“The War on Fun” with Noah Rothman
Are there comparable periods in our history that can guide us through the current ‘“woke” debates? Is there precedent for this kind of thing burning out? Will it? How did we get to this point? And how long will it take?
That’s what we discuss today with Noah Rothman, whose new book, just released this week, is called “The Rise of the New Puritans: Fighting Back Against Progressives War on Fun.”
Noah is an incisive writer and analyst. He writes about policy and politics and foreign affairs. He is an associate editor of Commentary Magazine, his previous book was called “Unjust: Social Justice and the Unmaking of America.” He’s also an MSNBC/NBC News contributor.
Transcript
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[00:00:00] You can't earn an indulgence from this movement. Uh, it's the sort of thing that requires ongoing, active, everyday participation in just about every facet of life. Now, again, that's a mania. That's the sort of thing that you can't really sustain unless it is being enforced and imposed upon you. And that there are punishments for, for offending the particular pieties of the, of the tribe, whatever they may be, they change from, from moment to moment, which is another reason why this is becoming a source of so much resentment.
If you drew a Venn diagram of listeners to this podcast and viewers of The Bachelor, I suspect there'd be very little overlap. So I'm going to take a moment to tell you about a controversy on The Bachelor that you probably never heard about. Stay with me. Early last year was the 25th season of the hit reality series, The Bachelor.
One of the final [00:01:00] contestants made it to the last round, only to be greeted by a revved up social media mob that had crowdsourced a photo of her from 2018, when she was like 20 or 21 years old, showing that she had once attended an antebellum themed party. Party. A flurry of outrage lit up on social media and even in the mainstream press.
The longtime host of The Bachelor, Chris Harrison, who had 19 seasons under his belt, called for calm. He was quoted saying that everyone should have, and I quote here, a little grace, a little understanding, A little compassion towards this contestant. Then, almost on cue, everyone turned on Harrison. All of the contestants from that season even felt pressure to jointly sign a statement that they released publicly saying, quote, that they denounce any defense of racism and any defense of racist behavior.
Was Harrison defending racism? Well, according to the mob, he was. And after 19 seasons, he was pushed out of his [00:02:00] job due to the, quote, racism controversy. That's what Deadline Hollywood called it in its reporting. Sound crazy? Or does it actually sound too familiar? Like the kind of canceling you hear of these days, all the time on college campuses and newsrooms and even at some companies, or at children's schools.
It's also ripping through entertainment and professional sports. But this isn't new. What is new is a real understanding of comparable periods in our history that can guide us. Is there a precedent for this kind of thing burning out? Will it? Can it? How do we get to this point? And how long will it take?
That's what a lot of people are asking. That's what we discussed today with Noah Rothman, whose new book just released this week is called The Rise of the New Puritans, Fighting Back Against Progressive's War on Fun. Noah's an incisive writer and analyst. I read just about everything he writes for Commentary Magazine.
where he writes about politics and policy and foreign affairs. [00:03:00] He's also an associate editor of Commentary Magazine. And his previous book, just a couple of years old, was called Unjust, Social Justice and the Unmaking of America. Noah is also an MSNBC and an NBC News contributor. This is Call Me Back. And I'm pleased to welcome Commentary Magazine's Noah Rothman to the conversation, the author of the just released.
book, The Rise of the New Puritans, Fighting Back Against Progressives, War on Fun, a book I have been devouring. Noah, welcome to the conversation. Thank you so much for having me, Dan. It's a pleasure to be here. Well, I um, I gotta tell you, this book, um, I've enjoyed reading. But it also has like made my head explode because it's reminded me about so much of what I've hated about the last couple of years.
So what we get to do now is like unpack some of that, which I guess is be therapy. I mean, I guess I like you're, you're sort of, [00:04:00] you're a writer and journalist. And I guess for my purposes today, a little bit of a therapist. I mean, this book was therapy for me, the whole genesis of it. Was that I was absolutely miserable in 2020 and I'm sitting around with my wife and saying, you know, how can I get un miserable?
Politics is, is just, there's the height of the riots, the pandemic. So summer 2020. Uh, it's actually like a late 2020, late fall, early winter. And I'm like, well, what, what do you want to do? Oh, if I had my druthers, I'd talk to people in industries I like. I'd talk to chefs, I'd talk to playwrights, and entertainers, and comics, and ah, but I can't.
Because that's, even that's not outside the realm of politics anymore. Politics is everything, and it's everywhere, and it's making everything terrible. She says that's the book. And it was the book. So it was therapy for me too. Okay, so that's, so I want to start about the, the idea that the book, or what you identify in the book, is making, um, everything fun political, so one of my, I'm a, I'm a massive, uh, sports fan, one of my favorite [00:05:00] quotes is by this manager from Real Madrid who, uh, who actually comes originally from Italian football or Italian soccer, uh, named Carlo Ancelotti, and he famously said, football, referring to soccer, football football.
is the most important of the least important things and it's to me it like it's it's very important because the emphasis is on the least important in other words in other words we get wound up as sports fans about something incredibly unimportant because it's a form of escapism and what you zero in on this book is how all these Banal forms of escapism in our daily life are suddenly not allowed to be untouched by politics.
