The Pilgrim Plague
Ah, the elite progressive white people. Those insufferable, self-righteous bastards who've managed to infect the American psyche with their millenarian madness for centuries. It's a flippin’ disease, a gnostic virus that's been festering in our national bloodstream since the first Puritan set his sanctimonious foot on Plymouth Rock.
The Four Horsemen of American Settlement
Four types of soccer hooligans came here from Britain:
The Puritans: New England's very own fun police
The Cavaliers: Southern gents with a drawl
The Scots-Irish: Appalachian rabble-rousers
The Quakers: Commerce-loving pacifists
Most of these folks weren't peddling the apocalyptic snake oil that's been America's favorite intoxicant. The Cavaliers were too busy playing plantation lord, the Scots-Irish only became messianic after a few swigs of moonshine, and the Quakers—well, they kept one foot on the mercantile ground while reaching for the heavens.
The Puritan Pox
But those damn Puritans. They're the ones who really left their mark, like a bad tattoo on America's collective consciousness. From Thanksgiving turkeys to witch trials, from Unitarian pulpits to Ivy League pretension, the Puritan brand is seared into our national DNA.
The Brit G.K. Chesterton quipped that England should celebrate the American Thanksgiving Day holiday by giving thanks that the Pilgrims left England. He was right. When you're so full of spiritual hot air that you can't see the earth beneath your feet, you become a special kind of unbearable.
The Insufferable Inheritance
Richard Hooker, poor bastard, spent much of his life wrestling with the Puritans. He found them smugly devoted to their wrongheaded ideas, dividing the world into "us" (the chosen ones) and "them" (the unwashed masses). Sound familiar? It should, because we're still living with the deplorable legacy.
The Hippie-Puritan Connection
Here's a mind-bender for you: those flower-power hippies? Just Puritans with better drugs. Picture it: peace, love, and social transformation through free love and LSD. It's the City on a Hill, just with more nudity and a worse work ethic.
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Eric Scheske
