What's Wrong With Us? Some ideas.

Perhaps I'm just in a bad mood, politically, but I made a list of what's wrong with America right now.  Enjoy:

1. Pointless, horrible wars that we won't end.
2. An assault on our civil liberties, mostly due to the Patriot Act.
3. A complete lack of initiative and desire to do something about climate change and out-of-control consumption of fossil fuels.
4. The deterioration of our public school system.
5. The ever-growing income disparity chasm between the rich and poor.
6. A broken health care system and no universal health care on the horizon to fix it.
7. Underregulated crony corporatism.
8. Insulated, unaccountable politicians.
9. Incivility and bigotry.
10. The New York Yankees.

To sum it up: we have a bipartisan assault on peace, liberty, niceness, the poor, and the environment.  Am I missing anything?

Divide and Conquer, Religious Style

NYDailyNews.com

Rep. Peter King is using his position as chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security to terrorize Muslims.  He is instituting hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims based on vague accusations that ordinary Muslims and their leaders have not done enough to speak out against terrorism.  He has yet to produce, of course, any proof of any of his claims that American Muslims are becoming more radicalized and that they are not adequately assisting the police and counter-terrorism officials.

The impetus for these hearings likely has nothing to do with the radicalization of Muslims, and everything to do with politics.  By turning Americans against each other politicians can pursue the old divide and conquer technique.  Anyone who knows American Muslims knows that they are just like everyone else.  They are mostly good, hardworking, honest people who value their freedoms and abhor oppression.  They are serious about their religion and embrace their cultural and familial roots.  While most are good, some are not.  The same could be said about nearly every group of Americans, no matter how you dissect them.  You could say the same about Catholics, Mormons, atheists, middle class, lower class, New Yorkers, Utahns, blacks, whites, and on and on. It is cliche but still basically true that the things that tie us together are both more numerous and more important than the things that differentiate us.

But politicians know, and Rep. King best of all, apparently, that creating connections based on virtuous commonalities is bad politics.  So King is finding ways to divide us, and his weapon of choice is religion.  Instead of pointing to all the ways that Muslims are a valuable part of our nation, and world, he is making false allegations and fomenting fear and dividing us artificially along religious lines.  It suddenly becomes very comforting for the average white Christian to identify with Peter King and his brand of politics against the sinister "other" that is, in this case, Muslims.  Proof and logic have no place in this debate, this is about emotion.

It won't do any good to point to studies that show that Muslims are becoming less and less likely to radicalize and how helpful Muslims have been in anti-terrorism cases.  It won't do any good to point out that in America there is no guilt of identity.  It won't do any good to point out that every group has extremist wings and that we don't require every Christian, for instance, to denounce White Supremacists or else be considered anti-American and come before a McCarthyite congressional hearing.  It won't do any good to point out King's own ties to the Irish terrorist group, the IRA, and that therefore he is a hypocrite.

We can't allow our leaders to use our religion against us.  If we're concerned about freedom of religion, and we should be, then we should stand up with Muslims against this oppression.  Because Mormons could always be next.  Have you publicly denounced Warren Jeffs, the FLDS, and Mountain Meadows yet?

Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holidays

Americans love war analogies.  It probably stems from our love of actual war, which I think is an actual collective sin we are committing.  So analogies between war and other non-war things are pretty unsettling and off-putting for me.  In the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for instance, there are over 100,000 dead civilians, tens of thousands of dead combat troops, and millions of wounded.  So when we use frequent war allusions in sports and politics and the like I think we're being rather callous and glib.  If we paid more attention to our language and how we use it we might end up making different and better political choices in America.

That was all a slight tangent I started pondering as I considered this most special time of year when we can come together and debate whether or not there is a War on Christmas.  The weapons in this war are not missiles, bombs, drone attacks, and machine guns, but phrases like "Happy Holidays," the removal of nativity scenes from government-owned public places, and "X-mas."  The casualties are not human lives lost or permanent physical or psychological injuries and disfigurement, but . . . what?  I'm not sure.  Hurt pride, I guess.

