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>The only thing that Americans in the 21st century can learn from the Puritans of the 17th century is that Puritanism is exactly what should not be happening today. If the United States government were solely concerned with religious matters, nothing would get accomplished. ... The Puritans did not represent the American way. They helped the formation of the American way, by allowing the Founding Fathers to see what should be avoided.

Oh for heaven's sake! I get suspended for three days for using profanity, and this is the first thing I see when I get back?! What is this, some kind of test of my will power?

Look: The notion that fundamentalist Christians were one dimensional in the past OR that they are one dimensional today is SUCH a misguided notion that it seems to cross the line dividing mis-information from propaganda.

When I took AP history, the AP stood for "advanced placement." What does it stand for today, "advanced propaganda?"

The Pilgrims were a logical development of the Dissenters movement. The original "Nonconformists." Far from being "solely concerned with religious matters," it was the Dissenters who, in England, built canals, a dynamic banking system, a dynamic educational system, and, for the most part, planted the seeds that would later be exploited by a secular Britain and turned into the Industrial Revolution.

Fundamentalist Christians aren't one dimensional people. They're just people who have a different set of priorities than the secular Establishment. (FYI, commercial NMR imaging was perfected by an Evangelical Christian. One of the advanced versions of the Pentium chip was designed by a Born Again Christian.)

Mark W.