Puritanism, Predestination, and the American Way

Useful backgrounder on Puritanism at the National Humanities Center, angled for teachers. It is interesting to note that Puritanism in England declined after the civil war and restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660. In America, Puritanism flourished among two factions, the Congregationalists and Presbyterians. In a sense, the British were capable of casting aside this wacko ideology only after the Puritans had revolted and took control under Cromwell with disastrous consequences. In America, there was no power base to act as counterweight and Puritanism took root in New England and the Mid Atlantic. Modern evangelicals are in the bloodline, certainly, and in the late 20th century, the reactionary Puritan mind has made a startling comeback, as a reaction to liberalism and the uncertain anxieties of modernity. Now in 2004, the Puritans have effectively taken power in America, and they are working feverishly to institute a theocratic republic, so at this point in time, it might be worthwhile to compare the Bush era to the Cromwell era and see if there's anything to be learned.
I've been thinking about why America is so fucked up lately. Here's a country with so much to offer and so little delivered. I think much of our national sickness can be traced to three roots: (1) Religious extremism (of which Puritanism is representative); (2) Materialism, or the worship of Mammon and the devotion to mercantile capital; and (3) Racism (the blood brother of chattel slavery and immigration). Much of what's wrong with us can be explained by analyzing those combination of factors, and much of the hypocrisy we witness has to do with the conflict betwen those factors. So for instance, extremist religion plus racism creates strange contortions of belief. The result? Lynch mobs, black men being dragged by pickup trucks, gay bashing, fear of commies and terrorists. When materialism meets religion, we get strange hypocritical syntheses like compassionate conservatism and assaults on entitlement programs, major rationalizations of greed (recast as the protestant work ethic), and the mythology of welfare queens and crack babies. Racism plus Materialism leads directly to the ghetto, the white trash slum, the trailer park, and suburban white flight. For each factor there are repressed antitheses: extremist religious theocracy vs. inclusive religious tolerance and secular democratic rule by law; obsessive free market materialism vs. economic liberalism and socialism; racism and fear of the "other" vs. multicultural diversity and melting pot integration. It's almost like a forcefield within which we can understand the dance of political, economic, and spiritual molecules in laboratory America.
None of this is very well thought out, I admit. I could be full of shit, and I may be leaving something (many things) out. It's just a sketch of some ideas that might be worthy of further analysis.
If I'm right about this re-emergent Puritanism, though, then we better put Nathaniel Hawthorne on the required reading list....