Founders Or Unfounded?
by Steven Gussman In high school history class, as is often the case with issues of identity in the 21 st century, I was given the impression that a significant front opposed Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy on the grounds that he was religiously Catholic (despite his ultimately winning the election). This was presented as a mere (if somewhat tame) expression of bigotry from a country with an ugly history of such attitudes (not to mention practices and laws). In part, it surely was. It had been argued by some that J.F.K. would take his orders not from the American people, but from a foreign actor in the Pope of the Catholic Church in Rome. Ridiculous, for sure, but in reading through some of America's founding documents, I was met with a piece of philosophical history that left me with a slightly more nuanced opinion of this particular opposition to J.F.K. The early British-American colonists are often described in ter...