Simple Utah Mormon Politics

The American national maladies of which Dr. King spoke in his "Beyond Vietnam" speech in April of 1967 have only gotten worse. Imagine how much more the shining city on a hill the United States could and would have been today if we had followed Dr. King's prophetic advice.

The nuclear family was enemy number one for the Soviet Communists of yesteryear.  Ironically, many of the same tactics applied by the Bolsheviks are being employed in modern-day America.

I always thought we hated Hitler more than Stalin because there was more documentary, pictorial, and videographic evidence of Hitler's atrocities, and that Stalin did a better job of covering up his and his country's crimes. That may be a partial explanation, but in reading The Anti-Communist Manifestos , I have discovered another, much more substantial reason.

Just a few years before Ronald Reagan became president of the United States, the Soviet Union was the world's 800-pound gorilla.  Countries across Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America were falling to Communism.  American politicians and beatniks had taken to talking of  losing the struggle to communism. As Reagan weakened the Soviet Union with his words of encouragement to communism's captives, many Americans worried that Reagan was too boorish and too aggressive.  Yet, suddenly, when the Soviet Union imploded on the wings of his inspirational critique, those same Reagan detractors said they had seen it coming all along.

I read three interesting stories in the newspaper this morning, and I couldn't decide which one to blog about, so I guess I'll talk about all three. Dmitry Medvedev took over as Russia's president today. Will he be his own man, or Vladimir Putin's puppet? The LDS Church is working together with CARE international to ship supplies to Myanmar. Now that's what I call foreign aid of the good kind! Jeremiah Wright may be right about a lot of things, but drawing attention to himself as a victim is not one of them. Will Putin Pull Medvedev's Strings? While Vladimir Putin took away a lot of liberties in Russia (in the name of stability) as its former president, new president Dmitry Mevedev seemed to indicate that he is more of a liberty-loving president. "Human rights and freedoms ... are deemed of the highest value for our society and they determine the meaning and content of all state activity," he said. But it all may be moot. Putin stays on as Prime...

The International Olympic Committee is considering abandoning the international portion of the Olympic torch relay for safety reasons. Of course, if they continue just the China portion of the relay then everyone will be safe--except for the current and constant crop of victims of massive human rights violations in China and Tibet. I think the IOC should go itself one step further . China, the greatest human rights violator in the history of mankind, does not deserve to host the Olympic games. Boycotting is not the answer, because then the athletes are penalized. So let me propose a better solution--let's convene another 2008 Olympics in some other country . I can hardly expect the United States government to take umbrage with the coming of the Olympics to China in August of 2008; the American Establishment has its fingers way too deep in that pie. Since General George Marshall was shanghaied by Mao and Chao in 1945, the American Establishment has never had as healthy a rega...

Books don't capture the moment like blogging does. Armando Valladares, Humberto Fontova, and other authors, have masterfully captured the debauchery, the murderousness, and the torture of the Cuban Communist oligarchy; but history presents the truth in a way that can tempt and trick our minds into dismissing its facts as either exaggerations or occurrences of a bygone era. Blogging, however, puts those facts in your face almost as they happen. With up-to-the-minute accounts by Yoani Sanchez--and hopefully soon-to-be others--Americans will now be able to get a clearer understanding that the debauchery, the murder, the torture, and the socialist expropriation are going on in Cuba right now . It's too bad the internet wasn't around when the Cuban revolution of Fidel and Raul castro, along with Che Guevara and other gutter rats, plunged Cuba deep into the dark ages. With the internet, this travesty of freedom may never have been able to happen. If Che Guevara were still arou...

The 81-year old Fidel Castro announced that he will not run for public office in Cuba again. (As though he ever "ran" for it in the first place.) It would have been nice if he had announced that intention some 50 years ago. The Cuban people would be infinitely better off today. So would the world. Fidel Castro lived less than a cipher's life, yet he has been romanticized unceasingly by the Robert Redfords of America, aided by a largely misguided U.S. embargo of his crumbling fiefdom. He could have amounted to a pretty good baseball player, and with God's grace, I wish he would have. He would have done much less damage. Too little, too late, he announced that he will not "run" for President for an unprecedented second 50-year term. As it stands, the world would have been better off if Fidel Castro had never been born. An ailing Fidel Castro resigned as Cuba's president Tuesday after nearly a half-century in power, saying he was retiring and will no...

Have you ever wondered why the Bush Administration not only doesn't seem to care about our illegal immigration problem, but is actively thwarting it? It's because they're actively supporting the North American Union. Have you ever wondered why the Bush Administration and Congress seem to be uncaring about our out-of-control national debt? Could it be that there are some people in high places who want America to fail, so we can be joined together in a North-American Union with one regional currency ? Yes. Shortly after Congress approved several hundred miles of border fencing last year, machinations allowed the Bush Administration to allocate the funds in essentially whatever way it saw fit . Not surprisingly, pretty much none of the fence has been built. The United States debt exceeded the 9 trillion dollar mark yesterday. It wasn't but a year and a half ago that Congress set 9 trillion as the Federal Debt Limit . Hmmmm....do they get arrested now? Do they care...

Karl Marx's solutions to the problems that he saw were not very effective or correct. But he was correct in his observations of slave-type labor in Britain, as noted in his book Capital . If he were alive today, I wonder if China would be the object of his opprobrium. It would deserve to be. Yesterday on The Right Balance , Greg Allen made a keen observation. He said, to wit, that China gets away with both the excesses of Capitalism and the excesses of Communism. China in 2007 is very similar to Britain of the 1800's. In his book, Capital , Marx refers to the business owners as having "the were-wolf's hunger for surplus labor". The Chinese government is today's 'were-wolf' business owner. Capitalism to excess is bad. Communism is just plain excessive, and therefore always bad. We complain--and rightly so--when American capitalists use capitalism to the point of extortion. But we are strangely silent when the Chinese Communo-capitalists do the ...

We need to be more discriminating when we buy things from China. At least there is a high chance that the product is of low quality. Or it could be a fake. But it could even kill you. I can remember when I was a kid that it was common to look on the bottom of a toy or a souvenir and see the label "Made in China". It's becoming even more common, and we continue to take their shoddy workmanship. It belies the fact that a communist oligarchy can actually manage productive quality. If China were to have consumer product safety guidelines like in the United States, the Chinese economy would temporarily go in the tank, until it began turning out quality products. Instead, China manages people's family sizes, freedom of speech, thought, press, and religion while the economy turns out garbage and forgeries. Things are definitely cheaper when they come from China. But I remember a bike we bought that we couldn't even put together, let alone ride. I remember openi...

How does Sudan get the wherewithal to resettle, torment, and kill its own citizens? A great deal of help is coming from China. Does anybody care? Clear back in 2004 it became clear that China was enabling the Darfur genocide . Although most Western oil companies have withdrawn from Sudan under pressure from human rights organizations, Chinese companies have turned a blind eye to the brutal way in which Sudan forced 200,000 to 300,000 of its citizens from oil-rich lands without compensation. Nor have these companies shown concern that Sudan uses oil revenue to purchase arms for its wars against its black African population. Oil provides revenue. Revenue can be used to purchase weapons. Weapons can be used by a government to kill its own people. But who would sell weapons to Sudan, knowing full well what they'll try to do with them? You've got three seconds to answer. China? Very good! Go to the head of the class! (If you said Russia, you're correct as well.) In a 24-p...