Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Theory of Evolution
It's been fashionable for the last couple of years to suggest that the United States is evolving toward a fascist state. Journalist George Monbiot says yes, the U.S. is evolving toward something, but not fascism. We're going back to the future, he says, to good old hardcore Puritanism, as it was practiced in England and on these very shores in the 17th Century.
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It's been fashionable for the last couple of years to suggest that the United States is evolving toward a fascist state. Journalist George Monbiot says yes, the U.S. is evolving toward something, but not fascism. We're going back to the future, he says, to good old hardcore Puritanism, as it was practiced in England and on these very shores in the 17th Century.
Puritanism was primarily the religion of the new commercial classes. It attracted traders, money lenders, bankers and industrialists. Calvin had given them what the old order could not: a theological justification of commerce. Capitalism, in his teachings, was not unchristian, but could be used for the glorification of God. From his doctrine of individual purification, the late Puritans forged a new theology.Monbiot cites some other characteristics of Puritanism that seem to fit our modern model, such as the idea that the world exists for Christians to conquer, and that in Puritan society, "the pursuit of adulterers and sodomites provided an ideal distraction for the increasingly impoverished lower classes." So it ain't all big black hats with buckles on them and church services that lasted for three hours. It is, however, joyless, and Darwinian in its way, and something to fight as hard as we'd fight fascism.
At its heart was an "idealisation of personal responsibility" before God. This rapidly turned into "a theory of individual rights" in which "the traditional scheme of Christian virtues was almost exactly reversed". By the mid-17th century, most English Puritans saw in poverty "not a misfortune to be pitied and relieved, but a moral failing to be condemned, and in riches, not an object of suspicion ... but the blessing which rewards the triumph of energy and will".
New Feature Alert: In keeping with our never-ending quest to make The Daily Aneurysm an even greater waste of your time, we now present up-to-the-minute news headlines, available for the clicking on the right-hand side of this page. Those of you who claim that this blog is your only source of news (and you should be ashamed of yourselves) can rightfully claim to be slightly better informed now.
Also, if you find any of these posts so brilliant that you want to share them with others, just click the little envelope at the bottom and e-mail the post to anybody you want--family, friends, and most important, to more famous bloggers in hopes they'll drive traffic my way. (Why deny it? Everyone's a whore.)
