According to Paul Mero, responding to my suggestion that Planned Parenthood simply provides kids with a more informed version of what they would otherwise get from their peers at LDS Youth Conference (Ed Firmage, Jr. Says, August 1, 2008, 3:49 PM), 1) the only thing keeping the world’s goat population safe from human sexual predators is civil law, 2) the only thing that makes us happy and generous is religion, and 3) the Talmud, the Mishnah, two thousand years of Jewish scriptural commentary, and all Mormon thought not correlated by church HQ (Mormon-speak for “sanitized for your safety and enjoyment”) are bird-cage liner.
And he calls me a misanthrope (by the way, it’s spelled with an “e” at the end, Paul)!
Let’s take Paul’s dark assertions one by one.
First, as to the safety of goats and sheep. At least in my, admittedly liberal, neck of the woods, Paul, sheep may safely graze not because of the presence of men with guns or even of good shepherds, but because men like me generally prefer women. I’m not sure that civil law adds anything that a billion years of sexual evolution haven’t already engrained in us. In fact, the law generally doesn’t seem to have added much to humanity’s built-in genetic repository of good ideas. This week, Paul, instead of toting your quad to church, take Robert Wright’s, The Moral Animal, or his follow-on Nonzero, both of which explore how evolution, not civil society or even religion, has taught us how to be moral beings. The misanthropic view, by contrast, is the one that says the only thing standing between us and bestiality is the fear of doing time or getting fried by God’s thunderbolt. Neither seems to have been particularly effective in the Catholic priesthood. (In fact, considering the latter, a better prescription for keeping goats, kids, and society generally safe would be to give the repressed (Catholic priests, LDS missionaries, LDS and FLDS adults generally, Saudi Arabia’s religious police — the usual suspects) a chance for some good, clean, ecclesiastically unapproved sex with a consenting partner of equal age).
Second, if religion is the only thing standing between Americans and Prozac comas, Paul, how come Americans, the world’s most religious people next to the nuts in Saudi Arabia, use so much of it? I am, as you say, Paul, devoutly unreligious. I see in that, however, not the source of bottomless misanthropy but the relief from it. What is more deeply misanthropic than the Christian view that humans are essentially flawed? I don’t mean imperfect, but really bad? As Mormon scripture puts it, “The natural man is an enemy to God and has been since the fall of Adam.” Notice, it doesn’t say, “the natural man is imperfect,” but rather the ENEMY of God, God’s opponent, God’s antagonist. If God is everything that is good, that makes us the opposite. Not a lot of comfort in that Good News, I’m afraid. With such a cheery view of human nature, what’s a good devil supposed to do? In point of fact, Paul, I get misanthropic only when I’m forced to confront the consequences of religious misanthropy, such as the mess than Mormons are making and want to make of their glorious, God-given landscape and the disregard they have for the consequences of their stupidity on the health of their kids (see previous posts for post-mortem details).
Third, the fact that you dismiss my Sunstone article on Jewish attitudes to abortion as “bird-cage liner” suggests that you regard this particular religious tradition as so much guano. I guess not all religions make us happy, huh? Let’s refine your original premise, then: “Only Christian religion makes us happy.” Since you’re of the LDS stripe that believes it has a unique handle on truth, we could probably go further, “Only Mormon religion makes us happy.” I can only repeat myself: AND YOU CALL ME A MISANTHROPE?!!!!
Actually, what I was proposing in the Sunstone article was not the union of “your world and my world…through the sterile intellectualism of some bird-cage liner like Sunstone” but that our two worlds could come together through the existence of a third way, illustrated by one of the world’s most fertile RELIGIOUS traditions.
Oh well, I guess our happy marriage will have to be called off. Want to go to Massachusetts?
At the root of your neurosis, Paul, is the belief that only religiously motivated authority stands between humanity and chaos. Without religion to keep us in check, we bourgeois-hating, over-sexed (and sterile!), intellectual liberals, the gays, and the rest of the world’s perverts would bring society to its knees. Without the NRA and the gun-toters to protect us, we’d all be reduced to Hobbes’s nasty, brutish, and short pretty quick. Without government looking over our shoulder and under our sheets, we’d all be fucking goats.
Dude, if that is your view of life, you need some serious salvation. Since going to church or Sutherland Institute testimony meetings will only get you more of the same, I suggest you need a Youth Conference in Provo Canyon with a girl named Foxy, and soon!
P.S. Has the Sutherland Institute considered promoting a ban on pets? You know, I trust, that, like highway rest stops, pets are an insidious mechanism for the promotion of promiscuity. The Saudis think only of human promiscuity, but you, Paul, know the truth. Don’t let people take their dogs or their goats into dark alleys. FOR GOD’S SAKE, SPARE THE GOATS!
#1 by Paul Mero - August 2nd, 2008 at 17:23
Ed, civil society also would tell you not to screw with straw men. While tempting fodder for response, I would prefer if, from now on, you just replied, GFY.
