But this is not simply another example of the kind of Puritanism which bemuses non-Americans.
Healthy culture should not be the realm of Puritanism but of Good Samaritanism and smart policy.
If one state opts for Puritanism while its neighbor allows the prurient, it is well.
She is also swimming against two currents in American life: petty puritanism and a pathological obsession with safety.
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The final explanation is drawn from Max Weber that Pentecostalism, like Puritanism before it, is an instrument of modernisation.
More tolerant and mystical versions of the faith, as well as the ultra-puritanism of the Salafist movement, also compete for market share.
It was also his hatred of Puritanism which caused him in early life to devote rather more time to pursuing homosexual conquests than to economics.
And this continues even unto this day of supposed financial puritanism.
Besides, not all immigrants to America brought Puritanism in their hearts.
The code they espouse is a combination of Islamic puritanism and Pashtun custom, the basic tenets of which are honour, revenge and respect for private property.
As long as the GOP clings, bitterly, to a core identity of Puritanism it will, and should, find itself viewed with considerable disdain by an American public imbued with the Jeffersonian ethic.
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At the risk of appearing more profound than it is -- the English were able to shake off the puritanism of Cromwell and established the quintessence of sexual humour in Restoration comedy.
The White House decided to go for broke: the President's allies toasted the death of neo-Puritanism, stopped talking about censure and raised the possibility that there should be no penalty at all.
That those statistics can be so easily and well disproved, as Snowdon does, tells me that the campaign is driven rather more by puritanism, that fear that someone, somewhere, might be enjoying themselves, than by public health concerns.
The trouble began when a small group of Salafists Muslims inspired by Saudi-style puritanism, supposedly harking back to the time of the Prophet Muhammad marched on a church in response to rumours that a female convert to Islam had been kidnapped and was being held there.
The supply-side chapel in which many of us have worshiped for so many years has an odd strain running through its creed of what can only be described as a kind of permissive Puritanism: Politicians can do what they want to do as long as they do do the few things they must do right.
Egypt's 8m Christians, about 10% of the population, are understandably anxious not least because, to get elected, Mr Morsi will need the support not just of the Brothers but also of the Salafists, a far more worrying band of Islamists who hark back to the puritanism of the Prophet Muhammad's era and who have amassed an alarming degree of popular support in the new Egypt.
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