Sometimes explicitly. Where me explain people Well, I, well, just to take one example in sports, if you're a, if you're a, a sports fan, an enthusiast watching live, uh, broadcast games or network coverage, [00:06:00] or ESPN, for example, you're often treated to prolonged digressions about the lamentable state of race relations in America.
Right? And fans routinely object to the imposition of political themes, not politics, but political themes on their happy pastime, their diversion, and when they object. They're often explicitly admonished for privileging and, uh, preserving their desire for escapism and putting that above their duty to dwell on the world's miseries and resolve to act to, uh, to try to alleviate them.
That is your mission in life because sports ultimately aren't that important. Okay, so let's, let's, so let's, I want to give our listeners a few examples. So what you were talking about right now was like. Ongoing commentary on ESPN. So can you describe to us what was happening on ESPN? How ESPN got sucked into this?
What it actually looked and felt like? I mean, I know what it looked and felt like because I [00:07:00] was living it and I was like throwing things at my television when I'd watch ESPN, but for those listeners of ours that aren't, um, sports freaks, what, um, what was happening? I mean, it certainly predates 2020, um, but not by a whole lot, uh, there, we were overtaken with this sentiment in which ESPN contributors, guests, hosts, and, uh, and, and sports figures, athletes, um, had to contextualize the game within the context of American social politics, and American social politics sort of overtook the mission of entertaining audiences, um, the most famous example of this is, um, Oh, uh, Jamel Hill, who's, uh, of ESPN 2's His and Hers, and she, uh, became very political, explicitly political, and ended up losing her, uh, her gig over at ESPN for it.
Now, she was very well compensated for it, and ended up moving over to the Atlantic to do more explicitly political commentary, where she probably belonged. Um, but this was, there was a [00:08:00] revolt inside ESPN over the, uh, idea that one, one radio host I said that in order to talk about, you know, issues, real issues in this country, we need to use these athletes as a meat shield, quote, meat shield to try to, uh, you know, contribute something of substance.
to this conversation. Well, that sort of cheapens the mission that you're on, right? I mean, if you're a sports broadcaster, your mission is to broadcast about sports. Now, you might find that unimportant, but your fans probably don't. And if you do feel like you're underserved by this, by your calling in life, then find another calling.
Um, ESPN's leadership was shaken up as a result of this because, uh, one of the new president came in, I think, 18, 19, something along those lines, explicitly said, look, we're, we're a sports broadcasting network, we're going to talk about sports. Uh, your pangs of conscience notwithstanding. And that might sound a little cruel, especially if you're, if you're, if you perceive yourself to have, uh, an absolute moral [00:09:00] imperative to address the circumstances that are in your environment that you find so utterly intolerable.
That does make sense. But when the fans object to it When they want what they came here to get, your core primary mission statement, and you have a problem with that? It's not the fans that are the problem, it's you! You have abandoned your mission statement. You are outside your lane. You are trying to do everything, and be everything, for everyone, and therefore not doing anything.
Well, uh, and there is also a very, um, and I, to lean, to bring it back to the, the latent puritanism of all this, there is an element of puritanical thought in the late 16th century, uh, 16th century, 17th century, and up to, uh, 19th century early nascent progressivism that had a very much disdained anything that was athletic, that didn't have a martial dimension to it, blood sports, um, sports involving animals, were, uh, statutorily banned, and they generally frowned upon anything that could produce injury, [00:10:00] uh, that led to excess consumerism, jingoism, wearing costumes, which is odiously similar to performance art, which is utterly banned in the, in the Puritan world.
And we kind of go into the, that strains of thought about how, in the modern world, sports distract from your studies. which is a much more important pursuit. Sports distracts from, um, sports encouraged toxic, toxic masculinity and the abuse of women, which is also something that the Puritans were very much attuned to and punished accordingly.
And ultimately it distracts from the great mission of our time, which is organizing for progressive change. That should be what your, what your focus is on the great mission of our lives today. So another example from sports, and then we're going to. provide some examples from other, uh, walks of life to show that, like, no sphere of life today is left untouched.
Uh, the Colin Kaepernick saga over the last few years. Now just Just to refresh Colin Kaepernick was a superb quarterback played for the San [00:11:00] Francisco 49ers But with many like many athletic careers it you know his his performance started to wane and it it the the the it ended if you will in 20s in this 2016 season when the 49ers had two wins 14 losses Kaepernick started I think most of the something like 11 games that season and and then he During the, his contract was up and he wanted to explore options and he didn't get picked up anywhere, which is common for athletes in any sport who are coming, trying to go out into the free agency market and have a Lackluster record or at least recent lackluster record.
What happened from there? Well, I mean, what isn't common is that the guy trying to fish for a new contract gets this tryout, gets this, you know, tryout for all the teams that were, that were attempting to bring him back to the game, and internal negotiations broke down. We can only imagine why. But, as you said [00:12:00] You know, Kaepernick overshadowed the 2016 season with his kneeling protests and his various grievance, which were omni directional.
