Free Republic

In music, as everybody knows, the blues were born in the Mississippi Delta and traveled up the river and the railroads from New Orleans to Memphis, St. Louis and on to Chicago. In politics, the blues were born farther north: in the Puritan commonwealth of 17th century New England centered around Boston. For the Puritans, the construction of a godly society was the first order of business. The state was not the enemy of liberty; the state was society’s moral agent. Today’s libertarians sometimes like to call their blue model liberal opponents “unamerican”. Nothing could be farther from the truth:...

Looking forward to the weekend is such an institution even officially-atheist nations like China shut down for Sunday. Here in America, it seems like the weekend is our goal line for all the days before! No wonder they write songs about it. Now, is anything wrong with that? The answer may surprise you, and even more when you realize that even the Puritans thought games and recreation could be Biblical and righteous ...

    PURITANS WERE MORE JEWISH THAN PROTESTANTS  Hugh Fogelman     A Puritan is a name often misunderstood. During the 17th century English Civil War (known as the Puritan Revolution), the Puritans were Protestant fundamentalists who wished to “purify” the Church of England. Some of the Puritans, known as Separatists “separated,” forming their own church. The Puritans felt that Parliament, and not the King, should have the final say and that the moral guidance for all legal decision should come from the Jewish Bible which they considered to be the highest authority in all matters. The Puritans were obsessed...

Steve Lee, of Denver, Colo., is familiar with the despondency that unemployment brings. Laid off a year ago from a medical-sales position, he admits that depression hit just a few months into his unemployment. "All I could think about was how bad the economy was and how unlikely getting a new job as good as my old one would be," he said. With tips like "start exercising" and "try to stay hopeful," cyber-counsel for the 15 million currently out of work rings hollow at best, leaving those thigh-deep in unemployment wondering where to turn for practical advice. With Thanksgiving just...

When the Pilgrims landed in 1620, they established a system of communal property. Within three years they had scrapped it, instituting private property instead. Hoover media fellow Tom Bethell tells the story. There are three configurations of property rights: state, communal, and private property. Within a family, many goods are in effect communally owned. But when the number of communal members exceeds normal family size, as happens in tribes and communes, serious and intractable problems arise. It becomes costly to police the activities of the members, all of whom are entitled to their share of the total product of the...

In a recent column ("Brown: the great radical Puritan university," Oct. 7), my friend Graham Anderson '10 makes several assertions about the Puritan worldview, and its influence on our beloved Brown, which I would like to refine and revamp, though not entirely repudiate. An item of disclosure: Graham and I have taken several courses on Anglo-American history together, and we both can trace our religious lineage back to the English-Scottish Reformation. He begins his column by referring to the lament among many conservatives that, though once a stronghold for Protestant Christian thought and leaders, the Ivy League is now an...

America's founding myth tells of the Puritans landing in wild, uncharted lands. Yet a French explorer had already mapped the territory in exquisite detail. NEW ENGLANDERS GROW up imbibing certain creation myths, most of which relate to how unbelievably historic we are. It all started here, and entire businesses -- the vending of tricorne hats, for example -- depend on the tight control of information relating to the beginnings of America -- the Revolution, and the Salem witch trials before that, and at the dawn of time, the Pilgrims, hacking their way into the forest primeval. Everything trails in their...

In 1630, as the Arbella lay at anchor off Southampton, England in preparation for its journey to the New World, John Winthrop proclaimed to his fellow passengers that “we shall be as a city upon a hill.” By mid- century the notion of an exemplary New England, a light for nations of the world, had seized the imagination of New England’s cultural establishment. “And thou New England,” wrote Peter Bulkeley, one of its chief ministers, “which are exalted in privileges of the Gospel above many other people, know thou the time of thy visitation, and consider the great things the...

The celebration we now popularly regard as the "First Thanksgiving" was the Pilgrims' three-day feast celebrated in early November of 1621 (although a day of thanks in America was observed in Virginia at Cape Henry in 1607). The first Thanksgiving to God in the Calvinist tradition in Plymouth Colony was actually celebrated during the summer of 1623, when the colonists declared a Thanksgiving holiday after their crops were saved by much-needed rainfall. The Pilgrims left Plymouth, England, on September 6, 1620, sailing for a new world that offered the promise of both civil and religious liberty. The Pilgrims had earlier...

Thanksgiving: Reflection, food, thanks ... and Dallas Cowboys http://www.lompocrecord.com/articles/2007/11/20/opinion/112007b.txt http://tinyurl.com/33tapv November 20, 2007 Ron Fink Thanksgiving is the time of year when we sit back, smell the turkey, stuff ourselves with too much good food and then reflect on the good things that have happened to our families in the last year. Basically, we “give thanks” for the small and large successes we have enjoyed during the year, just as the pilgrims did. Thanksgiving Day as national holiday wasn't celebrated at Plymouth Rock, as lore would have it, but over 200 years later when President Lincoln declared the “last Thursday...

