Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt
Stop it! It is so tiresome to repeatedly see the Arizona Republic's Robert Robb's malarkey about America's roots being Anglo-Saxon and Protestant.
Our "British" principles of government were borrowed from French and Italian humanists who were educated in Catholic universities. Britain's Anglo-Saxons adopted the Roman Republic and its heroes as their own, but they never would have known who their Roman heroes were if Catholic priests and monks hadn't told them.
For heavens sake, "British" isn't even an Anglo-Saxon word. The Roman Pliny called the British Isles "Britanniae" centuries before the Anglo-Saxons arrived and Pliny's "Britanniaie" is rooted in Celtic name "Pretani." In Pliny's day the Celts not only inhabited "Britanniae," but also Gallia (France) and Hispania (Spain).
In others words, since the Anglo-Saxon immigrants to "Britanniae" eagerly took Celtic wives (putting it delicately), not only is Mr. Robb Irish, but he's almost certainly a long lost cousin of his colleagues Elvia Diaz and Daniel Gonzalez and maybe Ed Montini.
Monolithic Protestant culture: what does that mean besides we're Christians who don't accept the Pope as leader. Theologically, Episcopalians have more in common with Catholics and Lutherans than they do with Baptists and Presbyterians. In "Britanniae", the dominant religion of the moment merrily persecuted everyone else. The Catholics persecuted the Anglicans. The Anglicans persecuted the Catholics. The Anglicans and Puritans (Congregationalists and Presbyterians) fought wars with each other over who'd run the country. America's government was inspired by the British all right. The Founding Fathers gave us a Constitution and especially the First Amendment to stop all that crap.
