Plymouth or Jamestown?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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

America is a mashing together of contradictory origin stories, that help to define the problems that we still experience to this day.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Write in: Philadelphia.


And to Orser67's point in the other thread:  American Nations is an excellent read and has pretty objective takes on all of the different cultures.  Including the Puritans... intolerance towards outsiders and what we modern Americans define as "Liberty" and personal freedom.

I guess that's why the Puritans in England allowed the Jews to return to the country after 400 years of being banned under the Catholic turned Anglican monarchy.

Things can be done in a selective fashion.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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?

Never once claimed that. There is a difference between a "libertine" lifestyle and social liberalism.

You seem to be catching whatever Henry has and starting to misread what I say.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

In fact Cavalier when used in the context of say sex life or other lifestyle choices carries a connotation of free wheeling or lacking in self control.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

Why are you people incapable of considering anything without drawing some kind of arbitrary line and trying to place them as such?

Charles II upon his restoration, basically drank and bedded his way into the good graces of the elites.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Cavaliers were far more libertine, self-indulgent and restrained then their opponents. That is why in my head the first thing that occurs to me when I hear the term is not reactionary slave driver, but a self indulgent rich guy, sleeping with everything that moves.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

There is a great thread from 5-6 years ago (which I'm sure NC-Y remembers) that goes into far more detail on this.  It's called "the inconvenient US history thread " or something like that, I bookmarked it in 2019.

Edit: said thread https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=184903.0

I linked it recently in a PM conversation.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Just as there being a continuinity between the Federalist Party and people like Elizabeth Warren is questionable besides them being strong in the same region, I’m also not so sure if there’s much continuity between the Puritans and the Federalist Party.

Continuity of most everything is at best a partial consideration. However, the Federalist Party did have substantial overlap with that group obviously.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Why are you people incapable of considering anything without drawing some kind of arbitrary line and trying to place them as such?

Charles II upon his restoration, basically drank and bedded his way into the good graces of the elites.

I’m not sure what the second sentence has to do with anything I said, and I don’t know what the first is even referring to.

Cavaliers were far more libertine, self-indulgent and restrained then their opponents. That is why in my head the first thing that occurs to me when I hear the term is not reactionary slave driver, but a self indulgent rich guy, sleeping with everything that moves.

Yes? And how is that in any way incompatible with also being reactionary slave drivers?

Its not, in fact they go hand in hand in some circumstances.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Why are you people incapable of considering anything without drawing some kind of arbitrary line and trying to place them as such?

Charles II upon his restoration, basically drank and bedded his way into the good graces of the elites.

I’m not sure what the second sentence has to do with anything I said, and I don’t know what the first is even referring to.

Cavaliers were far more libertine, self-indulgent and restrained then their opponents. That is why in my head the first thing that occurs to me when I hear the term is not reactionary slave driver, but a self indulgent rich guy, sleeping with everything that moves.

Yes? And how is that in any way incompatible with also being reactionary slave drivers?

Its not, in fact they go hand in hand in some circumstances.

OK, good to clear up that miscommunication. My point was more that their libertine social life does not negate their reactionary political views.

Is support for wine, women and song versus opposition to such not a political view itself?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Why are you people incapable of considering anything without drawing some kind of arbitrary line and trying to place them as such?

Charles II upon his restoration, basically drank and bedded his way into the good graces of the elites.

I’m not sure what the second sentence has to do with anything I said, and I don’t know what the first is even referring to.

Cavaliers were far more libertine, self-indulgent and restrained then their opponents. That is why in my head the first thing that occurs to me when I hear the term is not reactionary slave driver, but a self indulgent rich guy, sleeping with everything that moves.

Yes? And how is that in any way incompatible with also being reactionary slave drivers?

Its not, in fact they go hand in hand in some circumstances.

OK, good to clear up that miscommunication. My point was more that their libertine social life does not negate their reactionary political views.

Is support for wine, women and song versus opposition to such not a political view itself?

Supporting the good life for the elite while keeping everyone else in abysmal poverty is a pretty right-wing philosophy.

Two points though, in isolation though from who is supporting it, such certainly would stand in opposition to more restrained and restrictive views on personal behavior as such.

Second of all, some of what would come to be termed as "liberalism" derived their origins from the self interested motives of elites at various points.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

It's important to remember that in these days the "political sphere" of society by and large began and ended with the elite.

Its like at various points people forget such obvious realities of the period in question and latch onto a groups elite status as an x-factor to refute an argument. Bonus points if such elites were involved in slavery.