Quote:
Originally Posted by Nickatilynx
This a better fact not taught in the US.
That the pilgrims did not come to america seeking freedom. They came to America to build a theocracy...no political nor religious dissent was tolerated.
They actually came for the exact opposite reason.
;)
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In "Democracy in America," Alexis de Tocqueville noted:
"Puritanism was not merely a religious doctrine, but corresponded in many points with the most absolute democratic and republican theories. It was this tendency that had aroused its most dangerous adversaries. Persecuted by the government of the mother country, and disgusted by the habits of a society which the rigor of their own principles condemned,
the Puritans went forth to seek some rude and unfrequented part of the world where they could live according to their own opinions and worship God in freedom."
....The general principles which are the groundwork of modern constitutions, principles which, in the seventeenth century, were imperfectly known in Europe, and not completely triumphant even in Great Britain, were all recognized and established by the laws of New England: the intervention of the people in public affairs, the free voting of taxes, the responsibility of the agents of power, personal liberty, and trial by jury were all positively established without discussion."
When James I succeeded Queen Elizabeth in 1603 he brought from his native Scotland an antipathy for Presbyterianism and vowed to suppress Puritanism in England. He also brought his Stuart family's insistence upon the divine right of kings and loathing of "interference" by Parliament.
His harassment of Puritans led some of them to flee to Holland, whence came in 1620 the founders of the Plymouth colony in Massachusetts.