He had a problem with just about every aspect of American culture, favorably contrasted American jurisprudence with the alternative offered by communist Cuba. He was, he was quite a character. Um, but he managed to portray his ousting from, uh, uh, his, the NFL and make it into a story about oppression broadly his own and that of black Americans in the United States.
Uh, and ultimately he won the NFL sort of objected to and, uh, kneeling protests and did their best to discourage them and even punish those who engaged in it. But by 2020, the, the league had utterly capitulated. To the point where, um, you had two national anthems being played at the, at the NFL, the American National Anthem and the so called Black National Anthem, which is, uh, the, uh, Civil Rights Hymn, Lift Every Voice and Sing.
Uh, and fans objected to this. Fans, uh, frequently booed. [00:13:00] They booed displays of, uh, of racial separatism. They booed kneeling during the national anthem. They didn't like it. And they're routinely admonished by the people who know better, who think that you need to be properly educated and steep yourself in the inequities of this country, even enduring your, uh, pastimes and diversions.
Which renders them not diversions anymore, but that is the point, because you're not, you shouldn't be allowed that kind of, uh, that kind of excess, that abdication of your responsibility to make for a better world. And Kaepernick appears in the chapter in my book on austerity, which is on sports and fashion.
Which you wouldn't think would go together, but they absolutely do in Colin Kaepernick's case, because he transitions right over to fashion, where he proceeds to make his cause into, um, a form of, uh, what, what has become, what has become to be called moral merch, which is in which, um, you know, fashion pre, presenters.
I didn't even, that's a real term? Moral merch? It's a real term. Um, it's in, it's in there and it was, uh, it was in a McKinsey [00:14:00] memo. Okay. And, uh, It describes exactly what it sounds like. It is literally wearing your politics on your sleeve. Now, that used to be, uh, an epithet, a euphemism for trite and shallow political values.
Not anymore. It is how you're expected to navigate your environment. And Puritans had this as well. They had sumptuary laws, mostly to delineate class, to demonstrate outwardly who you were, what your birth was, and to whom you were subordinate. Uh, we have that today too. It's not class so much that this signifies.
It is your ethnic background, your ethnic heritage. So, um, you're expected to wear a uniform that comports with your ethnicity. If you're, um, anything other than in this, in the new Puritan fashion, if you're any, anything other than a Latina, you should not be wearing hoop earrings. Otherwise you're appropriating something.
If you're, um, appropriating African American hairstyles as something other than an African American. without having properly been permitted to do so. [00:15:00] Um, you are appropriating a culture that is not your own and not paying homage to it, which is a distinction they refuse to draw. There is a difference then.
One that I draw sort of subtly, with nuance, is that like pornography, you know it when you see it. I'm not saying that there isn't a way to be flippant and careless. With cultural heritages that are not your own, it's possible. But this has been broadened to a scope and degree that it, that doesn't observe any distinctions whatsoever.
The most illustrative of this, I think, is in that fashion section. Where does this, uh, uh, uh, uh, something erupts over an offense caused by an online realtor that was marketing a T shirt with Japanese characters on it. The only problem is those characters were Chinese and the people who were of this culture took that as, as a great offense, as a great attack on, uh, on their cultural heritage when it could only have ever been an accident.
Led that was the result of ignorance and if you cling to that idea that you've been deliberately offended When the simpler [00:16:00] explanation occam's razor is that these people just had no idea what they were doing That's not a mark of maturity or sophistication It's utterly childish Um, but we have elevated that kind of immaturity into a value proposition on the issue of so so in kaepernick Uh, left the NFL, or, I think, I think when he started the, the kneeling protest, he, he made some comment that he was willing to do this even if it meant him not, you know, not availing himself of opportunities in the NFL going forward, and he was willing to do this if it meant giving up his sponsorship deals and, and all his sources of income, uh, going forward.
He was willing to take that risk, which, you know, You know, if it's something he believed in, obviously it's, in one sense, it's admirable, but the reality has been, I'm not saying this was his calculation, but it is, it is worth noting, the reality is, as far as sponsorships are concerned, um, the track, the path that Colin Kaepernick has taken has been pretty good business for him.
Uh. And Nike. Right, so why [00:17:00] don't you explain, what has happened since, I mean, for this. Yeah, his um, his slogan, so he joined Nike as like the premier spokesperson for Yeah, an ambassador. Ambassador for Nike, yeah. Um, and, uh, his slogan was, on his advertising, was, uh, believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.
Nike didn't sacrifice anything. Kaepernick branded products provided Nike with roughly 163 million in free advertising. The stock went through the roof. People really respond to this sort of thing, which is why moral merch is everywhere, because it is good for your bottom line to market your, to market yourself as For example, Levi's is the official pants of the gun control movement.
