There’s an interesting column in today’s New York Times about the legacy of intolerance passed down by the Pilgrims and Puritans (The Un-Pilgrims). Since “history is written by the winners” we tend to focus on the English settlers and ignore the Dutch. Despite the mythology, the Pilgrims did not really value religious tolerance. Before coming to America, they went to Holland for religious freedom: “They found it and then left for the same reason: they feared that amid the diversity of Holland their children would stray, and so opted to carve out an isolationist settlement in the New World.” The Dutch colony, on the other hand, ” is the region that historians now see as the birthplace of religious pluralism in America: as the origin of the melting pot.”

But as powerful a force as tolerance proved to be, it was never elevated to myth. Rather, the other side of that equation � the religious absolutism that spawned the Pilgrim and Puritan sects � had the hardness and firmness suitable for that purpose. In the 1660’s, just as New Netherland got its name changed to New York, the first American history books were coming off the presses. These were written in New England by the sons of the first Puritans and Pilgrims, and spun the story of America as one of English religionists on a pilgrimage to a Promised Land. Ever since, America has been blessed or burdened, depending on your point of view, with this idea of Manifest Destiny, of being uniquely chosen by God to do his will.

If only they were holding that big parade today in a city still called New Amsterdam.
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