What we have are some very conservative Christians who object to the de-Christianizing of Christmas.  Which makes some intuitive sense, I guess.  After all, this is a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ.  Put aside for a moment that the holiday was started in part as a way to co-opt pre-Christian winter festivals, and that even before the supposed "War on Christmas" was launched by supposed atheists and statists we Christians did a pretty great job mucking it up on our own with our Santa Clauses and elves and red-nosed reindeers and general commercialism that has wrung any meaningful Christ-centered moisture from the public face of the Christmas cloth.  Put that aside and I can at least see a glimmer of what these staunchly pro-Christ-in-Christmas conservative Christians are getting at.

But as I've alluded to a couple of times so far I think this is a matter of public v. private observance, and I think the Defenders in the War on Christmas are on the wrong side of this one.  We live in a country that is multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multi-everything.  We Americans aspire to the ideal of tolerance and civility.  We have created this pretty rare country where ethnic and religious tensions have been historically pretty low key.  Only we're moving away from that recently.  There is a very vocal contingent of Americans that are creating tension with Hispanics.  The Christian right is continuing to gain power to push its anti-differences agenda and have swept Mormons into their net.  Muslims are have seen a steady deterioration in their public standing culminating in the embarrassingly bigoted "Ground Zero Mosque" fiasco.  And the list could continue.

The backdrop of all this, of course, is that we live in an increasingly heterogeneous society, so there is more and more bumping into each other causing the inevitable building of friction.  Whereas before you could walk down the streets of most small- to mid-sized towns in America and feel pretty certain that you were only going to pass by other white Protestants, now you're bound to encounter more diversity.  Whereas before any small- to mid-sized town in America could safely put up a nativity scene on the grounds of county courthouse because everyone that would see it was Christian and no one would care or complain, now you've got many more people of different faiths and backgrounds that might not share those Christian sensitivities.

The Constitution reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."  There are two different things there.  The second part, known as the Free Exercise Clause, is not really at issue here.  Having public displays of Christianity on government property doesn't prohibit anyone from exercising their own religion differently.  It is that first part, known as the Establishment Clause, is a little more tricky.  Does having a nativity, something overtly Christian, on government property constitute an establishment of Christianity as the de facto government-sanctioned official religion?  Would we allow overtly Muslim scenes during Ramadan?  Jewish scenes for Passover?  Hindu, Sikh, atheist, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Scientologist, etc. scenes at other times?  Should the government be in the business of doing anything overtly religious at all?

These are difficult legal issues that are being sorted out constantly in the courts.  But if we remove for a moment the legal issues and just focus on the human side, I think the ideas get more clear.  Christmas is a great time of year.  More volunteerism occurs, more charitable donations, more goodwill.  For Christians there is (hopefully) more of a focus on Christ, which is excellent, but for people of all faiths Christmas is becoming a time to focus on family and giving and, yes, presents and decorations and everything else.  Why would we choose to be less inclusive?  Why would we try to force only the extreme Christian view on others instead of something many more people can embrace?  What could we possibly gain by pressuring businesses and public entities to say "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays" or something that more people can identify with?

I just don't understand when people want to force their religion on others and into the public square.  This isn't missionary work and glorifying Christ and expressing our faith, those sorts of things are done in humility and personally and one-on-one, this is about xenophobia and pride.  I think it does absolutely no good to worry about some nebulous "war" on Christmas, but it does all the good in the world to celebrate Christmas privately as a religious holiday and publicly as an all-inclusively holiday.  So, Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holidays, whichever suits you best.

President Obama as a Muslim and Religious Tests

How one in five Americans view the President

A recent Pew poll showed that 18% of Americans think Pres. Obama is a Muslim, 34% correctly think he is a Christian, and a whopping 43% say they don't know.  There are various interpretations of where this misinformation is coming from, ranging from a right-wing effort to cast doubt on the president's Christianity to the president's failure to tackle the issue head-on to the fact that some (many?) Americans are just stupid.  Of course it is a combination of all of these.

