The possibility of housebound quarantine to avoid Covid-19, the coronavirus, took me back to my childhood in Bayonne, N.J., where my family belonged to an orthodox synagogue. Each autumn at Yom Kippur, the holiest Jewish observance, the observant fast between breakfast and dinner. My family did do that when I was very young; and then, after World War II, did not.

You might almost feel bad for Mike Pence. You could almost see the color drain from his cheeks when he was tapped by the boss to lead the United States coronavirus response.

I’m beginning to get it — “it” being how Puritanism, with its disdain for freedom of speech, religious tolerance, equality, et cetera, led to the Declaration of Independence — but my essential question as to how we got from Cotton Mather to Thomas Paine remains.