It's not that it's overtly anti-American, it's that puritanism (or maybe just puritan bigots?) inherently threatens our secular democracy or something. I think he said something more concrete about this, but I totally forgot because this class is at fucking nine in the morning, and i am generally only half-conscious.

Maybe it has something to do with "Another important distinction was the Puritan approach to church-state relations. They opposed the Anglican idea of the supremacy of the monarch in the church (Erastianism), and, following Calvin, they argued that the only head of the Church in heaven or earth is Christ (not the Pope or the monarch). However, they believed that secular governors are accountable to God (not through the church, but alongside it) to protect and reward virtue, including "true religion", and to punish wrongdoers — a policy that is best described as non-interference rather than separation of church and state," but then again, "Alexis de Tocqueville suggested in Democracy in America that the Pilgrims' Puritanism was the very thing that provided a firm foundation for American democracy, and in his view, these Puritans were hard-working, egalitarian, and studious."

*shrug*