Lib, why are you such a prick?

[Captain_Amazing]

@Liberal

But they did. The Puritans were agitators unsatisfied with reforms under Henry VIII. The more radical among them separated themselves from the Church of England and were called, well, Separatists. They were the forerunners of the Unitarian Universalist church, surely one of the most liberal churches today. They were dissenters who questioned the political order, just like all good liberals.

That’s really an overly romantic view of its founding the UUA has (and I’ll point out that you’re equivocating when you call the UUA today “one of the most liberal churches” They can be characterized as “centrist zombies after your wallet” as I think you described modern liberalism).

You can’t even characterize the the Puritans as classical liberals. They weren’t interested in abstract principles of liberty (although the Civil War led to the development of political liberalism), but instead in setting up a Christian commonwealth…in building God’s kingdom on earth, in whatever form it took.

[mhendo]

@Liberal

But they did. The Puritans were agitators unsatisfied with reforms under Henry VIII. The more radical among them separated themselves from the Church of England and were called, well, Separatists. They were the forerunners of the Unitarian Universalist church, surely one of the most liberal churches today. They were dissenters who questioned the political order, just like all good liberals.

I notice that your quote includes tha Puritans who came to America, and that you claim that the Puritans were “dissenters who questioned the political order, just like all good liberals.” I’m sure that Anne Hutchinson and various other New England dissenters would be intrigued to learn that she was banished by people who held a liberal belief in personal freedom and dissent.

[Liberal]

I didn’t say Puritans were the only liberals, or that all Puritans were liberals. Purtianism included the Separatists and the Presbyterians. But the notion that they were apolitical is ridiculous. The king’s advisor’s called them “Washington’s Black Regiment”, and their sermons in support of the American Revolution are legendary. The Whiggamores (Whigs) arose from the Puritans, and they were definitively politically liberal.

[Captain_Amazing]

@Liberal

But the notion that they were apolitical is ridiculous. The king’s advisor’s called them “Washington’s Black Regiment”, and their sermons in support of the American Revolution are legendary. The Whiggamores (Whigs) arose from the Puritans, and they were definitively politically liberal.

Congregationalist support for the American Revolution was legendary, but that was 140 years after Massachussetts was settled. They weren’t the people “who abandoned their homes hundreds of years ago and journeyed to the New World”; they were the great-great-grandsons of those people.

And you’re right, the Puritans weren’t apolitical, but I still wouldn’t call them liberals. They were proto-liberals, maybe, and the Puritan movement contributed to liberalsim, but saying they were liberals is like calling Rousseau a socialist. Rousseauian liberalism anticipated socialism, and socialsts were influenced by him, but he wasn’t a socialist himself.

[Liberal]

I’m fine with that. Proto-liberal. You should be a diplomat, Captain.