idiots started throwing soup at paintings and supergluing themselves to the frames in order to protest oil consumption, because I’m sure that would have made it into the book.) As Rothman continually points out, these “New Puritans” are contextually the same as the old ones – they are trying to impose their own vision of order upon society.

Like their ancestors, the modern Puritan ethos is a reaction to a perceived crisis. The only remedy for our presently chaotic state is to impose order on it – a newer, better order.” (Chapter 7, “Order: The Company We Keep,” page 193)

Rothman also delves more than a little into the history of the Puritans, stretching from their prominence and persecution in England, to their move to the American colonies. One part of history that he does not shy away from is the one thing that has remained in popular culture regarding the Puritans for decades – the Salem Witch Trials. After the English Reformation and the restoration of Charles II to the throne, England took tighter control over New England and the Mid-Atlantic colonies, vacating and rewriting colony charters and ending the power of the church to deal in local politics, which meant when Salem Village held their infamous witchcraft trials in 1692, it turned into “a moral panic.”

Previously, trials for those accused of witchcraft were relatively infrequent. The execution of the convicted was even rarer, and local authorities tended to use their power to invalidate rulings they believed to be unjust. But in 1692, amid profound political flux and confusion, the magistrates tasked with investigating the inexplicable fits that struck the daughter of Salem Village’s minister made grave mistakes. In deference to this new age of political pluralism, the magistrates opened their preliminary hearings to the public. Those proceedings became a spectacle as the alleged victims put on performative displays of possession for the benefit of the audience. And that audience, having been whipped up into a terrorized frenzy, demanded indiscriminate bloodshed.” (Chapter 8, “Reformation: Slowly at First, Then All at Once,” pages 229-230)

Sound even remotely familiar to anything that has happened over the last couple of years? But take heart, Rothman says – if history repeats itself, then these “New Puritans” will fall the same way the old ones did.

Puritanism fell victim to a generational backlash – a fate to which we all must one day succumb. Its inflexible codes of social conduct could not evolve with a changing world, and the inheritors of its strict commandments lacked their parents’ fear of the temptations abundant in secular and commercial life beyond the village’s bounds. Ultimately, Puritanism’s blind zeal paved the way for its own demise.” (Ibid, pages 232-233)

The bleeding edge of New Puritan thought believes itself to be boldly transgressive… but the executors of this vision today are not so intimidating. The New Puritans have made themselves into comic figures. They are the very portrait of fastidious busybodies. The consequences of their actions may be deadly serious, but these are not serious people.”

They are worthy of mockery. Mock them.” (Ibid, pages 235-236)

This book was neither a quick read or a fun read, and Rothman’s points are much easier to digest when he talks about them in interviews, which he ably does here on MSNBC, where he is a contributor.

However, the book is an important one for a broader historical perspective on the woke insanity that we are all currently being forced to watch. And if we have to watch these progressive puritans twist themselves into ever more ridiculous levels of self-loathing in order to prove how righteous they are, then the only way to cope is to do as Rothman suggests: mock the hell out of them. This book is an important tool in doing just that.

Featured image: original Victory Girls art by Darleen Click