The religions springing out of the desert, as obsessed with deprivation as they are, all have a very competitive, authoritarian, MEAN streak throughout. I mean, other faiths have the concepts of sharing, of plenty, of thoughtfulness as a part of the faith. But with the desert religions, some wise man comes along and preaches being NICE and its this amazing, radical thing.

And yeah, the Protestant/Calvinist mindset is much more entrenched in the U.S. because of how many of the extremists fled to the colonies early on. That mindset is still paramount in even otherwise liberal areas of the country like New England. Gads!!