this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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Look I agree in principle but let's not pretend the first settlers were fleeing religious persecution. They set up governments that killed people for being witches. They were more extreme than other Christians in Europe, not less.
And that's a huge reason freedom of religion is rule number 1. If it wasn't then the Catholics and 5 different kinds of Protestants would have all set up their own countries.
The Puritans were, technically, fleeing because of their religion: like you say, the Netherlands were too tolerant/Protestant for them.
They were also discriminated by the Dutch though. Since the Protestants weren’t very welcoming to religious zealots, because then they recently came out of the Eighty Years War with the Hapsburgs who wanted to suppress the Reformation in the Netherlands.
The puritans were protestants though. That's part of why when they held power in England under Oliver Cromwell they were so brutal to the Irish.
They had to flee. Europe wouldn't let them persecute others in peace. They did flee because of persecution, kind of.
They fleed for the religious right to persecute others in increasingly messed up ways.