jusplay4fun wrote:The USA was founded on religious FREEDOM,
A fantasy you like to tell yourselves..
jusplay4fun wrote:Maryland was founded as a refuge for Catholics,
Yes, Maryland was
founded as a refuge for Catholics, by enlightened Englishmen. Long before the Revolution, Maryland was taken over by Protestants who swarmed its borders, used electoral tricks to seize power, and then changed its constitution to ban Catholics from political office and resume the persecution that Catholics had come there to be free of.
jusplay4fun wrote:Massachusetts, as a refuge for what was called the Puritans (or Pilgrims).
Massachusetts was such an intolerant theocracy that at least two other colonies -- Connecticut and Rhode Island -- had to be founded as refuges for Puritans fleeing from persecution by their own brethren in Massachusetts.
Arguably New Hampshire could fall into that category also, as it was settled under Mass's hegemony by people who didn't really want to be harassed by the Thought Police in Boston.
New York, New Jersey, and Delaware were commercial enterprises by the Dutch and the Swedes that were stolen by the British through raw force.
The Carolinas and Georgia were founded explicitly as places for rich white farmers to exploit slave labour. Virginia was originally settled for different reasons, but fell into the slavery camp early on.
jusplay4fun wrote:PA became so for Quakers (Friends of Jesus)
This is the only one of the original 13 where your thesis holds more-or-less true. Pennsylvania stands alone as the only one that was fairly true to its stated goals of religious tolerance (although even there, "religious freedom" still only meant "religious freedom for Christians").
jusplay4fun wrote:One part of the religious freedom was that the dominant group wanted religious freedom for themselves, but not for others.
Truest thing you've said. The so-called "religious freedom" of the original colonies in most cases only meant for their dominant power group, and almost always involved intolerance and persecution for everyone else.