(oh, sorry for the misspelling…leave it to a guy with a silent “e” on the end of his name…and a European to boot…to make famous a word with an unecessary “e.”)
#2 by Cliff Lyon - August 2nd, 2008 at 18:38
Oh, and Paul, I’ll ask you to pronounce my last name like the French city.
I want to be clear about my elitist, radically liberal faux visage.
#3 by Who is watching the watchers - August 2nd, 2008 at 18:56
GFY…Gay Fuckin’ Yuppie?
Firmage has been better known as dick hardener. They call it Viagra these days.
#4 by Ed Firmage Jr. - August 2nd, 2008 at 22:35
Paul,
I never screw with straw men; it’s against my principles. Straw women, however…
candida me capiet, capiet me flava puella
A fine chiasmus about blondes. You probably know the folks at FARMS. Tell them that they should have a conference on this one. It clearly shows that Ovid was of Middle Eastern descent, and that he was probably a descendant of Nephi.
#5 by Jobu - August 2nd, 2008 at 22:51
GFY = good for you?
#6 by Paul Mero - August 3rd, 2008 at 08:24
Cliff…from now on it’s pronounced “Lee-O-n.”
#7 by Debbie - August 3rd, 2008 at 09:02
The Sutherland Institute is notable for its role as a purveyor of sophisticated arguments for social policy that conforms to current LDS doctrine.
Its publications are carefully crafted so as to avoid blatantly theocratic positions while advocating for the same result. Paul Mero has become a master of this balancing act. Ralph Reed has nothing on Paul.
If you visit the Sutherland site, you will find they are unabashed about their LDS slant.
Here’s the problem I’d like Paul to address:
Since LDS doctrine is the foundation of The Sutherland Institute’s social/political policy positions, how do you reconcile the exclusivity of the LDS church?
How do you translate the very non-democratic distribution of power into a democratic system?
I just visited the site and clicked on a Google ad called Hope After Excommunication.
The two personal stories there illustrate the problem of legislating morality. Both people were excommunicated for admitting sex related behavior that are by any measure, main-stream. Both people admit their guilt and desire to have their membership in the church restored.
Does the Sutherland Institute really hold that the LDS model of social governance could be an effective model for the larger society?
#8 by Paul Mero - August 4th, 2008 at 09:27
Debbie…thank you for actually adding a thoughtful comment. The ONLY connection between SI and the LDS Church are principles that might overlap…or principles that we (SI) interpret that might seem to overlap. Like “family is the fundamental unit of society”…this is not an exclusive principle of the LDS Church. It has been a mainstay of intellectual conservativism since Edmund Burke.
Perhaps a better round of debate might focus on why intellectual conservatism touches as close as it does to LDS beliefs systems? I have always found this connection curious, especially given that no Latter-day Saint was a significant part of the post-war resurgence of the American intellectual conservatie movement. And, yet now, I could make a pretty good case that LDS thinkers are a vibrant heartbeat of this school of thought…especially, as a I say, around family issues.
So, while I cannot answer your questions because they do not describe a reality I see, I can tell you that the “relationship” between SI and LDS beliefs is more than conincidence, but that it has as much or more to do with SI’s understanding of conservatism, not it’s underlying desire to align with the LDS Church. It just so happens that, in my opinion, if the LDS Church were a political philosophy, it would be conservatism (the authentic intellectual kind…not the political party kind).
#9 by Ed Firmage Jr. - August 4th, 2008 at 11:47
EXCUSE ME?!!!
Paul says that no Latter-Day Saint was a significant part of the resurgence of the American conservative movement. Excepting, of course, former apostle and later prophet Ezra Taft Benson, who as an apostle preached from the pulpit in General Conference that you could not be a good Mormon and a Democrat, and who, after exceeding even the church’s high degree of conservative indulgence, was warned by then president David O. McKay that he’d have to choose between politics and his apostleship. Since Paul is a convert, his ecclesiastical memory may not go back that far, but during the 60s there were running battles inside church HQ over Benson’s VERY public endorsements of extreme (John Birch) conservatism. At one point, Benson even floated the possibility of running as the John Birch society’s third-party candidate for the presidency, with our old friend, now blessedly passed on, Strom Thurmond, as V.P. Benson’s influence on subsequent LDS thinking was large. And in ways too numerous and obvious to go into here, the church’s leaders have continued over the years in more moderate but also more insidious ways to endorse the conservative agenda even as they proclaim their political neutrality. A recent example, which speaks louder than a thousand church PR statements about neutrality, is the appointment of the former head of Utah’s GOP, Joe Cannon, who knows absolutely nothing about running a newspaper, to be editor of the church-owned Deseret News.
