Mormons, What are we saying?

Frequently you will get a response from members when you suggest that the government should have a program to do something, "Its wrong to think that the Government can implement something which is an "inspired program" which only the Lord can implement." This is generally followed by a call for inaction, or even an attack on a proposed program. Normally the programs that draw this type of criticism are welfare or entitlement programs. Its alright, and in fact commendable, for the Church to run its commodity based welfare program, but a food stamp program is likely to be condemned (not by the Church, but by the members.)
You see commendation for the United Order, or as it is sometimes referred to as the law of consecration or the Order of Enoch, but anything which remotely can get tagged "socialist or communist" is set up to be attacked vehemently. Of course the millenium syndrome comes charging to aid the predicament of those who really are not interested in making a change. The millenium syndrome is a label which I have applied to the tendency to defer anything which the Church believes in, but would result in a major shift of the socio/economic status quo, to be classified as something that will be put in place during the millenium. In other words, "Well Christ can do it when He comes, but as for me and my family we will oppose any other person or entity suggesting that it could be done before then." Perhaps the most famous example of the millenium syndrome was contained in the earlier editions of the misnamed Mormon Doctrine written by the late Bruce R. McConkie which categorically deferred the extension of the Priesthood to persons of African descent to the millennium.

So what are we really saying when we oppose any attempt to implement a government program which is clearly consistent with what we should already be doing? Most would say that we are simply saying that the government cannot get anything right. I once listen to a talk by Mitt Romney's father George Romney during the economic suffering of the Carter/Reagan recession in which he said not to expect the answer to come from Washington. He was of course absolutely correct, Reagan was just getting warmed up and he certainly was not destined to give us any correct economic answers. But, I doubt that was what he meant -- what he meant was that we should never expect government to get anything right.

So where is it written that we should not support community oriented collaborative efforts towards socio/economic fairness or dignity? Where is it written that although we reject strict Darwinian evolution as to parentage of Adam and Eve, we, nevertheless, fully accept the notions of Spencerian social evolution and extol capitalism and worship Adam Smith's "unseen hand." Where is it written that we are so feeble in our ability to do good and make sure that everyone has a fair chance at life with dignity and access to some basic things like health care, that we have to oppose those things as a group effort by any entity other than the Church? or worse yet any effort whatsoever until Christ comes again?

Is this an attitude which while palatable to the social conservative, nevertheless, drives the social liberal of conscience away from the Church? And exactly how do we square the common antipathy towards environmentalists? Do we approve, for example, the fact that the air pollution is now worse in Happy Valley than in LA? Or that the lack of development standards is so horrible in Salt Lake that the Church has had to resort to buying up land surrounding Temple Square to keep it from complete degradation? Exactly where does that fit in with our beliefs? Or.... more importantly... Christ's. We are a peculiar people, and we are proud of that...but we need to become a peculiarly good people.

Back to the Garden

Gardens are a place and they also are a metaphor, and many other things. They denote a place with boundaries and organization. I suspect few of us really understand what was meant when it was said that a garden had been created and man was placed in it to dress it. Not many of us talk about going out to the garden to dress it these days. We talk about weeding the garden -- but how do you weed a garden before it contains weeds? We talk about watering the garden -- but how do you water a place where it does not rain but the ground is moistened everyday by mist rising from the ground? We talk about cultivating a garden, but does that fit?

I suspect what was really intended was for the newly created man and wife simply to tend the garden and love it. Love the plants and help them grow and produce.

Somewhere along the way too many of us forgot about the love part of the equation and just focused on the tending, growing and producing

Hillary Clinton: Does This Centrist Have the Stomach to Back Needed Change?

Hillary Rodham Clinton was, and a far as I can tell, still is a New Democrat. Being translated that means a Centrist who is a fiscal conservative, sympathetic to American civil liberties, and willing to implement moderate reforms. Despite the desperate attempts of the Republicans to paint her as a far left Democrat, the facts are she is a Centrist.

So the question is, does a Centrist have the willpower to effect the changes and reforms necessary to re-establish the middle-class, push through universal health coverage, and stop the drain of capital and jobs to overseas. Clearly, as her husband proved, a Centrist Democrat can shame the Republicans into balancing the budget. But Bill balanced the budget on the back of the middle-class, and when we were finally back in the black -- what happens? The neo-conservatives sweep into office and unload the surplus not on helpful domestic spending to assist the middle-class, but as a massive tax cut to the ultra-wealthy.

To get America back on track, there is going to have to be a certain amount of healthy class warfare in America. The question is, does a Centrist Democrat have the stomach for it?
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Reagan's Most Damaging Impact

Ronald Reagan did a lot of damage to our nation, but perhaps his attack on labor unions resulted in the greatest harm to the average American. It set the stage for the massive chasm between the haves and the have nots and began the steady march of the American Middle Class into extinction.

Unions were very important to our having a stable and responsible government. For all their warts and corruption, they were a way for the blue collar working class to organize and create leaders capable of making the economic and social issues of the blue collar and middle classes of America known to Congress and the legislatures and making sure that the blue collar and middle class interests were respected.

After Reagan and the onset of globalization combined with urestrained laissez faire capitalism, they evaporated as an effective force and their leadership lost the clout it had previously wielded. In essence, Reagan created a power vacuum and the Republicans were ready, willing and able to fill that power vacuum with the religious right. The blue collar class disintegrated and descended into poverty, the middle class began to melt away.

The result was that the religious right organized the lesser educated into a significant political machine which blamed all of our economic and social woes upon our moral decadence and delivered their votes to the Republican party free of all strings pertaining to the economic interests of these economic classes. The result has been that the Republican party has been able to win elections by obtaining the campaign funding from the economic elite while purchasing votes from the lower economic classes by pushing social agenda issues which do nothing to improve the economic standard of living of these groups.

The consequence has been that we have seen a massive polarization of wealth, destruction of affordable access to some of the basic needs of our citizens such as health care and the ability to improve their economic standing by putting college education out of reach for their children. In other words, the loss of organized leadership on economic issues previously provided by labor unions has been disasterous for America. We may not have liked how they behaved. We may have thought they encouraged less than productive behavior to employers.

