The Fanatical Puritans Are Still With Us, Doing Extreme Damage To Civil Society

https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/the-fanatical-puritans-are-still-with-us-doing-extreme-damage-to-civil-society/

In the terrific podcast above, historian Brion McClanahan outlines how Biden and the Democrats have failed massively at virtually everything they have inflicted upon the country for the past two years. This ideological mindset has a long legacy.

Since 1630 and the arrival of the Puritans on the North American continent life has never been the same. They are the busy body “Karens” at the grocery store, the woke willful idiots at the colleges and universities, the cancel culture bullies on Social Media, the insane hordes of bureaucratic petty tyrants throughout all levels of local, state, and the federal government. Self-righteous, abusive, and closed minded. The puritanical termites of progressivism.

Brion pays attention to the brilliant insights of the remarkable book, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America. Below are two precise summaries of this excellent and exceptional book

Perhaps the best summary analysis of a subject on Wikipedia

Albion’s Seed: Four British: Folkways in America
(How the four British colonial migratory groups looked at freedom).

These ethnocultural, ethnoreligious folkway patterns are still largely in effect today. Despite secularization, the Puritan/Yankees are still trying to dominate and control our civil society, and they are not strictly confined to New England. Their descendants migrated throughout America, especially through the Northern States, and also the West Coast.

History of the Puritans in North America (Wikipedia)

In the last decades of Murray Rothbard’s life, he developed an important interpretative framework in understanding American history. This was prodded on by his careful study of the emerging “new political history” which was reinterpreting the dynamics of the ebb and flow of ethnocultural and ethnoreligious groups. This bold synthesis became the central focus of some of his greatest scholarly endeavors, particularly when it came to understanding progressivism as a secularized version of this postmillennial religious zeal. That seminal ethnocultural and ideological struggle continues unabated today as historian Clyde Wilson detailed earlier in his brilliant essay (later amplified into a book), The Yankee Problem in America.

After viewing Dr. Brion McClanahan‘s excellent online college level courses on The War for Southern Independence and US History from 1865, I am even more convinced than ever that the key to unlocking an understanding of the dynamic of American history, from colonization to the present, is grasping the tremendous impact of the conflicts and contributions the various ethnocultural and ethnoreligious groups have made on these shores. This is a subject I first began intensely studying over forty years ago in 1978 due to the pioneering work in this area by Murray N. Rothbard. This is the Rosetta Stone that deciphers and explains it all.

Here are authoritative volumes which present the essential backstory. I could list many others:

Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America;

The Cousins’ Wars: Religion, Politics, Civil Warfare, And The Triumph Of Anglo-America;

Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America’s Millennial Role;

The Puritan Origins of American Patriotism;

America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation;

The Cross of Culture: A Social Analysis of Midwestern Politics 1850-1900; and

The Yankee and Cowboy War: Conspiracies From Dallas to Watergate;

The place to begin with however, is Rothbard’s seminal book, The Progressive Era.

And here are seven crucial articles on this important subject: