I just want to make a few comments.
First, people tend to glorify their own ancestors as a matter of ego. As to the early New England colonists, they certainly deserve some glorification. They immigrated across the ocean in a journey that was much longer and more dangerous than it is today, into a strange land and situation to which most of them, as English villagers, were unsuited and had no experience. Just to survive was a challenge, and many did not. To have done so, in my view is heroic to a certain extent.
I also believe that many here are proud that their lines have been here so long. I think this is a false pride, as we 21st century descendants had little or nothing to do with most previous generations, so have little or nothing to claim as an accomplishment from them. Honest working descendants of people who only immigrated last year have just as much to be proud of as the descendants of the Puritans.
Secondly, we should be very cautious about judging past generations. 20/20 hindsight has little to recommend itself as righteous. Conditions have changed greatly since the time of the Puritans, and most people writing about them know little of the conditions of those times. The Puritans emigrated out of a Europe which was in the middle of huge religious, social, philosophical, political, and even military changes. People were being burned at the stake and publicly tortured for things which we would today laugh at as being silly nonsense. England itself was heading towards a Civil War which would see thousands killed in conflicts which radically changed the course of English history. People were killed and tortured for being witches, for going to the wrong church, for conducting their religion using the false procedures, for following or not following the King, and the people of those times would swear up and down that they were justified for doing these things. Many protections for our rights which are now granted by our American Constitution, neither existed nor were even considered correct by the society of the time, and we should look at events of those days as the product of a far different polity and society than that in which we live today.
The Puritans were part and parcel of those times. I read about one of my ancestors, Samuel Gorton, of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, who was thrown out of Massachusetts for giving shelter to a woman whom was thrown out of the colony in about 1640, narrowly escaping the death penalty for doing so. I would refer people who are proud of the Puritans to the introduction to the book, "The Life and Times of Samuel Gorton" to understand just how narrow-minded and bigotted the Puritans were. But saying that, one can also say that nearly all people of those days were no better. The English court was a cesspool of immorality: many of the courtesans of the period later died in poverty, often of venereal diseases, and the illegitimate children of the King were given titles of nobility and land and pensions for life solely on the basis of their birth, while many common Englishmen were starving.
Thirdly, I would like to say that the contents of profiles should be viewed as the intellectual property of their creators. True, profiles can be editted by others, but the opinions of the editors should not be substituted for those of their predecessors. We don't have to agree with the contents of profiles which we did not create, but we should not become the censors of those who did the research and created the profiles.
I am not in favor of politicizing the contents of wikileaks; the fights over the content would never stop! However, we can add our own commentaries and comments to the biographies of people with which we disagree---if we can supply some documentation and sources to prove them. People are always going to judge history and historical figures and events, which is the right of all in a free society. What is wrong is to delete, "edit", or in any way censor the comments of others on the site. History is never a simple "yes" or "no" proposition. Whatever Adolph Hitler may have thought of other peoples than the Germans, he built lots of infrastructure in Germany that benefitted the country greatly and solved a lingering unemployment problem. One should not erase the accomplishments or deficits of those who went before us, just to push our particular philosophies or views of history, for by doing so, one distorts the truth, which is what we are supposed to be supplying here.
I have many lines of my ancestors whom I can trace back to these times, both Puritans and those from other countries, and I can say in nearly all instances that the causes of emigrations of religious minorities can be traced not only to bigotries of the ruling cliques of the periods, but also to necessities imposed upon those cliques by political and military events which were happening at the same time in places several countries removed from the countries of my ancestors.
So if you feel the urge to re-write history and censor wikileaks profiles, you should think not twice, but several times, and take the time to read the history of the country in question or the greater Europe during the time period in question before you disrespect the efforts of your fellow wikitreers who wrote the profiles in question.
