One of the hallmarks of a Puritanical culture is a total disregard for intent. Nothing matters except the behavior: internal motivations, extenuating circumstances, and individual histories get thrown out the window in the black and white quest for Justice.™

We can confidently say that our culture is becoming Puritanical, but that trend isn’t being driven by fundamentalist Christians or the right more generally. Our Puritan ethics come straight from the hive mind of the radical left.

Here’s a great example. Disneyland recently revamped their famous Snow White ride with new audio and visual technology, LED lights, music, and animation. But it didn’t pass muster with the radical feminists who rode it and wrote a review for SF Gate.

Why? Because the prince kisses Snow White without her consent.

How horrifying!

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According to crazy feminists Katie Dowd and Julie Tremaine:

The new ride includes a more comprehensive storyline — but that’s also the problem. The new grand finale of Snow White’s Enchanted Wish is the moment when the Prince finds Snow White asleep under the Evil Queen’s spell and gives her “true love’s kiss” to release her from the enchantment. A kiss he gives to her without her consent, while she’s asleep, which cannot possibly be true love if only one person knows it’s happening. 

Haven’t we already agreed that consent in early Disney movies is a major issue? That teaching kids that kissing, when it hasn’t been established if both parties are willing to engage, is not OK? It’s hard to understand why the Disneyland of 2021 would choose to add a scene with such old fashioned ideas of what a man is allowed to do to a woman, especially given the company’s current emphasis on removing problematic scenes from rides like Jungle Cruise and Splash Mountain. Why not re-imagine an ending in keeping with the spirit of the movie and Snow White’s place in the Disney canon, but that avoids this problem?

For those of you who haven’t watched Snow White in a while, let’s review. An evil witch enchants Snow White so that she falls asleep and can only be awakened by “true love’s kiss.” Helpful guy that he is, the prince volunteers to plant the aforementioned kiss, and Snow White lives happily ever after.

The prince, in other words, isn’t trying to sneak a smooch with a sleeping woman. He’s trying to save Snow White from an eternity of waking death. Does this not matter when we’re judging his actions? Presumably, any woman would be grateful for such a kiss, and any man would be commended for providing it.

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But for the radical left, intent doesn’t matter. Like the Puritans before them, all that matters is behavior. The prince didn’t ask for Snow White’s consent, and therefore his actions should be condemned.

If you want more proof of the left’s insanity, you need look no further than the New York Times. Earlier this year, The Times fired one of its most senior reporters for using the N-word. He didn’t use it as a racial slur. As The Times admitted, he used the word to ask clarifying questions of a student who was asking about the use of the word in another context.

That didn’t matter, of course. After receiving a few complaints, The Times fired him.

“We do not tolerate racist language regardless of intent,” they said.

The Snow White controversy may strike you as trivial. In a vacuum, it is. But it’s indicative of a larger trend towards fanaticism, bigotry, and, yes, Puritanism. Unless we can re-insert intent into our moral judgements, our culture is headed for a very dark place.

About The Author

Mark was a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, and served as the national coordinator. He left the organization to work more broadly on expanding the self-governance movement beyond the partisan divide. Mark appears regularly on television in outlets as diverse as MSNBC, ABC, NBC, Fox News, CNN, Bloomberg, Fox Business and the BBC. He’s highly sought after for the tea party perspective from print and electronic media outlets, from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, L.A. Times, Washington Examiner, Politico and the The Hill. Mark blogs at MarkMeckler.com, and his opinion editorials regularly run in many of the leading political newspapers both on and offline. Mark has a BA in English from San Diego State University and graduated with honors from University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law in 1988. He practiced real estate and business law for almost a decade. For the last eleven years of his legal career he specialized in Internet advertising law. When not fighting for the future of our nation, Mark is an avid horseman, and lives in rural northern California with his wife Patty and two children.