In an age not only ignorant of, but increasingly hostile to the constraints of constitutional limits and the balance of powers, we can only expect such a judgment to be passed. Nobody knows about the dangerous and tyrannical tribunal known as the Star Chamber; nobody cares about whether or not Charles abused the rights of Parliament. We barely care when our own president abuses the limits of executive power and tramples the rights of our own House of Representatives. But we love dancing and drinking and Christmas and lovemaking – not because we’re degenerates, but because we’re simply humans. And if some Puritans were against dancing on Sunday, then we remember it and want to run them out on a rail. And if they’re the only people we know of who caused Christmas Day riots by proclaiming it to be a day of fasting and penance, then we’d almost rather burn our cities to the ground than let them run one. It’s better, to us, to suffer even the wildest and most well-deserved natural penalties of vice than to have even our tragic romances stolen from us; we know, even by looking at newborns, that our heads and legs were meant to move when something catchy comes on the radio. It isn’t because the Puritans were bad at being neighbors that we’ve forgotten about their virtues (and let us be fair: they had many); it’s because they wanted everyone to be bad at being human.