Given the influence of people like Benson, it is hardly surprising that today’s church should limp to the right the way it does. But it is surprising, in ways that Paul perhaps has not thought about, that such right-wing tendencies should exist at all in the church. The gospel of Jesus of Nazareth is a long way from that of the GOP. But that’s a topic for another post. I don’t know whether I have the energy even to start that one. If I do muster the energy, however, I’ll start with Paul’s favorite hobby horse, the family. There aren’t many people in religious history whose pronouncements on the family have led to such a profoundly family-unfriendly culture as Jesus. I say that not as criticism of Jesus but as simple fact. Paul, whose statements on family are also far from heart-warming, did not misunderstand his master. Neither did the long succession of Christian writers who had no problem preaching celibacy and dissing family life using the teachings of Jesus. St. Jerome, who was unusual only by virtue of being more articulate than most, declared marriage to be “a plank for the shipwrecked.” Ah, good old Christian family values.
#10 by Paul Mero - August 4th, 2008 at 12:06
Ed…you’re proving my point from the last thread…which is why I suggested you simply shut up.
Re-read my last comment to Debbie…just the last line…I’ll make it easy. I drew there, and draw constantly, the difference between authentic conservatism and “political party” consevatism. You’re projecting…because everything about you has been politicized…everything must be politicized.
President Benson was not part of the post-war resurrection of the American intellectual conservative movement. Maybe…just maybe…the closest LDS was J. Reuben Clark…maybe. Not to mention that my point was not to draw a connection on that notion…but to draw the point that authentic conservatism and LDS beliefs are more than compatible, but that if the latter were a political philosophy it would look a great deal like the former.
I realize that there is a “conservatism” you hate and associate with the GOP. That is hardly authentic (intellectual) conservatism. At its best it is “slogan” conservatism, or “politainment” like Hannity or Limbaugh, or some other provinical or narrow bastardized form of conservatism.
You know, until you begin to get really smart about what you are talking about, you might take a breathe, pause, read a few books that you normally wouldn’t read because Sunstone or Mother Jones didn’t recommend them…and then take me on.
Here is a great start…two books…The Quest for Community by Robert Nisbet and (my book) The Natural Family: A Manifesto. Read those and then have at me. Otherwise, let your compadres have at me…at least a sense of humility (maybe trepidation) in arguing with me keeps them from all-out idiocy.
#11 by Ed Firmage Jr. - August 4th, 2008 at 12:08
Clarification. When I say, “Paul, whose statements on family are also far from heart-warming,” I mean the apostle, whose view of marriage was that it was better than burning, but not much. This is the Paul whose hobby horse was not the family. When I talk about the Paul whose hobby horse is the family, I mean the Mero, who needs a crash course in actual as opposed to purported Christian history on the subject of family.
Hope that clears up the possible confusion.
#12 by Ed Firmage Jr. - August 4th, 2008 at 12:27
J. Reuben Clark wasn’t a new breed of “true” political conservative but the last of a dying breed that was isolationist, non-militarist, and, in his case, at least, pacifist. This is a conservative who got up in LDS General Conference and declared that God would not forgive the U.S. for dropping the atomic bomb. I see no legacy of this kind of conservative in America today, intellectual or otherwise.
In general, Paul, I fail to see much of a distinction between your purported “true” conservative and the “political” variety. I take a figure like George Will to be about as intellectual and thoughtful as conservatives come these days. But the distinction between Will and Bush or Cheney, apart from IQ and verbal dexterity, is a distinction without a meaningful difference. Furthermore, the notion that you can take the political out of any movement, even if it thinks of itself as primarily intellectual or religious, is a fantasy that works only on paper. The LDS church is THE great local example. You see it as in principle allied with “true” conservatism. Fine. Yet it is also the vehicle by which the “political” variety that specializes in hate mongering is propagated here in Utah. When someone like Glenn Beck is invited to BYU to host a 4th of July celebration, when Sean Hannity is broadcast on church-owned KSL, when the church itself feeds the political fire by appointing Joe Cannon as editor of the News, the fine intellectual distinction you make between “true” and “political” becomes absolutely meaningless. Conservatism is as conservatism does. The rest is posturing.
#13 by Paul Mero - August 4th, 2008 at 12:47
Ed, my boy, now I see the problem is in your argumentation: if you don’t know it, it either isn’t true or didn’t exist. Ed, Ed…2Nephi 9:28-29. (oh, sorry, do you still have a copy of the BoM?)
I mentioned JRC as a “maybe” for precisely the same reasons you cite. (Shocking!)
And while I like George Will, again you say it precisely, “ABOUT AS intellectual and conservative….” George Will was not part of the post-war conservative reconstruction…although he certainly benefited from it.
Fact is, you don’t even know what I am talking about when I say “American conservative intellectual movement.” There is a book by George Nash on that exact subject…why not check it out of your local library (although I doubt the library at Red Square (downtown) has a copy). Amazon does…if you still purchase things in a capitalist society.
And here is a more local example of how you not only can separate philosophy from politics, but then also unite them in an appropritate and helpful way:
http://www.sutherlandinstitute.org/uploads/onus_or_opportunity.pdf
Iow, an example of how political philosophy informs politics, and not the other way around.
And…intellectual conservatism is “mere posturing”? Really? Do you mean anything intellectual or just ideas you hate?
