John G. West: My Plymouth Pilgrimage ... It was a worthwhile visit, despite the best efforts of the guardians of political correctness.
[John G. West is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and the author of Darwin Day in America.]
There must be something deeply ingrained in the human psyche about going on pilgrimages, for when I had a chance last year to take my wife and two small children to visit New England after speaking at a conference, I jumped at the opportunity.
What could be more worthwhile than showing my family the cradle of American liberty? I especially wanted to visit Plymouth, Massachusetts — the cherished landing place of the Pilgrims and, of course, the site of the first Thanksgiving. What better place to introduce my children to the roots of American democracy?
The answer to that question turned out to be more ambiguous than I imagined.
Our first stop was famed Plymouth Rock, of which Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in the 1830s: “Here is a stone which the feet of a few outcasts pressed for an instant, and this stone becomes famous. Its very dust is shared as a relic.”
Sheltered by a Greco-Roman monument built in 1921, the Rock looked suitably venerable and was our first encounter with a genuine article from the age of the Pilgrims. Or so we thought until we read the sign standing next to it.
The sign cast doubt on the authenticity of the town’s most famous relic, suggesting that it wasn’t the Pilgrims’ landing place after all. It was just a rock, not the Rock — apparently identified by a frail 95-year-old man in 1741, and then enshrined as a relic by over-zealous citizens over the next two centuries.
OK, scratch the veneration of Plymouth Rock. There was plenty more to see.
Nearby we found the “Mayflower II” anchored in the harbor. A painstaking replica of its namesake, the new Mayflower was constructed in the 1950s as a symbol of the friendship between England and the United States during the Second World War. Staffed by a crew dressed up as 17th-century sailors and Pilgrims, the Mayflower II allows visitors to step back in time to “experience” history.
But in looking at the educational displays before boarding the ship, something didn’t seem quite right. The displays provided considerable minutiae about the operational details of the Mayflower’s voyage as well as various customs of local “native peoples.” What the displays lacked was an explanation of the importance of the Pilgrims to American political history. The Mayflower Compact was mentioned, only to be dismissed. Traditionally, that document — wherein the passengers of the Mayflower covenanted themselves “togeather into a civill body politick” — has been viewed as a landmark in the development of American constitutionalism.
John Quincy Adams, himself a descendant of several Mayflower passengers, praised the Compact in an oration in Plymouth in 1802 as “perhaps, the only instance in human history of that positive, original social compact, which speculative philosophers have imagined as the only legitimate source of government.” While the significance of the Mayflower Compact can be debated, the theory of government which it represents certainly forms an important thread in the history of American political thought.
Nothing about that in the Mayflower II’s interpretive displays, however. Surely this must be an oversight, I thought.
I was disabused of my naivété by the “Captain” of the reconstructed Mayflower, whose primary mission in life seemed to be debunking the illusions of Plymouth visitors. In the tone of an impatient teacher addressing a thick-headed schoolboy, he explained to me that the Pilgrims weren’t interested in democracy and that there was nothing special or important about the Mayflower Compact....
Read entire article at National Review Online
There must be something deeply ingrained in the human psyche about going on pilgrimages, for when I had a chance last year to take my wife and two small children to visit New England after speaking at a conference, I jumped at the opportunity.
What could be more worthwhile than showing my family the cradle of American liberty? I especially wanted to visit Plymouth, Massachusetts — the cherished landing place of the Pilgrims and, of course, the site of the first Thanksgiving. What better place to introduce my children to the roots of American democracy?
The answer to that question turned out to be more ambiguous than I imagined.
Our first stop was famed Plymouth Rock, of which Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in the 1830s: “Here is a stone which the feet of a few outcasts pressed for an instant, and this stone becomes famous. Its very dust is shared as a relic.”
Sheltered by a Greco-Roman monument built in 1921, the Rock looked suitably venerable and was our first encounter with a genuine article from the age of the Pilgrims. Or so we thought until we read the sign standing next to it.
The sign cast doubt on the authenticity of the town’s most famous relic, suggesting that it wasn’t the Pilgrims’ landing place after all. It was just a rock, not the Rock — apparently identified by a frail 95-year-old man in 1741, and then enshrined as a relic by over-zealous citizens over the next two centuries.
OK, scratch the veneration of Plymouth Rock. There was plenty more to see.
Nearby we found the “Mayflower II” anchored in the harbor. A painstaking replica of its namesake, the new Mayflower was constructed in the 1950s as a symbol of the friendship between England and the United States during the Second World War. Staffed by a crew dressed up as 17th-century sailors and Pilgrims, the Mayflower II allows visitors to step back in time to “experience” history.
But in looking at the educational displays before boarding the ship, something didn’t seem quite right. The displays provided considerable minutiae about the operational details of the Mayflower’s voyage as well as various customs of local “native peoples.” What the displays lacked was an explanation of the importance of the Pilgrims to American political history. The Mayflower Compact was mentioned, only to be dismissed. Traditionally, that document — wherein the passengers of the Mayflower covenanted themselves “togeather into a civill body politick” — has been viewed as a landmark in the development of American constitutionalism.
John Quincy Adams, himself a descendant of several Mayflower passengers, praised the Compact in an oration in Plymouth in 1802 as “perhaps, the only instance in human history of that positive, original social compact, which speculative philosophers have imagined as the only legitimate source of government.” While the significance of the Mayflower Compact can be debated, the theory of government which it represents certainly forms an important thread in the history of American political thought.
Nothing about that in the Mayflower II’s interpretive displays, however. Surely this must be an oversight, I thought.
I was disabused of my naivété by the “Captain” of the reconstructed Mayflower, whose primary mission in life seemed to be debunking the illusions of Plymouth visitors. In the tone of an impatient teacher addressing a thick-headed schoolboy, he explained to me that the Pilgrims weren’t interested in democracy and that there was nothing special or important about the Mayflower Compact....