There are a number of items in the news each of which I'd given some consideration to posting about: the Corey Booker dustup, the screaming North Carolina teacher and the student who merely asked a question, Chris Matthews's bomb-out on Jeopardy, Occupy Whatever at the NATO summit in Chicago.
The sum total of what they have to tell us about the state of our civilization is really just further confirmation of what we have known for a sadly long time: It's unraveling.
There will be other examples to cite. There's no worry about that.
Really, lately I've been focusing once again on the Most Equal Comrade - who he is, how he views America, why he doubles down on policies and positions that are proven beyond a doubt to be hugely unpopular. I'm reading The Amateur by Ed Klein now. Like Stanley Kurtz's Radical-in-Chief, it substantiates how utterly alien to anything we consider American his whole worldview is.
He is the main focus. He has to be. We must stop him.
If Obama is Narcissus, Romney is the very mirror of God and you aint gonna like what's lookin' back at us all. We will be slaves to his Mormon vision of humanity, but that might serve you well since there are plenty of outcasts in that zeitgeist, those of Christ's brother, could it be, could it be? Could it be.....Satan?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-20/in-romney-mormons-see-path-to-christian-mainstream.html
During the 2008 presidential primary race, evangelical stalwart Mike Huckabee darkly hinted that Mitt Romney might believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers. This time around, Romney is the featured graduation speaker at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. What changed?
In the short-term world of party politics, the answer is that everybody loves a winner -- even the people who tried to beat him in the first place. Evangelicals will have to vote for the presumptive Republican nominee unless they want to stay home and effectively cast their votes for President Barack Obama. Romney may be a Mormon, but Obama is worse, even for those who acknowledge that he is not (gasp) a Muslim.
Okay, even though your alarm is disproportional to the reality of the situation, let's assume for the sake of argument that the Mormonism thing is the big deal you're saying it is. That negates neither the fact of the MEC's radicalism nor the indisputable correctness of basic conservative principles. Remember, LITD has big - maybe huge - problems with Romney. They have everything to do with his basic RGS, though, not his theological particulars.
ReplyDeleteYou capture the bottom line with perfect succinctness: "Obama is even worse."
You must remember that there are no secular Mormons.
ReplyDeleteLehi's dream can speak to us not only through what we have in common with it, but also by how we differ. Its world view in certain ways is so fundamentally different from our own today, that it provides for us a true insight into our own unnoticed assumptions about the world. I will end this paper with a brief view of one such doctrine -- namely, one aspect of its moral dualism. Lehi's dream contains what I call "apocalyptic primitivism.# This is a belief that all the churches except the one true church are abominable apostasies from ancient Christianity and constitute the apocalyptic whore in the last days. The Nephite apocalypse anticipates the restoration of ancient religious truths. This is only one small part of the moral dualism within the entire Book of Mormon. Everything is either black or white. But for most of us, nothing is black or white. We value ambiguity too highly; we are too cosmopolitan to accept such a moral dualism. The claim to he the only true church seems to many people today a provincial form of pride and exceedingly egocentric. Today's most common world view is entirely different from that in the Book of Mormon. I do not experience its despair of the world. When I eat the fruit of the tree, the world is as likely to applaud as point its finger. Because of my absolute commitment to the ecumenical spirit, I struggle with Lehi. And yet I learn from Lehi. The claim to be the only source of religious truth and the depreciation of all other churches is not spoken out of pride but out of despair. It denies the world, in order to rise above it. It challenges us to rise above moral circumstance, to be something higher than the mere products of a morally corrupt environment. It is an affirmation of life that has passed through a negation of life.
ReplyDeleteRead more at http://mldb.byu.edu/thomas.htm
As you know, I am not a very optimistic person. The chances that Western civilization is going to squeak through its myriad problems and thrive once again are less than 50 - 50.
ReplyDeleteWhat are we to make of the wide range of ideological orientations of Mormons, from Harry reid on the hard left, through mushy-middly types like Romney and Hatch, to solid conservatives like Mia Love?
ReplyDeleteGood point. I dunno, but have any of them wanted this "mission" as President and Commander in Chief as badly as Romney wants it? It is said he has seen himself as the great leader who it was said would come in tirmes of dire peril for the Constitution. Gee we really need a guy like that, right?
ReplyDeleteI know you will cheer him on as Commander in Chief during the next big one because Israel figures as prominently in his apocolyptic hermeneutics as he does in yours, methinks at least.
Romney really believes this. I suppose a so-called freedom hater like Harry Reid believes it too but he emphasizes the love side of the equation. They are also very socialistic in belief and action. They will help you out as much or better than the next denomination. But they insist that you get up off your ass and work too. First order of biz, I hear, is to get your ass working.
"Our Father in Heaven planned the coming forth of the Founding Fathers and their form of government as the necessary great prologue leading to the restoration of the gospel. Recall what our Savior Jesus Christ said nearly two thousand years ago when He visited this promised land: "For it is wisdom in the Father that they should be established in this land, and be set up as a free people by the power of the Father, that these things might come forth" (3 Ne. 21:4). America, the land of liberty, was to be the Lord's latter-day base of operations for His restored church."--Ezra Taft Benson 1899-1994, 13th President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
I think and live more like a Repubican these days but I see what really drives you guys and I don't want you in there again:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dailynewstranscript.com/community/blogs/holmes-and-co/x1040013324/Neocons-cheer-for-war
According to an article in the Nation magazine by Ari Berman, over seventy percent of the neocons who ran the Iraq war have signed up as foreign policy advisors to Mitt Romney. Elliott Cohen served as counselor to Condoleeza Rice and in 2009 urged the Obama administration to “actively seek the overthrow of Iran’s government.” Robert Kagan the author of Romney’s American exceptionalism stance; Robert Joseph National Security Council who inserted the famous “16 words” in Bush’s 2003 SOTU address claiming Iraq tried to buy enriched uranium from Niger; Dan Senor, former spokesman for the CPA under Paul Bremmer, and Eric Edelman a top official at the Pentagon under President Bush.
Of course this was written by the former chief of staff to that commie turncoat, reasonable pussyman Colin Powell. Come on boys, shock and awe us again! Mitt's Morman exceptionalism IS the AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM you've been waiting for. Let's kick some international ass!
ReplyDeletehttp://gulftoday.ae/portal/480e37f4-34b3-4f52-a1bb-71f3d3a16634.aspx
Under the circumstances, it is chilling to see leading figures in Washington following the same path, this time with regard to Iran.
In January, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, testified to Congress that while the US officials believe Iran is preserving its options, there is no evidence that they are making a concerted push to build a nuclear weapon. CIA director, General David Petraeus, agreed with Clapper.
But Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., dismissed the testimony. In a subsequent hearing, he told Clapper, “I’m very convinced that they’re going down the road of developing a nuclear weapon.”
On what basis?
Similarly, General Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently testified that the Iranian regime is a “rational actor,” and that the current US approach of international sanctions and tough negotiations “is the most prudent.” Within hours, presidential candidate Mitt Romney had dismissed General Dempsey’s testimony though he offered no data to support his stance.
Bottom Line:
ReplyDeleteAnother term for Obama will not end perpetual war. It’s written in stone, no president can change it. That’s the real point, the decision has been taken out of the hands of the president and the voters. The empire marches on, while the neocon crowd cheers for more blood.