The poll gets to an issue Americans have struggled with for a long time: whether the religion of our president and elected leaders should even matter at all.  George W. Bush famously claimed that God told him to invade Iraq (I'm thinking I worship a different God than him), Ronald Reagan was distinctly irreligious, Bill Clinton was actively religious but of course that was muddied by his personal, shall we say, indiscretions.  We know all of this, and much more, because we tend to care a great deal about the religions of our presidents and elected leaders.

Another recent poll, this one from Gallup, showed that one-fourth of Americans wouldn't vote for a Mormon, and over half wouldn't vote for an atheist.  A Fox poll showed about the same numbers and also showed that Americans would be even a little less likely to vote for a Muslim than a Mormon.

Article 6, Section 3 of the Constitution states:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

It appears that while there is no official religious test in America for public office, there is a de facto test in the minds of the majority of Americans, and if a candidate doesn't fit neatly into their preconceived white Protestant ideal, that candidate is in for a difficult ride.  One recent good example of this was the race for governor in South Carolina.  Nikki Haley converted from Sikhism to Christianity, but that didn't stop her primary opponent from calling her a "raghead" and Ms. Haley having to explain her religious beliefs to voters in an effort to allay fears.  She eventually won her primary, but that her religion was an issue at all was unfortunate.  What if she had still been a Sikh?  Doesn't that disqualify her from being a good governor?

Mitt Romney's Mormonism was similarly a big issue for his campaign and, really, a hindrance.  Should his religious beliefs alone have disqualified him from consideration for the presidency?  It did in the minds of many, many voters.

And now a big majority of Americans are not even willing to let Muslims build a cultural center a couple blocks away from ground zero.  It feels like we are taking a step back in religious tolerance in this country.  It seems like America is now propelled by fear and pessimism as opposed to courage and optimism.  There is no doubt that this is a period of change: terrorism is a new amorphous enemy, the economy is pretty ragged and it's hard to know how to compete when it is cheaper for businesses to function outside the country, and environmental concerns are growing.  But instead of bringing our best ideas to the table we are falling back on old prejudices and stale ideas.  We're demonizing "others" as a cheap trick to soothe ourselves.

As a member of a religion that is not exactly mainstream, I worry that if we allow ourselves to go down this road, a road where political candidates and their ideas are judged first by the person's religion instead of their inherent merit and where there is a knee-jerk reaction against minority religious beliefs and opinions, that we'll be excluded first and eventually targeted just like Muslims are now.

And the threats come from two directions.  On the one hand some extreme liberals would like see religion removed from the public psyche altogether, and on the other some extreme conservatives want to push America as a solely Christian nation to the point that all non-evangelical Protestantism is removed from the public psyche altogether.

Neither extreme is good for Mormons, obviously.  As a result, we should be making a strenuous case for healthy religious tolerance in America, and a good first step would be rejecting religious tests for our elected leaders and supporting (not grudgingly) the right of Muslims to build their center where they want.

Glenn Beck v. The Mormon Ethic of Civility

Can you guess which is which?

The political world is astir. Economies are faltering. Public trust is waning. Individuals feel vulnerable. And social cohesion wears thin. Meanwhile, stories of rage and agitation fill our airwaves, streets and town halls. Where are the voices of balance and moderation in these extreme times?

So here you have Barack Obama going in and spending money on embryonic stem cell research. . .  Eugenics.  In case you don't know what eugencis led to; the Final Solution.  A master race!  A perfect person. . .  the stuff we are facing is absolutely frightening.
 
During a recent address given in an interfaith setting, Church President Thomas S. Monson declared: "When a spirit of goodwill prompts our thinking and when united effort goes to work on a common problem, the results can be most gratifying."

You self-centered, self-righteous, socialist, out-of-control, dangerous, man-hating bitch. Shut your mouth. We might have bought into this crap in the 1960s because too many people were doing LSD. We’re not on LSD anymore. You need to start making sense.

