[Hemingway's Ghost]

Winthrop's speech was most definitely about communal living. Perhaps you should try not to filter every single word through modern experience. Here it is again if you care to read it.

[FreedominJesusChrist]

Thanks for the link...I will read it again. But I already read it when I was a junior in high school for my American Lit. Class.

[FreedominJesusChrist]

I wouldn't say that Communal living is wrong. It just doesn't work and is not practical.

[A.J.Armitage]

You can't simply equate the Puritan legacy, especially as it pertains to the government, with what they tried at first. In the first place, IIRC, they did try a kind of commune and abandoned it. That abandonment came long before the American Revolution. In the second place, the Puritans were part of the radical protestant tradition in England, which was the context for political factions such as the Levellers.