But it should be clear that without some way of organizing and providing economic leadership to the working class Americans, we all would suffer and we have. As the religious right has repeatedly stepped over the boundaries protecting individual liberty in America, and the average American has become weary of listening to debate after debate as to the morality or immorality of abortion and same sex marriage and unions, this economic strata has become available and is looking for something other than religion to rally to and provide leadership.
Political dominance in the coming decade is going to hang upon which party or group successfully manages to organize the working and middle-class economic strata. So far that has been a culture war that the Democrats have been losing to the Republicans since Reagan -- although before his Presidency was eclipsed by sex scandals, Clinton provided an alternative leadership which reached out to this group. The Republicans under Bush, however, consolidated their control of this economic stratum via the Christian Evangelicals. Now, the ball is once again in the air and the fate of America for the first half of the 21st Century lays in the balance.

ITS THE SYSTEM, NOT THE INDIVIDUAL: CAPITALISM IN AMERICA

When you wish to really avoid analyzing whether a certain system inherently leans towards evil, you quite frequently run into the rebuff that its the people not the system which creates the problem. This frequently is not an argument that can withstand the light of day. It is nowhere more obvious than with respect to laisez faire capitalism

I disagree with the argument that it is not capitalism, but selfish people who are the problem. This argument is like the one made by the NRA, its not guns that kill people, but people. To quote Eddie Izzard, "...umh, I think guns might just have a little bit to do with it." The problem with the people not system position is that capitalism is an amoral system which has two tendencies one is to concentrate wealth in the hands of the few, and the second is to require selfishness in order to work efficiently. Even the moderate free-market capitalists indicate greed is a virtue in such a system because of the so-called constructive destruction theory. Capitalism requires us to measure things and money and materialism provides the medium of measurement. I would also state that Soviet style communism suffered from the same problem. The social system needs to be community based and the economic system needs to be designed to support the social system, rather than the social system being designed to fit the economic system. This clearly differs from the neo-conservatives. Once when I was getting career advice from my great Uncle, he pointed out the window to his shiny new T-Bird and Lincoln Continental (this is late 60' mind you) and said "See those." I said "yes." He said, "That is how America keep score." I think that pretty much sums it all up -- capitalism is the game, materialism denotes the winner.

This concept of a game is interesting, since Kemp said on the floor of Congress in relation to the World Cup, "Football is an American capitalist game, soccer is a European socialist game." I would agree, since football is considerably more violent than soccer -- both as a sport and as a symbol. Football has also been referred to as the modern form of gladiator fights, which is also appropriate since that was a favorite pastime of the first major Western empire.

Kennedy was Wrong

Every President whose words are remembered, are normally remembered for only a few words said in the course of their career. (Lincoln our only presidential poet being the exception that proves the rule.) But Kennedy said something that was taken as a massive display of patriotic rhetoric. The phrase for which he is most remembered is, "Think not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."
It sounded good. It was, however, wrong. It is the epitome of nationalistic rhetoric run amok. People do not exist to serve their country, countries exist to serve their people. When governments cease to serve their people, then they should be removed and replaced.
There is no legitimate purpose for government than to serve its citizens. There is no other purpose, and citizens need to be demanding of their government -- we may disagree on how or what services should be delivered, but we should never support a government which exists to self-perpetuate itself.
In America when we think of what it means to be an American, it means subscription to a package of ideals which were the ideals of the deist enlightenment thinkers who conceived it. Those ideals are developing and are evolving towards the more romantic and higher ideals which are embodied in the Declaration of Independence. That ongoing development and evolution is highly dependent upon the citizens making demands upon that government.
While it is appropriate to call upon citizens to help each other, and to do things for each other, and to build strong communities, it is not appropriate to ask the citizenry to abjectly submit to a concept of a nationhood that is to be defended at all costs and against all odds. That kind of devotion is sacredly restricted to defending our brothers and sisters -- our fellow citizens, not some abstract notion of a fatherland or homeland.
This is not an easy concept to understand and many beloved Americans are hard to understand. Probably the hardest to understand is Robert E. Lee. Offered command of the Union forces, he chose Virginia over America. He did not seem to be terribly devoted to the preservation of slavery as an institution, but he led a fight on the side of the slaveholders. What did Lee think Virginia was and why was he more loyal to it, than the nation he had previously taken an oath to defend? Was it an abstract notion of a certain government, a geographical location, a culture? These are imponderables which historians and social thinkers will debate and mull over so long as American history is taught.
I find Lee the ultimate enigma. But I have thought, and continue to think, that Lee rendered his greatest service to his fellow Americans after he surrendered and after he lay down his sword. He did so by sternly admonishing his generals and leaders not to convert their struggle into a partisan guerrilla war, and afterwards downplayed militaristic ideals, going so far as to intentionally walk out of step in parades at his college.

The Patriarchal Role: Fathers and Community

Having been asked to prepare a Sacrament Talk on "Fathers" for a Father's Day Sacrament Meeting, I found myself in something of a stupor of thought. All that swirled through my mind were the gushy, sentimental observations, and very tired cliche's and supposed Biblical connections that everyone assumes are somewhere in the Bible about family values. Such thoughts just did not resonate for me. The more I meditated on the subject, the more I realized that was not where I was supposed to go with the talk.

So I tried to think about my father's generation -- which Tom Brokaw labeled "the greatest generation," a statement of praise that is probably overstated. They were blessed, or cursed, whatever way you want to view it with America's last morally unambiguous war. In fact, the more I thought about it, the less enthused I became about that generation. But, fortunately for our family, Dad did not behave like a lot of the Dad's of that generation. He showed up for all of our activities even though we sat the bench in all the team sports. My mother, my dad and my dog tended to be the only adults other than the coaches who showed up for cross-country meets and track meets. My generation on the other hand flocked to our kids meets both home and away. Same for music competitions.

My father shared most of the racial prejudices of white males in post WWII Indiana. Indiana was the hotbed for the Twentieth Century KKK. But that did not include my father -- who attempted to shelter the Catholics who drew the harassment of the KKK, because there were no readily available African-Americans to persecute. And, he annonymously decorated the grave of an African-American who had led him, as a small child, around on a pony in the churchyard when services droned on too long. His attitude with the gypsies who periodically travelled through the area was to get to know and befriend their King, rather than close up shop when they came to town. So he was the kind of guy who would bluster one thing, but behave completely inconsistent with his bluster.

