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Comment by roundandround | Hacker News Reader

The puritans did not build a republic, the masons did, a bunch of radicals that met with other republic forming radicals in Europe. Social conservatives of their time were deeply concerned about losing the feudal rule that kept society together.

The Republican party was religious radicals who either requested or demanded a new way and fought the status quo slavery loving (social conservative) democrats.

People in current seats have nothing to do with the history of the organizations they are in and if transported to the past would often more welcome in opponent organizations. This is also true of the revolutionary founding fathers and their very different views and make up than the puritans.

All indications are that the puritans could neither write not respect a constitution. Rhode Island was made up of people who wanted freedoms not stifled by that bunch.

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Puritans, Pilgrims, Quakers, etc., had huge impacts on the founding of the republic. The fact they opposed feudalism doesn't mean they weren't socially conservative, or align them with the humanist radicals of continental Europe. It's not uncommon for religious fundamentalist movements to be politically radical because they oppose secular power. The Islamists who overthrew the Shah were nonetheless social conservatives.

The masons thing is historical revisionism. Masons included people of different political stripes, including members of the British Monarchy. Edmund Burke was a freemason. Among the founders, some of the most socially radical folks like Jefferson weren't masons.

> The Republican party was religious radicals who either requested or demanded a new way and fought the status quo slavery loving (social conservative) democrats.

It's very odd to acknowledge that people were "religious radicals" but then deny that they were social conservatives. The Confederates certainly saw Republicans that way. They attacked Republicans as religious "zeal[ots]" and portrayed themselves as being on the side of "science": https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornersto....

I don't think we are agreeing on terminology.. AFAIK radicals and social conservatives are opposites. One wants changes to match new ideas the other a freeze or return.

The masons and quakers are examples of groups with tolerance that make them compatible with other ideas, mixes, radicalism and a republic. Other groups may coexist in a republic because the republic was designed for compatibility but they are really social conservatives and a super majority of them makes them persecutors instead of persecuted. I.e. people who would impose Sharia law as soon as they got 2/3rds are perfectly fine as a minority in a tolerant republic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Republicans

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Masonic_Party

> I don't think we are agreeing on terminology.. AFAIK radicals and social conservatives are opposites. One wants changes to match new ideas the other a freeze or return.

That’s not a sensible definition of “social conservative” because by that logic radical islamists aren’t also social conservatives.

> The masons and quakers are examples of groups with tolerance that make them compatible with other ideas, mixes, radicalism and a republic

Social conservatism doesn’t necessarily preclude pluralism. Quakers and Puritans may have been fine living in adjacent colonies, but that doesn’t mean they were “tolerant” of departures from behavioral norms within their own communities: https://worldspirituality.org/quaker-discipline-html/

That’s a good analogy to what America was like at the founding. American pluralism arose from multiple socially conservative and religious groups agreeing to share a country while leaving each other alone.

Yeah.. I would put the Islamic fundamentalists under social conservative they want to resume a system from ~820 AD. AFAIK these kinds of uses of radical are poor metaphors and certainly weren't relevant in the 18th or 19th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_radicalism

I generally view most of that explanation of the US as propaganda. The founders of the republic were 2nd generation+ congregationalists who were more going through the motions than puritans like their socially conservative forefathers. Shay's rebellion really highlights more about the nature of the actual inhabitants of the young nation, the way they influenced the republic and the fact that they were entirely foreign to Washington. I also don't think many of them could vote until Jackson.

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