An oldie but goodie from Samizdata.net, quoted nearly in full:
… Truth is more horrifying than fiction, sometimes.
The truth in question being the willingness of those close to power openly to advocate ever more interference with you and me, not ad hoc for venal, corrupt, human reasons, but in order systematically to enforce the currently approved good life on society.
From the BBC …
Jasper Gerard argues …… Current regulations are failing to tackle the growing trend of under age and binge drinking. …
… He proposes getting 18-year-olds to carry smart cards which record how much they have drunk each night and making it an offence to serve more alcohol to anyone under-21 …
I note the BBC has this story under 'health', rather than 'politics'. It does not have a 'neo-Puritanism' category (perhaps we should have). Medicalised bullying sails past the questioning pickets of journalism and gets straight into the credulous baggage train. As does technological bullying. And here we have medicalised state bullying enabled by technology. Woo-hoo!
One can not quote this fragment of C.S. Lewis too often:
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.… The robber baron pursues his own whims and pleasures, regardless of others; the neo-Puritan is only happy when the lives of others are under control. [italic emphasis added]
Neo-puritanism is a word I’m going to have to add to my world view.
And now we have the Obama administration’s new policy: a church that does not approve of birth control for its members must nonetheless provide it to its members because it volunteers to extend charitable care to people who are not church members and who might want birth control and who would like it provided through charity and who can’t be legally directed to some other charity that might also provide birth control.
That last clause may be hard to follow. Sorry, but you can’t make this stuff up.
Or as Macaulay put it a few decades before C.S. Lewis:
[Fredrick the Great] did not, it is true, intend to act unjustly. He firmly believed that he was doing right, and defending the cause of the poor against the wealthy. Yet this well-meant meddling probably did far more harm than all the explosions of his evil passions during the whole of his long reign. We could make shift to live under a debauchee or a tyrant; but to be ruled by a busybody is more than human nature can bear.
— Thomas Babington Macaulay, Review of Fredrick the Great and His Times
Posted by: Æternitatis | February 15, 2012 at 09:36 AM
On point, but let's also include neo-puritan efforts to control behavior that isn't traditionally seen as immoral like eating fatty foods or guzzling that sweet, sweet carbonated cola.
Posted by: Rodet | February 16, 2012 at 12:10 PM
Interesting. I know a bit about Frederick the Great's military adventures, but I didn't know he was a social busybody too.
Wait ... hold on ... isn't he the source of all that Prussian asceticism? Chalk that up to a middle-age moment.
Posted by: Dave Tufte | February 28, 2012 at 10:57 AM
Cortney: I agree with you ... but don't you think the whole point of continuing to use the puritan moniker is to label people who do choose to view all personal choices as moral ones.
FWIW: I've found that there are more people in Utah that think that a person's weight is a morality issue. I'm not sure if this is a western thing or a Utah thing though.
Posted by: Dave Tufte | February 28, 2012 at 11:53 AM