While unconsciously I believe he was indeed my role model, I never really thought of him that way, nor do I remember him ever behaving in a manner intentionally to serve as such. Well, I take that back -- Dad drank socially, but he never drank in front of me until I was of legal age. An intentional deception which backfired on him because I located and raided all of his liquor stashes -- its kind of hard to discipline a kid for consuming something that you are trying to pretend does not exist. Less hypocritical was his position on smoking. But what I mean is that he never seemed to be behaving in a "preachy manner" calculated to impress me with the notion that I was to behave as he did. The role modeling must have been too subtle for my older brothers because I cannot see that they ever used him as a role model.

The question, however, which haunts my mind is whether a father plays any other function in society other than a role model for his children and a source of financial support for his family. If he does, then what might such a function be and what might its level of importance be to the family and society. In a society where the social conservatives keep chirping about the importance of "family values" or "traditional value" there needs to be some in depth thought and investigation lavished upon such an inquiry.

I believe a father (and sometimes the mother) play an important role in anchoring or connecting the family to a community. The father is, especially in traditional white anglo-saxon Christian families, the person who establishes the family within the community and in many spheres also establishes the role the entire family plays in the community. Because of Victorian notions regarding gender roles, the exception to the father being the anchor in the community, is in the area of education. The Victorians specifically reserved this role to the mother and hence the mother frequently is the person anchoring the family within the public school system.
If what I have just said has even a modicum of truth, and I believe it has much more truth than that, when we start lamenting the decline in "family values" -- we may be looking at the wrong culprit. What I mean is that "family values" are associated by the vocal right as being under attack by gays, abortionists, pornographers, and the media. Somehow, I have always doubted that -- not that I necessarily condone homosexuality, abortion, pornography -- but because these are not new activities.

What I believe is happening is that the fathers have no community with which to connect. Certain religious groups do supply at least a partial community to which the fathers can connect. For example the Mormons, the Amish, Jehovah Witnesses, and the Islamists all recognize the inherent need for community.

For the Mormons it goes beyond that, and I fear that many Mormons do not understand the full extent of what is happening in society and its impact on Mormon standards and belief. Shortly after Joseph Smith, Jr. established the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the Lord directed him to start up colonies of members who would be a part of what is called the United Order or the Order of Enoch. These were something like the Israeli kibbutz -- in other words they were very communitarian in nature. Because of persecution, the Mormons after the assasination of Joseph Smith, Jr., by an anti-Mormon mob in Illinois, migrated to Utah under the leadership of Brigham Young and established successful United Order communities in the west. These communities continued to function until the Federal Government in the guise of clamping down on polygamy caused the communities to dissolve for fear of seizure of their land.
Obviously, United Order villages are what might be considere hyper-communitarian. But, America still had communities in the rural small towns and in the ethnic neighborhoods in the urban area which were still true communities until in the late 1980's. What we are seeing now, however, is the complete destruction of the communities encompassing small towns. During my father's generation, there was still a community to which he could connect his family. Persons born to families in such towns tended to either stay in the community after they graduated from high school, or returned to them after college or graduate school. That is much less likely now.
America during the last forty years put the saying, "home is where the heart is" to the test. It appears to me, that the saying has been found wanting. Home may be where the heart is and certainly no home can long endure if the family's heart is not in it, but home needs to be an actual community and an actual geographical location as well. It requires a father to stake his claim in that community and to connect his family to that stake. The creation of a home involves more than simply a home or an apartment in which blood relations reside, just as a community involves more than a group of housing units with a shopping center.

The sense of being at home cannot be franchised whether by a Church or a business. After WWII, servicemen who had suffered homesickness abroad came back with the notion if you had a business set up to look exactly like the same business elsewhere then it would make people feel at home. The concept being if you went into a franchised restaurant or store that was just like the one in your hometown then you would immediately feel comfortable and at home. In other words, businessmen went out with the conscious intent of creating a homogenized hometown so that wherever you went it was home. Religions such as Mormonism and the Jehovah Witnesses understood the concept as well and so every chapel and every Kingdom Hall tends to resemble every other chapel and every other Kingdom Hall. If you attend a Sunday service in one Mormon ward, you can expect that a similar service with the exact same Sunday School lesson is occurring in similar chapels all over the United States. Mormons often point out that no matter where you go you are at home at Church.

The problem with this economic concept is that if home tends to be everywhere, then instead of home being everywhere -- it is nowhere. Families moving in and out of LDS Wards every couple years or so, can only develop a superficial connection to the community at large and a somewhat tenuous connection to the Ward family. In other words, the father has no community to connect his family with, (not to mention the mother being unable to connect with the educational community) and as a result he is denied the opportunity to connect his family to any community.

The phrase "army brats" meaning children of military personnel who bounce around the country and the planet following their parents' postings has come to potentially include a huge segment of American society. As a consequence, father's are failing to fulfill their complete role and families are falling apart at a prodigious rate. But what the social conservatives are complaining about are merely symptoms of a much more systemic problem. That problem is that fathers no longer play the role they have to play in the community because there is no community in which he can play the role.

My father connected his family to his community. We knew we had certain standards which we were charged to uphold in order to protect or improve our family's reputation in the community. Our father provided the family leadership in this respect, and if his family upheld the reputation then it reflected well not only upon the father, but the whole family -- deservingly or not. This had a tremendously positive impact on the entire community and tended to keep families together. If the community is only a homogenized replication of some other community -- or a tract of hundreds of houses looking more or less the same as all of their neighbors, this community never comes into being. With the loss of the community, the obligation to protect the family reputation or even to keep the family together tends to erode -- you can just move on to another community which is exactly like the community where the family fell apart, or a different Ward which looks exactly like the Ward your family crashed and burned in.

