Patrick Henry or Gideon?

Patrick Henry's famous quote:

"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

Gideon's famous quote:

"For it is better that we should be in bondage than that we should lose our lives; therefore, let us put a stop to the shedding of so much blood."

Where do you come down?

The perils of scripture and politics

Read this and tell me what you think it means:

4 And now, verily I say unto you concerning the laws of the land, it is my will that my people should observe to do all things whatsoever I command them.

5 And that law of the land which is constitutional, supporting that principle of freedom in maintaining rights and privileges, belongs to all mankind, and is justifiable before me.

6 Therefore, I, the Lord, justify you, and your brethren of my church, in befriending that law which is the constitutional law of the land;

7 And as pertaining to law of man, whatsoever is more or less than this, cometh of evil.

[D&C 98:4-7]


Do you think that

a.) This means the Lord supports the U.S. Constitution as the only law of the land, and that anything more or less than the Constitution "cometh of evil", or

b.) This means the Lord supports his followers in upholding the law, and that he generally approves of the Constitution (but doesn't explicitly rule out other forms of government) because it allows his followers the freedom to follow Him, or

c.) None of the above?

Operators are standing by...

A Scriptural Basis For Mormon Environmentalism

As a Mormon and an environmentalist I believe thatensuring healthy air, water, and ecosystems is our moral and religious duty.  My own Mormon environmentalism is based onthree important principles found in the scriptures.

First, all of creation is imbued with a soul, and thus has value.  We are taught that all things, both animateand inanimate, were created “spiritually, before they were naturally upon theface of the earth” (Moses 3:5), therefore they all have a “living soul”(Moses 3:9), and the “worth of souls is great in the sight of God”(Doctrine and Covenants 18:10).  We areeven taught that our mother earth herself has a soul and is conscious of our “filthiness”  (Moses 7:48).

Second, all of creation is meant to bear record ofGod.  The prophet Alma taught that “the earth,and all things that are upon the face of it . . . do witness that there is aSupreme Creator”  (Alma 30:44).  The Lord taught Adam from the beginning that“all things bear record of [Him],” including “things which are on the earth,and things which are in the earth, and things which are under the earth” (Moses 6:63).

Third, polluting theearth is a sin.  In Moroni’s vision ofour day he gave many examples of the types of sins we would commit.  He mentions wars, murders, robbing, andlying.  In that list he notes thatanother sign of moral decay will be “great pollutions upon the face of theearth” (Mormon 8:31).

Given these principles, I think it is sad that members of the church are not generally the strongest voices in protecting our environment.  We put up with polluted and unhealthy air and water in order to protect corporations, we have much stronger voices for the slaughter of wolves, bears, coyotes, and cougars than for finding ways to peacefully coexist with wildlife, and we treat our last few truly wild places as commodities for our enjoyment rather than as having intrinsic value worth protecting at all costs.

I believe we have lost touch with the spiritual aspect of creation in our errant quest for perpetual economic expansion.  In our rush to "subdue" and exercise "dominion" over the earth we have forgotten that we are stewards only and will be held accountable for our stewardship.  When we report how we took care of the world which we were given will we be able to say we cared for it, nourished it, and protected it?  Or will we have nothing to show but a polluted world whose plant and animal life we destroyed for temporal gain?

Pro-Death Bona Fides

In a strange twist, Republican candidates now must seemingly prove their pro-death bona fides to the Tea Party extremist base.  In the last two Republican debates the crowd has made it clear that death is preferable to life, eye-for-an-eye-tooth-for-a-tooth is preferable to love thy neighbor and blessed-are-the-peacemakers and good-samaritanism and so forth.  (Videos below)

First, last week, the crowd erupted in cheers when Rick Perry's record of over two hundred executions was brought up (including at least one innocent man, and probably others):



Next, this week, the crowd yelled out in favor of and cheered the idea of letting an uninsured man die:



Add to this list the generally hawkish, pro-war Republican stances and suddenly the pro-life, anti-abortion wing of the Republican party seems oddly out of place.  After years of sowing the seeds of fear-mongering politics, the Republican strategy has worked:  I am scared for America.

