Mormon Bloggers

I’m reading Murray Rothbard’s “Betrayal of the American Right“. Chapter 7 talks about his conversion from conservatism to libertarianism, then to anarchism. I found it refreshingly similar (the logic) to my own conversion. Thought I’d share: My conversion to anarchism was a simple exercise in logic. I had engaged continually in friendly arguments about laissez-faire with liberal friends from graduate school. While condemning taxation, I had still felt that taxation was required for the provision of police and judicial protection and for that only. One night two friends and I had one of our usual lengthy discussions, seemingly unprofitable; but this time when they’d left, I felt that for once something vital had actually been said. As I thought back on the discussion, I realized that my friends, as liberals, had posed the following challenge to my laissez-faire position: They: What is the legitimate basis for your laissez-faire government, for this political... Read the rest of this entry »

In the financial world of Medicare and Social Security, things just got worse. There’s plenty of denial to go around, and no one is willing, it seems, to step up and admit the obvious. There was a report released yesterday by the trustees, heightening the necessity for Congress to rejigger the massive entitlement programs. The future, long deferred by lawmakers, has apparently arrived at the doorstep. The problems are us — the baby-boomers. We’re all retiring and the taxes collected to support the programs are in a prolonged pattern of weakness — call it life support if you wish. The bad news couldn’t come at a better time for serious reformers, and a worse time for the kick-the-can-down-the-road crowd. The trustees of Medicare now project it will run out of money in 2024. That’s been accelerated by five years earlier than last year’s estimate. Social Security trust funds will be drained in 2036, one year earlier than the last estimate.... Read the rest of this entry »

A writer in The Salt Lake Tribune the other day asserted a link between The Book of Mormon and socialism. His premise — at their very worst the people portrayed in the record were greedy capitalists, and at their best they were socialists. I suspect there are few things that get my blood boiling more than someone who asserts the law of consecration resembles socialism in any way imaginable. President Marion G. Romney I have written extensively in the past about the law of consecration. This is one example. Here’s another, where I wrote the definitive book about the establishment of Zion in the latter-days based upon the scriptures and the statements of the living prophets who succeeded Joseph Smith. I even cited President Marion G. Romney (a registered Democrat) who has written and spoken persuasively against this misinformed position. Harry Reid (D-NV), a Mormon and the Senate majority leader, embodies this flawed and misguided political philosophy better... Read the rest of this entry »

George F. Will I stumbled over this magnificent summary of where we were at America’s exceptional founding, where we are today at the commencement of the 112th Congress, and where we are headed in the future.  It comes from George Will, and you can read the whole article here: The American Revolution was a political, not a social revolution; it was about emancipating individuals for the pursuit of happiness, not about the state allocating wealth and opportunity. Hence our exceptional Constitution, which says not what government must do for Americans but what it cannot do to them. Americans are exceptionally committed to limited government because they are exceptionally confident of social mobility through personal striving. And they are exceptionally immune to a distinctively modern pessimism: It holds that individuals are powerless to assert their autonomy against society’s vast impersonal forces, so people must become wards of government, which supposedly is... Read the rest of this entry »

Ever since Barak Obama became President of the United States, conservatives and limited-government libertarians have been up in arms over his seemingly Socialistic policies. (Nevermind the Socialistic policies of most of his predecessors.) But what’s interesting, is that these two groups don’t realize that they too support and promote Socialism. Government funded and controlled policing and military are by definition Socialized services. What I thought I’d share is the economic arguments used against Socialism applied to your local police department, by Gil Guillory. It too suffers the shortcomings of Socialism. An excerpt: Literally speaking, those who deploy patrols have no idea how effective their patrols are. They may know how many miles they log, how many criminals they catch in the act, and what the rate of crime is in an area; but this is like knowing how many gigabytes are on a computer, and how many computation cycles can be done in its processor, but without... Read the rest of this entry »

Because of the out-of-control rhetoric, all the charges and counter-charges about socialism being unleashed in these modern times, I thought it wise to reprint a talk given by President Marion G. Romney (former counselor in the First Presidency).  The subtleties between the Lord’s way and Satan’s way today seem to be so nuanced and blurry it may be useful to re-examine President Romney’s clearcut distinctions when things were more easily viewed in black and white 44 years ago. With pinpoint accuracy, President Romney describes exactly what is being implemented today in America.  The unthinkable seems to have overtaken us, the very conditions President Romney warned about.  By understanding the comparisons between freedom and tyranny in all their carefully shaded hues, one can discern why taking steps to reclaim the government “for the people, by the people and of the people” this November is job one in America. He... Read the rest of this entry »

