The always excellent Simon Cooke who blogs at The View From Cullingworth has topped an excellent series of posts on the “New Puritanism” with a rousing call to arms-
New Cavaliers! A Call to Arms!
-and if you don’t go and read it now you’re what my dictionary defines as “vulgar slang for a despicable or worthless person” so I think you’d better go and read it, frankly. And I say this despite the fact that he’s quoted a bit of one of my comments in it.
I’ve been musing for a while that “cavalier” is not a bad group label for those of us opposing the new puritan tyranny. It has advantages over other words like “libertarian”, not least that it’s a word everybody knows already. It has some negative connotations (it can mean, sort of negligent) but it does mean we have a very nice mascot, that laughing chap. And it’s also historically accurate, if you share my general view that the battle between the collectivist state and the private individual, in Anglosphere nations, is simply a continual struggle that has been running since before the Civil War. For centuries.
The Puritan faction have shifted their ideological justifications, from time to time- from Calvinism to Evangelical Post-Millennialism, to a secular version with a Marxist flavour. But the struggle- between one faction determined to “reform” all the “sin” out of the world, and our faction who just want to be left alone to get on with our lives, remains the same. We are now at one of those critical points in history, with the enemy pushing forward hard on all fronts- smoking, food and drink, clothes, internet controls, nationalising the last remnants of the private family and childcare, the list goes on and on. Compared to their last great push in the Victorian Era, they have a massive State, and the necessary institutional structures in place to create a true puritan tyranny, with the ulema of academics, pressure groups and fake charities as ideologists, the State as enabler, and even our own mutaween, which we call PCSOs. And they are moving very fast.
So, if you want to retain the right to watch some gay hobbit porn while eating a hamburger and drinking a beer and then have a cigarette afterwards, before letting your daughter go out wearing a Kiss Me Quick hat, it’s time to get off the fence and declare yourself for the Cavaliers!
The series was brilliant, indeed. I’ll be linking to the lot and the final piece was excellent and actually a very good idea.
The cavaliers, I like it. It’s worth some serious working on.
Hmm, I have misgivings. much as I dislike puritans, the cavaliers were not exactly champions of liberty, except for the king.
Hear hear. I’m off to buy a plumed hat right now.
Trooper, nobody was a champion of liberty in 1645. It hadn’t been invented yet, and wouldn’t be until after the Puritan despotism had been evicted from power; the post-Puritan era is the one that gave us liberalism.
In 1645 it was a choice between a plumed hat on your head, and a bawdy wench on your knee, or turning the whole nation into a monastery. A question of, if you’d been forced to choose one side, which would you have stood on at Naesby? With a dodgy king, or christendom’s equivalent of the taliban?
Anyway, me, I just think it’s a good image for anti-puritans to consider. This isn’t about anarcho-capitalism and the gold standard and all that, it’s about whether you can have a can of beer that hasn’t got a picture of a diseased liver on it.
Very well Sirrah! Sir Mac the Knife’s Foot and Mouth raises it’s standard in Aylesham Square.
Liberty or Nothing! Even unto the death ’sblood!
A bawdy wench on your knee eh? Count me in then.
When I was a young teenager a guy tried to pick me up by asking if I was a roundhead or a cavalier. I don’t think he was talking about politics though.
@ Ian B, ah but you are not forced to choose between Cromwell and the Crown, there is always the Clark Gable option from “Gone with the Wind” viz ‘I believe in Rhett Butler, he’s the only cause I fight for’ (or some such, I have not checked the exact quote). Admitedly, one had to escape the local press gangs etc, but these days there is no excuse.
As to the article, the state is just following its own logic. Statists believe they pay for our health (neatly ignoring where the cash comes from) and thus, they start to believe the can dictate behaviour, some even think they should, saving the fallen from burgers and beer. Let’s be honest, persuasion and propaganda isn’t working, so it’s time for coercion, so they think. (And to go off on a tangent, just wait until we have database linked ID cards, made necessary for retail purchases and they start to monitor and then ration our purchases of various ‘unhealthy’ stuff. All very easy.)
As before with many issues, words are being misused. Public health used to refer to things like cholera and the need for sewers. There wasn’t much you could personally do about effluent in the street, hence public sewers. But there is absolutely something you can do about what you consume. This is the ultimate private health issue. If I drink too much, little or no blame can attach to Hattie Harman, even when she is on a long, high-pitched, squeaky rant about something or other, that’s apparently my fault. In some way?
If she thinks I am a raping, polluting, CO2 emiting, driving, smoking, drunken hooligan, racist, heterosexual, non-recycling, EU hating, borish, selfish, third world exploiting, private school using, discriminating tax-dodger….and I find myself reaching for the Stellla, it’s still my choice to drink it.
SAOT-
The argument here, at least the one I’m making, is that seeing this as “the State following its own logic” is kind of missing the point. libertarians tend to see “the State” as a personified entity with a will. We shouldn’t make that mistake; it’s a collectivist mistake. “The State” doesn’t do anything; the individuals running it do. The State is just a collective noun. In the same way that “The Church” doesn’t do anything, the individuals who comprise it do.