The demise of this patriarchal role is of very significant religious importance and nowhere of such importance than Mormonism. Although one may search somewhat in vain for praise of family connections in the Bible, one finds such praise much more evident in the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants which along with the Bible and the Pearl of Great Price constitute the canonized Latter-Day Saint scriptures. In Mormon theology there are three Priesthoods: the Aaronic Priesthood which is an appendent to the Melchizdek Priesthood, the Melchizedek Priesthood, and the Patriarchal Priesthood. Currently the only ordinances of the Patriarchal Priesthood currently restored are the sealing ordinances conducted in the Sealing Rooms of the Temple. This Patriarchal Priesthood is bestowed as part of the marriage ceremony and cannot be held by persons who have not wed. While the Melchizedek Priesthood is the authorization to act in God's name with respect to mortals, the Patriarchal Priesthood is the authority by which the Celestial Kingdoms are governed. In other words, the Patriarchal Priesthood governs the community of the gods.

If we believe that everything on Earth resembles that of the Heavenly Realms. Earthly Fatherhood then involves training to connect families to the community of the gods. For that reason, it is more than merely the assumption of duties of support and maintenance, and it is more than the duty to be a role model. It is to prepare for the enternities in God's Creation. As a result, it is not just a building block of society, it is that which when accompanied by God's grace secures and binds the eternal relationships of the Kingdom of God.

I suspect as a result, that if we want families to continue to be the bedrock unit of our country, we should spend less time battling pornography, abortion and bad media, and more time rethinking our economy and society so that families make a difference. Our goal should be the literal creation of Heaven on Earth, or rather the Kingdom of God. That goal involves much more than the preaching of sexual morality, it requires the creation and nurturing of a society to which a father can connect -- in other words a community in which every family has a place and every father a role. Not only a place and a role, but a cherished place and a dignified role.

Innocence

The other day while sitting in a PX at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, a thought began to take shape. It was something my subconscious has been mulling over for a bout a decade and then over a single weekend emerged into my consciousness.

The problem my subconscious had been wrangling with was how can you feel good about an action even though you know there is a dark irony or consequence which will taint the action. Do you have a duty to call someone to account for the action?

Let me give a few examples. In my faith we are fairly strict on the notion of keeping the Sabbath Day Holy, there are things you just are not supposed to do on the Sabbath like shoping or going to a sporting event, etc. I was serving in a bishopric at the time of this particular event with a bishop who spent his vocational time as a public prosecutor. He was probably the most laid back bishop that I had ever known or had the opportunity to serve with. So one Sunday after Church we were sitting in a bishopric meeting when one of the women in the Church who took it as her duty to hold the other members of our congregation accountable came storming in to indicate that we needed to make some kind of statement on the following Sabbath that people should not be selling things at Church on Sunday. She was of course correct. I looked at the Bishop and he looked at me, and we both knew she was referring to one of our mentally handicapped children who had been selling chocolate bars in the foyer as a class fund raiser that Sunday. The Bishop said, "Well the one I bought was pretty good."

Let me give another example. Another Bishop and his wife decided that the local congregation should work on a blood drive with the American Red Cross and in general the concept was favored by the congregation, although a couple members had expressed some reservations about doing anything with the American Red Cross because of their poor reputation. There was some quiet recognition of the fact and most of the local congregation helped out. Then the Red Cross came back and wanted the Church itself to sponsor a blood collection opportunity for them and the Bishop gave his blessing and the event occurred and the goals were exceeded -- on about the same date that the news services were carrying an article on the FDA hitting the Red Cross with the largest single fine ever assessed against a non-profit organization. The fine was for faulty screening and testing of blood, etc. The Red Cross responded that the fine would not be paid out of donations -- but operating revenues. So in essence our congregation was donating blood to an organization which was going to sell it and use part of the price it charged to pay a fine for sloppy handling of blood.

Now a person could look at either situation and see something wrong with both and wonder how a person could feel good about doing something that was probably questionable. I think that it is a gift from God a blessing of innocence which allows us to look at the intent of the act and intuitively feel good about it regardless of the implications and consequences. When the Bishop bought the candy bar on Sunday at Church what he saw was the excitement in the eyes of a young woman whose eyes were normally kind of glazed over dull. When the congregant gave blood he or she was intending to literally give of his or herself to help someone. And, even if both knew that there were problems involved -- still both were entitled to feel good about what they did. That to me is a blessing which allows us to overlook some of the missteps our religious leaders may make or our churches may take and still feel blessed.

So why did this thought start emerging while I was sitting outside a PX at Fort Jackson. Well, it was pretty much my first encounter with the military and I had previously been pondering the fact that the soldiers on the base were predominantly made up of minority races, in particular, African Americans. The main boulevard into the base was named after the former Senator Strom Thurmond who in his day was an ardent segregationist and most of the by-ways on the base were named after Confederate Generals. That is an irony that I would normally suck up and run with. But, this day I was overwhelmed by the politeness of the soldiers I encountered and the joy they were having with their families who were there in force to celebrate their graduation from basic training -- I just couldn't let the political irony wash out what I was seeing. Although my son later informed me that the racial and regional harmony that I perceived was actually something of an illusion, even that information couldn't take away from what I felt. I think it was a blessing of innocence.

Book of Mormon: Keystone of Our Religion

For years I have heard the Book of Mormon referred to as the keystone of our religion and it just never made sense until recently. The reason it did not make sense was if you really wanted to know how the Church ran or what the most notable peculiarities of us Mormons you would look in the Doctrine and Covenants. I thought that perhaps they referred to it in that way to serve some missionary purpose, or perhaps it was something that Joseph Smith said before the Doctrine and Covenants was published.

But the other day I was looking at an arch with a keystone and for some strange reason it occurred to me if the Book of Mormon is the keystone, then what are the sides? At that point I realized that the sides were the New and Old Testament. I thought, "You know Christ being the God of the Old Testament and the New Testament, kind of made him look like a split personality or something. The Old Testament is about as harsh a document as you could want to stumble into when it comes to God. But if you put the Book of Mormon in between then you can get a little bit clearer understanding of the Old Testament and that perhaps a lot attributed to God in it was just not set down right or something."

I think if possibly more Mormons would just come out and say, "Geez, ya know I can't see Abraham as doing the right thing when he almost burned up Isaac. And what on Earth sense do you make of God gambling with Satan in Job." Perhaps we should just step back a ways and say – "You know let's quit trying to invest some of these stunts with profound religious meaning, and quit attributing God with some of this stuff."

