we can't chase them across the ocean off our continent.

Puritans would wear them.

Republicons today are in it for the money/power. They do not have the convictions of the religious. They use religion to polarize people so it is easier for them to gain money/power.

pretty much died away after the Salem witch trials. I believe many migrated at that time to other Protestant sects; Presbyterianism and Methodism come to mind.

was that there was no place else for them to go. The English booted them out and then they went to Holland, where they were such blue-nosed, assholish, intolerant killjoys that even the notoriously tolerant Dutch couldn't stand them after a few years. Had the Natives in what is now New England been more organized and numerous, the Puritans probably would have been sent on their way once more.

The Australians got the penal colony, America got the religulous nutbags. The Aussies got the best end of that deal, no doubt about it.

So they went to where their kids wouldn't be tempted to marry into those 'amoral' families.

You can see an interesting difference in Winthrop and the Republicans in how they use the "city on the hill" reference that Winthrop spoke of as the Arabella approached Massachusetts. Reagan and all the Republicans - said it was shining. This distorts the original point. In a speech on South Sudan last December, Kerry referenced it in a way that likely was truer to the original.

[div class = "excerpt"]
In 1630, my great-grandfather many times over led a journey across the ocean, fleeing persecution. And he gave a sermon on the deck of the Arabella that has been invoked by leaders as different as President Kennedy and President Reagan. John Winthrop talked about what it meant to be a “City upon a hill—the eyes of all people are upon us.” He knew that a historic moment had to be met with historic resolve because the world was watching.

Well today, all the eyes of the world are on South Sudan. The world is watching to see if this new nation will fall into the all-too-common sectarian conflict and corruption that some say is inevitable, or whether you can meet the loftier challenge of history and the dictate of your own aspirations—whether you will affirm your long struggle by making an even longer commitment to get to that better place.

Yeats wrote about those hinge points of human events when we can, as he said, “make hope and history rhyme.” This is your nation, but this is the world’s opportunity to match your hopes for all of history—and together we can stand together and make sure that what you do at this moment stands the test of history.

http://www.foreign.senate.gov/press/chair/release/senator-kerry-delivers-a-speech-on-the-situation-in-south-sudan

The difference is that one is bragging about our society - the other is a call for it to live up to their values. In many speeches on interfaith issues, Kerry has spoken of the intolerant roots in Massachusetts and he has always called for toleration. The Republican seem to have emulated the intolerance, but lost the humility and idealism.

If you look at the states with significant Puritan roots, they are mostly blue.

"The bourgeois Puritans, intellectual and moralistic, largely originated in Eastern England. From 1629 to 1640, they settled New England, and their descendents later spread across northern tier states like Minnesota, Washington, and Oregon. (The most famous representatives are the Adams family.) "
http://www.vdare.com/articles/americas-scotch-irish-and-the-rove-rationale