Did you know gun control had an official pants? They do. Levi's jeans. Uh, you can go down the line, but this is the sort of trite Um, political conduct that passes for sophistication today. [00:18:00] And it is purely a uniform to do, to show outwardly, um, your piety, your level of commitment to the cause. Okay. I want to rattle off a couple more stories that I think are very illustrative of what we're dealing with.
And then, and then I have a few other topics I want to get into. So the story that you wrote about in, um, In Minneapolis, the, it's called the Land Grocer, the Holy Land Grocer, which is, uh, a Middle East food grocery store owned by a gentleman by the name of Majdi Wadi. Can you tell the story of what happened to him?
Yeah, he was pretty well known in his community and he was even featured, um, on the floor of the house by Congressman Keith Ellison. Guy Fieri went there and featured his place on Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives. And Keith, and Keith Ellison, just for our listeners, his former Democratic. from, from Minnesota, the stores in Minneapolis.
He's now the attorney general. He's very much a progressive icon, uh, early [00:19:00] supporter of Bernie Sanders. It's kind of one, one of the big voices at the left in, in Minnesota and nationally. So he, and he, he, he, he was a fan of the store, the store had other. As you're saying, a lot of very, you know, liberal activist types who, who frequented.
So it's not like this was Chick fil A. No, but I'm, I mean, not to digress, but it is often that the targets of this movement are those who are most, uh, deferential to it. Okay. So I want to, I want to, I do want to get to that point. So first tell the story and then that's a very important point. Yeah. Yeah. So, um.
He was very popular and very successful, which also attracted a lot of negative attention from people who resent success or want a piece of the pie for themselves. Uh, so, uh, at one point, this gentleman's daughter, who, uh, was an employee, a low level employee at Holy Land, had been discovered that she had made racially insensitive remarks on social media.
twice when she was respectively [00:20:00] 14 and 18 years old. She had subs, she was subsequently several years older, um, but young indiscretions, um, and there was a pile on, on the internet and they attempted to ruin it, the place's reviews and had this, they were going like on Yelp, right? And ruining the reviews on Yelp and, and, and piling on and, and making a case out of it.
And one that, uh, what he responded to. And just so clear, was this, was this around the. 2020 George Floyd was this when was all this happened? When did all this heat get kicked? I have to go into my notes. It was early 2020, early 2020. So it was maybe even before the riots, but still this was a lot of this predates the riots.
I mean, that was just a catalyst for this sort of thing. But anyway, so he, he did his best to appease them, um, saying that, you know, she would, uh, they would engage in and they would donate and they would engage in listening to her, what have you. It wasn't good enough. So, he eventually had to take the, the step of firing his own child.
He promised that he would hire diversity consultants, and she would devote herself to doing good [00:21:00] works, and uh, engaging in anti bias training, and it was, none of it was good enough. No apology was good enough. Eventually, the landlord, uh, terminated Holy Land's lease. Uh, and this was a punishment that was, I write, was befitting the sin of careless parentage of a willful daughter.
Um, which is quite, Quite clearly, uh, something that you wouldn't think of would be something that, uh, the, the permissive left would be so finely attuned to, but the permissive left is no more. There's a moral framework informing a lot of this. It is, this is one example of it. Another, uh, subsequently, um, comes to us from the, uh, Los Angeles Galaxies soccer team.
Um, where midfielder Alexander Katai, uh, woke up one morning to find that his, uh, family was in the, uh, was enduring a lot of, uh, scrutiny over his wife's, uh, conduct online. She had, uh, posted some, her, uh, Teja, his wife, who speaks, [00:22:00] um, Serbian, I believe, um, had posted some very actually provocative and arguably racist, I would I would be convinced by that argument.
Racist, uh, posts during the riots, where she was, uh, writing things in Serbian. Uh, like, uh, black Nikes matter, like, picturing individuals who are looting and saying, uh, you know. Really kind of offensive slogans. Um, and she was called out for it and she apologized for it. Uh, but it ended up costing Katai his career.
He was fired. So just to be clear, no one was suggesting that Katai, this midfielder for the LA Galaxy, did anything wrong. No one said he said anything offensive. He publicly denounced his own spouse. He publicly denounced his own spouse who said some very provocative and offensive things on social media, but she's her own person with her own identity.
He, he publicly condemned it. Yeah, his association with a woman of low repute had tainted him too. Okay. So we can go on and on and on with these stories. Uh, [00:23:00] I, I highly that you, you chronicle a lot of them in the book, which is, and, and they're, they're important to read and they're important to actually really think through.
So that's why I encourage, uh, listeners to, to read this book, but I want to get now to how this happened. Um, so. So you, in the book, explain that this approach to, I don't know, public, you know, kind of public square censorship, if you will, was, was something that historically had been the province of the right, the American political right, and then it somehow migrated to the left.
So first, can you describe What it was when it was the right doing this what would it look like I mean it you know Oh, we all I mean all of us who grew up Excuse me, um who basically were alive for the last 40 years know full well that Traditionally the you could count on the right to be priggish To be prudish, to be sanctimonious, to see with their [00:24:00] keen, discerning eye, in seemingly innocent and harmless cultural products, the influence of corruption that not only would taint you, but degrade society as a whole.
