Re: University of South Carolina e-Mail Compromises StudentIDs

[Drsolly <drsollyp () drsolly com>]

On Thu, 20 Apr 2006, Brian Loe wrote:

> The US had serfs? 

The US had *slaves*. 

> Puritans broke away from England?

Yes.

What happened, was that from the 16th century and into the 17th, the
Christian faith in England was divided into Protestants and Catholics, and
there was much war and persecution between those, lots of people got
killed or at least persecuted for what we would today recognise as being
for no good reason. Monarchs alternated between Catholic and Protestant, 
and if you were the "wrong religion", you had serious problems. This stuff 
was so important at the time, that the Bill of Rights in 1689 specified 
that a Roman Catholic cannot be the King or Queen of England (this archaic 
law is still on the books!).

By the mid 17th century, England had gotten really fed up with all these 
religious wars, and a compromise was worked out. The idea was that anyone 
could worship according to their conscience. Neat idea, I think. In 
practice, of course, if you weren't a Protestant, you were at a big 
disadvantage (hene the 1605 Gunpowder Plot, which we still celebrate on 
November 5 each year).

But the extremist, fundamentalist protestants wouldn't settle for this 
compromise, seeing it as a sell-out to "popery" (Roman Catholicism) and 
they believed that the Pope was the evil Antichrist. 

The Puritans decided that the Church of England was beyond possibility of
reform (and the Catholics were plain evil), and when the rest of the
people in England wouldn't go along with them, they left. And, I have to
say, good riddance to religious fundamentalists of any kind.

Sadly, you were saddled with these nutters, and you've suffered from their 
influence ever since, despite a claim to have a separation between church 
and state.

Read the wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritan 

> I suppose we invented the slave trade too...
 
The slave trade was invented several thousand years ago. I don't know who 
invented it. But I do know that the British Empire was the first to 
abolish it, at a time when the Americans were *talking* about liberty, 
but not really taking it seriously.

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