The Rage of the New Puritans Is Sweeping America

The announcement that the “Silence Breakers” have been named “Person of the Year” by TIME magazine has catapulted the sexual harassment scandals into the national spotlight. Sexual assault in the workplace has taken on crisis proportions.

Many are saying that men and women will soon revert to minimizing contact among themselves. They fear a new “Puritanism” will sweep over corporate America increasing anxiety in the workplace and hindering communication.

No Puritanism from the Distant Past
Such fears are exaggerated. There is no danger of a wave of old-style Puritanism because the target of the anti-harassment offensive is not the hypersexual culture that permeates everything. There is no going back to old Puritan times.

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Rest assured that the hook-up culture with its vulgar talk, drug use and immodest fashions will continue to degrade society and office. The media will also keep promoting the greatest possible sexual freedom wherever it might be found.

All this will happen despite the fact that these promiscuous habits are the incubators that prepare the way for sexual harassment. They are the gateway drugs that lead to the hard stuff. However, they are curiously not the target of the anti-harassment blitz.

Creating a Narrative
The target of the anti-harassment campaign is the non-consensual sexual behavior of powerful men directed at intimidated female and other victims. This is the admitted target found all over the media.

Like all such media onslaughts, the aim is to build a narrative that can be wholly controlled by the liberal establishment. The foxy defenders of the morals henhouse include The New York Times, TIME and the Huffington Post.

Their denunciations follow a pattern.

Components of an Uproar
The narrative is built around a legitimate and even urgent problem long neglected that needs to be addressed. The “open secret” of undesirable and even bizarre sexual behaviors is suddenly exposed by major media. The horror of these immoral acts rightly makes them indefensible in the eyes of the public. At the same time, other offenses are presented that were committed in the distant past making it difficult for the alleged offender to prove innocence in the face of a public that demands immediate judgment.

A second component is the finding of extreme examples of non-consensual sexual assaults that become the standard against which all other cases are judged. The behavior of Harvey Weinstein, for example, has become the celebrated case with sufficient allegations to impress a scandalized public. Others soon followed.

The next phase is to whip up a great uproar around the allegations. The smallest offenses are associated with the most egregious cases. In the mind of the public, all cases are the same. An atmosphere of accusations and allegations swirls around the issue creating the impression that all-powerful corporate figures are predators that take advantage of weak women seeking to advance their careers or support their families. In an atmosphere much like that of a Red Terror, anyone can be accused, summarily media-judged and socially destroyed.

Turn Everyone into a Predator
Key to the narrative is a climate of exaggeration around real victims. In the case of harassment, the facts tend to disprove the hysteria. It is true that there are many cases of assault, and that just one is one too many. However, America’s reality is that the vast majority of workers are not victims and most bosses are not predators.

According to a 2016 survey of 42,000 employees by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, for example, extreme cases of sexual advances are rare in the workplace. Only one percent of women and men reported strong pressure for sexual favors. A similar figure for both sexes was registered for sexual assault.

Some 18 percent of women and six percent of men did report harassing behavior that consisted of unwelcome jokes, lewd comments, suggestive gestures or looks or unwanted invasions of personal space. Given the hypersexualized culture, many people can be accused of such harassment. While such behavior is entirely censorable, it can hardly be compared to the egregious assault cases.

Just as the horrific actions of a tiny minority in the Catholic Church made many unjustly regard all priests as sexual predators, so also in this media terror all men of power can likewise be labeled.

A Class Struggle Framework
The important thing to remember is that the left controls the narrative of the harassment scandals. Their rhetoric contains the typical class struggle framework that favors the liberal agenda.

It is not hard to discern the classic liberal boilerplate all over the media. The oppressors-become-predators are represented by all-powerful men in Hollywood, media, business and politics. They are even called “feudal lords” possessing unlimited powers over their “vassals.” The oppressed are the truly unfortunate victims, except that the media expanded the victim moniker to include all women, minorities and LGBT-labeled people.

Changing Structures and Old Behaviors
The final goal is the changing of power structures, especially those that favor men.

Women have entered corporate America in significant numbers. However, for the feminists, this change is much too slow. Anyone who represents a traditional power figure must be made a target, including expendable liberals who followed the Sexual Revolution to its final consequences. The business world must be terrorized into change. It is the next Bastille to be overthrown.

The long-term goal is much more radical. The liberal solution is not to restrict but expand sexual freedom yet more. Activists see conventional binary sexual promiscuity as too traditional and male-dominated. They want all old behaviors, even immoral ones, eliminated. They favor a new age of sexual fluidity to be explored through an alphabet of new gender identities. Curiously, none of these behaviors, which often lead to abusive relationships, are being denounced in the media terror.

Hence, the threat is not the old Puritanism but a strange new Puritanism that could sweep through American workplaces. The new Puritans are not traditional moral conservatives but radicals that cry out for blood and complete “gender” equality. The rage of the new Puritans knows no bounds. The same feminists that abuse women by promoting abortion are now the new zealots defining what is abuse and harassment. They will show no quarter to Christians.

Return to Christian Order
Of course, the solution is a return to Christian morality. The source of the problem is all promiscuous behavior. Creating a moral society is the only way to address this issue.

The new Puritans will never accept this solution.

However, it is the only solution because it takes into consideration the fallen nature of both man and woman. The Church fosters those moral norms that create the conditions for people to live in harmony. The Church provides the means for God’s grace to work in souls to overcome the unbridled passions that lead to abuse and sin. The Church teaches harmony not class (or “gender”) struggle; justice not rage; purity not licentiousness.

Any other solution will lead to chaos and strife. That is why the rage of the new Puritans must be exposed lest it sweep the nation with its madness.

Author

  • John Horvat II

    John Horvat II is vice president of the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property and the author of Return to Order.

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