And I, like
>every sane people who would be reading this, fail to see the
>relation between John Winthrop's influence on the US and
>Europe being more "cultured",

i think it's american puritanism and religiosity v european urbanity and freethinking. he has a point.

are there european analogues to the importance of the religious right in the us? the attorney general annointed himself with olive oil at his inauguration, for pete's sake. and i think the religiosity is intimately entwined with anti-intellectualism and a suspicion of cities as sites for secular learning. i mean, would "pointy headed intellectuals" or dan quayle's foaming about the "cultural elite" even be an insult in europe?