Church Surveillance

[Dr. Sunstoned]

As to you resort to Quinn, does it trouble you in the least that his two "Power" books were not peer-reviewed as an academic work would ordinarily be? I can assure you that I have indeed read those works and followed some of his cites. The ones I have followed, without exception (of course, I was following the ones that caused my eyebrows to go sky-high) were abysmal overstatements.

I do seem to remember a couple of FARMS Review of Books reviews of Quinn's work from some years ago that made precisely that observation.

Quinn is quite good at taking something normative or even rather trivial and expanding it into a something deeply important, troubling, or even sinister, with regard to the Church and its leaders.

[_Mister Scratch]

You see Scratch, you can't even get this right. What is your credibility on things you have no direct knowledge of but Bob clearly does?

Bob doesn't have any "direct knowledge." He's relying completely on spoken accounts from dubious sources. Moreover, his dishonesty on this subject has already been demonstrated. Or did he finally provide a cite from the Prince text?

The bottom line? Virtually all of Quinn's published work has been centered around his personal vendetta against the Church and its teachings, and especially its social teachings, to which he has bent his scholarly abilities. Quinn is a revisionist historian before he is a historian, and always has been. He has shown, over time, a willingness to stretch history and historical evidence, and even invent it when necessary (Same Sex Dynamics) to make his points.

I'd be interested in seeing this assertion dealt with more fully. (Then again, Coggins probably hasn't bothered to do the reading.)

I'd be even more interested in you admitting that your knowledge of the BYU "stakeouts" etc., is completely second hand, then embellished and amplified to fit your polemical needs, and that Bob has taken you to the cleaners regarding this issue.

Oh? I didn't know that Bob was personally involved in the effort to spy upon and track down homosexuals at BYU. Further, I'd like to see some real evidence that Quinn has "stretch[ed]" or "invent[ed]" history. I'd especially like to see it magically spring forth from someone who's openly admitted to having never even read the books in the first place. (I guess frontpagemag.org takes up too much time....)

[_Coggins7]

I

can also assure you that I am a liberal.

My heartfelt and respectful sympathies. I can assure you rc, that you will, eventually, be mugged by reality and the waking dream will end. Quality will always, always, be more important than equality, as the gospel teaches (and socialism, in any case, is economic nonsense, regardless of the good intentions and desires of some of its proponents).

In the meantime, you do a great job here, in particular because of your personal knowledge of some things that others know, or claim to know, in only a second or third hand manner. I must confess that, though I'm almost 50, I've never heard of the student spy ring thing or the staking out of homosexuals flap, or the Church's part in it, and thanks so much for not letting Scratch get away with it here yet again, as I wouldn't know where on earth to go for legitimate information on these incidents otherwise.

Thanks much.

[_Trevor]

Like I say, the veneer is very thin. I wonder what prompts you to think I don't read?

As to your resort to Quinn, does it trouble you in the least that his two "Power" books were not peer-reviewed as an academic work would ordinarily be? I can assure you that I have indeed read those works and followed some of his cites. The ones I have followed, without exception (of course, I was following the ones that caused my eyebrows to go sky-high) were abysmal overstatements.

I can also assure you that I am a liberal. This liberal socialist condemns claims without support.

Ugh. Do you really wonder why I question your reading skills when you take my criticism of Coggins' characterization of Quinn's motives as a defense of the accuracy of everything he has written? Coggins said that Quinn clearly had a vendetta. I am challenging that attribution. Now you come on here to take me to task for defending Quinn's scholarship? How are you connecting those dots?

[_Mister Scratch]

What we actually learn here is that Coggins, like crocket, is apparently unable to read. Well, I should give him more credit than that--he reads what he wants so he can launch into an irrelevant diatribe about modern liberalism.

Like I say, the veneer is very thin. I wonder what prompts you to think I don't read?

As to your resort to Quinn, does it trouble you in the least that his two "Power" books were not peer-reviewed as an academic work would ordinarily be?

How do you know it did not receive any kind of editorial or peer review, Bob? Or are you just guessing? Quinn's list of "thank yous" is mighty indeed, and it seems clear that significant portions of these texts were reviewed by Leonard Arrington, Jan Shipps, Dan Vogel, and others.

I can assure you that I have indeed read those works and followed some of his cites. The ones I have followed, without exception (of course, I was following the ones that caused my eyebrows to go sky-high) were abysmal overstatements.

And you can prove this, I assume?

I can also assure you that I am a liberal. This liberal socialist condemns claims without support.

You know, Bob, I'm still waiting for you to provide text and page number from the Prince book, which will prove your assertion that the BYU spy ring was entirely "student instigated."

