US History without JFK?

Try to imagine a US History without JFK. Difficult isn't it? Despite his assassination 48 years ago, his influence is still at the front of our collective minds. Now stop and consider that if the religious bigots of the time had had their way, the Catholic candidate, wouldn't have been elected. The fear-mongering cry of a country "run" by the Catholic Church and the Vatican was just that, fear mongering and bigotry. It's sad that in 50 years we have made very little progress on this front. George Santayana made famous the words "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" yet that seems to fall on deaf ear's when it comes to politics.

An article I read this morning really hit on this issue and the bigotry problem that continues to plague our country. The first was an opinion on CNN by Dean Obeidallah about Republican candidate Herman Cain and his comments regarding filling a post with a Muslim. What's worse than the inherent racism in Cains position, is that it's discriminatory by both race and religion. It's as if one bigotry wasn't enough for him, he needed to leverage two. This is an especially prescient issue given similar, albeit less covered, noise around Romney being a Mormon. Perhaps that's why Romney responded with the insightful comment he did; this country, unlike many others, is based on a fundamental equality of people, regardless of religion, race, or sex. Our short, 300 year history, has shown that while that is the theory, we've struggled, and continue to struggle with this in practice. I believe the irony of Gingrich's contribution to this point during the debate was lost on him. He equated Muslims to communists or Nazis, saying Muslims should take an oath of loyalty. Requiring someone, who is already an American, to pledge their loyalty to America, is Naziesque in and of itself (hello pot, this is kettle). It reminds me of a show I saw on TV when I was a kid called The Wave (site and imdb). Everyone is an equal, sure, but we're better equals because we've "pledged." It's all very cultish, fire-and-brimstone, us versus them.

Herman Cain was born in Memphis in 1945, and raised in Georgia. Growing up in the South during a particularly dark period of our nation's civil rights history, I'd expect him to know better. As a nation, until we stop the fear, stop the vitriol, stop the bigotry, and start judging people by who they are and how they act, we can never truly progress. I'll leave you with words from Martin Luther King: "Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of [any] injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children." "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."