    35

    But memes do more than infect minds with abstract ideas.  They

    occasionally mobilize those bits of the animal brain that drove the killer

    rats to clear their cage of rivals.   Oliver Cromwell, a man whose animal

    brain had always been restless, was a godsend for the galloping meme

    of Puritanism.

    The greed of the meme revealed itself innocently enough at first.

    The English Protestants were ravenous for land.  So they roused

    themselves with spurious tales of rebellion and massacre in Ireland.

    According to widespread stories, the Irish had taken up arms and

    killed anywhere from 20,000 to 200,000 innocent English Protestant

    settlers.  The villains had supposedly left women and children to

    wander half-naked through the snows, starving and freezing to death.

    Rumors declared authoritatively that the demonic Irish had  held

    games to see who could stab his sword the furthest into a captive

    Englishman's flesh.  Some said the Irish had even roasted Protestant

    Englishmen alive, then eaten the steaming meat.52

    False as this gossip was, it aroused the English to a fury.  A

    group of primarily Puritan London businessmen put forth a simple

    proposition.  They would raise an army at their own expense to defeat

    the rebellious Irish and put down the outrage of Papacy. In exchange,

    the promoters wanted to keep the lands they confiscated from the Irish

    miscreants.  One man who enthusiastically invested in the scheme was

    Oliver Cromwell.  In fact, Cromwell bought two thousand pounds

    worth of shares--a fortune at the time.  The return on his stake, he

    hoped, would be a substantial chunk of the "liberated" lands.53

    The cranial circuit that had driven the rats to clear their cage was

    spreading its message through Cromwell's brain.  He became

    possessed by a new idea.  Why not cleanse Ireland of the Catholic Irish

    altogether, purging the land of those who satanically worshipped a

    devilish Roman Pope?  Ireland, said Cromwell, should be "replanted."

    The purified soil should be sewn with God's own crop--his chosen

    people.  These chosen souls, as you've probably guessed, were the

    Puritans.

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