Word: puritanically
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Because we're living in an economy only a Puritan could love. When profits began falling, out went lavish holiday parties. Company retreats retreated from Cancun to the conference room. "If, say, on Friday, you announce layoffs and no raises, but hey, next week I'm taking everyone to Hawaii--no, that you can't do," says Bob Moog, founder and CEO of University Games in San Francisco, which has bucked the trend by not emptying the employee goody bag. Economists marvel at the productivity of this new new economy. The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced in August that output...
...Puritan: A pious gentleman, who believed in letting all people do as he liked...
...Puritan: A pious gentleman, who believed in letting all people do as he liked...
...also wrote parodies that poked fun at Puritan intolerance. In one of them, called "A Witch Trial at Mount Holly," a couple of accused witches were subjected to two tests: weighed on a scale against the Bible, and tossed in the river with hands and feet bound to see if they floated. They agreed to submit--on the condition that two of the accusers take the same test. With colorful details of all the pomp, Franklin described the process. The accused and accusers all succeed in outweighing the Bible. But both of the accused and one of the accusers fail...
Franklin used Mrs. Dogood to attack the theocratic rule of the Puritan establishment and the link between church and state that was then the very foundation of Massachusetts government. At one point she asks, "Whether a Commonwealth suffers more by hypocritical pretenders to religion or by the openly profane?" Unsurprisingly, she concludes the former is worse, and singles out the Governor, a minister who had become a politician, as an example. "The most dangerous hypocrite in a Commonwealth is one who leaves the gospel for the sake of the law. A man compounded of law and gospel is able...