Further, former Church President Gordon B. Hinckley once said that living “together in communities with respect and concern one for another” is “the hallmark of civilization.” That hallmark is under increasing threat.

Speaking to a Muslim Congressman:  "I have been nervous about this interview with you because what I feel like saying is, "Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies". . .  And I know you're not.  I'm not accusing you of being an enemy, but that's the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans feel that way.

So many of the habits and conventions of modern culture — ubiquitous media, anonymous and unsourced online participation, politicization of the routine, fractured community and family life — undermine the virtues and manners that make peaceful coexistence in a pluralist society possible.

Mary Landrieu is "a high-class prostitute".

The fabric of civil society tears when stretched thin by its extremities. Civility, then, becomes the measure of our collective and individual character as citizens of a democracy.

Every night I get down on my knees and pray that Dennis Kucinich will burst into flames.
 
A healthy democracy maintains equilibrium through diverse means, including a patchwork of competing interests and an effective system of governmental checks. Nevertheless, this order ultimately relies on the integrity of the people.

Progressivism is the cancer in America and it is eating our Constitution, and it was designed to eat the Constitution, to progress past the Constitution.

Speaking at general conference, a semiannual worldwide gathering of the Church, Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles asserted: “In the end, it is only an internal moral compass in each individual that can effectively deal with the root causes as well as the symptoms of societal decay.”

[Hilliary Clinton] is the stereotypical bitch, you know what I mean?

Likewise, Presiding Bishop H. David Burton emphasized that the virtues of fidelity, charity, generosity, humility and responsibility “form the foundation of a Christian life and are the outward manifestation of the inner man.”

Person 1:  I don't hate women, they're very convenient to have around.
Person 2:  They just shouldn't be voting.
Person 1:  Of course not.

Thus, moral virtues blend into civic virtues. The seriousness of our common challenges calls for an equally serious engagement with reasonable ideas and solutions. What we need is rigorous debate, not rancorous altercations.

Cindy Sheehan "a pretty big prostitute" and a "tragedy pimp".

Civility is not only a matter of discourse. It is primarily a mode of engagement. The technological interconnectedness of society has made isolation impossible.

I think she is a racist.  I think she decided things based on race.  I think she says that a Hispanic woman, with the experience of being a Hispanic woman, can make decisions that a white man can't make.  I can't imagine saying that.  That's like saying Hispanics can't make money decisions like them Jews.
 
Of all the institutions in the modern world, religion has had perhaps the greatest difficulty adjusting to the reality of give and take with the public.

I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. . .  If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish. Go alert your bishop.

Rather than exempting itself from the rules of law and civility, the Church has sought the path of cooperative engagement and avoided the perils of acrimonious confrontation.

These vampires are not going to be satisfied by just sucking the blood of GM's top guy, the AIG executives or any other business or businessperson. Their thirst for power and control is unquenchable and there are only two ways for this to end: Either the economy becomes like the walking dead or you drive a stake through the heart of the bloodsuckers.

Some people mistakenly think responses such as silence, meekness, forgiveness, and bearing humble testimony are passive or weak. But, to "love [our] enemies, bless them that curse [us], do good to them that hate [us], and pray for them which despitefully use [us], and persecute [us]" (Matthew 5:44) takes faith, strength, and, most of all, Christian courage.

The most used phrase in my administration if I were to be President would be "What the hell do you mean we're out of missiles?"
 
The moral basis of civility is the Golden Rule, taught by a broad range of cultures and individuals, perhaps most popularly by Jesus Christ: “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise” (Luke 6:31). This ethic of reciprocity reminds us all of our responsibility toward one another and reinforces the communal nature of human life.


I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. . .  No, I think I could.  I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out.  Is this wrong?

The need for civility is perhaps most relevant in the realm of partisan politics. As the Church operates in countries around the world, it embraces the richness of pluralism.  Thus, the political diversity of Latter-day Saints spans the ideological spectrum. 