When we do the Old Testament in Sunday School we kind of dance over the genocides that are attributed to God. The Book of Mormon approach is ever so much more reasonable – the ethnic wars explained in it are generated by men, God may predict they are coming – but He doesn't speed up the work. So I believe it is right to say that the Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion.

Impeachment: Political Weapon of Last Resort

The problem with impeachment proceedings is that we do not want to encourage a trend of impeaching Presidents. Gingrich's House was way out of line in doing what it did to Clinton, and though the sins of Bush relate directly to his power as the Chief Executive and probably do rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors (unlike dalliance with a female intern), still it is a power that should be invoked sparingly.

I realize that a lot of Democrats and even some Republicans have their dander up. Nobody likes to be lied to, and they especially do not like being lied to when it means they are tricked into sending American GI Joes and Janes into harm's way. And, although the Republicans set a very bad example in picking up impeachment proceedings as a way of distracting a nation and gaining political leverage to derail an administration -- that does not mean that the Democrats should follow their example.

The frequent employment of the impeachment process in a democracy endangers the democracy's ability to reflect the will of the people. It should only be employed where it is clear that the executive has committed treason or is clearly shown to have been tampering with the Democratic process. Nixon, for example, got caught red handed at directly tampering with the Democratic process. Clinton's impeachment was just a vicious form of politics since lying, even lying under oath, about an extramarital affair has pretty much zilch to do with the Democratic process. Bush's sins obviously are more like Nixon's than Clinton's and it is fairly clear at this point that he violated the protected civil liberties of citizens. This is not, however, the first time that Americans have been led into a war based on flimsy evidence or downright lies. It is pretty clear that Spain did not sink the Maine, which was very well understood at the time from an inspection of the hull -- and they had complied with every ultimatum we made, but we went to war anyway. It is also very clear that Johnson knowingly lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident in order to get a war making resolution during the Viet Nam war.

Although Bush's doctored intelligence reports on Iraq do have an aroma similar to that of the accusation that Poles attacked a broadcasting station which was used to trigger WWII, it is not quite the same. As a result, I believe that it would be in the best interest of the nation to simply wait Bush out -- approximately 70% of America has figured out that he is not to be trusted, and in a Democracy that pretty much destroys your ability to do really, really bad things.
The other problem is that it will be a major distraction unlikely to develop enough votes to get the job done anyway. So I would say, Congress would better serve the American people by wielding the power of the purse, isolating Bush, and curtailing, with investigations, the more overt transgressions of his appointees. We have demonstrated that the lower echelon political operatives of the White House are no longer terribly interested in falling on their swords to protect the Administration. As a result, the White House can be held in check by investigations.
I would liken the situation to Iraq. We now know that Saddam was being held in check by the combined effect of UN inspections, US Airforce fly-overs, and economic sanctions. I believe that the Bush Administration can likewise be kept in check by the combined effect of Congress exercising the power of the purse, Congressional Committee investigations, and lawsuits by the State Governments to challenge Federal Agency malfeasance. That is a much safer route to take than an impeachment struggle.

Success and the American Christian

Given the fact that several conservative Christian talk show hosts seem to dominate the news media when it comes to the integrating market theory economic politics and religion, perhaps it might be well to ask, is there really such a nexus? It seems almost like sugar and Frosted Flakes anymore. The sugar comes along with the cereal.

Yet it is very difficult to immerse oneself in the New Testament and surface, with any confidence at all, as to free market capitalism having anything to do with the teachings of Christ. In fact as a conservative Christian friend of mine once noted in Sunday School, "Its pretty obvious that Christianity leans towards communism." The unfortunate part of the comment was the use of the word "communism" which is generally associated with U.S.S.R. and Communist China. I believe what he meant was something which perhaps could better be labeled "communalistic" connoting communes. With that definition, I believe it is pretty hard to deny the truth of the assertion.

I also remember the comment of a retired Congregational minister made after a rather rousing community battle over funding a recreational center in town. He said, "You know the older I get the more Marxist, I get." Kind of a shocking statement given the "opiate of the masses" comment in the Communist Manifesto.

What these men, conservative men at that, were trying to get their arms around was the fact that it is difficult to annex Christianity to an economic system which views competition, ambition and greed as virtues. What they also were expressing was the inherent difficulty of taming the economic tiger we Americans are riding. How does one get off such a tiger safely. The answer is, we don't know how to get off the tiger. This fear of the dismount impacts nearly every economic reform issue of significance in America from the estate tax to reform of the health care funding.

The situation is reminiscent of the scene in Dante's Inferno where people are tied to chairs with one arm strapped down and the other strapped to a long spoon in such a manner as to disallow one to bend the elbow. In the middle of the table is a cauldron of tempting soup, however, no one can feed themselves, but only their neighbor because of the way the spoons are attached to their arm. The upshot is that they all sit around the table in eternal hunger. There is an element of that in American behaviour. For example, some will recall a widely published anecdote that was circulated by the John Birch Society during the Cold War. The anecdote involves a servant sneaking away from his master's house to attend a meeting of communists. According to the story, the servant listens to the presentation and then sneaks back home. The servant's attendance at the meeting, however, does not go unnoticed by the master who then asks his servant why he did not join up, and the servant replies that he calculated how much would go into the common pot and realized that he would be economically worse off when the property was redistributed. The point the John Birchers were making was that for many people, possibly even menial labor in some cases, they would be economically worse off if property and wealth were shared. But, there is a hidden attitude in the story, namely, a person would only be willing to share if it betters himself and not if there is a possibility that it will not.
This attitude, which permeates nearly all political and economic policy discussions in America, is, I believe, tied to how we define "success." In America we define "success" primarily in economic terms, namely how much money we have and make. With that mindset, it is very difficult to make Christianity and free market capitalism blend well without one or the other being moderated. The Christian right has opted to moderate Christianity in order to accommodate, capitalism rather than the other way around. The Christian left has been relatively quiet and inactive since the heady protest days of the Viet Nam war.
As a result of the blending of capitalism and religion by the Christian right, the key challenge for American Christians is whether our definition of "success" can be substantially altered and whether Americans are in fact willing to make the socio-economic changes necessary to bring that definition from theory to reality. So long as the current blend of economics and Christianity being espoused by the Christian right dominates religious discussion in this area, it will be difficult to bring the teachings of Christ as to wealth and community into alignment with reality in America.