Social Justice in Book of Mormon-Era Governments

I recently came across the following verse in the Book of Mormon, Helaman 6:39:

And thus they did obtain the sole management of the government, insomuch that they did trample under their feet and smite and rend and turn their backs upon the poor and the meek, and the humble followers of God.

At this time in the history of the Book of Mormon, the Lamanites are righteous and the Nephites are not, so much so that the Nephites have allowed the Gadianton robbers to take control of the government.  Upon taking control the Gadianton folks immediately started harassing and making life miserable for the poor.

 

There are various ways to interpret this verse, we don't really know for sure exactly what was going on, but it struck me that this verse may be evidence of social justice in Book of Mormon-era government.  The assumption of the verse seems to me to be that previous to the robbers taking over the government, the government was in the business, to some unknown degree, of helping the poor.  Following the take-over the policy is reversed and the robbers used the government as described.  Why else would the author describe of the oppression of the poor and meek in the same sentence he states that the Gadianton's took over the government if not to draw that contrast?

Many moderate Mormon conservatives contend that the government should not be running programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and welfare because those are properly the the domain of the private sector, and maybe charities in particular.  I have no problem with the argument, I happen to disagree strongly but understand the reasoning behind it.  The problem is that they often use the gospel or Book of Mormon as the basis for their arguments, which I do have a problem with.

I think a righteous people, or even people just trying to do their best, as the pre-Gadianton Nephites were, could have, and indeed did, view the government as an efficient and justifiable means to helping the poor and meek, perfectly in line with their gospel beliefs.  Perhaps their beliefs even required that they use every means and institution available to them to aid the poor and underprivileged, as that is a basic requirement that God gives to all his covenant people.  I think this verse may give us a glimpse of that in the Book of Mormon.

Down With the Two-Party System

. . . kind of.

As it stands now, there are two major political parties that are supposed to somehow represent the infinitely more complex political views of hundreds of millions of Americans.  It's a political duopoly.  Our two political parties, meanwhile, are failing us spectacularly.

Not only are the two parties failing us, but the two-party system itself, regardless of which parties are in control, is failing us.  It is a system which actively suppresses diverse ideas and candidates and thinking-outside-the-box, which results is less choice and less democratic representation for Americans.

The 2000 presidential election is an apt illustration of this problem.  More people voted for Al Gore than George W. Bush, but Bush became president of the United States.  So you have a situation where the president of the United States did not garner a majority vote of Americans.  This might be attributed to two major factors.  First, the electoral college and, second, the presence of Ralph Nader.

As to the electoral college, there's not much else to add.  It is archaic and anti-democratic and nonsensical and needs to be done away with.

As to the presence of Ralph Nader, he actually did end up taking enough votes away from Al Gore in Florida to flip the state in Bush's favor, thereby turning the election.  I imagine that most of the people that voted for Ralph Nader would have had Al Gore as their second choice, but by voting their conscience and refusing to vote strategically (which I applaud), they showed how a multi-party system fails.  Many people were afraid to vote for Nader because of how it might have skewed the election in favor of Bush.  The two-party system, then, suppressed the valid concerns of Nader-ites, and any other potential third party, because there is only room for two parties.  So how to fix it?

There are actually different and better ways to run an election than simply marking an "X" next to the name of the person you are voting for, often referred to as Plurality Voting.  This is the system that punishes third party candidates and skews the entire process like what happened with Bush, Gore, and Nader.  It seems weird to conceive of a different way to elect our government at first, given that we have voted in a certain way for so long, but it is nonetheless true that better ways exist.  Much better ways.

