Friday, October 21, 2005

Cross Post from Cellar Door: Moral Hysteria and the Persecution of Difference by John Buell

Jessica found an article on Common Dreams that really cements a lot of the topics we've both been covering over the last few weeks:

I just read a fantastic article in Common Dreams that brings together a lot of the thoughts in my head over the past week about religion, faith and gender roles, as well as the ideals of the Reconstruction Theocratic movement. I'm only going to point out a few of the passages that were most pointed.

• In 1692, the “city upon a hill” faced unprecedented crises. The Crown had revoked its charter and ordered the arch-Puritan colony to tolerate dissenting faiths. Puritans were engaged in a bloody war with Native Americans, who had decimated Casco (Portland) and York. A military expedition to Quebec returned to Boston with heavy losses. A small pox epidemic spread outward from Boston to outlying communities like Salem and its rural offshoot, Salem Village. Salem Village, part of the larger, richer community, was straining against traditional geographic and political boundaries. Its men had to walk ten miles to participate in political affairs and enjoyed no infrastructure for settling local disputes. Nonetheless, their complaints were dismissed.

Much like the many problems that face this nation, many to the right have sought simplistic solutions, and debate on controversial knee-jerk reactionary issues such as abortion, gender roles, homosexuality, and childrearing.

I don't have time to comment now, but I highly recommend reading both it and her comments.

Posted by crimnos @ 11:40 AM

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Excellent post. I'm off to read Cellar Door.

Posted by Blogger Handsome B. Wonderful @ 12:02 PM #
 

definately cements a lot of our discussions. It is interesting to read about the history ofpsychology of fear and displacement in the world, particularly in our own country. We are all relatively young, and so we weren't around for a lot of this. This makes us more apt to freak at a lot of the stuff going on right now and think that this is the end all of end alls, when really, it's happened before, many times....sadly...

Posted by Blogger Jes @ 12:15 PM #
 

Absolutely. It really put things in perspective, and I'm honestly tempted to read up even more on the Puritan period.

Posted by Blogger crimnos @ 1:07 PM #
 
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