It will also require that that the Christian left to make the point that Christ taught about temporal things other than abortion and traditional marriage, and that will be a call that really puts the followers of Christ to test because it will require an attitude change so that the servant in the John Birch story approaches the issue with a different perspective. The change will require Christians to think about fundamental changes in their lives rather than a relatively sacrifice free faith which only calls upon them not to commit sex related sins, defend traditional marriage, and eschew pornography. It will require Christians to actually fundamentally change their relationship with their community and it will, in some cases, require a willingness to make a sacrifice as to their standard of living and consumption habits -- but if a Christian refuses to do so, they will be betting their soul on whether they are right about capitalism.

"Success" and Morality

I am becoming more and more of the opinion that a sustainable morality for the future must be dependent upon a new definition of "success" in America. There have been several attempts at trying to redefine "success" in American history. Those which have been the most enduring have required significant sacrifice and a religious base. That may an odd statement for a self-avowed liberal to make, but I strongly feel that it is true.

Religion gives such efforts the power to endure and they tend to fail only when they are subjected to immense social pressure to change from outside of the group making the attempt. In some, this causes them to become even more entrenched and stubborn and endure -- like the Amish. In others, the group may weigh the chances of enduring against the chances of surviving -- and they slowly let their definition start to slip away. Unfortunately, we Mormons may be in the latter group. But, we have plenty of good company in that regard.

So, how do we define "success"? Well, in America "success" is part of an economic game -- he who makes the most money and wields the most influence wins the game. We keep score by the lines on our resume, the money in our bank account or stock portfolios, what kind of car we drive, what kind of house or houses we own, what schools our children attend, etc. Related to the definition of "success" is the definition of "progress." "Progress" is defined primarily in terms of materialism, and it means getting more of the same quicker and easier with an improvement in either quality or price. As a result, we look primarily to technological advancement.

In Mormonism we talk about the "iron rod" meaning a very straight kind of railing that we need to hold onto to make it to Eternal Life. The "iron rod" being the Gospel. This scene is accompanied by a rather dirty river that languishes slowly along side the walkway for us to slip into and be lost -- that refers to sin. And on the other side of the river are people in a fancy building partying, jeering at those on the path by the rod, and laughing, etc. This being worldliness.

In a drawing or a vision this seems pretty easy to understand, kind of black and white. Either you are making progress by holding onto the rod and staying on the path, or you are getting dirty in the river and heading for the fancy building. In vision its pretty simple, in life it is not quite that simple. You can have more than one rod, in fact you can replace the rod with a conveyor belt that carries you along without a whole lot of effort on your part. The trick is determining whether the conveyor belt is following the rod or taking you on a tour of the building, and trying to determine whether you are getting dirt on you from the river or some kind of cleaning agent.

As a result, we Mormons suffer from some of the same problems as the rest of the world. Many of us define ourselves in terms of what taboos or checkmarks we observe, for example: do we pay a full and honest tithe, do we keep the Word of Wisdom, do we attend Church, do we read the scriptures, do we pray, do we hold family home evening, are we honest at work, do we keep the Sabbath day holy, do we avoid promiscuity, etc. And we tally up the checkmarks on a regular basis and then determine whether we are on the right conveyor belt.

We assume in that regard that if we are able to give the correct answer to the multitude of questions that we must be on the right conveyor belt. And if we stay on that conveyor belt it is quite alright to also play the American game and keep score in the traditional American way. But what if... what if keeping score in that manner means we are on the wrong conveyor belt. What if it means that we start totally ignoring those we are passing as we travel along? What if we start believing that if we keep the taboos and stay on the conveyor that those who are on a nearby conveyor and have not been very successful in the game are deserving of their fate? What if we begin to believe that the American way, is the only way?
What if we start emphasizing how neat we look in our well pressed white shirts and business suits?

Somehow, I don't think that Christ is going to be pleased with us in that case. Somehow, I don't think that He is going to be pleased at all that His people look like something polished by Madison Avenue. I could be wrong, but somehow, I don't think that I am, and that getting back to basics doesn't just mean reading the Scriptures -- but redefining ourselves and our country. And part of that redefinition is going to have to be scrapping our current definition of "success" and our current definition of "progress" and looking back at where we started from and how we defined "success" back then and whether we have in truth progressed? Do we define "progress" in terms of the number of tithe payers we have, or the size of our membership, or people with Temple recommends, or the number of our Temples? Or was there a time when we were community focused and trying to devise a new way to live with each other on not only a spiritual basis, but a temporal basis?

But, I guess we can defer all that to Millennium can't we? or can we?

Mormons at the Gates

Just thought that title would get everyone's attention. This article is intended to indicate why Mormons tend to be assumed to be Republican. Some political commentators would even tend to think of Mormondom as a "wholly owned subsidiary of the GOP" (Not my phrase, it was a phrase which the Vice President of the American Evangelicals used to describe how people felt about the political stance of the Evangelicals -- but Mormons for some strange reason get dumped into the same political pot with the Evangelicals who deny that Mormons are even Christian.)

Mormons tend to be busy. They have their work, above average sized families, and Church callings that frequently take up most of their spare time. As a result they get their political awareness in sound bites and inferences drawn from clear Church stances on a very few political issues. Although Mormons are warned prior to the heavy onset of national political campaigns, not to ascribe endorsement of any candidate or party to the Church -- many would feel such an ascription would probably be of minimal value anyway, since most members have a radar lock on who they are going to support based on sound bites.

So how does that happen? Certain issues like abortion and gay marriage are routinely brought up by the Republicans. The Church's stance if read closely is not necessarily inconsistent with pro-Choice or at least responsible pro-Choice. I would suspect that there are only a minimal number of Mormons who are radically pro-Life. But, the Church, and rightly so, considers abortion to be a very, very grave decision -- and if it is a gratuitous abortion (where the pregnancy is not a result of incest or rape, necessary because the mother's life is in danger, or involves an extremely impaired embryo) then the woman may well be in serious jeopardy of her standing in the Church. So when abortion is mentioned, most Mormons are going to click on gratuitous abortions and make inferences about pro-Choice politicians which may or may not be correct. They may not have the time or wish to devote the time to figure out exactly where the politician stands.

