JFK, Catholicism, and the 1960 Election
The American Founding ushered in a “new order for the ages” that included the unprecedented and remarkable natural right of liberty of conscience. The First Amendment protected this universal right of all humans and banned Congress from establishing an official religion. The Constitution also banned all religious tests for national office.
The election of 1884 was the first to put a Democrat in the White House since the Civil War. That it did, albeit narrowly was a testament to the way even the earliest stages of industrialization had transformed the country, setting it on the road to something far removed from its, rural, agricultural, protestant roots.
The Supreme Court has been in the news this week and Justice John Roberts has been thrust into the spotlight because he authored the majority opinion in King v. Burwell. In it, Roberts and the Court upheld the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, i.e. Obamacare. This is no ordinary decision, though. The court’s ruling doesn’t simply interpret the law, it rewrites the law.
The only way for the United States to wrestle the reins of power from the general government is a renaissance of State powers as codified by the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution. Only then will we have true government by the “consent of the governed.”