ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the American political system tends to support conservative cultural politics. Presidents, members of Congress, Surgeon Generals, state legislators, judges, and grassroots activists came to embrace the politics of Puritanism. The "personal is political" was also quite ambiguous, in that many viewed it as a kind of imperialistic concept in which all human behavior could be evaluated in a "political" way. The basic logic of the anti-corporate argument regarding tobacco, food, alcohol, and pornography and television is that they "hook" consumers through glamorous advertisements and promises of joy. The chapter argues that although the right wing can claim the mantle of New Temperance, its success is also a victory for moderate and liberal activists in the new social movements who have supported a "politics of danger" rather than the libertarian politics originally voiced by the New Left, Feminism, Gay Liberation, and related movements.
