Guess Who Said This. I'll Give You 1/2 A Chance*

 . . . conclusive proof that you’re a classic example of a Puritan shithead…somebody obsessed with the idea that somebody, somewhere, is having fun. 

The twit doesn't even know he's quoting the racist, fascist loving, overrated, antisemite H. L. Mencken, which puts him in the same mindset as Ronald Reagan who also quoted it to whine about those who wanted equality and social justice and tax fairness.

But that wouldn't have been a good reason to post this, what makes me do that is this passage that I just happened to read about one of my favorite American artists Hyman Bloom  yesterday.  From Boston Modern: Figurative Expressionism as Alternative Modernism

Yet the stern orthodoxy of their religious practice, which seemed to isolate recent Jewish immigrants from the rest of the city, was closer than they might have thought to the Puritan orthodoxy that had defined the spiritual orientation of the Boston community from its inception.  Years later, noting that "the old Puritan and Jewish beliefs are really quite similar," Bloom appreciated the commonality of these two faiths anchored in the Hebrew Bible and the ascetic spirituality, which became sources of his inspiration.  These synagogue visits left an indelible impression on the child that would draw him back. 

The authentic American liberal tradition of economic justice, social equality, etc. flows from the John Calvin commentary on the Old Testament as was far more widely read in New England than the King James Version back in the formative years of American egalitarian justice liberalism.  Of course Mencken and Reagan and the pop-kulcha addled idiots informed by nothing better than greed and TV would disdain it.  I always have preferred the "Boston School" of Hyman Bloom and Jack Levine to the CIA financed moral nihilism of abstract expressionism and brain-dead Pop Art BS.  I was aware that Jack Levine and I shared a good deal of political and other thought, I had not thought that dear old Hyman Bloom might, as well.  

I, of course, am no Calvinist but I will acknowledge the positive contribution to the American tradition of liberalism as opposed to the 18th century "enlightenment" "liberalism" which is more akin to today's oligarchic "classical liberalism" and the "Neo-liberalism" that was akin to what Walter Breuggemann discusses below.

*  Because he's a half-wit.