Uh, this was something that, uh, an excess of the moral majoritarian sort of approach to. political dialogue that was borderline paranoid, but nevertheless, um, had a, had a moralistic philosophy that informed its political activism. By contrast, the, uh, liberal left emphasized self fulfillment, self actualization, and self gratification, even at the, uh, at the risk of self Being the self destructive, uh, it was a permissive philosophy that had its roots in the sexual revolution of the 1960s, which subsequently took over the culture in the, in the eighties and the politics in the nineties and became an unquestioned ethos of the left until the last decade.
Uh, at which point we've seen a profound reversal, a much more austere progeny [00:25:00] is. coming up that emphasizes, um, torment, that emphasizes gratuitous displays of public labor and public penance, uh, of self deprivation. It elevates self deprivation to a virtue, because there are certain temptations that you should not allow yourself.
In fact, if you do allow yourself, there's something of a zero sum game here. You're taking it away from somebody else. And This book endeavors to draw out the threads between that outlook, that philosophy, and how it connects to, uh, mid 19th century progressivism, um, which, uh, was very native to, um, geographic areas dominated by mainline Protestantism.
It was a moral crusade as much as a political movement, and you'd, you'd follow that thread a little bit longer, and you end up in the, uh, in the late 1600s, early 1700s, uh, where that, um, Mainline Protestantism was, uh, really, really honed itself. I mean, it was a transatlantic [00:26:00] philosophy, but it was, it was the most excessive, the most zealous in the colonies.
Uh, and while the Aperitan experiment was very short lived in historical terms, we, they've left with, they've bequeathed us with A really, uh, enduring legacy for a lot of good reasons. This book is not an attack on Puritanism per se. They left us with a lot of things that we should be thankful for. Proto democratic institutions that eventually became, uh, the, the American experiment as we understand it.
Uh, they were the most committed abolitionists. They were, uh, they left us with a social contract that ensures that you don't have to be dependent on charity alone in your darkest hours. These are valuable. But there's an excess to it. And the excesses are that you're utterly exhausting. You in mixed company are difficult to deal with because you are so consumed with this moral crusade that you know to be righteous and that you must observe at all times and in all places and that does not allow for diversions, one of the greatest sins In the Puritan book of sins is idleness, [00:27:00] that which is not contributing actively and without any nuance to it, you can't be trusted to enjoy nuance, um, was, uh, deemed to be the vessel of sin.
Uh, it would, if it wasn't productive, it would inevitably be co opted. By evil and we see that today and how everything must have a very plotting didactic narrative associated with it because you cannot be trusted with subtlety, um, why is disney decided that every movie has to have regardless of the plot line has to have this, uh, lgbt narrative to it or are they playing or when they're playing classics.
Like Aladdin and others, they have to put out the disclaimer before, right? Right, because it can't be something as trite as entertainment. Right. It has to have a higher social value. Right. So, how did the pivot of what you're describing from liberalism to progressivism, like, when I think of liberalism, I think of the liberal movement of the last, liberal, [00:28:00] Politics, philosophy, political philosophy in the last, you know, 10, 20 years.
It just seems like this very accelerated flip to what you're describing. This would have been unrecognizable to liberals 10, 20, 15 years ago. It feels like this acceleration just, it just went into like Turbospeed. So what, what happened? Yeah, so, um, well, the, the sexual revolution won and, uh, a sort of permissive licentious, uh, philosophy became the, uh, relatively unquestioned, uh, dominant theory within the liberal coalition of how they should organize themselves and what they should support and endorse.
Um, but there were dissenters within the ranks even during the new left. Um, you had, uh, You're Marcuse types who advocated for intolerance towards particular views that could lead to authoritarianism and anti liberal view. There was, there were your Andrea Dworkins, who was very famously hostile [00:29:00] to heterosexual courtship rituals and interpreted assault and harassment and rape, uh, broadly and to a degree that, uh, was.
perhaps a little mad, but nevertheless, uh, it had, it had its audience, but it wasn't a large audience. These were on the sidelines. This was the intellectual movement on the sidelines of the, of the new left, and they didn't have many adherents. They do now. Um, there were this dissension from, uh, the hedonistic permissive, uh, new left of the 1960s that eventually became and reached its Apotheosis with the Clinton presidency, um, was ultimate, there were a lot of dissensions within the ranks, but they didn't have their audience.
Uh, a new younger generation has since discovered. Uh, the virtues, and some of them are virtues, and in this chapter, the book is organized, um, by unimpeachable values, to which any responsible, well socialized adult would likely adhere, um, is their excess in practice. [00:30:00] But when you see young, young adults who are now turning away from sex, who are scared of alcohol, these adult markers, um, they're informed by a philosophy that, uh, became, came back into vogue in the last decade, uh, which understands that when you have social situations that are bathed in alcohol and men and women are on top of each other, That, things happen that are disruptive of the social fabric.
