Michael Everett wrote:cthia wrote:Everybody wants to move religion. Or discussions about religion. The Pilgrims fled England and religious persecution in search of lands in which they could worship as they please.
America's success leads it to forget its roots. A land of religious freedom. As a result, we have taken (moved) religion out of the public schools.
Now our public schools have become a warzone!
Actually, the Pilgrims fled the UK because they were too uptight and stick-in-the-@$$ to fit in with the majority, so they headed to the New World to set up a commune which effectively failed.
Had the Pilgrims not been aided by the natives and follow-on shiploads of immigrants, America would still be in a state of low-level war between the various tribes.
Or invaded by other countries seeking to grab the resources.
AAAARRRGGHH!!! this is so not related to the Honorverse.
As a neo-bob, I will take issue with two stereotypes here. First, the confusion of the Pilgrims with the Puritans, and second with the idea that the natives were incapable of organizing into capable political units.
Religion in the new world was never free; somebody had to pay for the royal charter in the first place. Plimouth Plantation almost failed, because it landed on the wrong rock. Most of them were living in Holland, and the Spanish were attempting to invade --it wasn't a time of long-term peace in the region. The Puritans came to America, because they were Low Church, and because the Glorious Revolution ended with the restoration of the monarchy, and a general loss of political/religious/economic power on behalf of the original supporters of the Commonwealth. So they set up a new Commonwealth under the authoritarianism of the Congregational Church. Drive around New England, the white churches are everywhere.
As far as the Natives not being organized, the great power in Colonial America before the Stamp Act was the Iroquois; they fought for the English against the French, gaining the UK control of Canada; but they split during the Revolution, with some tribes supporting the colonies, and others --mostly it was the Mohawks--supporting the UK. But they were widely respected for their politics, and it was their losses in the war--and the inability to pit the new US against the UK for influence/assistance--that doomed them.
There were several other confederations in those early days; Cherokee, and Creek in the south. But the degree to which people organize politically depends on what you are organizing against, and what you are organizing for. Most empires as far as I can tell spent all their time fighting internal and external enemies. Native americans weren't dealing with those threat levels, so they didn't create political structures to deal with them.
Sigh. there are so few who try to understand barbarians. Which, originally, was anyone who didn't speak Greek.
