Time to sail away from ‘ruffian-like fashions and disorder’

(Politically incorrect) Seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

“The fountains of learning and religion are so corrupted that most children (besides the unsupportable charge of their education) are perverted, corrupted, and utterly overthrown by the multitude of evil examples and the licentious government of those seminaries, where men strain at gnats and swallow camels, and use all severity for maintenance of caps and like accomplishments, but suffer all ruffian-like fashions and disorder in manners to pass uncontrolled.’’

— From “Reasons for the Plantation in New England,’’ written in 1628 in England by John Winthrop (1588-1649), the Puritan lawyer and key leader of the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.