This is something conservatives understand rather intuitively. But to see the left rediscover it, as though it's a new philosophy, is fascinating. And it is an explicit rejection of their far more permissive, far more chill grandparents and parents. This is something that I, that this book argues these, these individuals need to be confronted with because they will adamantly reject it.
Um, but it is nevertheless the truth. But, okay, so, but, I, I just, was there a trigger, like, was it a gradual process, or was there, am I missing something, that, that, where, where liberal politics turned into this, because I didn't [00:31:00] see it coming. Yeah, I, I don't, I don't identify, uh, Uh, a starting point, but for example, John Haidt and Greg Luganov have, uh, in their book, uh, The Coddling of the American Mind, they identify the turning point as sometime around 2013, uh, at which point the student body on campuses became, um, began to conflate Uh, safety with, uh, intellectual coseting that they, they, they began to, uh, change the terms of the debate so that speech and violence were sort of indistinguishable and that speech could be violence and that violence could ultimately be then be a response to speech and that frankly.
Uh, anything that challenged them intellectually or otherwise was, uh, seen as a very literal form of trauma. This has subsequently migrated off campus and into institutions. Why? Uh, because these individuals were handed the levers of [00:32:00] power. They festoon their arguments with polysyllabic jargon that is superficially authoritative, difficult to argue with.
Um, and it's, and it has the capacity to capture institutions because these institutions are, uh, helmed. By people who are teaching these children how to capture these institutions. It's a very kind of clever act of piracy on their part Um, and it's been wildly successful Um because they've been lent this success back to this point that I was making before about how the targets of this movement usually Agree with it.
It does you no good as a movement To attack a hard target, have no success, and then just kind of have to slink away after three days and go after another one. To have efficacy, you have to be effective. So, going after the food truck with a bunch of liberals, who believe in white privilege, and saying that you've appropriated and stolen from the, the indigenous folk, uh, of, uh, of, uh, southern Mexico, is a very effective tactic, because they will self defenestrate.[00:33:00]
And hand you the reins. Uh, and we see this in quite a lot of, uh, of institutions. There are, those institutions that are resistant to this sort of thing can and do resist it. But there aren't that many of them that are. They're probably growing now, but over the last decade we've seen quite a lot of institutions fold in the face of this agitation.
Uh, because they fundamentally agree with the philosophy at root, even if they resent the tactics being employed against them. So, I want to quote here from your book, you say, um, the fatal, I'm quoting, The fatal flaw in the practice of new Puritanism is that it immiserates its adherents, and misery is unsustainable in the absence of a coercive mechanism.
For now, that mechanism is As it was centuries ago the guilt and shame imposed upon transgressors by the public square With the advent of social media the public square now resides in your pocket Meaning an iPhone. Uh, you go on to write, it is in your bed when you wake up in the morning, it's right where, it's right [00:34:00] there on your commute to and from work, and on your couch as you wind down for the night.
It is with you, judging you, always. Explain. Well, yeah, I think social media is probably one of them. most effective ways in which this is, uh, enforced and imposed on you. Um, because you have the sensation, an artificial sensation, frankly, there is a overwhelming body of opinion that's arrayed against you, and this is not.
This is not new, this is not, well, you know, untrodden ground here that social media creates an illusory perception of, uh, of general consensus. But social media is also an instrument by which these maxims are enforced deliberately. Um, so, for example, Facebook, um, has been flagged and targeted, uh, appropriately, because it is actually true, uh, for very often, um, limiting access to conservative books.
For example, [00:35:00] Amazon, too. Um, anything that sort of becomes really controversial, Abby Schreier's book, um, there's another novel, there's a novel about Abraham Lincoln that was blurbed by Mike Pence, and because it was blurbed by Mike Pence, it was too provocative, uh, for, for social media. Now, all of these, uh, books did wildly well, far better than they should have, by virtue of their PR campaigns around them and their investments, uh, by their publishers.
It was the censorship, That created these conditions for a backlash, and we we saw that in the 19th century as well. A story I tell at the end of this book, which I think is illustrative of how the seeds of this movement's destruction have already been sown is captured in the phrase band in Boston. So in the 19th century.
Um, Comstock, Anthony Comstock's, uh, moral policing efforts and Comstock Society's Comstockery, as it was called by H. L. Mencken, um, became vogue. It was in fashion and it was designed [00:36:00] to combat lewd and lascivious literature, uh, among them, uh, Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, that subversive tome. Uh, And they have very successful.
Boston, where mainline Protestantism was, uh, most effective, managed to, uh, ban a lot of books, baudelarize plays, ban songs from the radio, uh, make sure that you never had the Dime Store novel that was very popular elsewhere in the country. And this was seen as sort of an esoteric feature of Boston, uh, and it was definitely for, The Moral Majoritarian Movement, which also festooned its arguments with semi authoritative jargon.
The moral science in, uh, Yale Porter's book, uh, uh, talking about morality as a science. Um, but it eventually became not a warning against titillating literary experiences, but a powerful advertisement for it. Authors and publishers around the country actively sought to have their books banned in Boston so they could get more money From everywhere else where everybody would [00:37:00] buy this very titillating experience.
