Beck: "We are stomping all over the Pilgrims this holiday"
November 25, 2009 5:17 pm ET
From the November 25 edition of Fox News' Glenn Beck:
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we all need to join a seminar or something on how terrible of a marxist obama is... maybe we can get a good laugh out of it.
but its very crucial to becoming a certified wingnut these days.
<sigh>
The freedom you lost was the freedom of having your president be caucasian.
Some of us realize the sacrifice of your ancestors - we will not forget you now or in the future!!!
There already is a Mayflower II. It's a replica of an English merchant vessel c. 1590. It was built in Brixham, UK in 1953, sailed to the US in 1957, and is now docked in Plymouth, MA. If you go to Plymouth to see "the Mayflower," that's the ship you see.
(That's tongue-in-cheek, lest I alarm any of our friendly neighborhood wingnuts.)
Come to think of it, I'm sure that Beck and his ilk believe that anyone who travels in search of riches is on a religious journey anyway, so I guess "pilgrim" really does fit...
Um, yeah, they did. To make money and get land, the latter being the big draw.
First, they didn't call themselves "Pilgrims." The term, based on a single passing reference in William Bradford's journal, was popularized 200 years later by Daniel Webster.
Second, they came as part of a joint stock company in which they were among the shareholders. (It wasn't a matter of being underwritten by a an existing company, it was a matter of creating a company.) Yes, they were after (and hopeful of) profit.
Third, if religious "freedom" was their only concern, they could have stayed in Holland, where they did worship essentially unmolested. (Sidebar: They opposed "freedom" as equivalent to anarchy; they would describe the goal rather as "liberty of conscience," perceiving a difference between "freedom" and "liberty" which we generally do not.) But they were very poor in Holland to a point they feared it was breaking apart their little community.
Oh, and fourth, while it's true that they were little more open to anyone following varying religious practices in the town than others were, the fact is that for their time they were a pretty laid back crew who - unlike many others - felt no urge to go out and make you do it their way. Oh, given the opportunity they'd argue with you in exchanges of pamphlets, they'd try to convince you (or others) they were right, but they still had an attitude of "you leave us alone and we'll leave you alone - just do what you do over there somewhere, not here."
Just FYI, this is something I wrote about Thanksgiving and "the Pilgrims" last year.
The Calvinists, Catholics, Quakers, etc. etc. who came here to make money WERE NOT PILGRIMS. And I never said they were.
Thanks for the history lesson- I have a Master's Degree in History and I teach it. You could have saved a lot of time if you had just read my post a bit more carefully.
Come on! They no sooner started founding towns than they had started exiling people from them who didn't worship at the congeragtionalist churches! They spent all day Sunday in church and compelled everyone in town to attend. Whatever the people of the Bay Colony and Plymouth were, they were NOT laid back when it came to the religion of others.
Cotton Mather was so "laid back" he had the bodies of Quakers dug up so he could measure their skulls, convinced that demons lived there.
Where do you think the American stigma against Catholics came from, and why has it persisted so long?
Why did Penn have to set up a whole separate colony for the Quakers?
Why did the Jews who came here have to go to Rhode Island to set up a temple?
Why were Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson exiled?
"Laid back crew" indeed.
Except for the whole exiling and witch-hanging thing. But hey, nobody's perfect.
1. Exiled Ann Hutchinson for (gasp) holding religious services in her home,
2. Exiled Roger Williams for questioning the right of religious leaders to enact and enforce secular law,
3. Included Cotton Mather, who was so fearful of Quakers that he had their bodies dug up so he could measure their skulls, where he was sure that demons resided when they were alive,
4. Ultimately executed 19 people for "practicing witchcraft." Very laid back, very "you leave us alone and we'll leave you alone."
By the way, they did not stay in Holland BECAUSE Holland had a great deal of religious freedom- and the Calvinists did not want to live near Catholics, Lutherans, Quakers, and Jews. Very laid back.
If you don't know what you are talking about, its ok to be quiet. I promise.
I have a Master's Degree in History and I teach it.
Teach history? Or specialize in the relevant time and place and issues? Your degree does not make you an expert on every particular area of history and I must say degrees don't impress me when they are matched with both arrogance and ignorance. I tell you up front that I am more than prepared to match my knowledge of the particular area I was addressing - the settling and early years of the Plymouth Colony - with yours, any time at all.
1. First, of course the technical definition of "pilgrim" is "one who makes a pilgrimage." But in the context being discussed here, of Thanksgiving and "the Pilgrims," the term is commonly used to refer to a specific group of settlers, those who came to what's now Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620. I was talking about Plymouth specifically as should have been more than clear from the references to "the Pilgrims" since, again, they are the ones to who the term is usually applied.
