Simple Utah Mormon Politics

One of the worst things that someone can do is to claim that a consensus exists when it does not. More and more, the so-called global warming "consensus"--that man-made global warming is destroying planet earth--is falling apart. This faux consensus has contributed more than most any other factor for man's lack of hospitality to earth. It's time for some environmental honesty. Can't we just work together using It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that there is only a fringe of scientists who don't buy into anthropogenic global warming. reality to encourage stewardship of the earth? Apparently not. From the early days of environmentalism, lies and exaggeration have been the norm. Global warming "expert" Stephen Schneider summed it up quite well about twenty years ago. On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but - which means that we ...

Ezra Taft Benson, thirteenth prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was one of the greatest statesmen that has ever lived. Not only was he prophetic when it came to spiritual things, he was equally prescient when it comes to economic issues. I have read several times the economic warnings of President Benson, but his warnings have never rung more true than now--when we are in the midst of suffering for failing to heed his warnings. Recently I wrote about the prophetic mantle of Gordon B. Hinckley as regards the world economy. With similar prophetic insight, Ezra Taft Benson authored The Red Carpet in 1962, and in 1969, he penned An Enemy Hath Done This . What follows are selections from those two books. Warning: If you feel a sense of dizzying deja vu, don't be surprised. Care for a stimulus package, anyone? A nation cannot spend itself into prosperity. How about a bailout? When you read the following axiom from Benson, the futility of such economic s...

My wife gave me a copy of The Christmas Sweater for Christmas. I devoured in in all of a Christmas afternoon. I warn you...when you read it, prepare to not only be surprised, but to understand that, in your surprise, you will know that it all makes sense. And, hopefully, you'll want your own Christmas Sweater. On the same day that I read The Christmas Sweater , I read coincidentally what might in retrospect be an astonishing development in the world of cancer research. My wish, for this Christmas season, is that everyone will come to appreciate the sweater's magnificent metaphor. In the afterword to his newest book, author Glenn Beck explains why he wrote what he wrote: In The Christmas Sweater , Eddie's trials begin when his father succumbs to cancer. I didn't select that disease by accident. Almost all of us know someone who has been affected by it in some way, and I am no different; my grandfather had cancer. Six years ago, just after Christmas, my nephew, Ty...

Over the last few days I haven't been able to stop thinking about the Iraqi reporter who threw both of his shoes at George W. Bush during a recent Iraqi press conference. After contemplating the "legacy" of the younger President Bush, I applaud the Iraqi reporter's actions. Come to think of it, given the chance, I might throw my shoes at President Bush as well. More than most pawns of the Establishment, he has been an unmitigated disaster for America. Shoe throwing in the Arab world is a supreme insult. You may have Like his father, George Jr. experienced a meteoric rise to fame coincident to his presidence over the destruction of Iraq. Also, like his father, George II left office amid plummeting popularity, once the American populace had come to understand his true character. read that this very disgrace happened to President Bush on his "farewell tour" to Iraq on December 14, 2008. At the beginning of a joint press conference with Iraqi President No...

A lot of supposedly free-market economists revere Adam Smith as one of the foremost proponents of free enterprise. Ironically, these same economists advocate corporate libertarianism, which ultimately allows powerful corporations, through special governmental favors, to make a mockery of the ability of people to freely exchange money, goods, and services. Adam Smith hated what corporations had become in 18th-century England. Today--at best--it's no better. In today's world, money has become for most the sole measure of market value--civic, social, and environmental responsibility be damned. Without any sense of irony, today's self-proclaimed free marketeers argue that free markets should be completely unrestrained by government. Corporate law is their prominent blind spot, because, as these "economists" apparently haven't noticed, it is government regulation in favor of corporations that has allowed corporations to become 8- and 900-pound gorillas that ...

In the recent presidential election, only three states had a lower voter turnout than Utah. In 2006, Utah had the worst turnout in the nation. Why the apathy? I think it's because many Utahns feel like representative democracy, even in Utah, is a lost cause. Somehow we've got to enlist the "lost cause" voters and get them back on the path of optimism. Lost-Cause voters have martyr complexes, and , in large part, it is their fault that we are a country ruled more and more by a Republicrat oligarchy. Do you know people who say they don't vote anymore because their vote doesn't count? I do. It's their fault that their country is going down the drain. If they're Latter-day Saints, they might be surprised when they see the big movie of their life on the other side of the veil and discover what might have been if they'd pulled their pathetic heads out of the sand. Despite leaders of Utah's predominant religion (The Church of Jesus Christ of ...

Apart from claiming unique authority to act in God's name on the earth, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints encourages its members to seek truth, even if a significant part of the truth we find is not from a study of standard church doctrine. To the best of my knowledge, no other religious denomination is so confident in its teachings and principles that it encourages its adherents to look into every field, under every rock, and in every nook and cranny to discover what is true. Unfortunately, not enough members of the LDS Church realize this enormous blessing and challenge. In many ways, many members of the Church are just like members of other denominations--limited by their creeds, superstitions, and ignorance. Joseph Smith taught that: ...the most prominent difference in sentiment between Latter-day Saints and sectarians was, that the [sectarians] were all circumscribed by some peculiar creed, which deprived the members the privilege of believing anything not co...