#14 by Glenden Brown - August 4th, 2008 at 13:37
Paul - the current cultural conservatism of the Mormon church is the product of a long time of intentional church policy. A hundred years ago, when my grandfather and his siblings were growing up in Salt Lake City, Mormonism was, in many ways, quite progressive. My grandfather was one of 7 children - five of whom were college graduates; four of his five sisters were college graduates and professional women. My great aunt Evelyn Villet was the first female bank vice president in Utah and one of the first in the country; Alice Correll was, at one time, the highest ranking woman in the US State Department. The Browns weren’t a particularly wealthy or prominent family but the women in the family were given the same opportunities as the men. The strong emphasis on the nuclear family was part of the Mormon church’s quest for respectability in the American religious world and did not really begin until the post World War Two era, at which time LDS leadership also began to strong emphasize the Word of Wisdom as part of the drive for respectability. My grandmother, born in Salt Lake City in 1913 and raised very devout LDS, remembered when the Word of Wisdom began to be emphasized. By contrast today, I have a cousin who whispered to me, “I know my husband has a good job, but I want a career too and I’m not the mommy type. Don’t tell the family.”
My point is not to say that you are wrong but just to highlight that Mormonism as lived has changed dramatically in the last hundred years.
#15 by Ed Firmage Jr. - August 4th, 2008 at 13:40
William F. Buckley, Leo Strauss, Milton Friedman, Frederick Hayek, et al. are not new to me, and, at least in the last of these, I find (brace yourself, Paul) much that I agree with (but then he wasn’t an authentic American, was he). I mentioned George Will mostly because I thought him a better example of a conservative than Buckley or Friedman, better that is as a man.
What strikes me about intellectual conservatism as a movement is that it prides itself unduly on its intellectuals, as if it’s still smarting from John Stuart Mill’s famous dictum, “I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative.” Don’t you find it interesting that conservatives find it necessary to append “intellectual” to their label? I don’t know of any “intellectual liberals.” I guess we just take it for granted. Or, maybe, intellectual conservatives realize that there’s another variety of conservatism, part of their genetic legacy, that’s not intellectual. The skeleton in the closet. A Faulkneresque relative one doesn’t want to acknowledge.
Despite all of the hoopla about the intellects, the message is mostly the same warmed-over cabbage we’ve heard from run of the mill POLITICAL conservatives from time immemorial–those that could speak.
Yawn.
If it weren’t for the POLITICAL and decidedly non-intellectual spice of the religious right, however, intellectual conservatism would be a dead letter. Without the reaction of southern whites to racial equality, intellectual conservatism would be a dead letter. Without America’s knee-jerk reaction to the first oil crisis, intellectual conservatism would be a dead letter. Intellectual conservatism is visible today only because it stands on the shoulders of the more populist variety, which is always fearful, always reactionary, always deeply prejudiced, and always deeply ignorant. Sean Hannity isn’t a perversion of your conservative truth, Paul, he is that truth speaking from the gut, from which ultimately all conservatism arises.
Give conservatism an enema, Paul, and then, when its head has cleared, we’ll talk about the intellect.
#16 by Ed Firmage Jr. - August 4th, 2008 at 13:56
Well said, Glenden.
#17 by Glenden Brown - August 4th, 2008 at 14:16
Thanks Ed.
FWIW, I didn’t care overmuch for Hayek. I was reading Jane Ellen Harrison’s Prolegomena and Erich Neumann’s Origins at the time though and Hayek paled by comparison. I’m a big fan of Norman O. Brown, however; his book Love’s Body is one of the more challenging books I’ve ever read. I also Life Against Death and the way in which it invites us to read history in a very different way than as a series of events.
#18 by Cliff Lyon - August 4th, 2008 at 14:22
Since this argument has finally trespassed certain “politically correct” lines, I’d like to jump in.
There is some truth to John Stuart Mill’s famous dictum, “I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative.”
I will point out as I have done forever this interview as an easy reference to the great deal of science that has evolved to predict conservative authoritarian personalities with 100% accuracy.
#19 by Paul Mero - August 4th, 2008 at 14:23
Always the clever one, Ed. The reason you don’t hear of “intellectual liberals” is because there aren’t any…at least if “liberal” means today’s progressive. In the past, they were called “classical liberals,” like Hayek…who I am not surprised you like, btw.
Perhaps it would surprise you to know that I think authentic conservatism is pretty much a dead letter, except in certain circles, again, precisely for the reasons you suggest…which is my first point: politics driving philosophy…leading to my second point: which allows misanthropes like you, Ed, to mischaracterize anything and everything that is good in life (i.e. family, religion, decorum, thoughtful and contextual intellects, free markets, etc.) as some sort of scourge against humanity…and simple but nuanced ideas like “authentic” conservatism as “warm-over cabbage.”
Again, a misanthrope like you needs Sean Hannity…you need an enemy…and my taking that from you must feel hurtful on my part…robbing you of such a fundamental part of your being, that hate chip that you have picked from somewhere, probably a Sunstone Executive Committee meeting.
