Dr. Larry Schweikart

And the last was a free market economy.

They wouldn't have called it capitalism then, but they did have early elements of a free market economy.

But it was only Plymouth,

that had those first two elements.

And as a result, American exceptionalism, are you listening to me, 1619 Project?

American exceptionalism has nothing to do with slavery or slaves.

There were no slaves in Plymouth.

Supposedly, so was Plymouth, but of course we know what happened there was that the pilgrims could not go to the king and say, listen, whore of Babylon, we want a place where we can worship without your oversight.

And they were being persecuted severely in England at that time by the Church of England.

So they couldn't go to him and use a religious argument.

So they went to him and they said, hey, we think we can make you some money.

If you just give us some land up there in the top of the Virginia grant, and as you know, they were originally supposed to be part of the London company, Virginia company grant at the top of Virginia, and they were off course and ended up in Massachusetts.

Well, they went to Leiden in Holland, and it's something of a myth that when they came to America, they didn't know how to farm.

Of course they knew how to farm, but they'd spent some time in Holland doing other things, tanning and leather and all these other kinds of things.

of what we call mechanical skills at that time.

And they had wanted an area which wasn't, as you said, decadent and sort of a Las Vegas.

And that's what they found in Holland, and that greatly disturbed them.

But when they left England, it's important to understand that it wasn't just, oh, these guys are a little too sinful for us.

They were being actively persecuted.

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