>>> Part 3 of 5...
Puritanical, and that consensual democracies tend not to be.  Thus 
Britain's only rigidly authoritarian dictatorship, that of Cromwell, was 
borne aloft on a surge of Puritan feeling.  Marxist-Leninism in Russia 
brought a sombre new world of restriction and control in personal life 
as well as the economy; the National Socialists (Nazis) drew strength 
from a reaction against what was seen as decadence, and imposed harsh 
moral laws on the German people.
It is not without significance that they also were the first Government 
who wanted to ban tobacco advertising.
From "Good Intentions" to Coercion
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Meanwhile Puritans turn in frustration to totalitarian methods in order 
to enforce their prohibitions as the means inevitably fail.  They start 
as well- meaning advocates, develop a mission to educate society and end 
as fanatical enforcers of a single creed.
What, of course, all of this demonstrates is that restrictive measures 
against the individual are not isolated phenomena, but part of a 
coherent pattern.  They are not a conscious political conspiracy but the 
result is as if they were.  It could perhaps be called a conspiracy of 
history; increasing restriction the symptom of a new wave of Puritanism; 
that wave instigating or nourishing totalitarian political tendencies.
Therein lies the double danger of apparently benign social measures 
justified as helping to improve society; the excuse too of all 
dictators.  Firstly the measures are an assault on the individual's  
freedom; secondly they help propel society towards and increasingly 
Statist regime.  Even where the promoters of a single set of 
restrictions desire no such end, and believe they are being entirely 
benevolent in their objectives, they are in fact unknowingly playing a 
part in this greater process.
The New Unhappy Puritans and the Health Fascists
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Others, of course, acknowledge this is the case and do not regret it.  
They are fully paid-up members of the band of the New Unhappy Puritans. 
They support most of the restrictive measures advanced today in the 
public domain and will consciously link them together.  Alcohol, 
tobacco, risky foods, use of non-Green products, dangerous sports and 
even sex have to be limited in the same way and for the same reasons - 
to protect individuals against themselves.
They draw on apparently new discoveries; their legitimacy purports to 
rest on the most recently published hard scientific evidence.  This is 
constantly refined until we have a perfect picture of the lifestyle that 
presents least risk of, for example, a heart attack.  Out of interest 
this produces a "bicycling, unemployed, hypo-beta-lipoproteinaemic, 
hypolipaemic, underweight, premenopausal, female dwarf living in a 
crowded room on the island of Crete before 1925 subsisting on a diet of 
uncoated cereals, safflower (sunflower?) oil and water."   
Is avoiding a heart attack worth the price, I ask?  After a lifetime of 
such a lifestyle an extra 10 years might not exactly prove to be an 
attraction.
Yet that is the direction in which some would drive us.  As the one-time 
American Medical Association's Health Education Programme Director, W. 
H. Carlyon, said: "The self-righteous intolerance of some wellness 
zealots borders on health fascism.  Historically humans have been at 
greatest risk while being improved in the best image of their 
possibilities as seen by somebody else."  
For, as Anthony Burgess aptly puts it: "There is a frightful heresy in 
supposing that the welfare of the body is all that counts."   
You will find the New Unhappy Puritans in many places.  They are 
increasingly inhabiting the Labour Party, normally young, and pushing 
out their older colleagues who do not share their views at all.  Some 
do, however, and in his more lucid moments the deranged Tony Benn admits 
that he is a 17th Century Puritan Leveller.  His Socialism, he will 
argue, is rooted in Leveller thinking, not Marxism; and it is no 
coincidence that the Labour movement grew out of the Primitive Methodist 
chapels of North-East England and South Wales.  In historic terms the 
chapel was a revival of the Puritan church; the Labour Party the 
inheritor of the political commissars of the New Model Army.
The New Unhappy Puritans have also always been present among Liberals 
too, moralising self-indulgently from behind their beards and woolly 
hats, and they, of course, infest the Green movement.  They run strange 
campaigning organisations like ASH and Action On Sugar whose public 
profile far outstrips their real strength.  
The European Dimension
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But the most dangerous variety are found in the corridors of the public 
policy formers and, at present, particularly in the European Community.
I have no doubt that there is a "dirigiste" school of thought permeating 
the Commission which is motivated by the desire to set in place a whole 
framework of neat, central controls to perfect society by eliminating 
the risks and temptations of pleasure.  It does not enjoy total 
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