[_Mister Scratch]

In the meantime, you do a great job here, in particular because of your personal knowledge of some things that others know, or claim to know, in only a second or third hand manner. I must confess that, though I'm almost 50, I've never heard of the student spy ring thing or the staking out of homosexuals flap, or the Church's part in it, and thanks so much for not letting Scratch get away with it here yet again, as I wouldn't know where on earth to go for legitimate information on these incidents otherwise.

Thanks much.

(emphasis added)

<Ahem> So, I guess Coggins is admitting that he knows nothing about the spying and the stakeouts? Care to field this one, Bob? Meanwhile, I'll try to keep from laughing myself to death.

[_Trevor]

Observe. Although Trevor will never admit it (because to do so would place his real beliefs in the arena of ideas where they would be subject to the scathing disinfectant of light), this is a version of Postmodernism, which is the most radical and thorough repudiation of both the intellect and the moral imagination the western Left has yet constructed. Trevor is afraid of opposites and binary pairs because he is deathly afraid of being placed on one side or the other of them. To do so, to even accept indirectly, the premises that such opposites or dualisms exist, is to drive a stake through the very heart of the liberal's core assumption: that all values, all morality, and all choices are relative and arbitrary, and that the sovereign self can construct his own values and moralities as it goes along.

Or, as is more likely the case, I can't stand it when the real complexity of matters is reduced to pablum fit for children's programming.

All I'm saying is that most of Quinn's work is transparently tendentious, which is not arguable. Quinn has never, to my knowledge, taken a strictly dispassionate position on anything he's ever written about in a mass market non-fiction book. His agenda is social and doctrinal change within the Church and he has never written a book on Mormon issues or history that does not overtly exude this overarching theme.

No, that is not all you are saying. You attribute the motivation of all of Quinn's hard work to his personal vendetta against Mormonism, when he has, through much of that work, professed a deep and abiding belief in and love of Mormonism. It is this mind reading of yours that I have challenged.

[_Coggins7]

<Ahem> So, I guess Coggins is admitting that he knows nothing about the spying and the stakeouts? Care to field this one, Bob? Meanwhile, I'll try to keep from laughing myself to death.

And while your laughing yourself to death, keep in mind that Bob has already eviscerated you and exposed you as a provocateur and a poseur on this issue as others have on so many others. You are fudging your sources, haven't read them thoroughly, and your own knowledge of the issues are completely second hand and fragmentary.

Bob has already pointed out quite clearly, for which you have, again as usual, no answer, that the Church had nothing to do with any of these escapades, and when it found out, did everything it could to set things aright.

You have again committed ritual intellectual suicide in this forum. Thanks again, but no thanks.

[_Trevor]

Quality will always, always, be more important than equality, as the gospel teaches (and socialism, in any case, is economic nonsense, regardless of the good intentions and desires of some of its proponents).

In that case, be prepared to stand revealed as unimportant.

[_Mister Scratch]

Trevor---

First, where did this occur? On MAD?

As an update, Dr. Peterson makes claims concerning what precipitated his actions that force me to concede that I cannot be certain that his actions were despicable, or that he felt some kind of self-righteous urge to strike back at GoodK. In short, I don't really know. So, I retract my judgment, admitting that I don't know enough to conclude what was really going on here. If it all was as Dr. Peterson represented to me, I would not characterize his actions as despicable.

Where did DCP chide you about this?

Second:

Observe. Although Trevor will never admit it (because to do so would place his real beliefs in the arena of ideas where they would be subject to the scathing disinfectant of light), this is a version of Postmodernism, which is the most radical and thorough repudiation of both the intellect and the moral imagination the western Left has yet constructed. Trevor is afraid of opposites and binary pairs because he is deathly afraid of being placed on one side or the other of them. To do so, to even accept indirectly, the premises that such opposites or dualisms exist, is to drive a stake through the very heart of the liberal's core assumption: that all values, all morality, and all choices are relative and arbitrary, and that the sovereign self can construct his own values and moralities as it goes along.

Or, as is more likely the case, I can't stand it when the real complexity of matters is reduced to pablum fit for children's programming.

All I'm saying is that most of Quinn's work is transparently tendentious, which is not arguable. Quinn has never, to my knowledge, taken a strictly dispassionate position on anything he's ever written about in a mass market non-fiction book. His agenda is social and doctrinal change within the Church and he has never written a book on Mormon issues or history that does not overtly exude this overarching theme.

No, that is not all you are saying. You attribute the motivation of all of Quinn's hard work to his personal vendetta against Mormonism, when he has, through much of that work, professed a deep and abiding belief in and love of Mormonism. It is this mind reading of yours that I have challenged.

Please note that Coggins has never even read any of Quinn's work. Please note also that he apparently believes that the BYU spy ring and stakeouts never happened! Perhaps he'll go running off to MAD in order to try and persuade one of the flunkies over there to supplement his "erudition."