There are three reasons that an illegal immigrant "comes across the border in the middle of the night:  One, they're terrorists.  Two, they're escaping the law.  Or, three, they're hungry -- they can't make a living in their own dirtbag country."

Individual members are free to choose their own political philosophy and affiliation. Moreover, the Church itself is not aligned with any particular political ideology or movement. It defies category. Its moral values may be expressed in a number of parties and ideologies.

Good for you, you have a heart, you can be a liberal. Now, couple your heart with your brain, and you can be a conservative.

Furthermore, the Church views with concern the politics of fear and rhetorical extremism that render civil discussion impossible.

This president I think has exposed himself over and over again as a guy who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture. . .  I'm not saying he doesn't like white peopel, I'm saying he has a problem.  This guy is, I believe, a racist.
 
Latter-day Saint ethical life requires members to treat their neighbors with respect, regardless of the situation. Behavior in a religious setting should be consistent with behavior in a secular setting.

You got to have an enemy to fight.  And when you have an enemy to fight, then you can unite the entire world behind you, and you seize power.  That was Hitler's plan.  His enemy: the Jew.  Al Gore's enemy, the U.N.'s enemy: global warming.  Then you get the scientists -- eugenics.  You the scientists: global warming.  then you have to discredit the scientists who say, "That's not right."  And you must silence all dissenting voices.  That's what Hitler did.

The Church hopes that our democratic system will facilitate kinder and more reasoned exchanges among fellow Americans than we are now seeing.

There are good Muslims and bad Muslims.  We need to be the first ones in the recruitment office lining up to shoot the bad Muslims in the  head.
 
In his inaugural press conference President Monson emphasized the importance of cooperation in civic endeavors: “We have a responsibility to be active in the communities where we live, all Latter-day Saints, and to work cooperatively with other churches and organizations. My objective there is ... that we eliminate the weakness of one standing alone and substitute for it the strength of people working together.”

When I see a 9/11 victim family on television, or whatever, I'm just like, "Oh shut up."  I'm so sick of them because they're always complaining.

The Immigration List, Continued

An investigation into the now infamous immigration list has revealed that two state workers compiled the information illegally from state databases.  I wrote a little about it a few days ago here.  This entire episode has ratcheted up the level of intensity surrounding the immigration issue here in Utah and also nationwide.  Amidst all of this the Church's position is to approach immigration with a spirit of compassion, "careful reflection and civil discourse," and "the strongest desire to do what is best for all of God's children."

After skimming the Deseret News comment sections to some relevant articles and doing a little "web surfing" I'm finding that a lot of politically conservative members of the church aren't so thrilled with the vibe they are getting from the church on this issue.  They find themselves in a somewhat unfamiliar position of not being exactly on-board with a political issue into which the church has inserted itself.  The word you are looking for is: schadenfreude.

The go-to authority for most of these people is the Twelfth Article of Faith, which of course states that "We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law."  This says it all for them, that the law says deport illegals so we have to support it.  Let's set aside for now that these same people have done anything but honor and sustain laws with which they disagree, such as health care reform, and would gladly accept the government failing to enforce that one.  We all have convenient little mental gymnastics we can perform to bend logic to fit our preconceived ideas.

Setting that argument aside, what many of these politically conservative outspoken members fail to remember, also from the scriptures, are stories such as these:

1 And he entered again into the synagogue; and there was a man there which had a withered hand.

2 And they watched him, whether he would heal him on the sabbath day; that they might accuse him.

3 And he saith unto the man which had the withered hand, Stand forth.

4 And he saith unto them, Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? to save life, or to kill? But they held their peace.

5 And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it out: and his hand was restored whole as the other.

6 And the Pharisees went forth, and straightway took counsel with the Herodians against him, how they might destroy him.

7 But Jesus withdrew himself with his disciples to the sea: and a great multitude from Galilee followed him, and from Judaea 

11 ¶ And, behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself.

