The Pure Primitivism of Pacific 'Progressive' Puritanism

In 2008, Richard Miniter wrote, “In the 1950s, the most puritanical place in America was somewhere in Kansas. Today it is Los Angeles.”

With gestures such as this and this, I’d say another California city about 500 miles north has just surpassed it.

Update: Steve Green pens “An Open Letter From the President:”

Dear Business Leaders,

You’re all just too stupid and greedy to realize that getting taxed and regulated back to the Stone Age is what’s good for you.

And we’re going to do what’s good for you a lot.

Yours,

Barry.

The Stone Age? America’s blue states (none of which are currently accessible to travel due to the boycotts they’ve all placed on each other) are definitely arriving there first.

Update: In the comments below, Miniter adds:

If you sell a hamster or drink a diet coke in San Francisco, you’re in trouble. And the city by the bay is also considering a measure to ban, or severely restrict, the use of salt in food. Clearly, Prohibition is back, in an even more petty form.

There is nothing too small or too intimately connected to private, individual decisions for modern-day Puritans to regulate. Perhaps the bigger, vital issues–like the record-high number of jobless or the record-high government debt (at all levels)–simply baffle them.

More likely, they do not realize that one should not legislate one’s prejudices or preferences.

Anyway, the center of Puritanism in America is now California, not just L.A. Point taken, Ed.

Between L.A., S.F., and especially Sacramento, where, given the state’s myriad structural woes, the Assembly and even the Governator are currently obsessing on improving the quality of life for egg-laying chickens (no, really!), it sure seems that way.