I’ve experienced some of the upsets that America faced over sixty years ago. It was 1960, a presidential election year. Richard Nixon was the Republican candidate and John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, was the Democrat.

The foundation for the election and for daily life was spelled out in the preamble to 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 unalienable Rights,that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

We must compare the values that surface in soci...