The Puritans left England for America not because they couldn't be Puritans in their mother country, but because they were not allowed to force others to become Puritans; in the New World, of course, they could and did.
Interpretation
The Puritans migrated to America not for religious freedom for themselves, but to impose their beliefs on others.
Gore Vidal's quote suggests that the Puritans were driven not by a desire for freedom of religion but by a need to exert their beliefs on others. They sought a new environment where they could practice their faith without opposition, indicating a complex relationship with the idea of religious liberty, where their quest for autonomy entangled with a desire for authority over others in matters of faith.
In practice
In a discussion about religious freedom during a class on American history.
We must declare ourselves, become known; allow the world to discover this subterranean life of ours which connects kings and farm boys, artists and clerks. Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
American writers want to be not good but great; and so are neither.
Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
The important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
For the average American, freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more.
Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society.... To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.
The real hell of life is that everyone has his reasons.
I wish I had never been born--there or anywhere else.
By adopting the control strategy, the nation's environmental program has created a built-in antagonism between environmental quality and economic growth.
It is very sad to me that some people are so intent on leaving their mark on the world that they don’t care if that mark is a scar.
Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?
In the visible world, the Milky Way is a tiny fragment; within this fragment, the solar system is an infinitesimal speck, and of this speck our planet is a microscopic dot. On this dot, tiny lumps of impure carbon and water, of complicated structure, with somewhat unusual physical and chemical properties, crawl about for a few years, until they are dissolved again into the elements of which they are compounded.
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