And Glen (btw, thanks for being civil)…do you really believe this: “The strong emphasis on the nuclear family was part of the Mormon church’s quest for respectability in the American religious world and did not really begin until the post World War Two era…”? Do you really think that Joseph Smith didn’t have a strong family emphasis? (Not to mention that merely posing that sort of question reveals your disdain for modern revelation, at least through leaders of the Mormon Church.) Do you really think that every LDS prophet from JS forward to DOM WASN’T a cultural conservative? Really?
You guys have tremendously creative minds. But what I have found most remarkable is how you use a heritage/legacy/ancestry, that you so loathe, to give you credibility over someone like me, a lowly “convert” who wasn’t around when all of these monumental shifts of Gospel doctrine took place (because, of course, I can’t read a book)…my guess is that your faithful LDS ancestors are shaking their heads at you guys, screaming in their still, quiet voices, “Oh that I were an angel….”
My short answer to you Glen is that politics messes with everyone and everything…what you deem progressive from yesteryear I would deem conservative (i.e. conserving that which is good and ridding ourselves of that which is bad).
#20 by Paul Mero - August 4th, 2008 at 14:32
Cliff, shame on you. Your prejudice airs (errors?) itself: conservative and authoritarian? Pick the biggest mass murderers of the 20th century and, I bet, they all thought they were pretty progressive (as did their American shills telling the rest of us about what Utopia looks like).
But I also have not doubt some progressive created that psycho-babble test and labeled it that way on purpose.
#21 by Paul Mero - August 4th, 2008 at 14:43
In the spirit of using insulting quotes, icon of authentic conservatism, Russell Kirk, said of John Stuart Mill, “he became all head and no heart.” And that Mill and every other champion of libertarianism (and makes me think of Ed) has “forgotten nothing and learned nothing.”
I used those thoughts in a paper I wrote about authentic conservatism:
http://www.sutherlandinstitute.org/uploads/whatitisnt010907.pdf
I know Ed won’t read it, but I offer it to those of you remaining who still feign a semblance of honest debate and understanding.
#22 by Glenden Brown - August 4th, 2008 at 15:08
Paul - I don’t think you get what I’m saying. I don’t loathe my ancestry but I don’t regard my ancestors as sacred or as possessing any special wisdom. They were products of their time and place. They were strong minded people, loathe to blindly follow leaders simply because they were leaders. Family legend holds that James Stephen Brown feuded with Brigham Young on such a regular basis that Young repeatedly sent him on missions to get him out of his hair.
The LDS church began its life embracing a radical vision of family - polygamy. It was divisive even among the earliest followers of Smith. His own wife detested the practice. It led to a number of splits in the church. It wasn’t until after WWII that the Mormon church began to emphasize the notion of nucelar family to the extent that it does today; at least part of that was to take the sting out of charges that Mormons practiced polygamy. (It was a way of framing the argument; we don’t practice polygamy, see we’re all about mom, dad and kids . . )
As far as disdaining modern revelation . . . why wouldn’t I? I don’t hold ancient revelation in any special regard either. Suffice to say I find the idea that God - with a universe as vast as this one - concerns itself with our affairs an absurd and arrogant conceit. Are you seriously telling me that a divine being so powerful and all knowing as to have created a universe as vast and wondrous as ours actually cares if we drink caffeine or not? And if so, doesn’t that show God in a rather petty light?
Yesterday’s progressive is today’s conservative. There was a time (not so long ago) that the idea of women having the vote was radical. Outside of a very few places in our society, it is regarded as utterly uncontroversial. Less than 50 years ago, racial integration was violently opposed. Today it’s mostly uncontroversial.
#23 by cav, revelling in others pain since 2000 - August 4th, 2008 at 15:31
Your pain, however, is unbeaarable. I’m cutting you loose. Boyya
#24 by Larry Bergan - August 4th, 2008 at 16:47
And there’s that other conservative appendage that liberals don’t need to emphasize for political purposes; compassion.
Paul’s good friend Tom Delay was profiled in Bill Moyer’s Journal last week. Try not to cry when you look at the young girls in the back of the truck, being hauled off into slavery after being told they were coming to America.
You have to watch this Paul, and then tell us if you still consider Mr. Delay to be a friend.
#25 by Cliff Lyon - August 4th, 2008 at 18:25
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Paul. We’ve heard that canard too. Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin and Hitler.
In exactly zero academic circles will you be taken seriously if you tried to equate those regimes with progressive American thinkers and politicians.
I would think, at some point, you might be just a little bit embarrassed invoking such tired, corrupt, and insanely stupid comparisons.
Show me one respected writer who has made an such an argument. INTMT, I can show you many that compare your neo-con brethren with fascism.
Can we get serious now? Please explain how your positions do not entail social engineering?
