Save Us from the Meddling Puritans

I try not to read Andrew Bolt.

But when I do, I usually feel like I'm witnessing some sort of freak show.

This morning's missive in the Brisbane Sunday Mail got me reading because of the heading (reproduced as the title to this post).

I wondered whether Andrew had had a vision and suddenly turned into a supporter of Bill Henson.

Firstly, let me state my admiration for whoever conjured up the heading. It's not clear whether it was Andrew personally, it was probably some copy editor.

When I tried to find the article online, all I could find is the same article under the heading "Big Brother turns wowser" and "Return of the wowser".

It's obvious (and obvious why) I didn't feel inspired to use any of these as my title!

Reading beyond the heading, I discovered more and more evidence of Andrew's libertarian credentials.

Let me quote him:

• A new breed of puritans is upon us and growing far too puffed up themselves. It’s increasingly urgent they be resisted.
• Who unleashed these salon Stalinists? ... Who let them loose to flog us sinners into living lives more holy, by their grim creed?
• Never have I seen so many preachers so keen to bully others for their own “good”.
• From which circle of hell did all these finger-waggers spring?
• Consider what plans they’ve already unveiled to cramp your life and set it to their stern order.
• So drunk on bans are these people..
• This isn’t meant to save a planet but to impose someone’s joy-killing morality.
• It’s not just a madness confined to Australia, of course. The [new breed of Puritans] in every English-speaking land is now indulging its inner totalitarian.
• It’s a Mein Kampf for meddlers - a defence of for-your-own-good bullying that is startling in its contempt for our right to decide for ourselves not just how to live, but even what to eat.

Can you understand why I thought Andrew had turned?
He was using the very same language that everyone frustrated by censorship, Puritanism and wowserism uses.
He was asserting the right of the individual against the State and those who would use it to legislate Morality.
What value was he seeking to protect? What economic, social or cultural activity was so fundamentally important that the State should not be able to interfere with it, that the activity should be above the Law?
Could he have been talking about Art? Could he finally see a nude body without thinking sex?
No, Andrew emerged from his study this week to defend the right to smoke cigarettes!
I don't really care what rights Andrew wants to defend. That's his right.
It just amazes me that he can't see any irony in these cultural debates:
When there's a right or value or activity that he wants to protect, his opponents are Politically Correct Wowsers and Puritans.
When there's an activity he disagrees with, the full force of the Law should be applied to prohibit and punish it.
Ultimately, he is saying that "what I think is and should be the Law".
He is only a libertarian when his own views prevail.
He is not libertarian enough to leave others to their views.
Ultimately, he is just as tempted by totalitarianism as the social and cultural adversaries in his morality tales.
He is not really "laissez faire" at all. He is more "regardez-moi".