Comment by Upvoter33

Here's a ChatGPT rewrite, focusing on a different end of the political spectrum:

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The word "puritan" isn't very common now, but if you look up the definition, it might sound familiar. Google's version isn't bad: “A person with censorious moral beliefs, especially about pleasure and sexuality.” This sense of the word originated in the 16th century, and its age is an important clue: it shows that although *freedom conservatism* is a relatively recent phenomenon, it's just a modern iteration of an ancient habit.

There's a certain kind of person who is drawn to a rigid, dogmatic sense of virtue and demonstrates their superiority by policing anyone who steps out of line. Every society has these people. The only thing that changes is the rules they enforce. In Puritan New England, it was religious purity. In McCarthy's America, it was anti-communism. For the freedom conservatives, it’s about traditional values.

If you want to understand freedom conservatism, the question to ask isn’t why people act like this. Every society has moral busybodies. The question is, why are *our* moral busybodies obsessed with *these* ideas, at *this* moment?

The answer lies in the 1980s and 1990s. Freedom conservatism is a sequel to the culture wars, which started with Reagan's "family values" campaign and found new life in the early 2000s when people realized reality TV wasn't enough drama. Its second wind came with the rise of social media echo chambers, which peaked around the Great Meme Wars of the late 2010s.

What does freedom conservatism mean now? I’m often asked to define it by people who think it’s an empty buzzword, so here’s my attempt: *An aggressively performative devotion to traditional values.*

In other words, it’s people being puritans about old-fashioned ideals. The problem isn't traditional values themselves—family, patriotism, etc., have their place. The problem is the *performance.* Instead of quietly living their lives and, say, mowing their lawn while humming "God Bless America," freedom conservatives focus on getting people fired for not standing during the anthem.

And of course, freedom conservatism started in the best possible place for self-serious, inflexible ideology: academia. Did it begin in hard sciences, where people have to deal with facts? Of course not. It began in the cushy chairs of humanities departments, where abstract ideas about morality and society are debated without anyone worrying about inconvenient things like lab results.

Why did it happen in the 1980s and not earlier? Well, the answer is obvious: the hippies of the '60s got jobs. Radical students grew up, got tenure, and traded in their flower power for bow ties and flag pins. Now they were the Establishment they'd protested against, and they weren't about to let anyone disrespect their shiny new rules.

Suddenly, campus life wasn’t about free expression anymore. Now, students were encouraged to rat out professors who said something insufficiently patriotic or questioned the sanctity of heteronormative nuclear families. It was the Cultural Revolution, but make it apple pie.

And what about the rules of freedom conservatism? Oh, they’re a hoot. Imagine explaining to an alien why it’s okay to chant “freedom” while banning books. Or how “family values” means yelling at teenagers about abstinence, but having your own scandalous tabloid history is perfectly fine. The rules are neither consistent nor logical—they’re just a list of traps, perfectly designed for the self-righteous to trip others up.

Freedom conservatism thrives on outrage. And boy, does social media deliver. If outrage were a currency, Twitter would’ve been the new Fort Knox. Freedom conservatives figured out that they could rally mobs online to cancel anyone not adhering to the prescribed "values." Ironically, this led to the thing they claim to hate most: cancel culture.

And let’s not forget the administrators and HR departments hired to enforce this ideology in workplaces. Their job titles often feature words like "patriotism" or "family," but their real goal is to make sure you don’t say anything remotely critical about their flag collection or their favorite founding father.

The sad thing is that freedom conservatism is not going anywhere. The aggressively conventional-minded are like weeds—they’ll always find a crack in the pavement. But the key to stopping them is simple: stop letting them create new heresies. The next time someone tries to ban a book or a word in the name of protecting “values,” maybe, just maybe, we should push back.

Because when freedom conservatism—or any performative moralism—runs wild, the number of true things we can say shrinks. And that’s a loss for everyone, even the puritans."