The left-wing used to be about freedom of speech, freedom of expression and liberal ideas.
They have increasingly become totalitarian which is to be expected considering the ideologies they have sprung from.
Constantly wanting to control our speech, our thoughts and ideas and what we eat and drink.
Alex Wickham at Breitbart explains:
âThe haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happyâ. So said H.L. Mencken of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Puritanism; the tyrannical do-gooders of the temperance movement, authoritarians pushing their Victorian values on âsinnersâ across the Atlantic.
Whether it was booze, sex, drugs or whatever form of permissiveness they thought was destroying western civilization from within, the Puritans of the last hundred years have been conservatives. Reactionary, traditional to the point of totalitarian, these were people who did not like change and would make sure you knew it. Post-war, they detested liberals, these new, amoral, sandal-wearing, pot-smoking, freedom-loving hippies. Typified by the social conservatism of Mary Whitehouse, hectoring the public with their controlling views, the Puritans were not on the side of liberty.
Today, Puritanism has changed. It is still not on the side of liberty. It is still hectoring, controlling, freedom-hating and totalitarian. It is still haunted by the fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. The difference is the New Puritans are not conservatives, they are liberals. Ironic and perverse given the pro-freedom, anti-authoritarian aspirations of their purported ideology, the mantle of Puritanism has been assumed by so-called liberals, by so-called progressives.