12 And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity.

13 And he laid his hands on her: and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God.

14 And the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because that Jesus had healed on the sabbath day, and said unto the people, There are six days in which men ought to work: in them therefore come and be healed, and not on the sabbath day.

15 The Lord then answered him, and said, Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering?

16 And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?

17 And when he had said these things, all his adversaries were ashamed: and all the people rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him.

It was illegal for Christ to do these things on the sabbath, and yet He did anyway.  So, what is more important, a Christlike compassion and willingness to serve and strengthen those in need, or obeying, honoring, and sustaining the letter of the law?  What is more important, Matthew 22:36-40 or the Twelfth Article of Faith?

I don't think we should simply ignore the 12th, but let's at least put it in perspective.  It doesn't trump the commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves.  These illegal immigrants are our neighbors, they are good people, and the fact that they are here illegally doesn't allow us to just blindly demand that the full weight of the law be executed.  Instead, it actually gives us a chance to exercise some charity and do something might be uncomfortable doing: forgiving and reaching out in compassion to illegal immigrants.

Religious Freedom and the Ground Zero Mosque

The Eleventh Article of Faith states: "We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may."

I stated in my last post that my evolving three pillars of Things I Care About The Most In Politics are peace, a healthy sustainable environment, and moral/religious agency.  I think if we safeguard these three things we can live in a pretty great world for a long time.  Of course the three are intimately intertwined.  War is usually based on scarcity of resources (the environmental aspect) or religious conflict.  If we could focus on cleaning up our religious conflicts and our environment, sustainable peace would surely follow.

Unfortunately, there are many right here in America who want to restrict the religious freedom of anyone that worships different than they do, thus creating more conflict and less peace.  The latest and most public incarnation of this bigotry is the uproar over the plans to build a mosque and Muslim information center a few blocks from ground zero.

The opponents of this mosque truly believe that those who died on 9/11 would be dishonored by the mere fact that Muslims would have a place of worship so near ground zero.  The only way this thinking makes sense is if you believe that all Muslims are responsible for the actions of al Qaeda and the extremist factions that want to harm the United States.  This is, of course, absurd and bigoted.

Only a very tiny fraction of the around 1 billion Muslims in the world have radicalized and condone terrorism and violence against civilians.  Granted, that tiny fraction is doing some serious harm, but it is still no reason to condemn an entire religion.  What's more, Muslims in America are showing no signs of radicalization and some polls have shown that they are less likely than the American population at large to condone terrorism.

And lets not pretend that some of our actions in the Middle East played no part in creating extremism to begin with.  It does not justify terrorism, but it is relevant to understanding why such extremism exists.

If we were to hold every religion to the standard that those protesters are holding Islam, we would not allow any religion in our borders.  Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Mormons all have extreme factions and skeletons in their closets, but we are willing to overlook those because we are a supposed "Judeo-Christian" nation.  Frankly, I'm more afraid of extremist Christian groups like the Christian Identity and other racist, nationalistic groups than anything else.

And if we allow the intolerant to dictate how, where, and what Muslims in this country worship, what is to stop them from coming after Mormons next?  They've got some pretty weird beliefs, don't they?  Then they can go after the Jehovah's Witnesses, then Buddhists, then Catholics.  Where do we draw the line?

Fundamentally, we have to let all religious people peaceably practice their religion, or practice no religion at all, if we want true religious freedom in this county and if we want to retain our moral agency.  That means coming to terms with Islam and extending a hand of fellowship.  It means truly respecting all peaceable religions and demonstrating true tolerance of differing religious beliefs.

If we let this sort of bigoted religious thinking to become mainstream in America we will all become less free.  We will be less free to practice any religion we want, less free to exercise our moral agency and strive to become more like Heavenly Father in the way we best see fit, and less free to hold points of view of any kind that are unpopular with the majority.