#26 by Ed Firmage, Jr. - August 4th, 2008 at 20:40
Great video, Cliff. Dean marshals and presents the social science behind extreme conservatism. At about the same time as Dean’s book, another study appeared–I forget the details (but Paul will no doubt oblige me to find them)–that revealed the actual physiological mechanisms that underlie this behavior. It appears that liberals and conservatives literally think differently at a physiological level. Conservatives are preconditioned by their biology to be fearful followers. Hence the social pathology that Dean talks about. The 23% figure that Dean quotes is about what I remember the hard science suggesting as well. This group is biologically as well sociologically beyond reach. Unfortunately, it’s this group, not Paul’s cerebral conservatives, who define what conservatism is today. Of these zealots some at least of their supposed icons–I think especially of Frederick Hayek–would be deeply ashamed, as indeed early LDS leaders would be of the present church and its sociology. Brigham Young didn’t give a rat’s ass about homosexuality, but he spoke feelingly about such basic things as greed, and the evil of the profit motive. He wouldn’t recognize his ueber-capitalist descendants.
#27 by Thomas McCrae - August 4th, 2008 at 21:53
Well there were more than a few intellectuals that supported the theories behind these troubling leaders last century, and the certainly weren’t conservative.
Many “progressives”, intellectual socialists supported theses efforts until it became all too obvious where they were headed.
Well to be sure our current effort has killed over a million perhaps, and there are no lack of progressives or at least democrats that went along with it. Don’t tell us that we are not a horror show all our own. The comparisons are apt enough.
What academic circles do you travel in Mr. Lyon? I agree progressives don’t have the guile, guts, or brains to pull off a real tyranny, they generally act as what Lenin called the “useful idiots” that begin the process of social breakdown, usually by destroying whatever a nations Constitution is. After that is effected, it is the real players that take over and finish the job.
How is what progressives attempt to engage in not social engineering.
#28 by Ed Firmage Jr. - August 4th, 2008 at 22:36
Late night postlude, the lewd post, post lewd.
Paul,
This comment really belongs under your diatribe about Planned Parenthood, but since that discussion is now even more ancient than this one, I thought I’d just say thanks here instead. I happened to be discussing your PP post with my 18-year old son (you see, you inspire SUCH discussions here chez Firmage), so I revisited the PP site and played one of the inspired ads http://www.takecaredownthere.org/#/watch…) I hadn’t looked at before, the one called Let Me Do Me. I really have to thank you for pointing me to this site, Paul, of which I had previously been unaware. I confess that I had never taken quite this view of abstinence before, and I found it inspiring. So much so that I now affirm that every self-respecting teen should practice abstinence religiously at least once a day. Nor will I ever hear the song strummin’ on the old banjo in quite the same way as in my days of innocence.
Gracias, amigo. May your prelude, your lude, and your postlude be lewd.
#29 by Ed Firmage Jr. - August 5th, 2008 at 09:11
To the anonymous Thomas McCrae
Yep, progressives have done their share of stupid things. I’ll give you Vietnam, if by progressive you mean Democrat. I personally think there was nothing progressive about Vietnam. It was a Democratic agenda but not a progressive one. Reactionary is more like it, whatever political party was in power.
But when it comes to Constitution bashing, nobody does it like the neocons. No conservative today can talk about upholding the Constitution while their party presides over its demolition at the hands of Bush-Cheney and their fascist partners in the Scalia Supreme Court. Conservatives have no right to talk at all about the rule of law while they allow their representative in the White House to unilaterally abrogate international treaties, the Geneva Convention, and our own domestic law. Until conservatives join with Democrats in impeaching these bastards, they should be silent about upholding the law out of sheer shame.
#30 by Thomas McCrae - August 5th, 2008 at 10:21
Agreed Ed, I would have to say that there is no doubt that the reactionary conservatives play a more active part in destroying freedom today. Progressives are more often used as the useful idiots history so well describes. This is displayed much as the current neo-cons bamboozled democrats to support the current war. You would have to agree that those progressives or democrats that did support the war, didn’t have enough brains to spread on a cracker.
I am more concerned with “progressive” people that wish to change constitutional laws and society for our good, in the image of what they believe is right. They can have the same zeal as religious fanatics. A simple tyrant may be satiated after obtaining the material goods, riches of structural changes, leaving society blessedly alone thereafter to its own devices.
Those interested in societal change however, if so infected with the mission, do not quit. It is at this juncture in history that these movements get hijacked, often with those with more nefarious plans. That is when the horror and tyranny begins under the auspices of for “the good of society” which is of course and entirely subjective exercise.
The Carthaginians used to throw infants into a fire as sacrifice for the good of the whole, some environmentalists today would persecute those with a big carbon footprint, based on the best science, in their view. Burn their wagons so to speak, pass laws prohibiting their devices. These are just examples, but in fact it is usually religious fanatics, or those that wish to change society, “for its own good” that historically bring the worst horrors to the fore of history.
I am myself on guard against both of these types of nuts, and would prefer a tyrant driven by material riches, over those of zeals of belief, any day.
#31 by Larry Bergan - August 5th, 2008 at 13:19
I deleted the anonymous comment Thomas McCrae made prior to the named comment to avoid redundancy.
