[alkaloid]

I mean, pretty much everyone associates puritanism with the right-wing, but ok my bad...

We put up sets of idealistic moral standards that some or most of a society generally agree protects vulnerable people. This is why we have age limits on alcohol, for example. This is why we have age limits on porn, too.

Everyone is forced to comply or pretend to comply with minimum drinking ages, which are pretty common throughout the world. I think all would agree.

It doesn't really seem to be puritanism that drives a society to protect its vulnerable populations. It's not out of a hatred of alcohol that drinking ages exist, it's because alcohol abuse has been proven to ruin lives. Just like porn.

[LAC-Tech]

Well I think at this point you're just using puritanism as short-hand for "people trying to enforce morals I disagree with".

So if you're left-wing, than in your terminology puritans will be by definition right-wingers. And the people enforcing morals you agree with cannot be called Puritan.

If you take a brief look at the history of the original Puritanism however, it was definitely a 'revolutionary' movement against tradition. Including the ones who came to America.

[toyg]

> pretty much everyone associates puritanism with the right-wing

That "everyone" must be old. The new phenomena are already lampooned in plenty of memes. The boomers aged pretty badly.

> It's not out of a hatred of alcohol that drinking ages exist, it's because alcohol abuse has been proven to ruin lives

If that were the case, alcohol would just be banned outright. The limits are basically virtual anyway, anybody can attest that getting alcohol is trivial once you start to really want it. Just like porn.

A lot of law is effectively performative morality, and no more so than in the area of personal pleasures. Prohibitionism always fails, eventually, because people want to feel.

[samhw]

> I mean, pretty much everyone associates puritanism with the right-wing, but ok my bad...

The fact that the right wing is puritan doesn't mean that puritanism entails being right-wing. This is, like, Logic 101, 'Socrates is a man'-level shit.