Moderation In A Crowded World

In 1800 just after the United States was formed and the Constitution ratified, the world population was about 978 million, just under 1 billion.  North America had about 7 million people.  If you had suggested to them at the time that they really should consider moderating consumption and conserving natural ecosystems, they probably would have laughed you to scorn.  "The world has more natural resources and available land than we ever could possibly develop," they would say to you with a condescending chuckle.  "Why on Earth should moderate anything?"

Today the world population is approaching 7 billion and North America has about 340 million people.  In a hundred years we'll be pushing 10 billion people.  It is a crowded world we live in now and it is not difficult to imagine running out of oil, chopping down the Amazon rain forest, and polluting our entire atmosphere and oceans to near sterility.  For thousands of years leading up to now humans have never had to moderate because the world was so big and we were so small.  So it is not altogether surprising, then, when so many people today, Americans in particular, continue to scoff at the idea of moderation, at the idea that we have to pull back in order to preserve what we have.

The oil gushing into the Gulf Coast at a rate of 210,000 gallons a day, which we are apparently powerless to stop any time soon, is a fitting example of how we are failing to be proper stewards of the Earth because we are not willing to moderate our thirst for oil.

But the idea of moderation in an ever more crowded world doesn't just pertain to the environment and consumption of goods.

As world population increases so does our proximity to other people.  As infrastructure increases and improves information is more easily shared, goods are more easily shipped around the globe, people travel more easily and are not confined to their ancestral land, and divisions based on ideology, race, national origin, habits, ways of life, and religions are no longer easily maintained.  We are forced to live and interact with people and ideas that before were easy to avoid.

It was easier to take more extreme positions because we could easily insulate ourselves from the consequences, but that is no longer the case.  In order to survive we have to find common ground.  We can't elevate the rhetoric against immigrants like we used to because there is no longer any buffer between Us and Them.  We can't demand that our government be Christian because there is no longer any buffer between Us and Them.  We can't demonize people of other political ideologies because there is no longer any buffer between Us and Them.  We are crowded together on the same subway train now and it does no use yelling at the person standing next to you to make more room because more room doesn't exist anymore.

Which brings us to two things:  Pres. Obama and the Gospel.  As for the president, he has been a liberal disappointment.  The far-right wing wants to paint him as a dangerous liberal, a socialist, a communist, a fascist, extreme in every way.  The reality is much different.

His newest nomination to the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, is a safe choice meant to avoid any sort of conflict or strong statement about what liberals believe.  Liberals wanted a single-payer health system, or a strong public option at the very least.  Universal health care was never on the table and the public option was bargained away before the bargaining even started.  Instead we got a bill that amounts to a give-away to private health insurance companies.  Liberals wanted Guantanamo Bay shut down, full light shed on the torture issue, the Bush Administration torturers prosecuted, and the end of executive power overreaching.  Instead Guantanamo remains open, torture was swept under the rug, and the president is not letting go of unconstitutional executive powers like the right to indefinitely detain terror "suspects" without any evidence.  Don't Ask, Don't Tell has not been repealed.  The energy bill is going to be another give-away to private industry instead of hard choices in reducing climate change.  And I could go on.

I let this bother me for quite a while, but I'm starting to come around.  It's okay to hold liberal and conservative views, but it's not okay, in my opinion, to hold them at the exclusion of compromise and mutual respect.  Our nation is simply too big and diverse to cling to extreme ideas.  Partisanship is good and healthy, America needs to debate the different positions and fully explore all good ideas, but in the end we have to move towards each other and work together.  Despite what the anti-government movement and other far-righties might try to tell us, I think Pres. Obama is doing a good job trying to bridge differences and moderate.  He'll never hear that from those groups or Washington politicians, but it's true and I think America sees that.

And I think the Gospel is the perfect vehicle for this sort of moderation and is more and more relevant as the world grows more and more crowded.  It teaches us that all people are children of God and have a common divine heritage.  It teaches us to love and respect everyone, regardless of race, politics, age, sex, religion, or any other Earthly distinction.  And when we are able to love and respect anyone, looking beyond arbitrary differences, we are able to find common ground and moderate our more extreme impulses.  I think members of the church need to employ the Gospel to bridge differences instead of widen them and to promote peace instead of conflict.  I don't think polarization, whether it be my country against yours, my politics against yours, or my religion against yours, is in line with what the Savior taught.