As for that technical meaning, it is your own reading skills that could use some honing since the very first thing I said was that the settlers did not call themselves "pilgrims."
2. You apparently equate Boston with Plymouth. Two different settlements, two different companies, two different brands of Protestantism, two different attitudes toward church-and-state issues, and two different attitudes towards imposing their particular views on others. In fact it's worse, as you equate 1620 with 1650 with 1690 as if they were of a piece. Tell me, Mr. I Have a Degree, would you think it's proper history to throw the attitudes of Americans of different regions in 1920, 1950, and 1990 into one pile as if there were no differences?
The fact is, if you don't know the difference between Boston (and Salem, for that matter) on the one hand and Plymouth on the other, you have already disqualified yourself from any claims to educated commentary.
3. Your claims about leaving Holland because of too much "freedom" is belied by the actual record. There were several reasons later given by the Plymouth settlers who came from Holland for leaving there, but they boiled down to two: We're too poor in Holland and our children are growing up Dutch rather than English. Even that boiled further down to one: We're afraid if we don't move our community will fall apart. No, they didn't like the various "heresies" they saw and they argued against them in debates and dissertations, but there is no mention of them as a cause for leaving.
4. Related to that, they would not have called themselves "Calvinists," in fact they would be insulted by the term as implying they followed the teachings of a man rather than the Bible. There was overall agreement on general principles (expressed in the so-called TULIP formulation which came out of the Synod of Dort) but the settlers would say that just defined sound Protestantism and if you got into the details of what Calvin taught and Calvinist practice, there were differences - for one important example, there were national "Calvinist" churches in a couple of countries and the settlers we are discussing specifically rejected the idea of a national church. (It was among their objections to the Church of England.) And again, in any event, they would have rejected the name.
They likely saw few Catholics or Lutherans in Holland, Jews would have been regarded with curiosity rather than revulsion, and Quakers? Oh my: The Religious Society of Friends, the Quakers, was founded in 1647 in England - 27 years after the Plymouth settlers left a different country to head for the so-called "New World."
Meanwhile, the cases of Ann Hutchinson, Roger Williams, and Cotton Mather all involved the MassBay colony, which was a separate legal entity from the Plymouth Colony until 1691, when the much bigger, better financed, and better-connected former absorbed the latter. Blaming Plymouth for them is like blaming South Dakota for a law passed by North Dakota.
These laid-back fun-loving Live and Let Live people
Again, your own reading skills need some sharpening: Why in heaven's name do you think I italicized the phrase "for their time?" It was to deliberately contrast what were in fact the - for their time - relatively tolerant views of the Plymouth settlers with modern views of the same issues. Yes, as I said, they were intolerant of true religious diversity within their community; in fact, by 21st century standards they were religious and ethnic bigots - but unlike many others of their time, they did not require everyone to join their church, they did not make such membership a requirement for holding public office, there is no record of legal discrimination against any resident on the grounds of not being a member of the church, and they lacked that violent brand of evangelism which goes beyond saying "we're going to preach to you" to "we're going to go over there and make you do it our way."
What's more, just as a sidebar, in 1650 Governor William Bradford entertained for a few days a Jesuit priest who came down from Quebec. (And yes, he left safely.)
If you don't know what you are talking about, its ok to be quiet. I promise.
Good advice. I suggest you follow it.
It would have been so much easier to just admit that you jumped without looking first, and misspoke. Instead, you try to bury us with bits of unrelated information. Great strategy- "I'm typing so much, they have to believe I know a lot about the subject."
"For their time," the Calvinists were NOT as tolerant as the Quakers, the residents of Dutch (and then English) New York, the Catholics of Maryland (who were required by law to accept Protestants,) etc- so who were they tolerant compared to? Again, total fail.
I could go line by line disputing the "facts" you have listed here, but it would take all day- seriously, you are attempting to drown us in misinformation here, so I'll just address the "point" you make near the end- "What's more, just as a sidebar, in 1650 Governor William Bradford entertained for a few days a Jesuit priest who came down from Quebec (and yes, he left safely.)" Gee, that's really relevant- a Catholic visited the Bay Colony and got away with his life. My apologies- that certainly proves that the Calvinists of Massachusetts were super-tolerant.
By the way, I note that you snark on my Master's Degree- but at your website, you describe yourself as an "aging hippie" and "educator" without giving YOUR credentials. If only your knowledge level equaled your desire to prove your intelligence. Please tell me you aren't a teacher, and just save this nonsense for the cocktail parties you attempt to dominate with your "knowledge" of every subject you happen to overhear being discussed.
