# What is wrong with this statement about the formation of America? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 24, 2018, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-this-statement-about-the-formation-of-america/807341 "2018-01-24T04:06:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2018, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-this-statement-about-the-formation-of-america/807341/41 "2018-01-25T16:38:37Z")
> [@gnoitall](#): > > Indeed, the Church of England wasn’t going to let them execute [non-Puritan heretics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Hutchinson), so they founded a colony in which they’d be boss. > > This is the standard right-wing ignorance on religious freedom, in that they define “religious freedom” as “the right to practice religion as I do, and in no other way.” And of course before they set out for America they spent ten years in Leiden, where they were free to worship as they wanted. In fact the culture was so free and accepting that the kids were basically ‘going native’ in a culture the elders found to be too permissive. That, plus ongoing language issues and the inability to do missionary work when you’re already living in a strongly Protestant community, drove them back to England and, eventually, to the New World. Nothing supports the idea that “the original America was made of Europeans who wanted Freedom from their governments”, which is a nonsense. It was made of Europeans who wanted (or got) a new life elsewhere for a wide variety of reasons including religion, money, adventure, escape from social stagnation, and forced relocation. I suppose one could argue that those that chose transportation over hanging as a criminal penalty wanted “freedom from their government” but that’d be a very generous interpretation indeed. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2018, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-this-statement-about-the-formation-of-america/807341/42 "2018-01-25T16:45:11Z")
> [@gnoitall](#): > > Indeed, the Church of England wasn’t going to let them execute [non-Puritan heretics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Hutchinson), so they founded a colony in which they’d be boss. > > This is the standard right-wing ignorance on religious freedom, in that they define “religious freedom” as “the right to practice religion as I do, and in no other way.” You could have simply fought your ignorance and predujice by reading the Wiki page. > **[Puritans](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritans)** > > The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to rid the Church of England of what they considered to be Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become more Protestant. Puritanism played a significant role in English and early American history, especially during the Protectorate. > Puritans were dissatisfied with the limited extent of the English Reformation and with the Church of England's tolerat... ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2018, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-this-statement-about-the-formation-of-america/807341/43 "2018-01-25T17:36:13Z")
> [@Euphrosyne](#): > > I take that back. That was as bad as the earlier ad hom. > > My goal here is to see: _Can productive discourse exist outside one’s own echo chamber?_ > > My last comment is not a good example. I hate that it wasn’t. Let me repeat my comments in a larger font: I’ve already conceded that **I disapprove of forcing cake makers to make cakes, let alone forcing them to write a homophilic inscription on such a cake.** _ **Now: Can you reciprocate and tell us which of the freedoms in my list you consider less important than the cake-maker freedom?** _ ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2018, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-this-statement-about-the-formation-of-america/807341/44 "2018-01-25T17:58:33Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > You could have simply fought your ignorance and predujice by reading the Wiki page. > > [Puritans - Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritans) [Thank you for supporting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritans#Opposition_to_other_religious_views) my historically correct assertions. > [@](#): > > The Puritans exhibited intolerance to other religious views, including Quaker, Anglican and Baptist theologies. The Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were the most active of the New England persecutors of Quakers, and the persecuting spirit was shared by the Plymouth Colony and the colonies along the Connecticut river. > > In 1660, one of the most notable victims of the religious intolerance was English Quaker Mary Dyer, who was hanged in Boston for repeatedly defying a Puritan law banning Quakers from the colony. She was one of the four executed Quakers known as the Boston martyrs. The hanging of Dyer on Boston Common marked the beginning of the end of the Puritan theocracy. In 1661, King Charles II explicitly forbade Massachusetts from executing anyone for professing Quakerism. In 1684, England revoked the Massachusetts charter, sent over a royal governor to enforce English laws in 1686 and, in 1689, passed a broad Toleration Act. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2018, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-this-statement-about-the-formation-of-america/807341/45 "2018-01-25T23:24:02Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > As I recall, it was the 1620 Pilgrims who came in flight from religious oppression. Everyone since then came either motivated by greed, or to fill the vacuum of religious oppression. That’s also a simplistic view. There were other people who immigrated at least in part for religious reasons. For instance, lots of Catholics went to Maryland and Quakers to Pennsylvania because the propriators were of those faiths and tended favor others of those faiths. (Didn’t last though; a later Penn was not a Quaker and had a fair amount of conflict with the leaders in Philadelphia.) And later, there were a number of other immigrants who came mostly because of religion: Amish, Mennonites, and other anabaptists, for example. And sometimes Catholics and mainline Protestants had a religious conflict with the rulers in whatever part of Europe they were in and moved at least in part because of that. But you’re right for most immigrants. The big draw for most immigrants can be summed up in two words: free land. And that includes the religious refugees. They didn’t have to come to the US; they could have gone to Latin America, Canada, or Australia. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2018, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-this-statement-about-the-formation-of-america/807341/46 "2018-01-25T23:51:20Z")
> [@Euphrosyne](#): > > My goal here is to see: _Can productive discourse exist outside one’s own echo chamber?_ If by “productive” you mean “we all take this incredibly stupid tweet seriously”, then the answer is probably no. The tweet takes an ignorant misrepresentation of history and pairs it with a grossly bad misrepresentation of liberal goals in an attempt to trap progressives with stupid wordplay based on a name for their group. You want an assessment of the tweet’s substance and you’re getting a remarkably charitable one - one that focuses primarily on the relatively understandable-if-ignorant misunderstanding of history as opposed to the gigantic pile of stupidity to be found in the latter half of the tweet. Take what you can get - a lot of interesting history! ---
**Author:** ![BloodStalk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ee59a6/32.png) [@BloodStalk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BloodStalk)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2018, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-this-statement-about-the-formation-of-america/807341/47 "2018-02-02T04:00:13Z")
Is the tweet right wing/ have racist undertones? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-wrong-with-this-statement-about-the-formation-of-america/807341.md?page=2)