You simply had to have the experience for yourself and I see that as perhaps a way out of this just commercial culture because taboos are meant to be broken and That is the cost of living in a free society That you you will always have rule breakers who test the parameters of their environment and certainly are attracted to overturning taboos.
Um, that's, that's not something we can do away with. It's not something we should want to do away with. It is, uh, it is a virtue of a liberal society, but a liberal society is increasingly the problem as seen by the people who we used to call liberals. So, um, you said before that, or you identified one of the problems before, one of the, one of the features of this, of this movement, of this phenomenon is the, the intense, uh, very aggressive policing of its own, uh, you know, within the movement rather than people outside the movement.
I'm reminded of a friend of mine who's a very partisan [00:38:00] Democrat, center left Democrat. Who said to me recently that he is more under siege from this movement than I am. Meaning that he's saying you, Dan, because you're more associated with the right, you're less of a target. You're like less of a problem for them.
They, they, like, they don't like you, but they have to, they kind of figure they got to, like, Deal with you or live with you later. We're sorry later later, right? Right for now You're just like a foil that's like a necessary foil, but he said but me meaning this friend of mine this Democrat He's like they're out to get me.
He says I'm you know, I'm white middle aged Jewish Moderate liberal and I am like they are they've got a target on my back So I think that's what you were alluding to before. So why is he more under siege than I am? Well, and this is something I wrote about in my first book on just on social justice, and it's a right left phenomenon, too.
I mean, this is just really [00:39:00] just a basic effective organizing tactic is that you go after the targets that are most likely to lend you authority and those are the people who are going to agree with you and they happen to be when it comes to the It's artists, it's, um, it's chefs, it's fashion creators.
Uh, it's certainly, uh, entertainers and performers and have a dozen other subjects in this, in this book. And if I'm wrong that the, that there is no backlash fomenting, then there is everybody I spoke to for this book, nine out of 10 people I spoke to for this book are liberal, are Democrat, wouldn't vote for a Republican with a gun to their heads.
Um, but resent the, the conditions that are sapping them of the joy that they had in their life's work. Because their life's work is no longer about the work. It's about the work. It's about the politics that they have to adhere to, and the moral theory, moral sentiment, that they have to project, uh, outwardly, and not the art.
Uh, and they do resent it, and I think there's a backlash forming. If not, [00:40:00] then What your friend describes will be the ultimate course of events that the the Borg will succeed They will assimilate their own and they will train their fire on harder targets. So you and I are next Okay, but before we get I mean this particular individual is a you know is a very public.
I don't want to out him, but he's a very public, by name, but he's a very public critic of what he describes as mass incarceration, uh, and the unfairness of our criminal justice system, and he gives to a lot of very left wing causes. He's very active funding, um, criminal justice reform causes. So, what, I still don't, I mean, he, he seems to be, be going along with the party line, so to speak.
And I genuinely, by the way, I think he believed, I know he believes in these issues. It's not like he's doing it to just to get a membership card. So he's, it seems, but yet it's not enough. You know, they almost humans like more of a problem that he is doing those things. Yeah. Uh, [00:41:00] in part because he's, he's showing his soft underbelly.
I mean, one of the things that this movement rejects is the popular front mentality, whereas there's nobody, um, you know, to my, to my left, that is too far to my left. There's, um, The biggest coalition is the most powerful coalition. This is a very small group of people. I mean, it's, it's hard to sort of, uh, quantify exactly what this is.
Um, I've seen one survey that suggests that the truly woke progressive represents roughly 6 percent of the, of the population. Um, but this population punches way above its weight. They have managed to cow otherwise dissenting voices within their own. Uh, ideological firmament, um, to a, to a degree that does not comport with their, actually the scale and scope of this movement, which lends it outsize gravity and authority.
Um, and so, yeah, I mean, just, just by virtue of, uh, failing to toe a particular line, and it is a, it is a moral philosophy, it's not a [00:42:00] political philosophy, it is, it is in behavior and affect, uh, not just necessarily, you know, um, You know, you can't, you can't earn an indulgence from this movement. Uh, it's the sort of thing that requires ongoing, active, everyday participation in just about every facet of life.
Now again, that's a mania. That's the sort of thing that you can't really sustain unless it is being enforced and imposed upon you. And that there are punishments for, for offending the particular pieties of the, of the tribe, whatever they may be, they change from, from moment to moment, which is another reason why this is becoming a source of so much resentment, but it is just the functional disruption of what they get up every day to do.
These professionals in who create cultural products, uh, that's not really the focus of their jobs anymore. And they are. Very frustrated by it. My hope is to catalyze, insofar as I can, um, that rejection of this austere philosophy. And to confront these, you know, very young people who find them, think themselves to be the [00:43:00] most open minded, uh, with the fact that they're not.
Most certainly not. You also talk about what's going on in literature. I, I, I, I know I can keep going with these examples, but I just, I don't, I don't want to forget. I won't go through all of them, but I don't want to forget this one. So you talk about, like, it's not books being banned, but um, but the way, they're books that are sort of being given black marks by libraries and school districts, books like Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men.
