Tom unintentially makes my point. Julia Ward Howe was a Unitarian, as were most of the other fire-breathing Yankees of which Rothbard writes. Unfortunately, Rothbard mistook Unitarians for Calvinist Puritans. Furthermore, the postmillenial views of the Unitarians were secular in outlook, since they did not believe in the Second Coming of Christ, given they did not believe even in the deity of Christ.

The Unitarians’ postmillenialism was nothing like the postmillenial theology of some (and I emphasize some) people in the Reformed camp. Not all people who are Calvinists are postmillenialist, as some take the same eschatalogical view as does the Roman Catholic Church, while others fall into a pre-millenial category (but different from the pre-millenialism of those who are Dispensationalists).

I believe this to be a serious error on Rothbard’s point. Perhaps the best treatment of this subject can be found in Samuel Blumenfeld’s 1979 article in Reason, “Why the Schools Went Public.” Blumenfeld points out that Horace Mann and most of the other New England reformers were Unitarians who despised Calvinism and Calvinists. Furthermore, he points out that in 1805, the Unitarians took over Harvard and kicked out the Calvinists.

Unfortunately, Rothbard took a “all Protestants think alike” approach to his narratives. While this viewpoint made it easier for him to push certain themes, they tend to tar a lot of people with a brush, including people like me.

Now, I suspect that those readers who are Roman Catholic would not like to have a false history put on this blog, nor would they like to be portrayed as caricatures. All I ask is that you hold to the same standards of truth when writing of Protestants that you would want for yourselves as Catholics. I truly resent being portrayed as a cartoon character.