The struggle between political philosophies has been raging since our founding as a nation.  Thomas Jefferson and John Adams started tangling soon after the Constitution was signed over something so simple as how the new country would address President George Washington.  Jefferson as Secretary of State favored no titles, and Adams as Vice-President (and President of the Senate) made a fool of himself trying to come up with high-sounding titles nobody liked.  That’s how we ended up with “Mr. President” as the appropriate title.  Adams was at the head of the “Monarchists,” with Jefferson heading up the “Federalists” (convenient labels, but meaningless) in that debate, and in spite of it all they began and ended as tried and true friends.  Adams became the second, then Jefferson the third president of the United States.  The political divide has always been part of our American fabric. This... Read the rest of this entry »

Every time that I think the paranoid fringe in this country has reached the apex of possible bizarre-ness, it exceeds my expectations, as a case in point consider the current situation in Provo, UT.  In this bastion of conservative republicanism (Provo was repeatedly cited as the area in the nation most consistently satisfied with George W. Bush’s Presidency) a group has formed claiming that both the local school district (Alpine Unified School District) and Brigham Young University are parties to a conspiracy to indoctrinate the young people of Utah into acceptance of Socialism. I kid you not, this is not a prank post, for details I would refer you to the articles in the Provo Daily Herald listed at the bottom of this post.  In essence, the charges leveled against BYU are that a certain faculty member associated with the University’s education initiative, John Goodlad is spreading socialism as his ideas (which have been influential in the Alpine School District’s goals)... Read the rest of this entry »

How does a debate on reform policy become a referendum on the future of our nation?  I ask myself this as I look with frank unease on the fate of Health Care Reform, set to be voted on (by way of a rather arcane House procedure) this weekend.  I am not an unabashed fan of this bill, I find the mandate forcing people to buy insurance or face a fine to be extremely problematic, and wonder if, in the long run, it will not cause more trouble than it was worth.  That said, I am in favor of reform and find myself, like many on the center-left, in the unenviable position of arguing (in a manner that neither convinces my colleagues on the right, nor satisfies my colleagues on the left) that part of a loaf is better than no loaf at all, and that actually managing to get some reform framework passed opens the door to further refinement of the system down the road, something that has generally been impossible up to now.  Yet such arguments fail to deal with the key problem facing health care reform,... Read the rest of this entry »

The state is an institution of government that receives wide-spread support among all sorts of political philosophies. The difference, however, is that different political philosophies support different sizes and scopes of the state. A few examples: your typical “conservative” favors using the state for military and national defense, as well as enforcing morality among the people; your typical “liberal” (in the modern sense) favors using the state to regulate the economy and provide social services; even your typical “libertarian” who is generally opposed to the state in favor of liberty will support using the state in a limited, defense and crime prevention capacity. As I will argue here, so long as the state can collect funds by force to pay for national defense and crime prevention, it can collect funds by force to pay for anything, and so long as the state can legitimately enforce it’s monopoly of the defense and justice services, so too can... Read the rest of this entry »

In the West dog packs are always a problem. They hunt down a cow, deer or elk and run it until they exhaust it sufficiently to take it down. Then they tear chunks of its flesh and eat them, while the animal is still alive. They do this to any animal that cannot protect itself. That is what our elected representatives are doing to us. They write bills that will take more money from us than we make. I don’t mean these bills will take whatever money we have left after we support our families. No! They will take the money we need for food, shelter and clothing. They pretend to be “looking out for us.” No! They are taking power from us and concentrating it in Washington. This is a power grab by conscienceless, power-hungry people. Do our Senators and Representatives in Washington represent us? Sadly, Republican or Democrat, they have come to represent only their leader, not us. The President says we must have government-run healthcare or our country will collapse, so they sign... Read the rest of this entry »

Twenty years ago today, the East German government lifted all travel restrictions on its citizens. Later that night, Germans began tearing down the Berlin Wall.The press seems to be taking much more notice of this one than they did of the Tiananmen Square anniversary.I remember the events, but I didn’t appreciate them as much at the time as I do now. This was a truly historic event, and was the  Read More →