#32 by Larry Bergan - August 5th, 2008 at 13:53
Thomas McCrae said:
I guess you’re talking about Al Gore or somebody with very similar beliefs there, but to place him/them on an equal footing with religious fanatics and the people who use them is a stretch, isn’t it? These giant corporations have the laws changed to enrich themselves in ways that should be illegal. It’s not a “Crusade” to make laws that reign THEM in a little while helping the planet, is it?
The useful idiots of today are the religious people, whom punks like Rove and Cheney have absolutely no respect for, but use to either get votes or SAY they got votes, (steal), from. Let’s not focus the attention away from the Republicans, who have had all of the corrupting power lately, and who use it freely even when they don’t have a real majority in the congress.
Keep things real!
#33 by Larry Bergan - August 5th, 2008 at 14:00
I’m assuming Paul Mero is watching my Tom Delay video, and reevaluating his life.
#34 by Paul Mero - August 5th, 2008 at 16:55
Larry, I did just watch the video. Lots of thoughts. Made me go back and check our conversations about DeLay being my “friend.” Couldn’t find where I said that. Would you point me to that comment?
That certainly was the Washington I left…I am sure nothing has changed.
Two points…first, I have no clue what a conversation about DeLay or any politico has to do with the original post here (at least from my perspective)…second, Larry, are you suggesting a) I am corrupt, b) “conservatives” are all corrupt, c) no liberal is corrupt like Abramoff, or d) all of the above?
#35 by Thomas McCrae - August 5th, 2008 at 17:38
Al Gore is of such a compromised hypocritical nature, he isn’t the type of enviros I was referring to. I was thinking more on the lines of the ELF and PETA types, If elf had a rocket launcher they might shoot Al’s jet down, or burn down his large consumptive mansion. Not much of a stretch really Larry, with his lifestyle and riches, he very well reminds me of a fruity televangelist, just with a different religion.
That progressives may not know that what they begin won’t be controlled or even finished by them, is a testament of how foolish they are to meddle in the constitutional principles and the mechanics of the republic. That is about as real as it gets Larry.
There are tyrants, enablers, and fools, in every tyranny. That is as real as it gets. That progressives generally refuse to understand the dangerous nature of those that would destroy a republic, they generally act as used players in the downward spiral.
The made proof would be our current case in point, the bush administration, which elements of the left have stupidly enabled, in their weakness of mind and perception of the dangers presented. In short, the bush cabals useful idiots.
#36 by Larry Bergan - August 6th, 2008 at 01:43
Paul:
I actually don’t have any quote, anywhere of you saying Tom Delay was your friend, but then again, I never vacuumed the brains out of a fetus either, so I guess we’re even. However, I am sure you had some good things to say about this terribly corrupt man on Chris Vanocur’s show a while back, and it was the first time I had seen you, so it didn’t leave me with a good first impression. It seems as though you are a little hesitant to associate yourself with Delay now, and that could only reflect positively on you, but isn’t it time for you to just come right out and condemn Delay and the types of “conservatives” that Barry Godwater would have, AND DID condemn before he died? I know he would have loved and promoted John Dean’s book, “Conservatives Without Conscience.”
Am I suggesting…
I have no Idea, but you do trumpet many of the ideas of the most corrupt people in Washington.
No! John Dean, Paul O’ Neil, Bruce Fein, Paul Craig Roberts, Kevin Phillips, and many, many, others are conservatives WITH a conscience that are doing more then most liberals to call attention to the dangers of this new type of conservatism you seem to like.
To tell you the truth, I think this whole conservative/liberal nonsense is designed to divide and conquer us. I never considered myself a liberal until Limbaugh started bashing them. Virtually all Republican congressmen are corrupt in 2008. That would be my position.
Not applicable.
#37 by Larry Bergan - August 6th, 2008 at 02:09
Thomas McCrae said:
That almost sounds like a warning.
#38 by cav, - August 6th, 2008 at 06:36
Larry. Nicely written.
Thomas,..and besides there’s only room for one entirely corrupt political grouping, and it’s presently in ascendance.
#39 by Paul Mero - August 6th, 2008 at 10:03
Larry…you seem to remember things about me that I don’t. Okay, so I never said Tom DeLay was my friend? Good. I can tell you that Ed Buckham was my friend (he was in the Moyer video). I can also tell you that money and power do strange things to people…even the best of us. My guess is that DeLay and Buckham didn’t know where the Abramoff money came from…if they had a sin it was not asking where it came from. That happens a lot…like Clinton’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. (There is a reason why a majority on the Hill didn’t fight that stupid policy…it’s because plausible deniability was part and parcel of the corrupt Hill culture.)
I am amazed at how you project opinions onto me…that “you are a little hesitant to associate yourself with DeLay now.” Again, you act as if I did associate myself with him. I would have to know all of the facts about what was shown in the Moyer video, and then agree with the conclusions of Moyer, to “condemn” DeLay. But I can’t because I don’t know the facts and, unlike you, Moyers isn’t my journalistic god to take on faith. I can condemn Abramoff…is that sufficient for you?
