“Since the turn of the century, American fundamentalists had reveled in their sense of persecution by an infidel elite, but in the… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“For Northerners, victory had confirmed they were on God’s side, fortifying their besetting smugness, and their religion resolved more and more into… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“THE BIG PIECE of secular conventional wisdom about Protestantism has been that it gave a self-righteous oomph to moneymaking and capitalism—hard work… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“The Puritans are conventionally considered more "moderate" than the Pilgrims. This is like calling al-Qaeda more moderate than ISIS. The Massachusetts Bay… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“As we let a hundred dogmatic iterations of reality bloom, the eventual result was an anything-goes relativism that extends beyond religion to… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“mix epic individualism with extreme religion; mix show business with everything else; let all that steep and simmer for a few centuries;… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“Protestantism has been that it gave a self-righteous oomph to moneymaking and capitalism—hard work accrues to God’s glory, success looks like a… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“Whether an individual’s conspiracism exists alongside religious faith, psychologically they’re similar: a conspiracy theory can be revised and refined and further confirmed,… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“The great compromise between the American religious impulse and the American Enlightenment in the 1700s permitted any and every conceivable sect to… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“major argument of this book is that Americans are not just exceptionally religious but that our dominant religion has become exceptionally literal… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“Europeans had highly developed regional and national cultures and societies before they bolted on Protestantism. America, on the other hand, was half-created… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“Since the turn of the century, American fundamentalists had reveled in their sense of persecution by an infidel elite, but in the 1960s the… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share
“If I think it’s true, no matter why or how I think it’s true, then it’s true, and nobody can tell me otherwise.” — Kurt Andersen Copy Share
“Libertarianism used to have a robust left wing as well. Both disliked government. Both were driven by a fantastically nostalgic conviction that a country… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share
“But what other place on Earth has been more congenial to believers and promoters of mad dreams and schemes of so many kinds? California… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share
“The antisharia movement lobbied states to pass statutes and constitutional amendments banning the use of sharia in their courts and legal systems, a fantasy… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share
I'm comparing Americans to international peers in terms of GDP, educational system - the sort of benchmarks we used to designate a so-called developed… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share
TED was simply wonderful, an intellectual spa, a 21st-century Chataqua, superb and singular. — Kurt Andersen Copy Share
“The early advocates of universal literacy and a free press…did not foresee…the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share
“EVEN PAUL GOODMAN, beloved by young leftists in the 1960s, was flabbergasted by his students in 1969. “There was no knowledge,” he wrote, “only… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share
“IN ADDITION TO having become a distinctly Christian party, the GOP is more than ever America’s self-consciously white party. The nationalization of its Southern… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share
“Sixteen hundred years ago Saint Augustine instructed, basically, Don’t be stupid. “Shall we say, then,” he wrote about Genesis, “there was such a sense… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share
“After more than three decades and many hundreds of studies, the overwhelming scientific consensus is that GMO foods are safe to eat. The National… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share
“P. T. Barnum was the great early American merchandiser of exciting secular fantasies and half-truths. His extremely successful precircus career derived from and fed… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share
I am proud to be American. We wouldn't have our big dreams without this quality, but if we can't agree on the shape of… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share
“In 1848 the Homeopathic Medical College was founded in Philadelphia, eventually becoming the Drexel University College of Medicine. Homeopathic M.D. degrees were issued by… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share
