The Sadism of the American Mind

Moralism and the Puritan Legacy

Alexander Raynor argues that America’s Puritan-rooted moralism masks a sadistic impulse that, through judgment and conformity, sustains a decentralized form of totalitarian control.

American culture, for all its professions of liberty, tolerance, and individualism, is undergirded by a deeply moralizing spirit that often slides into cruelty. From its Puritan beginnings to its contemporary expressions in political discourse and social media outrage, the American mind has long exhibited a zeal for judgment, surveillance, and punishment. This impulse, masked as moral concern, frequently reveals itself as sadism — an enjoyment of domination under the guise of righteousness.

To understand this, we must begin with the Puritans, whose influence on American cultural DNA cannot be overstated. The Puritan worldview was steeped in binary moral codes: saved vs. damned, pure vs. corrupt, chosen vs. fallen. In this scheme, there was little room for ambiguity, let alone compassion for the morally errant. The community’s spiritual health was maintained not only by private piety but by the public shaming and punishment of transgressors. Alexis de Tocqueville noted this phenomenon in his work, Democracy in America. The stocks, the scarlet letter, the witch trial — these were not only mechanisms of discipline, but spectacles of moral superiority and collective catharsis.