Bob Edgar of the National Council of Churches on Keith Olbermann's
_Countdown_ on MSNBC tonight repeated a lie that seems to be eternal, and
even finds its way into "history" textbooks in this country, that the
"Pilgrims"--the Puritans who settled Massachusetts--came here to escape
religious persecution.
They came mostly from Holland, whence they had escaped generally
well-merited persecution in England (these guys generally made our own
fundamentalists look like liberal pacifist eggheads--see the .sig, which
begins Butler's description-in-doggerel of what happened when they came to
power, briefly, after Cromwell's death, and which reign quickly brought
about the restoration of the Stuart kings); but in Holland, while they were
not persecuted, they could not themselves persecute; and that was so
intolerable to them that they committed themselves and their families to an
unknown continent, known to be peopled by generally unfriendly aborigines,
thousands of miles of vicious ocean away, rather than put up with such
restriction.
That is, with religious liberty.
--
And now the saints began their reign,
For which th' had yearned so long in vain,
And felt such bowel-hankerings,
To see an empire, all of kings,
Delivered from th' Egyptian awe
Of justice, government and law.
< _Hudibras_
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