Here are more things that don't really go together:
I might add that both Democratic campaigns missed an opportunity last week. They seem not to have noticed that the date of the first Seder, April 19, was also the 233rd anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord. So, a few days before Pennsylvanians vote, the candidates could have commemorated not just the Exodus from Egypt but also “the shot heard round the world,” thus identifying themselves all at once with political liberation, religious freedom and — yes! — the right to bear arms.
The story of Exodus involves, at the very least, a movement of a large mass of people from one place to another, better one. The story might fit the Pilgrims, what with their desire to live religiously pure lives in someone else's country, but that didn't have a whole lot to do with religious freedom–or at least the freedom of religions other than their own.
I suppose Times Readers will be forced to deal with these sorts of columns from Kristol now that he is a regular contributor.
Just wanted to respond to your analysis, Casey:
“The story might fit the Pilgrims, what with their desire to live religiously pure lives in someone else’s country, but that didn’t have a whole lot to do with religious freedom–or at least the freedom of religions other than their own”
By that story, I suppose you mean the start of the American Revolutionary War? Given the great symbol of religious liberation and tolerance that the this conflict has become, is it really so out of place here?
While the motives for the Pilgrims might not have been religious tolerance for all people of all faiths, it that even relevant? Americans, and scholars have embraced those events as catalysts for religious freedom in America. Isn’t that what matters?
No, I don’t mean the start of the American Revolution. I mean that the story of the Pilgrims, with an escape, a difficult voyage, a promised land founded by a religious minority is like the story of Exodus. The American Revolution, which followed that event by many years, didn’t have much if anything to do with those themes.