Word: puritanism
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College life is just a bastion of the Puritan work ethic. That's one basis of American society, but it lacks the emotion of ingenuity and surprise. So what if we can work hard, get secure jobs, set up trust funds for our children's education and save enough money to retire while we can still remember what we want to enjoy. Is this the American Dream circa 1990? Safe sex, safe drinking, safe bank accounts? We're getting so boring...
...have been expected, the French, who tend to be connoisseurs of other nations' foibles, provided the most piquant blend of sneering and scolding. "Since the arrival of the pilgrim fathers," said Le Monde in a front-page editorial, "America has never truly settled its account with sin. The old Puritan heritage periodically surges forth from the collective memory, invading the national life and upsetting the political game. But over time, these resurgences of prudery have grown in cruelty, bordering today on the absurd...
...Protestant churches seem obsessed with sex these days. Not that their interest in the subject is new. Puritan disquisitions on sex were so plainspoken that early 20th century editions of them had to be bowdlerized. But the terms of today's discussion are revolutionary -- not Why do men sin? but Why shouldn't they party? Traditional strictures against homosexuality, premarital sex (once called fornication), even adultery, are up for theological debate. The Presbyterians in conclave assembled gave thumbs down to the new morality; the Episcopalians gave thumbs sideways; the United Methodist Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will...
Zealotry of either kind -- the puritan's need to regiment others or the victim's passion for blaming everyone except himself -- tends to produce a depressing civic stupidity. Each trait has about it the immobility of addiction. Victims become addicted to being victims: they derive identity, innocence and a kind of devious power from sheer, defaulting helplessness. On the other side, the candlesnuffers of behavioral and political correctness enact their paradox, accomplishing intolerance in the name of tolerance, regimentation in the name of betterment...
...Puritan zealots and all-purpose victims deforming the American character...