Barry Goldwater went weird in his old age. While he might have been justified to condemn whoever and whatever he did, the BG of 1990 was not the BG of 1964. Goldwater ended his political career as a libertarian…economic conservative, social liberal. So, again, you throw BG at me as if I care what he thought in his philosophically pathetic declining years…fact is, by the time he passed on, he wasn’t a conservative.
Neither are the other folks you mention. Oh, I know in YOUR “everything is political” world they might be considered political conservatives. But you’ll have to trust me when I say that those folks don’t show up at the inner sanctum meetings of authentic conservatives (where the few of us remaining gather).
Okay, so where are we in your ramblings? Oh yes, I must be corrupt because I share some political opinions with people who are corrupt. Do I really even have to respond to that logic?
And…okay…I’ll stop. Your other answers are evasive and irrationally accusatory.
#40 by Larry Bergan - August 6th, 2008 at 14:29
Paul:
I’m glad to hear that you will condemn Abramoff! According to the video:
And the man you DO call your friend, Ed Buckham:
Excuse me, a just threw up a little in my mouth.
Let me add another name to the list of Republicans whom I don’t consider to be corrupt. Senator Frank Murkowski, even though he calls himself a Republican, actually seems to care about OPF, (other peoples families). From the video:
Well, I don’t know, Delay hasn’t seen the inside of a prison like Bob Ney or Jack Abramoff, but this exchange really ticks me off because there was another little issue that also got unanimous consent of congress that was blocked from being discussed by Delay. Voting machines! Bob and Jack got lots of money from Diebold to help make sure paper ballots never saw the light of day, like those poor Chinese slave girls Delay didn’t know about. Wink,wink.
All of those Republicans I named didn’t go weird Paul, they woke up to the fact that policies they helped establish were being bastardized in the name of religion and “families“.
#41 by Albert O. - August 6th, 2008 at 14:33
Larry:
My guess is Paul will never condemn Tom DeLay, as DeLay’s “principles” and those of the SI go hand in hand. Thank “God” conservatism continues to crumble as we speak!
#42 by Larry Bergan - August 6th, 2008 at 14:35
Albert O:
Amen!
#43 by Thomas McCrae - August 6th, 2008 at 19:16
Larry, that you would take that as a warning is perhaps a sign of some wisdom. Reviewing the history of tyrannies is good practice, and in doing so, it could well become evident that tyrants rarely get to the top of the heap by themselves.
They always have helpers that are along the way disposed of after no longer being of use, or palatable to the tyrant. One can go back thousands of years and see it all systems of government, monarchies, republics, democracies. It is nearly always bodies of ideological zealots that desired societal change that fill the mass graves of tyrants.
That, and the brave that discern the threat, and actively oppose it.
The only warning would be, be careful what you wish for, you may get it, real hard.
It is well that people should support the rights of all, no matter how we disagree with their ways of life within moral reason, in that if we do, we offer protection to ourselves.
#44 by Larry Bergan - August 7th, 2008 at 00:48
Thomas McCrae:
My anger overtook any wisdom I may have had when Bush stole the election many years ago. I don’t make the best decisions, but I do the best I can to make the right ones. That’s all I can do.
#45 by Albert O. - August 7th, 2008 at 01:35
TM:
While I reserve judgment, I’m liking what you are saying, at least insofar as I understand what you are saying. Keep it coming, bro (we may be destined for a terrorist fist-jab someday).
#46 by Thomas McCrae - August 7th, 2008 at 09:45
Albert, it would be keen to know that such an attack could come from places that people do not expect.
In reviewing the histories of powerful republics, that had large holdings, undefeated military capacity, and great wealth, it was rarely an external adversary that laid them low. The decay came from within.
Reviewing a strategic policy of competitors to weaken their adversaries without war there is this one that is cheap and has great success.
Fund the madmen that would lead them within their midst. They will draw the useful idiots to them, and then like a virus, destroy the foundations of the republic. These foundations are the inalienable rights of the citizens, and the application of laws, decreed or democratically decided, unequally. This effort runs the gamut of the political spectrum, and nearly always the people chosen for the job sound good, to those that would believe.
It is always wise to review where those that would rule under popular presentation get their money from, and then who stands behind them from the past, and pushes them to the fore, like a Trojan horse, replete with apparent gifts, but hiding something more sinister inside.
Beware those of low humility, and a bridling arrogance, we have lived with this now for 8 years, and need no more of it.
#47 by Larry Bergan - August 7th, 2008 at 22:59
Thomas McCrae said:
I’m trying to figure out which of the present candidates you would consider to be representative of that description, and I can’t. All of the possible candidates in every party match that definition, but you’re missing one additional category that could be associated with both Bush and Mccain that I don’t think any of the others have:
Stupidity or feigned stupidity.
That is one thing I surely need no more of. Are you supporting anyone?