Michelle, you draw a good parallel between the historic No Nothing Party of the 19th century in the US and the political religionists of every stripe today, especially in the US but actually everywhere.

However, it would have been far better had you written the next to last paragraph without the collective "we". Neither you nor I (or anyone else I know of) were alive 150 years ago to make any progress in our individual thinking. And please do not lump me into those who have not learned "the lessons of seperation [sic] of church and state". Although it is a too often seen writing and speaking technique, this frequent practice of using "we", "us" and "our" when the group is undefined and/or the writer/speaker is not a designated spokesman for the specific group (permission haven been given by all members) is very bad for logical reasoning. I suggest that the paragraph is just as effective and logically correct when reworded:

"Has there been no progress in the last century and a half? Did civil rights never happen, or Thoreau, Ghandi, Madelyn Murray O'Hair, or hell, John Lennon? Have so few individuals learned the lessons of separation of church and state as well as hegemony?"
(BTW, hegemony is a word with which many are not really familiar. Per Merriam Webster Unabridged Online Dictionary:
1 : preponderant influence or authority (as of a government or state) : LEADERSHIP, DOMINANCE
The State by its very nature is authoritarian and by its legal monopoly on force has the preponderant influence on the actions of those in its geographical area.)

For more discussion on the pitfalls of this use of the 1st person plural in writing and speaking, I recommend reading, "Collectivism in Language:
Its Effects on Valid Reasoning"

**Kitty Antonik Wakfer

MoreLife for the rational - http://morelife.org
Reality based tools for more life in quantity and quality
Self-Sovereign Individual Project - http://selfsip.org
Self-sovereignty, rational pursuit of optimal lifetime happiness,
individual responsibility, social preferencing & social contracting