Public health, nannying, social control and so on, in the model I’m advocating, are not some kind of cover for “the State” doing its thing. Neither are they a front for some conspiracy (e.g. Communism). Puritans have actively enlarged the State to a point where it can be used to enact the social controls they desire, and have always desired. Their purpose is their stated purpose, which is to purify the world of sinful activities. The State is merely a mechanism they use to achieve that end.
THese people believe the world would be better without tobacco, or alcohol, or smoking, or hamburgers, or naked boobies, and all the other things on their list. The State is simply their tool. We seriously have to stop shadowboxing with imaginary entities and start engaging the actual individuals who do the damage to us, and understand why they are doing it.
Opposing puritanical crap is in my blood. I’ve been an awkward, contrary mare for most of my adult life. I’ll happily stick a feather in my battered old stockman’s hat at the risk of looking like Phil Harding. However, I draw the line at Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen ruffles. I’d rather forego the Van Dyck beard if you blokes don’t mind. You can forget the wide-load dresses too…
BTW, the was a brilliant call to arms by Simon Cooke. I didn’t know there were any real conservatives left.
@ Ian B,
“Trooper, nobody was a champion of liberty in 1645. It hadn’t been invented yet, and wouldn’t be until after the Puritan despotism had been evicted from power; the post-Puritan era is the one that gave us liberalism.”
What about John Lilburne? He was fighting for liberty, including economic liberty, and he was no cavalier.
The puritans went down at the Restoration. The Restoration was overthrown by the Glorious Revolution. Tories are cavaliers, Whigs are roundheads. Still, the analogy may work with the ‘Horrible Histories’ crowd.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWPbnWMpMiA
Do none of you understand what “Puritan” means? A five-second trip to wikipedia would have availed you:
“The designation “Puritan” is often incorrectly used, notably based on the assumption that hedonism and puritanism are antonyms: historically, the word was used to characterize the Protestant group as extremists similar to the Cathari of France, and according to Thomas Fuller in his Church History dated back to 1564. Archbishop Matthew Parker of that time used it and “precisian” with the sense of modern “stickler”.”
Libertarians are Puritanical, in the sense that we follow a purist’s interpretation of the Non-Aggression Axiom. Anyone who doesn’t is by definition not a libertarian!
And to take this misinterpretation of the word “Puritan” one step further in order to paint Royal Absolutism as some kind of libertarian position is just barmy.
I can’t entirely go along with this for much the same reasons as Trooper Thompson, to characterise the whole of the Parliamentary cause and the Commonwealth as Puritan is rather simplistic. Anyway were all of the Puritans as killjoy as has been made out ? There were horrible fanatics on both sides but not everyone who disliked the established church was a fanatic and there were people within that church who although Royalist in politics were influenced by broadly Puritan ethics, how about George Herbert for instance ? I really can’t see that the Stuarts should attract the sympathy of anyone with a libertarian bent, getting rid of them was one of the best things that happened to England, even if it took a Dutch invasion to do it. I’m with the authors of ‘1066 and All That’ on this, the Roundheads were right but repulsive.
Of course you’re quite correct about the modern puritans who should be shipped of to a remote and hostile colony as soon as possible.
First thanks for the link! As to the choice of cavalier - it just went with Puritan really. And yes it’s not about some form of libertarian absolutism - when I toddle about the ward (and drop into the occasional drinking establishment) I hear ordinary people moan and grumble about the intrusive state. These are people who’ve never heard of Rand or Rothbard (unless of course they’re characters in Coronation Street or up-and-coming stars at Leeds United) but they really are rather fed up with people bossing and nannying them about their drinking, smoking and eating.
The cavalier analogy these people will understand in the same way that Americans get the image of the pioneer or the cowboy. Whatever happens there’s som fun in it!
When I was preparing this post I started typing a very long historical analysis to give a better context and justification, but then deleted it because I didn’t want to dilute Simon Cooke’s excellent posting, which was the main purpose. I’ll do that posting on its own in the next day or two.
However, I’m not saying that “libertarians” should rename themselves “cavaliers”; rather that cavalier is a good fun collective noun for a broader based opposition to the new puritanism, incorporating the many people who oppose social despotism who may not themselves be interested in libertarianism. Bottom line is, this is the front line right now, and you’re not going to defeat the “nanny” state with the saloon bar’s worth of folks who are ideological libertarians.
History and politics are messy. Sometimes, people have to choose between a Shah and an Ayatollah.
The cavalier analogy these people will understand in the same way that Americans get the image of the pioneer or the cowboy. Whatever happens there’s som fun in it!
I agree entirely, and with your whole comment Simon.
@ Ian B
“The State is just a collective noun. In the same way that “The Church” doesn’t do anything, the individuals who comprise it do”
Of course you are quite right, I was fast and sloppy with my phrases.
WOONS