Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. Most of its population of 6.4 million live in the Boston metropolitan area. The eastern half of this relatively small state is mostly urban and suburban. The west is primarily rural, also with most of its population in urban enclaves. Massachusetts is the most populous of the six New England states and ranks third in overall population density among the 50 states.

History

Massachusetts has been a significant state in American history. Plymouth, Massachusetts, was the second permanent English settlement in North America. Colonists from England founded many towns and villages in the present-day territory of Massachusetts very early in the nation's history in the 1620s and 1630s. The Boston area became known as the "Cradle of Liberty" for the ferment there which led to the American Revolution and the independence of the United States from Great Britain. Massachusetts was the first U.S. state to abolish slavery and was a center of the temperance movement and abolitionist activity in the years leading to the American Civil War. Many Massachusetts politicians have risen to national prominence, such as the Kennedy family.

Originally dependent on agriculture and trade with Europe, Massachusetts was transformed into a manufacturing center during the Industrial Revolution. Migration of factories to the lower-wage Southern states caused economic stagnation during the first half of the 20th century. The Massachusetts economy was revived after World War II, and today is prominent in higher education, health care, and high technology.

History of radicalism

Since the foundation of Plymouth Colony and Masachusetts Bay Colony, the Commonwealth has been known for its radical politics and fanaticism. The cradle of the American Revolution, in the early to mid 1800s Massachusetts was a redoubt of abolitionism, an antislavery ideology that demanded an immediate end to slavery regardless of the consequences. Originally infused with evangelical Calvinism, during the 19th Century the state, formerly a stronghold of the Congregational Church, succumbed to Unitarianism, which in turn gave way to atheism and post-Christianity as the dominant religious force. The state's universities, in particular Harvard College, became strongholds for this post-Unitarian ethos which supplanted Christianity as the motive force of its political radicalism. For a time, the massive influx of Irish Catholics challenged this hegemony, but after the Boston Heresy Case of the late 1940s the hierarchy and laity became increasingly content with the state's liberalism, although not entirely so, as seen in the Church's successful campaign against a ballot measure that would have legalized physician assisted suicide in 2012. Even mild Catholic opposition to homosexual power is often met with threats of violence and condemnation by local newspapers and news stations. Today, the state overwhelmingly supports the Democratic Party at the national level, although it did have a history of electing liberal Republican governors before the election of the Black Deval Patrick in 2006.

Since the 1970s many communities have become known as centers for the Left, regularly giving over 80% of the vote to the Democratic candidate in presidential elections. These cities and towns, including Provincetown, Brookline, Amherst, Northampton, and Cambridge, Massachusetts are sometimes called "People's Republics" (e.g. The People's Republic of Ahmerst) in reference to the Soviet fetishism of their most vocal residents. Often these communities are college towns, as in Amherst, home to the University of Massachusetts Amherst; Northampton, home to Smith College; and Cambridge, home to Harvard University. Often these communities have reputations as centers of sexual degeneracy, as in Provincetown, which is seen as homosexual, and Northampton, which is seen as a cesspool of lesbianism.

Homegrown resistance to the omnipotence of the Left, and especially social liberalism, is almost nonexistent. The Massachusetts Republican Party is widely seen as Left wing, confining its sights to immediate fiscal issues, and has a past of advertising in publications that cater to sexual bolshevists. Republican candidates for statewide office, such as Mitt Romney (2002), Charlie Baker (2010), and Scott Brown (2010, 2011) regularly boast of their support for murder of the preborn, promiscuity and taxpayer funding for artificial contraception, and their comfort with sexual deviancy, taking positions well to the Left of their own party and the Democrats on the national level; often, they plead for votes on the grounds that they will move the national Republican Party further to the Left on these issues. Massachusetts Citizens for Life, a nominal pro-life group perceived as the main organization opposed to legal abortion in the state, supported uncompromisingly pro-abortion Scott Brown in both of his campaigns for the United States Senate.

Perhaps the sole significant orthosexual, socially conservative lobby group in Massachusetts is "MassResistance", which is run by Brian Camenker but receives most of its support from the state's lay Catholics and some independent Protestant churches despite his timely glorifications of Judaism. The group supports socially conservative measures on Beacon Hill and sheds light on the consequences of gay or LGBT "marriage" and other social experiments going on in the state but normally glamorized by a sympathetic media; MassResistance also campaigns in other states and overseas, encouraging other societies and governments not to emulate the Communwealth's policies. The group is regularly attacked by anarchists and sexual deviant fanatics, often with prior criminal records, and is described on Wikipedia as an "anti-gay" group, even though it supports ex-gays who support its program.

External links

Encyclopedias

• Encyclopedia.com: Massachusetts