The political culture of the United States was founded on puritan idealism. President Reagan used often to quote John Winthrop's statement that the new colony of Massachusetts, which he founded in 1630, must be "a city set on a hill". What Jesus actually said was: "A city that is set on a hill cannot be hig." The US is a very large and diverse nation. Unless its held together by shared idealism, its hard to suppose that it can long be held together at all. When a President runs a morally defective Administration, that will have an impact on the coherence of the nation.
             The Puritans dream was to create a model society for the rest of Christendom. Their goal was to make a society in every way connected to god. Every aspect of their lives, from political status and employment to even recreation and dress, was taken into account in order to live a more pious life. But to really understand what the aspirations of the puritans were, we must first understand their beliefs. "Their goal was absolute purity; to live with out sin in a sinful world was to them the supreme challenge in life. They were derisively called Puritans because they sought to purify the Church of England of the popish and antichristian stuff with which they believed the simplicity of the primitive Christian church had been encrusted." The Puritans believed that man's only purpose in life was "to glorify God on earth and, if he were especially fortunate, to continue the good work in Heaven." For the puritans, to glorify god meant keeping him in mind at all times, working to the best of their ability at whatever job god had fated them to do, and following a strict moral code based on the bible. "Every act and thought was either a glorification of god or its opposite." Thus, leading a pious life in the form of working hard, praying, and churchgoing, was considered paying homage to God. Through all of these things, the most important was to...