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Ted Cruz

7 (6.5%)

Rick Santorum

16 (14.8%)

Michelle Bachmann

13 (12%)

Chris Christie

23 (21.3%)

Rand Paul

49 (45.4%)

Total Members Voted: 107

[GlyphGryph]

Most of them may not have come over for religious reasons, but most of them were strongly religious.

And it may not have been the prettiest sort of immigration, but it was still immigration.

[Frumple]

... in the same sense that invasion or conquest is immigration, sure. There's not really a parallel between what happened then and immigration now in anything but the absolute broadest sense, I'd say -- and at that level, it's almost denigrating the earlier years to be calling it that.

Though yeah t'the first. I'd call it a pretty important distinction, though. Big difference between crossing a sea for cash and crossing it for your religious beliefs, even if the latter is still pretty strong, and this country was founded mostly by folks doing the former.

[GlyphGryph]

But YOU were the one who brought up that claim. 0_0

The quote just stated they were religious zealots which, yeah, that was pretty damned true in large part. (Some weren't, but they all pretty much went to Rhode Island. )

[Frumple]

Ehn. I see a bit of a divide between "strongly religious" and "religious zealot". There were plenty of the latter, sure, but that's not what I've picked up most of the folks that came over really being about, y'know? Didn't come over for god, didn't go about doing things for god. Not beyond going through the motions, anyway. Place has pretty much always been about coinage uber alles, really. S'what brought people, and what drove people.

[SalmonGod]

Wasn't escape from religious persecution one of the major motivators?  Friction between denominations and such.  I'm pretty fuzzy on it, but the way I understood it, pilgrims were sent over by their origin nations for the sake of financial gains.  Many of the pilgrims themselves went along with that for the sake of the religious freedom offered by a frontier.  Or maybe that's just among much other total nonsense I learned from public school history texts.

[Zangi]

Wasn't escape from religious persecution one of the major motivators?  Friction between denominations and such.  I'm pretty fuzzy on it, but the way I understood it, pilgrims were sent over by their origin nations for the sake of financial gains.  Many of the pilgrims themselves went along with that for the sake of the religious freedom offered by a frontier.  Or maybe that's just among much other total nonsense I learned from public school history texts.

I was gonna say something similar. And yea this is what I remember from high school.

[GlyphGryph]

Of course, even there one needs to remember that the religious freedom they were seeking was the ability to persecute those who disagreed with their beliefs. The pilgrims were all about zealotry.

The colonies formed primarily for resource extraction not so much.

Rhode Island was the only colony formed for what we would consider today to be actual religous freedom.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It varied, (and, in fact, the variation being the reason that religious freedom would eventually win out in the formation of the Union) with the two extremes being accepted as Massachusetts' puritan theocracy vs. Rhode Island's secularism.

[Frumple]

Wasn't escape from religious persecution one of the major motivators?  Friction between denominations and such.  I'm pretty fuzzy on it, but the way I understood it, pilgrims were sent over by their origin nations for the sake of financial gains.  Many of the pilgrims themselves went along with that for the sake of the religious freedom offered by a frontier.  Or maybe that's just among much other total nonsense I learned from public school history texts.

Some did, yeah, but it wasn't a majority, at least from what I remember. Most of the folks that came over from europe came to make money, flat out. Jamestown came before Plymouth, et al.

High school texts... misrepresented a lot. A hell of a lot. At least mine did. Very, very different picture than what I ended up digging up during college stuff and the (very) minor (fairly cursory) smattering of independent research I've done. Pilgrim this, pilgrim that, blah blah bullshit, mostly. Religious persecution of the "we're such assholes they're kicking us out" kind. Ignoring, y'know, all the other people and their reasons for coming over. Etc., so forth, so on. Misremembering a bit and indulging in a bit of hyperbole, but... yeah. High school stuff I was taught, at least, was frankly almost criminal in how poor a picture of history it painted

[MetalSlimeHunt]

People came to the Americas for the same reasons any person has ever tried to go to a frontier. Unbridled opportunity. To make money, to build a society, to claim unspoiled resources, whatever one wants to do. Like most else in history, there is no one good answer to the question.

[Loud Whispers]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/us/tsa-expands-duties-beyond-airport-security.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Police state finishes completion around about now.

[Frumple]

... John Pistole? Viper teams?

Damnit all. Really? No one looked at this and went, "Hey, maybe we shouldn't be naming ourselves after bad action flick villains?"

Morbidly amusing that the effectiveness of the shit is "classified", though.

[Scoops Novel]

So, what's everyone's thoughts on the suspiciously sympathetic media coverage on such topics as LoudWhisper's article at the moment? We're getting kids movies with evil bankers and guilty struggling super-villains, action movies about the divide between the first and third world, coverage of the US government's stamping on liberty's, revelations about surveillance, it's as if we had a free press.

[10ebbor10]

SSSSS

They might notice.

(([/espionage]The US had been turned into a reality TV show. We're trying to get you out. Please stay tuned[Restart espionage]))

[scriver]

Of course, even there one needs to remember that the religious freedom they were seeking was the ability to persecute those who disagreed with their beliefs.

What? No. Basically all European had state religions. You were not allowed to practice or disagree with or believe in anything but the state religious dogma. This included such minor things like holding sermons or preaching without being ordained in the state church. So yeah, people definitely emigrated in order to escape persecution.

Furthermore, for Sweden at least, most people who left didn't leave "to make money" but to be able to make a decent living. The Irish emigrated to be able to not starve to death. And so on.