The Puritans were a particular kind of Evangelical Christian who arose in England and later in North America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We meet them first of all in England in the early 1560s, where the name 'Puritan' was first given to them. The Puritans were so called because, while appreciating all that had been gained in the Reformation, they wanted to ensure that without losing these gains the work of reforming the church according to the Word of God was taken further. When Queen Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1559, opinion in England was divided...

ANYONE WHO THINKS of American foreign policy in the Middle East as cussed, overzealous, hot-headed and hypocritical will be unconsoled to learn that this was the kind of thing people were saying about Puritanism and its adherents some four hundred years ago. Like so much else in modern America, its actions abroad should be viewed through the prism of the country’s root religion, Puritanism. To understand its continued centrality, imagine an America with no Mayflower and no New England. The national temperament would be less earnest, less moralistic, gentler. There would be fewer people in jail, and no executions. There...

NEW YORK - Pornographic movies now seem nearly as pervasive in America's hotel rooms as tiny shampoo bottles, and the lodging industry shows little concern as conservative activists rev up a protest campaign aimed at triggering a federal crackdown. A coalition of 13 conservative groups — including the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America — took out full-page ads in some editions of USA Today earlier this month urging the Justice Department and FBI to investigate whether some of the pay-per-view movies widely available in hotels violate federal and state obscenity laws. The coalition also is trying to...

Social Conservatism Posted 8/1/06 (By Travis)Social Conservatism8/1/06 Neoperspectives.com In principle, Conservatives and Libertarians see eye to eye in regards to economic freedom. They believe that individual Americans will collectively spend their own money much more efficiently and benefit society more than government spending. They believe burdensome regulations limit prosperity and harms business. They understand the harmfulness of socialized health care and retirement schemes.      However, there seem to be differences in scope between the two ideologies. Conservatives don't seem to have the same degree of, for lack of a better word, anti-governmentism. They don't seem to realize the degree which government...

THE GREAT DIVIDE Ever since its first European settlements, in the early 1600s, America developed as two completely different republics. We have been politically divided ever since, and will always remain so. This is because our two founding republican traditions are both opposite and irreconcilable. On one side of the divide were the agrarian republicans like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. They gave us the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, with their foundation stones of equal creation, personal freedom, and the inalienable rights of every citizen. Theirs was a republic of innate virtue, where crime and vice were nothing...

Too Glad to Be True: Puritan Culture David P. Henreckson A vast and untamed wilderness surrounded the first Puritans who landed in New England. Civilization was unknown in this land of dense forests and deadly natives. Yet, miraculously, these same Puritans were able to carve out of this wilderness an oasis for cultured learning, the poetic arts, and theological training. As one Puritan recorded, “After God had carried us safe to New England, and wee had builded our houses, provided necessities for our livelihood, rear’d convenient places for God’s worship, and settled the Civill Government; One of the next things ...

A Missouri couple say they were denied an occupancy permit for their new home because they're not married. Olivia Shelltrack and Fondray Loving have been together for 13 years and have three children, ages 8, 10 and 15, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. The couple are appealing the occupancy permit denial from the Black Jack, Mo., board of adjustment, which requires people living together to have blood, marriage or adoption ties. Loving is not the father of Shelltrack's oldest child. I was basically told, you can have one child living in your house if you're not married, but more than...

The residents of early New England were strongly influenced by the traditions of Calvinism and the routine of the established Congregational church, honoring hard work and stern independence, which were interpreted as self-sufficiency. They were proud of observing Thanksgiving as the most important day of the year and self-righteous in refusing to observe Christmas day, which they considered an emblem of the Roman Catholic Church. The Presbyterians, Quakers and Baptists also followed the teachings of John Calvin and chose not to celebrate Christmas. It was a day when farmers slaughtered hogs and farm wives dipped their candles. "It was remembered,"...

Yankees Touching Harps of GoldAppropriately, it was 1984. The Reagan-Bush ticket had won reelection. The U.S. Olympic team had destroyed everyone else at the Summer Games in Los Angeles. The HIV virus had been identified, and a cure for AIDS would surely follow. Hezbollah terrorists had bombed the U.S. embassy northeast of Beruit, and the CIA was busy training terrorists to carry out covert operations in Lebanon to stamp out terrorism. All was right with the world. Except in Africa, where people were starving, while American yuppies sat at home in the lap of luxury. Fortunately, a collective of British...

Save Our Strippers! Lawmakers want to kill gentlemen's clubs -- and the livelihoods of the women who run them. By Joe P. Tone If the "Stripper Bill" passes, dancers will have to zip up at 11 p.m. She knows you won't believe her, and she knows the starched shirts in Columbus won't either, but Robyn wants you to hear it anyway: The strip club saved her life. "I found my independence," she says, hands tucked nervously between her knees, as she sits in the champagne room at Diamond Men's Club on the East Bank of the Flats. It's early in...