Because of the centrality of the marriage covenant to Mormon beliefs, the Church feels compelled to speak out against Gay Marriage. With respect to Gay Marriage the gloves are more likely to be taken off and actual political activism encouraged. That does not, however, mean the Church is saying vote for this candidate or that candidate -- it is merely trying to denounce Gay Marriage. So when Gay Marriage comes up, most Mormons are going to take a peak at which party or candidate is advocating or fighting against Gay Marriage. Once that quick observation is made by the individual Mormon, they can then pull their head back into their ordered shell and move on to other matters in life. They may not feel they have the time to figure out what the other issues may be.

Outside of these "morality" issues, the Church tends to rarely get involved in politics -- it did oppose the ERA and it also opposed the MX Missile system since that would have directed all of the USSR's nuclear missiles at Mormondom.

The ecumenical outreach programs that were assigned to Dallin Oakes when he was called to the Quorum of the Twelve sought to reach out to the Protestant Christians and Christian Fundamentalists in particular. Whether that was wise or not is hard to say, I assume there was a good reason for doing so. On the other hand, the most vehement persecution of the Mormon Church has never come from the liberals or from the left, it has always come from the conservatives and from the right. Its like Mormons have taken "turn the other cheek" to a whole new level like, "here's the other cheek, top of my head, my back, my knees, etc." Out here in Vermont you hardly ever hear anti-Mormon attacks, back in Indiana the attacks from various fundamentalists and other Protestants was constant and vicious.
But now, the Christian right has a problem. For a number of years now they have been able to count on two regions as part of the power base: the South and the Rocky Mountain West. The South being represented by the Evangelicals and the Rocky Mountain West by the Mormons. They have certainly not been above using the Mormons as a political cudgel to bash and batter the liberals, and since the Christian right is focused on the "hot button" social issues -- well its pretty obvious the election of significance to them is the Republican Primary where they cull out moderates and libertarians overly attached to liberty. But now they are confronted with a maverick who seems to be foundering in the polls (McCain), a Republican whose "morality" may be in question as well as some of his social conservative credentials (Guiliani), and a Mormon who currently is singing their tune, but for a slight lapse necessary to get elected Governor of Massachusetts (Romney.)

Their quandary is not well hidden. When you have a political base which puts religion before law, and the Fundamentalists have been very clear they would basically use the Bible to interpret the Constitution and find the establishment clause to be nothing more than a very low speed bump -- well religion is actually important! The problem they now face is that their political operatives are standing behind pulpits and they have been declaring that Mormons are not Christians ever since Joseph Smith, Jr. disclosed the First Vision to his local ministers. Its a tough choice, 30% of Americans have said that they would not vote for a Mormon for President under any circumstances. Wonder how many of that 30% are Democrats? Not likely -- more likely it is the Christian right.

So will the Christian right stand by their political agenda, or cave into religious bigotry? Tough choice -- but its one they set themselves up to have to make. You live by using religious beliefs as a political weapon -- you die because of your political weapon. Life is not fair -- at least that is what the Christian right has been screaming in a very shrill voice for sometime now.
And when a Mormon is rejected as being unfit to be a President because of his religion, by his fellow Christians? How will that go down? Will it cause Mormondom to start taking a much wider view of the issues facing the country than what the pregnant women and gays are up to? Maybe, then again...probably not.

The Romney Irony

Mitt Romney is a nice guy, he is not my favored pick for the Presidency -- but he is a clean cut and honest guy. But, he faces what is probably an obstacle embedded in a political irony that will probably preclude his nomination and most certainly his election if nominated.
The political irony with which Romney is faced is simply this: given his recent pandering to the Christian right he is considered by most people outside the Christian right as clearly a Christian right candidate. On the other hand, because he is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints most people who are inside the Christian right do not consider him a Christian.

So the task that Romney faces is proving to the social conservatives that Mormons are Christians, and though Mormons are normally a group that comes in for special hatred from their bigoted core -- that Romney is their best candidate for their avowed intent to replace the Constitution with the Bible and legislate Evangelical lifestyles and beliefs for all. That in itself is a pretty tall order, when 30% of Americans are currently saying that they will not vote a Mormon under any circumstances -- and you have to believe that a large portion of the 30% are right-wing social conservatives in the Republican party.

The same poll showed that 40% of Americans had no idea what a Mormon was. This 40% is probably largely inhabited by the voters on the left side of the of American politics. Further, they are seeing a man who portrayed himself as pro-life and a member of that nearly extinct group known as moderate Republicans. He did that to get elected Governor in one of the most liberal States in the Union -- namely Massachussets. Now, however, that he is running for the Presidency, he is repudiating many of the things which he held himself up to represent in order to get elected Governor. So moderates and centrists are now beginning to consider him just another ranting social conservative.

So Romney is caught up in a very, very tough corner. McCain, has taken a somewhat similar approach -- his credibility with the American people was based on the fact that he was a Republican rebel and a political maverick. Which basically highlights his problem -- how do you get nominated by a party which you have built your reputation in rebelling from? And, the related problem of how do you woo your own party without destroying the reputation which makes you palatable to the conservative Democrat, moderate Republicans, and the independents. My guess is that you cannot walk that political tightrope and get elected President. But -- what are the Republican alternatives?

