…of both parties:

For the half hearted worldling like myself, who can never quite summon up all the moral fiber necessary for a grimly earnest New England crusade, all forms of Puritanism are suspect. But unlike the “Christianists under the bed” crowd over at the Daily Dish, I’m less worried about the puritanism of the right than the puritanism of the left these days. First, because American society is so firmly set against old fashioned right-wing prudishness, Romney’s “conservative” puritanism is probably a lesser threat to the freedoms of the people than the secular puritanism of the enlightened left. Public acceptance of homosexuality is likely to increase, for example, no matter who takes office next January; even after eight grim years of two Romney terms, you are still going to be able to see bare breasted women on “Boardwalk Empire” and “Game of Thrones.” Romney and the right are fighting the tide on many of these issues, so any efforts on their part to force more moral conformity on the population are unlikely to go all that far.

The other reason I worry less about the right’s tendency toward moralist dictatorship is federalism: the left likes its regulation at the national level and thinks the Federal government should set the tone for the whole country. The right on the other hand makes more room for the states. If we must be governed by meddling nanny state puritans, I would rather live in a country that had fifty petty moralistic dictatorships rather than one big one; I’d at least have a chance of finding a place where my favorite foods and amusements wouldn’t be banned by law. Surely there will be one state somewhere in this republic that will let me put some extra salt on my freedom fries.

Professor Mead doesn’t expand on the theme of this as being one of the folkways described in Fischer’s Albion’s Seed, but ever since reading that book it has always been clear that the “progressives” are the current incarnation of the Puritan tradition that came over from East Anglia in the seventeenth century. It was very clear that Hillary fell into that camp (whereas Bill was a redneck). But I had never thought before of the Mormons as being an offshoot of it. It makes sense. They’re not descended from Quakers, or the Cavaliers, and certainly not the Scots-Irish. So there are some similarities between Obama and Romney, but for the reasons that he mentions in the quote above, I’m much less concerned about Romney in that regard.

This discussion reminds me of my post from years ago about why we should worry much more about Leftist urges to control us than that of the social-issues right. Will Wilkinson disputed it at the time (though the specific example he used of Ashcroft’s fear of a marble tit turned out to be a Democrat urban myth). I wonder what he thinks now, given the economic disaster confronting us from the Democrat depradations of the last six years?