Mark Lipton wrote:Robin Garr wrote:(As I understand it, moreover, we got our "Temperance" attitudes from the same source as our more defensible Abolitionism in the age of slavery: We imported it from England.)
Yup, though it's fair to point out that the Protestant nonconformists (aka Puritans) weren't limited to England, being also found in the Netherlands and with similar trends in the Lutheran splinter groups in Scandinavia. I find much to admire as well as to criticize in those religious sects: their emphasis on good deeds in the here-and-now, their work ethic, their opposition to slavery. In fact, the Friends (Quakers) to this day have a pretty admirable social agenda. It's fair to say, though, that their anti-hedonism would spell the end of any association I could have with them.
Mark Lipton
We Brits can take a lot of the blame (credit, if you prefer) for the development of Puritanism and particularly for its export to America. Strong kill-joy, even kill-king, attitudes developed in the 17th Century but some who found the home turf insufficiently receptive emigrated. In a sense we were lucky to have a short period of Puritan misrule by Oliver Cromwell which caused a national revulsion, even though quite a lot of puritan influenced attitudes, some good, some bad, continued to linger under the surface. As you rightly say, deeply protestant culture flourished for a long time in the Netherlands, Scandinavia and parts of Germany, but let us not blame Luther for the excesses. Is he not attributed with the saying "he who loves not wine, woman and song is a fool all life long"? (Is it an accident that a binge drinking culture flourishes in most of these Protestant areas?)
Let us not forget that Calvin was a Frenchman who set up a puritan "paradise" in Geneva. I think that on the whole the Huguenots in France were more pragmatic than Calvin while conserving their essential convictions, but that did not prevent their expulsion by a Catholic king. I believe that some of the prominent Bordelais wine families are protestant.
Europeans nowadays are overwhelmingly secular although historical cultural attitudes continue to have an influence (e.g. drink rules in Scandinavia). In France there are no traditional kill-joy attitudes in the gastronomic field; rather the reverse. I wonder if this does not, in part, explain the virulence of French Public Health fascists who may feel that they have to kill an existing culture in order to erect a new healthy utopia.
édération Internationale des Journalistes & Ecrivains du Vin et des Spiritueux) has launched a petition to refute the ruling of the court.
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