Family Values Conservative

Recently on a blog-site a person asked in a comment, what is a "family values conservative?" The question was sufficiently interesting to me that I felt it justified an article. Actually, the three-word label given up above is somewhat unusual. Usually its label is "family values," or "traditional family values." Its an odd phrase in any event where it is employed.
For example, you would expect that a party touting "family values" would place tremendous effort upon the protecting the relationship between parent and child. Yet, when the Republicans decided to go after Clinton with respect to Monica Lewinsky -- there were some truly bizarre things going on. This is not intended as a reference to the various "Christian right" members of Congress throwing stones in their glass houses. No this is a reference to what the "independent" prosecutor did when Monica Lewinsky went home to have a heart to heart talk with her mother. He subpoenaed her mother to try and find out what Monica said.
"Family values," however, has become a code-phrase that basically means: strict censorship of the entertainment industry, pro-life, pro-abstinence only sex education and birth control, intelligent design, negative view on public education funding, anti-gay, stereotyping of gender roles, economic individualism and abolishment of the barrier between religion and government. In other words, "Conservative Family Values" is a code word for Christian right wing politics. Its about the stick and not the carrot.
It is, to say the least, riddled with inconsistencies. First of all, censorship has to do with keeping other people from being entertained with lewd or racy material -- true family values start at home (in other words turn off the d--- TV!). Second, there are a lot of people who are opposed to abortion except in very special exceptions -- this isn't about whether you should or should not have an abortion, its not even about whether wealthy people should have an abortion -- this is about whether welfare mothers can have an abortion. Three, sorry folks abstinence only education does not work -- not that I don't agree that abstinence is the right thing, its just that teenagers in the backseat of a car or wherever have this unfortunate tendency to forget about abstinence. Four, intelligent design -- I have no clue why people believe that Darwinian Evolution is destructive to any family. Five Destroying public education is not going to make people more moral, its going to make people less educated and being less educated does not make you a better parent. Six, it would seem to me that "family values" would support committed relationships -- parents who stay together longer, what we should be doing is focusing on promiscuity, not gender orientation. Seventh, gender stereotyping -- if you didn't want both parents working outside the home, you should have supported economic conditions where they could afford a good standard of living with only one person working. Eighth, if you haven't figured it out yet -- unrestrained free market capitalism does not strengthen families. Ninth, do away with the establishment clause and then you try to live the American myth where you had a nice home, four kids, two cars and the wife kissed her husband goodbye as he left for work and she returned to do the laundry, housecleaning, cooking, and a trip to beauty parlor.For me -- this whole "family values" discussion is your basic bunk. It elicits smug comments from Bob Dole, when he isn't doing Viagra commercials, to make stupid statements like it doesn't take a village to raise a child, it only takes two parents! Oh clever Bob. No Bob, it does take a community to raise a child and we need to help communities to unite to get the job done. We don't do that by blaring that competition is the only way to get things done. We don't do that by alienating people and discriminating against people. We do that by making sure everyone receives enough pay to live with dignity and off the welfare system. We do that by investing in education. Its the carrot that works, not the stick

Fatherhood and Remembrance

Each generation seems to belittle the generation which follows. When they do this, they tend to be talking about other family's children or "kids these days..." followed by some negative comment on their work habits, ethics, child rearing or school work. In a country obsessed with labor saving gadgets, the grousing normally includes some comment to the effect that the rising generation has it easier than the one that went before... "well when I was in school..."
As a result you really have to question the credibility of the generation immediately preceding you as to their critique of your generation. Tom Brokaw may, or may not, have been correct in referring to the WWII generation as being the "Greatest." Sure they put America as number one with respect to just about everything: military might, economic clout, standard of living, health care etc. etc. Sure during this generation we have only been able to hold on to that first place in military might and economic clout (the second is quickly headed for shaky ground), but they were not called upon to fight a morally questionable war in a country few knew anything about (Viet Nam.) They also voted themselves the best retirement security this nation had ever seen. In addition, WWII had driven every other highly developed industrialized planet to their knees. Except for Pearl Harbor, America was basically unscathed at home. So business wise, you really had to do a lousy job not to succeed -- now you have to do one heck of a job to just survive.

Frequently, in the grousing by the WWII generation, you find negative comments about the parenting ability of the Viet Nam generation. But I believe there might be grounds to call them on that issue. I give you one simple anecdotal example. My children who are now mostly grown and through college or grad school, all participated in track and cross-country in high school. I followed my Father's example and attended nearly all of their meets at home or away. I also ran track and cross country. "When I was in high school and junior high..." hardly anyone showed up for our home or away track meets. Other than team members and coaching staff, the only other spectators were my parents and my dog -- and sometimes the dog didn't make it. When I watched my children participate, there were a huge number of parents at such meets. So how does that compute into bad parenting?

Sometimes they complain about drugs. That is one complaint that my generation has no real grounds to criticize their kids generation, and probably not the extramarital sex issue either. But I suspect our parents had some legitimate gripes on that point, except...have you ever watched General Eisenhower in any of the film clips during WWII? He is almost never without a cigarette in hand. I remember if you opened the door to the teacher's lounge at my high school, a huge cloud of billowing cigarette smoke would blossom out into the school. It also seems like that generation had something of a little alcohol problem as well.
Looking at my children and their friends, I just cannot help being impressed. They know how to do so much more than we did. So when it comes to being a father, I tend not to knock the Iraq war generation. But contrary to what I have said before, I have to nod in some respects to my Father having been an amazing person. He only graduated from high school, but he was one of the first in his home county to learn to and drive a motor vehicle. He could sell about anything to anyone. While he was not a strong advocate of organized religion and basically detested professional ministers, there was still some kind of spirituality about him that I cannot quite put into words.

While my father had most of the prejudices prevalent in the Great Lakes region at the time, when the local KKK started persecuting Catholics (because there weren't really any racial minorities to persecute), he helped try to shelter them from the storm. When Merchants got outraged at the Gypsies when they came around, he made friends with their King. He may not have been a big supporter of the United Way and other organized charities, but he quietly took care of neighbors in need. And, probably most important of all -- he provided, took care of, and encouraged his children in their activities. It didn't matter to him if we sat the bench at team sport competitions, he came anyway. When he thought an important extracurricular group was not getting sufficient attention from the school (4H, Cross-Country, etc.) -- well he made sure himself that they got rewarded for their efforts himself. If at a 4H or FFA auction it appeared to him that kids were being penalized at the auction and judging not because of the efforts they put in, but rather the quality of animal they could afford to start with -- well, let's just say there were a lot steers who commanded a higher price than the Grand Champions at the local county fair.

While he may not have been impressed with the hippie generation, or the anti-war demonstrations during Viet Nam, he understood that all wars were not equal and in that respect our generation got short changed. He also knew that we should not be sending my generation into harm's way because of some domino theory.

So while I may not be all that impressed with my Father's generation, I was and always will be impressed with my Father.