Long Promised, Well Delivered, It's a Lileks Screed of Epic Proportions . . .

Amitai Etzioni made the mistake of sending James Lileks one of his spamilicious missives promoting his 'communitarian' nonsense.

Needless to say, James was not amused, and he cooked up an excellent and detailed response to Amitai's Punitarian nonsense (Punitive+Communitarian=Punitarian, and all communitarians in the end know for individuals to act 'for the greater good' that serious punitive measures such as high taxes or ridiculous regulations are needed to fetter our natural self interest).

I originally called this crap, Punitive Communitarianism, but I've decided that Punitarianism is a better portmanteau of those two words that still conveys the meaning (Blake had an excellent post at his blog that reminded me of that concept, and Lileks attacks this nonsense in his screed, the Obama administration has a way of bringing out the Jacksonian in folks, I guess).

You can't spell "Punitarian" without the letters from "Puritan", and in all the ways that count, these folks are the modern version of 'Puritans', noble sounding goals, consumed by self righteousness, zealotry, and a need to find witches to burn (in the case of Punitarians capitalist are their Satan worshipping witches, but the principle's the same).