I mean, you go on and on with a few of these examples. So why are these books problematic? And how, how are educational institutions and, um, libraries? Responding to the pressure being, being hurled at them for these books being problematic? Yeah, everybody talks about, um, books being banned when, on both sides of the aisle because there are conservative predilections that, um, and frankly, all these literary organizations take very keen note and observance of [00:44:00] any time a conservative has a problem with a work of literature, but somehow overlook it when their own side, uh, is going after classics, particularly American classics.
But yeah, there's a, you know, a very, uh, familiar, it's not new, it's a very familiar rejection of the themes, the thematic elements in these classic works of literature that, uh, contain very dated anachronistic stereotypes, or even very offensive language that we don't really I don't think anybody should be even exposed to now, much less, uh, entertain and internalize, and therefore possibly end up espousing later on in life.
It's an element of condescension here that, that taints everything. But, when they, we do see bottlerization happening, we do see a revision of some of these classics. There was a very, uh, interesting profile in New York Times about two years ago of a classics professor in Princeton University who had convinced himself that his entire life was a lie, that the the entirety of the classical, um, canon [00:45:00] was a, uh, a Trojan horse for white supremacy and that it was his responsibility as a professor of classics to destroy his institution.
That was the only responsible way to go and we're in up to and including and we talk about some of this in these, um, And these people, library, you know, library blogs for professional, uh, literature professors and teachers at the, at the elementary level that certain things should be de emphasized, which is, you know, a euphemism for banning, but nevertheless, not necessarily banning, but de emphasized, removed from the curriculum, which is exactly what the rite does, and they don't make that distinction for the rite either, um, but they, you know, it involves the classics, it even involves Shakespeare, And that is literally what they did in, in Victorian times.
The word Baudelarization is derived from the work of Dr. Baudelar, who sanitized, for lack of a better word, the, the Bard's works. Um, removing, uh, Catholic references, removing anything impious, anything [00:46:00] sexual. Uh, and this was thought of as a great work of his time. He was, he was, uh, you know, thought of very well and thanked for his work.
He turned his, he turned ultimately to the Old Testament and did that to the Bible. And people loved him for it. He was praised effusively for making, um, these works accessible to the God fearing modern reader. Um. We now use the word bottlerization as an epithet. It's an insult. It took quite a while to get there, uh, and hopefully it won't take two centuries for us to figure out that the very same project is just as contemptible as it was then.
Do you envision, I mean there's, there's, when I, when I talk to, for instance, friends of mine who, who teach on college campuses, I often ask, because they're on the front lines of this, and they, I ask, do you think this burns out quickly? Uh, or is this going to take a long time? And, unfortunately, most of [00:47:00] those I ask who have, are students of history, they say it's going to take a long time.
It's, this stuff does not burn out as quickly. We tend to think it's so crazy that it's just going to, like, self combust on its own. But, But, you know, these professors will say to me that I'm, you know, that that's, that's in, that historically, when you, when you look at these manias, they take a, they don't burn out, they take a long, they actually just get really, they burrow in, they get settled in, and they take a long time, and if you think they're gonna burn out on their own quickly, you're crazy.
And worse before it gets better. Yeah, so I'm, I, I don't know. But, you know, I would, I would venture slowly at first, then all at once, um, and that was the story of Puritanism, capital P. Well, if you're right that it happens slowly and then it happens all at once, I'm just hoping the all at once part happens soon.
Because, uh, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's making it, uh, very, very difficult to enjoy the least important [00:48:00] things. These, these banal activities that, uh, you know, typically populated like the, uh, You know, populated our lives. It's been, uh, it's been pretty demoralizing, but, uh, anyways, the book, like hope this is a happy book, though.
I mean, this is supposed to be a hopeful book, an irreverent book, something that is not It's definitely irreverent. It's definitely irreverent, and I guess it's hopeful. In that, you don't, like, I think sometimes when we're all encountering this craziness, we think we're the ones that are crazy, like, are we losing our minds?
So in a sense, you're creating community, because you're like, oh no, I'm not the only crazy person, I'm not the only one, I'm not the only person that's thinking that I'm losing my mind. I've actually, like, and then, and then when you give it a historical context It's actually, uh, like I said, it's a form of therapy, so it's, in that sense, it's a positive contribution.
I hope so. Alright. The Rise of the New Puritans, Fighting Back Against Progressives, [00:49:00] War on Fun. Noah Rothman, thanks again for doing the podcast, and I hope to have you on again with a, um, with a, um, A more cheery topic. Thank you so much, Dan. I really appreciate it.
That's our show for today. To keep up with Noah Rothman, you can follow him on Twitter at Noah C. Rothman. C is his middle initial. N O A H C R O T H M A N And of course you can follow his published work at commentary. org And also at the MSNBC website. You should also listen to the Commentary Magazine podcast.
It's a daily podcast. I highly recommend it. You becoming a subscriber. Call Me Back is produced by Alain Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.