One better way to run an election for an executive office is called Instant Runoff Vote.  Under this system voters rank their preferences one through however many candidates are on the ballot.  If no candidate receives a majority vote right off the bat the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and the second choices from that ballot are distributed amongst the remaining candidates.  This process is followed until one candidate has a majority.  Under instant runoff voting, the person elected always has a majority and there is no punishment for third-parties (or fourth, fifth, etc.)

That's simple enough, but the more difficult issue is the problem with voting for legislatures, councils, and the like.  Imagine a state where 40% of the people vote for candidates from Party A, 35% vote for candidates from Party B, and 25% vote for candidates from Party C.  Also imagine that the party makeup is the same in each individual district.  In this case even though Party A only makes up 40% of the electorate, they get 100% of the power in the legislature.  The dominant party, then, generally gets greater representation in government, and thus more power, than they proportionally receive among the electorate.

There are several methods used in different American cities and states, and federal elections in different countries, that fix this problem, all of which try to attain the most fair way to achieve Proportional Representation.  They are all more complicated than the system we use now, but much more fair and representative of the electorate.  Choice Voting is similar to IRV in that voters rank their preference of candidates, and second and third preferences are redistributed until all the seats are filled.  This requires that the seats be at-large and that candidates obtain a threshold of votes to be elected according to the Droop Formula, which is the number of votes cast, divided by the number of seats available, plus one.

Mixed Member Voting has the voters cast two votes: one for a specific candidate and one for a party.  In this method, the party receives the number of seats proportional to the number of party votes it gets.  The seats are filled first by those that win the specific candidate vote and the rest filled by the party.

Party List Voting is where parties order a list of candidates and voters just vote for their favorite parties.  The seats are filled by the parties according to how the proportion of the vote they receive in the order the party ranked the candidates.

These are very basic overviews of the systems, and there are different variants for each one, but the overriding concept is that they all do a better job of representing the diverse and complex political characteristics of the public than our current Plurality Vote system.  They allow for more voices and more ideas, which inevitably leads to less political stagnation and fewer stale ideas to fix problems.

As an example of how this might change things, let's take a look at good old Utah.  To get an idea of the general proportion of Democrats to Republicans in the state, I took the results of the 2010 governor's race between Peter Corroon and Gary Herbert.  Herbert won 64-32.  A two to one margin is probably about right.  The state senate, meanwhile, is made up of 22 Republicans and seven Democrats, which is a 76-24 split.  The state house of representatives is made up of 58 Republicans and 17 Democrats, which is a 77-23 split.  In both cases Republicans are over-represented compared to the electorate.  A Proportional Representation system would correct this problem and lead to something like a 19-10 split in the state senate (a pickup of three seats for Democrats) and a 51-24 split in the state house (a pickup of seven seats for Democrats).

This isn't even factoring in the increased opportunity for third parties, which would change the political landscape even more.  And this is just a liberal whining about Utah and the 2000 elections, there are plenty of conservatives that would embrace a Constitution Party or Libertarian Party if they had the chance, and I would welcome that.  More parties, more ideas, more choices, more democracy.

The last few years have made it clear that democracy in America is weakening drastically.  There are many good ideas for how strengthen it again, and changing the way we elect our officials is perhaps one of the most important.  It is also the least likely to happen because it would mean that the parties in control would voluntarily weaken themselves and give away power, and as we know, "We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion."

Huntsman the Environmentalist

I think Jon Huntsman might be campaigning for my specific vote.  I'm not sure he even cares if he becomes president, as long as I vote for him.  Because, really, I can't see who his constituency might otherwise be.

Huntsman recently had dinner with a bunch of environmentalists and declared that "conservation is conservative."  Add this to a list of other moderate-to-liberal stances, and I'm not sure Huntsman has a firm grasp on today's Republican Party.  This is not a party of moderation, generally, and certainly not a party hospitable to even inklings of environmentalism.

I've already expressed a little political crush on him, so if he keeps reaching out to me personally like this I'm in trouble because my steamy new political partner is the Green Party and I don't want them getting jealous.  But a moderate Mormon environmentalist as President of the United States?  That's hot.