Posted on 12/31/2011 9:31:32 PM PST by delacoert
Characterizing rhetoric as VIOLENCE?
P M
Don't forget: "pushing for amnesty for illegal aliens in violation of Mormon precepts and Christ's own teachings".
Well, Mormonism is so weird & un-American (more Kolobian), who needs to caricature it? (It caricatures itself!)
Mormon supermen, eh? Gods? Divine peers of the one true God, eh? Utter blasphemy!
Look here from BYU: Teachings Concerning The Divine Potential of Man
See post #9 for most of Spencer W. Kimball's teachings on how Mormon men -- including Mitt and Jon Huntsman -- are supposedly "god in embryos":
Romney Insists He Is as Consistent as Humanly Possible
Happy New to all FREEPERS!
Bfl
Yea, verily.
And the beat down goes on.
Also the author self-consciously refers to himself within the article:
Yeah, I'd say the article is written by a Smith disciple.
[even among America’s literati, belies the fact that Mormonism is foremost a belief system in action. Perhaps a concise summary of Mormon practical divinity comes from the late Church President, Spencer W. Kimball: “As God’s offspring, we have His attributes in us. We are gods in embryo, and thus have an unlimited potential for progress and attainment.”]
I’ve been screaming for years that Romneycare is a logical consequence of the Mormon need to do something, anything, in order to earn your planet. So you can’t separate religion from politics, But I was called a bigot.
[One solution is to stop talking about religion as part of a presidential candidate’s resumé altogether. In an op-ed on the Rachel Maddow Show, political scientist Melissa Harris-Perry insinuated this solution. She argued that there are many reasons for Republican primary voters not to vote for Mitt Romney—many secular reasons. But his Mormonism is not one of them. Harris-Perry wants to draw a clear line between evaluating a candidate and analyzing a candidate’s faith.
In a lecture at the Danforth Center this fall, E.J. Dionne proposed a different solution: limit discussions of candidate’s faith to how this faith might influence his or her political perspective and policies. This would not include sacred underwear, seventy virgins, or transubstantiation. It does however include (as Michael Ruse allowed in his CHE post) discussions of how a candidate’s theological views of the Holy Lands, for example, might affect American policies regarding the Middle East. ]
So if we just shut up, everything will be fine? I don’t think so, that is incredibly un-American.
Two days ago, Mona Charen wrote an articleNational Review in which she stated that the Mormons were "harried, persecuted, expelled, reviled, and chased across a continent" for its first seven decades. Starting from the Book of Mormon's publication in 1830 (with Joseph Smith initially listed as "author"), that would be until 1900 (there is no record of any public knowledge of Smith's claims to have had a vision around 1820, much less persecution).
For the last 50 years of Charen's period of persecution, expulsion, and chasing, the Mormons were living in Utah, where Brigham Young had established a theocracy (Charen may want to read on the Utah Wars - Utah vs. the United States - and decided whether that was persecution of Utah's insistence that it remain a theocracy).
If Mormons were persecuted in the last forty years of that seventy, it is that the U.S. required them to stop practicing polygamy, which was illegal in the U.S. territories (although the Mormon Church continued to practice polygamy after the 1890 manifesto).
It was during this period that the Mountain Meadows Massacre (September 11, 1857 - the largest religious killing of American citizens until the next September 11th attack), which she mentioned, occurred. Innocent gentile men, woman, and older children were slaughtered. Yes, the Mormons executed John Leee, but only years later, but only after pressure by the U.S. Government and in an agreement to keep the U.S. Government from pursuing justice against other Mormon leaders involved; very possibly Brigham Young.
As for Missouri, and New York, and Illinois, Charen has read no history books, including histories written in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, or other peer-reviewed religion or history journals. And nothing by the Mormon History Association. She's clearly not read about the Missouri Wars, as both sides fought. There's no mention of the Danites.
I noticed the reference to Missouri Governor Bogg's October 27, 1838, Extermination Order, a period of history that can be condemned. However, she fails to mention that Mormon Leader Sidney Rigdon first ralled the Mormon faithful and troops (and there were troops; Smith's Nauvoo legion had 1,500 armed men) on July 4, 1838 when he said:
"it shall be between us and them a war of extermination, for we will follow them till the last drop of blood is spilled, or else they will have to exterminate us; for we will carry the seat of war to their own houses and their own families, and one part or the other shall be utterly destroyed."
She fails to mention the failed assassination attempt on Governor Bogg's life by Porter Rockwell, the Mormon's Avenging Angel.
As for Smith's arrest and death, Charen fails to mention that the original kerfuffle arose because Smith ordered that a newspaper, the Nauvoo Expositor, be destroyed because it printed truths about him. Among these was the fact that the was committing polygamy, something that had been practiced by Smith and other Mormon leaders since the early 1830s but was publicly denied until 1852.
Smith also declared martial law and called out the Nauvoo legion, over which he served as general (he also was prophet of the church and has had himself crowned king of the of world in 1843 and 1844). Smith was in jail voluntarily on a charge of treason as a result of declaring martial law over the laws of the state. While there, LDS members smuggled two pistols into the Carthage Jail for Joseph. He gave one to his brother Hyrum.
Joseph was killed by a mob, but only after he first shot and murdered at least two men outside the door of the room with the cells (if shooting Smith was murder after he shot; the Smith shooting the other men was murder on his behalf, too).
I could continue, but history rarely is a piece of cloth with cleanly cut edges.
As for tarring and feathering? Ms. Charen will find out that Smith was lucky, A physician was with the group to castrate him as well; although history has been clouded, it appears from contemporaneous history that the group tarred and feathered Smith because Smith had made sexual overtures to a young sister of one of the men who formed the 'mob.' She did, after all, wind up as one of his polygamous wives. One of the wives that many Mormons insist never existed.
The cloth of history is never as cleanly cut as Charen portrays - particularly then she leaves out large parts of undisputed history to make a political point. It's a shameful piece, Ms. Charen.
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