A Different Look at Reasoning

The only eyewitness account we have of the Puritans’ first Thanksgiving (by Edward Winslow) describes three days of sporting, entertaining and feasting, hardly the pious sobriety one would ascribe to a “grim, self-righteous and self-satisfied” society.

Rutten should not dismiss the Puritans so quickly. After all, the movement was diverse enough to include poet John Milton, a champion of civil liberty and free expression.

While their little theocracy had a dismal civil rights record, most atheist states and so-called people’s republics have done far worse. Yes, American exceptionalism may be a myth, but Rutten’s replacement--the genius of human reason applied to the problem of class struggle--has also been tried and discarded in the ash heap of communism.

STEVE KUCHENSKI

Sierra Madre