Colonial fear of Catholicism transferred to British authority and to some extent to the Anglican church, he said. Law and religion were two crucial interlocking intellectual systems in the 1700s. Nine of out 10 intellectuals then were clergymen. Colonists tended to organize as Presbyterians, Baptists and Congregationalists. Taxation without representation doesn't sufficiently explain people's perception of tyranny, Clark said.
People fight wars when they persuade themselves there is no alternative.
A problem on both sides of the Atlantic, Clark said, is that the historical way of looking at things is declining in modern culture. A few years ago, for some Americans, their event horizon was the Mayflower. If people view their history in modern terms, they tend to insulate themselves from being able to make international comparisons, he said. Consequently people are unable to recognize that they are more different from people in other societies than they think they are. But history is what you don't escape.