Ira Stoll, author of Samuel Adams: A Life and JFK, Conservative, is editor of FutureOfCapitalism.com.
On July 4, 1946, the 29-year-old navy reserve lieutenant named John F Kennedy, was the featured speaker at the City of Boston’s Independence Day celebration. He was the Democratic nominee for a Massachusetts Congressional seat and spoke at Faneuil Hall. This famous hall was a red brick building where long ago the colonists had gathered to protest taxes imposed by King George III and his Parliament.
Kennedy began by talking not about taxes or about the British, or even about the consent of the governed but about religion. “The informing spirit of the American character has always been a deep religious sense. Throughout the years, down to the present, a devotion to fundamental religious principles has characterized American thought and action,” he said.
For anyone wondering what this had to do with Independence Day, Kennedy made the connection explicit ~ “Our government was founded on the essential religious idea of integrity of the individual. It was this religious sense which inspired the authors of the Declaration of Independence: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.’”