So I figure that unless something entirely new is raised, I'll end with this, content to let others read the whole exchange with an open mind to see who had demonstrated what degree of knowledge on the particular topic I'm addressing: the settling and early history of Plymouth, Massachusetts by the so-called "Pilgrims" and even more specifically, those who had lived as an English community in Holland before coming on the Mayflower.
1. It is still wrong to call them Calvinists. Not only would they have rejected the term as insulting but they had fundamental disagreements with some of the particulars of Calvinism such as its allowance for national churches.
2. It is still true that the Quaker church was not founded until 1647, 27 years later.
3. Yes, the Dutch were more tolerant, as were the Catholics of Maryland - the latter a model hardly followed by Catholics in Europe any more than it was by most Protestants. It's also irrelevant because a)I didn't say the Plymouth settlers were more tolerant than anyone and everyone else (in fact I said - twice - that they were not very tolerant of religious diversity within their own community) and b)who were they tolerant compared to? How about just for a few the French, the Spanish, the various German states (30 Years War, anyone?), the Scots, and there's always the Church of England, escaping from which set the whole England-Amsterdam-Leiden-Plymouth process in motion.
3. What you sloppily dismiss and falsely label as "misinformation" is documented fact drawn for the most part from contemporaneous sources and later historical interpretation, most of it easily available to anyone who cares to make the effort. Obviously, you don't.
4. The reference to the 1650 visit was, as labeled, a sidebar, the point being that by your lights, such an event should have been impossible. (And, I'll note in passing, he wasn't just "a Catholic," he was "a Jesuit priest." Equating the two phrases in terms of the political significance of the visit is like comparing a high school basketball game to the Final Four.)
5. But that reference does help to reveal an important point: "a Catholic visited the Bay Colony and got away with his life." It was not the MassBay Colony! It was the Plymouth Colony, a legally-separate entity. Thank you for confirming that you don't know the difference between the two and are determined to maintain that ignorance in the face of a specific listing of some of the differences.
6. This could sum up how false your entire premise is: "that certainly proves that the Calvinists of Massachusetts were super-tolerant." They were not Calvinists, it was not Massachusetts (i.e., MassBay), and I never said the Plymouth settlers were "super-tolerant" or anything even vaguely approaching that. That is, your statement is about as wrong as it is possible for it to have been and shows an absolute determination to ignore what's in front of you, to ignore, that is, not only historical fact but the actual words themselves.
7. I did not snark on your Masters. I said having a degree does not make you an expert on every facet of history (Do you deny that?) and that degrees don't impress me when "matched with arrogance and ignorance," both of which you offered in place of erudition.
8. Yes, I call myself an "aging hippie" and an "educator." The terms are chosen precisely and deliberately and the latter is deliberately vague because it's a self-description, not an attempt to close off debate by references to authority (e.g., "I have a Master's Degree in History and I teach it"). If I ever start a blog about history rather than political commentary, I'll be sure to state my bona fides.
9. "Please tell me," etc. And you complain about snark that wasn't even snark? What a clown you are.
10. Thanks for coming by my site. I can use the traffic.
The only thing you've demonstrated here is your ability, and willingness, to split hairs and cut and paste questionable data from Wikipedia and God knows where else.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go party with the Calvinist/Puritan/Pilgrims over in the Bay Colony, or maybe it's Plymouth or Massachusetts. I'm a Catholic, but they are cool with me. Maybe we'll press a guy to death later, just to show how laid back we are.
Becky, you can't redefine American history to suit your limited views.
And they came here scared of native americans (no one calls them indians because they are not indian) and proceeded to kill thousands of them. Good role models for the kids. Stick with the founding fathers beck. They were racist slave owners who pretended this country was equal when it was anything but. However, they at least had the right intentions.
I suppose I should expect to get slammed for this, too, but I just wanted to note that your statement is not completely true. Many native peoples do not like the term "Indian" for just the reason you give, preferring "native," "Native American," or, as it is for many in Canada, "First Nations."
But that's not true of all: The recognized tribes of Virginia, for example, actually prefer the term "Indian" and use it in reference to their own nations.
So what is the preferred term - and whether or not "Indian" is disapproved - does vary somewhat with location.
Yep the english, spanish, dutch, and french came here and ran the native americans off their land, raped their women, and killed all those who fought back.
No wonder Thanksgiving has a tainted history. But progressives are stomping all over this holiday. *Facepalm*