Pres. Obama and Religious Tolerance in America

It will come as no surprise that I really liked Pres. Obama's speech in Cairo. I think it is absolutely necessary for America to overcome its fundamental distrust of Islam in general, as opposed to extremists in particular, in order to better secure ourselves and promote democracy abroad. Pres. Obama is doing well walking the sometimes fine line between finding common ground where it exists and condoning anti-democratic practices and customs.

But there was one section of his speech that I wanted to highlight that I thought was pretty relevant to this blog. In the section where Pres. Obama addressed religious tolerance, he said:

Among some Muslims, there's a disturbing tendency to measure one's own faith by the rejection of somebody else's faith. The richness of religious diversity must be upheld -- whether it is for Maronites in Lebanon or the Copts in Egypt.

...

Likewise, it is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practicing religion as they see fit -- for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear. We can't disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretense of liberalism. In fact, faith should bring us together.

We live in an America where we are lining up religion and politics, and I think that is extremely harmful to both. Politicizing religion and religious-izing politics sullies and impedes them both.

Look, I love seafood, and I love Nutella. But I do not think that they go well together. I try to keep them separate and enjoy them each on their own. I don't dip my shrimp in Nutella or smother my salmon in melted Nutella. It ruins them both when you eat them in the same bite. Likewise, religion and politics are two things that I love to talk about and debate and learn more about. But combining them almost always has very negative side effects. Of course, it is easier to separate Nutella from seafood than it is to separate your politics from your religion, but no one ever said this life was easy and it is something for which we should strive.

In America, the current trend is that the majority of those who attend church more frequently vote for Repbulicans and the majority of those that attend less frequently or not all vote for Democrats. This is becoming so pronounced that we are getting the two mushed up in our minds. Liberal activists see conservatives as a bunch of irrational, kooky born-agains and conservative activists see liberals as a bunch of godless hedonists. This then becomes a positive feedback machine where the deeply religious dig in against the liberals and the non-religious dig in against the conservatives and all of the sudden we aren't even talking about politics anymore and what is the best way to run the country, we are talking about whether a Mormon should even be allowed to run the country or if atheists can be trusted in federal office or if religion itself should be done away with because it is irrational and only leads to wars and bigotry.

On the one side, then, as Pres. Obama pointed out, we have hostility towards religion under the pretense of liberalism, and on the other side the championing of overt religion as the only way to effectively run the country. What's more, conservatives demand ideologically pure religion (with suspicious glances at conservative Catholics and Mormons). In the end it looks like we certainly deal with religious tolerance and freedom better than most Muslim countries, but we aren't really doing that great in our own right.

It does religion no good to get intertwined with politics. Whether it is fair or not, many liberals have simply discounted Mormonism completely because they see it as too politically conservative for them. Otherwise good people who love their families and believe in God have shut their ears to our message because of politics. Politics. Are we really willing to shackle our religion with politics and miss out on the chance to touch the lives of millions of Americans? I want to emphasize again that the purpose of this blog is not to justify liberal politics through Mormonism, but to show that they are at least compatible and that a diversity of political thought in the Church is good for its long-term well being.

And it does politics no good to get intertwined with religion. Religion is based on faith and personal conversion, whereas politics must be based on facts and societal good. Often what is good for one is good for the other, but using religion as the reasoning to justify politics never works. It only leads to arbitrary decisions, distrust, and disenfranchisment.

So as Pres. Obama urged Muslims to practice religious tolerance and freedom, I could not help but think of our own issues. Liberals are becoming hostile towards religion, conservatives are becoming hostile towards the non-religious, and religion in America is becoming too indistinguishable from politics. This can only turn out badly for both.