Plymouth or Jamestown?

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

I'd say my chances of not being cooked and eaten were probably better at Plymouth than Jamestown, so them. But in seriousness: there are so many reasons to prefer Plymouth of the two, at least during the early period of its existence. Worse comes to worse, I can always defect to Rhode Island, assuming I survive the first few decades.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

People talk about “our Puritan roots”, but “greed is good” seems more like Jamestown than like the Puritans.

Of course it is more complicated that this, but I suppose one could argue the protestant work ethic is essentially "greed is God."

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

I guess we're just going to ignore that Rhode Island exists, then. How could it, when the Puritans of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay were so tolerant of Protestant dissenters?

In 1658, Plymouth Court ordered that any boat carrying Quakers to Sandwich be seized to prevent the religious heretics from landing. A year earlier, Quakers in Sandwich had established the first Friends‘ Meeting in the New World. Magistrates in both Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies were alarmed by Quaker teachings that individuals could receive direct personal revelations from God. To protect orthodox Puritanism, the courts passed a series of laws forbidding residents from housing Quakers. Quakers themselves were threatened with whipping, arrest, imprisonment, banishment, or death. But driven by conscience, some Quakers repeatedly returned to Massachusetts to preach; four of them, including Mary Dyer, went to the gallows before a shocked King Charles ordered an end to the hanging of Quakers in 1661.

Not so different from how Quakers were treated anywhere else in the New World —but then, that is the point.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Jamestown was fiscally conservative, Plymouth was socially conservative.

Jamestown being "cavalier" as such would indeed be more permissive of "various" behaviors provided you had the money to make people look the other way. Much less so in Plymouth with its "our way or to hell with you (literally)" approach taken by the Puritans.

So the Ukraine meme kind of applies here.

Claiming that the Cavaliers were more “socially liberal” than the Puritans is certainly quite the take. I didn’t realise you could own slaves and spit at peasants, but so long as look the other way with regards to drunkenness and partying, you’re socially liberally. Are David Cameron and Boris Johnson lefties because of the entitled debauchery of their younger years?

Did I miss where Yankee said the Cavaliers were "socially liberal" somewhere? In any case, let's not pretend slavery was unique to the Southern colonies in this period; it very much was not.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Jamestown was fiscally conservative, Plymouth was socially conservative.

Jamestown being "cavalier" as such would indeed be more permissive of "various" behaviors provided you had the money to make people look the other way. Much less so in Plymouth with its "our way or to hell with you (literally)" approach taken by the Puritans.

So the Ukraine meme kind of applies here.

Claiming that the Cavaliers were more “socially liberal” than the Puritans is certainly quite the take. I didn’t realise you could own slaves and spit at peasants, but so long as look the other way with regards to drunkenness and partying, you’re socially liberally. Are David Cameron and Boris Johnson lefties because of the entitled debauchery of their younger years?

Did I miss where Yankee said the Cavaliers were "socially liberal" somewhere? In any case, let's not pretend slavery was unique to the Southern colonies in this period; it very much was not.

You’re right, he didn’t directly say it, but it was sort of implied that they were more so than the Puritans. The fact that they weren’t the only ones to initially own slaves doesn’t the change the fact that they held a deeply, uniquely (for America) reactionary worldview.

Of course. They could hardly help it, having fought on the wrong side of the English Civil War. I'm not so ready to let the Puritans off the hook for their own uniquely reactionary worldview, however, especially when it comes to profiting off the slave trade, my earlier-expressed preference for them notwithstanding.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Jamestown was fiscally conservative, Plymouth was socially conservative.

Jamestown being "cavalier" as such would indeed be more permissive of "various" behaviors provided you had the money to make people look the other way. Much less so in Plymouth with its "our way or to hell with you (literally)" approach taken by the Puritans.

So the Ukraine meme kind of applies here.

Claiming that the Cavaliers were more “socially liberal” than the Puritans is certainly quite the take. I didn’t realise you could own slaves and spit at peasants, but so long as look the other way with regards to drunkenness and partying, you’re socially liberally. Are David Cameron and Boris Johnson lefties because of the entitled debauchery of their younger years?

Did I miss where Yankee said the Cavaliers were "socially liberal" somewhere? In any case, let's not pretend slavery was unique to the Southern colonies in this period; it very much was not.

You’re right, he didn’t directly say it, but it was sort of implied that they were more so than the Puritans. The fact that they weren’t the only ones to initially own slaves doesn’t the change the fact that they held a deeply, uniquely (for America) reactionary worldview.

Of course. They could hardly help it, having fought on the wrong side of the English Civil War. I'm not so ready to let the Puritans off the hook for their own uniquely reactionary worldview, however, especially when it comes to profiting off the slave trade, my earlier-expressed preference for them notwithstanding.

No question the Puritans held some abhorrent beliefs, but I don’t think it’s controversial to state that many parts of their worldview were at the very least proto-democratic and -egalitarian.

Oh, sure, the key word (prefix) being "proto-." We can see the beginnings of democracy in early New England, and compared to England or the Southern colonies anyways Puritan social hierarchy was relatively flat; where <ahem> some people run into trouble is glossing over some of the nastier bits that complicate the overarching narrative.