American culture is no longer the best culture, yet we export it to every corner of the globe. In addition to thwarting people's ability to provide for their own economic wants, the American corporatist culture shows a profound disrespect for other cultures around the world. Through so-called reduction in barriers to trade, we have destroyed their "mom and pop" shops and sold them Coca Cola instead. Like a cancer, corporatist culture, with its carefully and subtly pre-manufactured demand, marches across the globe homogenizing nearly everything in its wake. Thomas Friedman, in his book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree , tells of being in a Middle Eastern country, feeling a bit lost, but then walking around a street corner to see a Taco Bell sign greeting him. He was ecstatic. He mused that "before Taco Bell there was probably a fly-infested sidewalk stand." Friedman, What started over a century ago as a homogenization of Native Americans and Hispanics into U.S. ...

When you think of "free markets", you think of the corporation, right? Of course, the corporation is the quintessential attribute of the free market, isn't it? I've become surprised to find out that corporations in the modern United States are nothing like they used to be--back when they really did contribute to a free market. In the fourth chapter of his very enlightening book, When Corporations Rule the World , David C. Korten describes what the ultimate free marketeer, Adam Smith, thought of what corporations had become in the Europe of the 1770's: Adam Smith saw corporations, much as he saw governments, as instruments for suppressing the beneficial competitive forces of the market. His condemnation of corporations was uncompromising. ...The Wealth of Nations and the signing of the U.S. Declaration of Independence both occurred in 1776. Smith and the American colonists both shared a deep suspicion of both state and corporate power. In the young American re...

I'm not sure if it's because we were so focused on a presidential campaign--but don't they usually talk about these things quite a bit during campaigns? Or maybe it was because the world economy went south, and the propagandizers that be realized they couldn't add greater economic catastrophe on top of economic cataclysm? I guess if we really are killing the earth that it's going to have to get in line behind all of our other problems. At any rate, not as many people are talking about global warming anymore. Maybe they're not talking about it because My greatest fear amid all of the propaganda about global warming is that government will be given the responsibility to fix the problem, because government has been part of this problem all along. 2008 was the coolest of the last ten years on record, and that the trend is downward. This year's cooling is primarily because of a La Nina effect. But if the globe were warming, why is the trend going down? It s...

Utah Senator Chris Buttars may be a well-meaning individual, but his actions often don't come out that way. His latest lament, with accompanying legislation that businesses use the phrase "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays", is at least the third case in point that I am aware of. First, we were entertained by the faux pas made by the Senator in the 2008 Utah Legislative session, when referring to an In reality, America has a Judeo -Christian heritage, so maybe Senator Buttars should change his legislation to "encourage" businesses to advertise with " Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas"...? analogy of a human baby, of declaring that " this baby is black ". Then there was the attempt to help a friend develop his property in Mapleton, Utah, by using the force if his legislative office . Let's see if we can top that... Who cares that businesses hock their Christmas wares by using the term "Happy Holidays"? I...

With the diabolical sneer of the Ayatollah Khomeini etched upon our minds, it's hard for us to imagine that Iran is democratic in the least. With George W. Bush having branded Iran as a charter member of the Axis of Evil, it's probably unpopular to think about such a possibility. But Iran is relatively democratic. When you compare recent presidential elections, you might be surprised to discover that, in its own way, Iran is as democratic as the United States. That's really not saying much about the United States, though. Prior to the 2005 Iranian presidential vote even occurring, George W. Bush had this to say about Iran. Today, Iran is ruled by men who suppress liberty at home and spread terror across the world. Power is in the hands of an unelected few who have retained power through an electoral process that ignores the basic requirements of democracy. If you substitute "United States" for "Iran" and "shock and awe" for "terrorism...

The current "injury" is that Barack Obama may not meet Constitutional citizenship requirements for becoming President of the United States. To that we can now add an "insult". In a far more cut and dried case, Hillary Clinton cannot currently be appointed to serve as Secretary of State. Darn it! That "[blankety-blank] piece of paper" is getting in the way again... Hillary Clinton is a United States Senator. In her current term in the Senate, Admittedly, it wouldn't be the first time that a president has used Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution to wipe his backside. Nixon did it, Carter did it, and Hillary's own husband did it. So, we can likely count on the Obama administration and its media patsies to pay about as much attention to this as they did to that little thing about the birth certificate. the pay for the office of Secretary of State (among others) was raised. Senator Clinton is thereby disqualified from becoming Secretary of S...

Modern-day America has been styled recently by both Republican and Democratic governments as the savior of the world. The natural result of such illogic is to claim that whatever America does is right. Out of this supposed inability to do wrong was hatched the "Doctrine of Pre-Emption"--or, in other words, to attack "them" before "they" attack us. The United States government would be more successful if it heeded the Doctrine of Self-Defense as advocated in the Book of Mormon. The United States has employed the doctrine of pre-emption to some degree for decades now, but it has been most used blatantly by the George W. Bush administration. It is now, therefore, more commonly known as the Bush Doctrine. As fine-tuned by Bush's National Security Council, the Doctrine of Pre-Emption is this : The security environment confronting the United States today is radically different from what we have faced before. Yet the first duty of the United States Gover...