Word: puritans
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American humor in its traditional forms -the wisecrack, the tall tale, the deadpan jape, the shaggy-dog story -has both resisted the official puritanism and made it all possible. For more than two centuries, from that subversive puritan Ben Franklin to the wryly theological Charles Schulz, the nation's humorists have operated as a tolerated underground culture. They have conspired to create a fantasy world where good Americans could be as shiftless as Charlie Chaplin's tramp, as cynical as W.C. Fields never-giving-a-sucker-an-even-break, as lecherous as Groucho Marx prowling a bedroom. American...
...Orwellian conformity is reassuring to those of us who are apprehensive of the Administration's plans to "bring us together." That Mr. Douglas prefers not to pattern his private life after the neo-Victorian vogue prevailing in Washington is understandable. That Mr. Douglas abhors crass censorship in the puritan tradition of Increase Mather is not only praiseworthy but also healthy...
...Puritan Ethic scored a partial victory over the Sexual Revolution yesterday...
...Russia and China, on the other hand, an untamed peasantry became the backbone of another successful authoritarian movement: Communism. But the Puritan revolution in England and the 1789 revolution in France effectively crippled the agricultural powers and opened the way for modernization along democratic lines. The one social revolution in the U.S.-the Civil War-succeeded only partially, according to Moore. The radical reconstructionists failed to win the land redistribution in the South that would have assured the ex-slaves their freedom. Still, the power of the landowners was sufficiently reduced to prevent them from later joining with Northern capitalists...
...better at extrapolating from the past than anticipating surprises. Could all these trends that seem to lead from the '60s to the '70s be reversed? Certainly. After all, the heady air of freedom in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I was suddenly stifled by the Puritan Revolution in England, and staid Victorian laws followed the carefree boisterous spirit of the Regency. It may be that the early '70s will see a period of repressive reaction against the Dionysian tendencies of the young. There may also be a purely spontaneous swing back to discretion and suggestion. "Writers...