Talk:John Winthrop/Comments
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It seems to me that commentary of the type exeplified by the text excerpted below is inappropriate for an article which is ostensibly a biography of an historical figure.
<<Unfortunately, however, praise of Winthrop fails to note his strident anti-democratic political tendencies. Winthrop stated, for example, "If we should change from a mixed aristocracy to mere democracy, first we should have no warrant in scripture for it: for there was no such government in Israel ... A democracy is, amongst civil nations, accounted the meanest and worst of all forms of government. [To allow it would be] a manifest breach of the 5th Commandment."[3]>>
However "unfortunate" the author may think John Winthrop's opinions of democracy to be, a encyclopedic biography is not the place to say so. Readers of Winthrop's excerpted comments on democracy may decide for themselves if he is indeed "strident."
The commentary also betrays a point of view on the part of the author that is at least as miopic as Winthrop is accused of having. To expect Winthrop to hold a view of democratic government which resembles that held by the author is to require him to champion what he had never experienced, had no context for understanding in the way the author presumably does, and had no interest in promoting not because he was "strident(ly) anti-democratic" in contradiction of all good reason, but because he believed that the world was naturally hierarchical and that to deny this was not only preposterous but dangerous.
Respectfully submitted Arucuan 20:41, 14 December 2006 (UTC)Arucuan
