Can a leftist be considered a faithful Latter Day Saint?

[_Moniker]

What's funny is that The No Child Left Behind Act (HELLLOOOO BIG GOVERNMENT BUSH PROGRAM) is precisely an outcome based education model.

Sometimes you're silly, Coggins. :)

Eventually Moniker, it would be a welcome change if your were to become philosophically serious about these kinds of things. This is not an argument about the policies of George Bush or his administration, but about leftist ideology. The fact that you are totally unaware of the scathing criticism of the No Child Left Behind Act from all parts of the conservative intellectual movement is indicative of a general lack of knowledge regarding that movement.

Haha. Actually, Coggins, it's teacher unions that are the most outspoken opponents of this legislation.

~Edit!~

So, conservatives aren't lock step in agreement over an issue? Gasp! I imagine that could be said the same for liberals, as well....

[_Droopy]

Over the years, Gad's ability to engage in any form of sustained rational arguemnt has deterorated markedly. That's unfortunate. I'll just insert a few remarks into this awful mess below and leave it at that:

Supporting the legality of pornography and supporting pornography are two different things.

No, its not.

"pro choice' doesn't mean you support abortions.

Yes, it does.

I think smoking is wrong. I hate being around smoke. But I don't think it should be illegal to smoke.

Neither do I.

The rest is, yes, the standard Nietzschean moral relativzations that are the at the center of the historic Left, so I snipped it to make a more important point. Gad wants to compare smoking, a private behavior that may have serious health consequences, to convenience abortion, which affects another being who has no say in the matter and barbarizes and coarsens the culture which allows it, and pornography, which exploits and debases the most intimate of all human relationships for public entertainment. In other words, Gad will support any form of personal, moral, or social debauchery or barbarism so long as a clean split can be imagined between the moral and the legal, and so long as the intellectually and morally anesthetized inhabitants of this culture can navel gaze themselves to sleep at night secure in the knowledge that their private choices have no greater social consequences.

Conclusion: this entire argument is philosophically so far over Gad's head he's going to have to decompress before he comes back to the surface for air.

[_Droopy]

Haha. Actually, Coggins, it's teacher unions that are the most outspoken opponents of this legislation.

~Edit!~

So, conservatives aren't lock step in agreement over an issue? Gasp! I imagine that could be said the same for liberals, as well....

Yes, you imagine...

[_Gadianton]

Coggins,

You are what Neil A. Maxwell and Bruce R. would call a "gospel hobbyist". You've made this clear in such extreme ways now that I would have difficulty seeing even BCSpace siding with you anymore (unless he just wanted to troll). You are looking beyond the mark, Coggins, and I hereby call you to repentence.

[_Jason Bourne]

Can one be considered a faithful LDS and support convienence abortion on demand? No.

I agree this can be problematic.

Can one be considered a faithful LDS and support homosexual marriage? No.

Same as above but more complex. I think the idea of agency and freedom may come into play here. But it is complex.

Can one be considered a faithful LDS and support a socialist economic order? No (not because socialsim cannot work economically, but because of much deeper doctrinal issues surrounded the concept of agency, which is a core, foundational LDS doctrine).

To simplistic. What about Hugh B Brown? What about members of the Church who live is socialist countries like France or Finland? Or even Canada. I know Canadian saints who are all for social health care. Are they lousy members? Hardly. One could argue that to let 40,000,000 citizens with out health care is actually evil.

Can one be considered a faithful LDS and support pornography? No.

Agreed

Can one be considered a faithful LDS and support high, confiscatory tax rates? I don't think so, given Joseph Smiths statements on the proper role of government in the D&C.

I think it depends what you call confiscatory tax rates.

Can one be considered a faithful LDS and support anti-personal self defense laws. I don't think so.

Why?

Can one be considered a faithful LDS and support radical feminist ideology and social aims. No.

Why?

Can one be considered a faithful LDS and support the modern environmental movement. No.

Can one be a faithful Latter-day Saint and not care for the environment and even recklessly exploit it and destroy it. Seems to me that there is an ideal of being a good steward. but your one liner is to simplistic. The environmental movement had lots of ranges within it.


Now, none of this has anything to do with excommunication or anything elce of that nature. The question is, can one be considered x. None of these beliefs imply official Church action against anyone who holds them. It only asks the question if, at the end of the day, a Mormon in name can also be a Mormon is substance who also accepts as valid the doctrines of, let's use as a few examples, Nazism, Communism, or the Ku Klux Klan.

[_Jason Bourne]

Can one be a good Latter day Saint and support premptive wars like the one we are involved in now?

D&C 98:19-48

[_Jason Bourne]

So is Harry a good LDSer?

One thing about Reids remarks-the idea of the US has a voluntary tax system simply meant we voluntarily file our own income tax return and report our income. Other countries may have a government official file prepare an file a tax return than they send you a bill. Paying your taxes is not voluntary.

Sort of scary that the head dude in the Senate is pretty stupid about this.

[_Droopy]

You are what Neil A. Maxwell and Bruce R. would call a "gospel hobbyist". You've made this clear in such extreme ways now that I would have difficulty seeing even BCSpace siding with you anymore (unless he just wanted to troll). You are looking beyond the mark, Coggins, and I hereby call you to repentence.

Blah, blah, blah. Now I see that you also have no idea what a gospel hobbyist is either. Add that to the now quite long list of your nearly endless gaffs.

Beyond one's personal philosophy and metaphysical views, one's politics are, more than anything else, a barometer of what lies in the soul. This is the case not only because, since the sixties, politics has become far more about social transformation and social engineering that in the past, and very contentious issues, like abortion, that should have remained for the people of the various states to decide for themselves, have been thrust onto the national stage by politicized rogue federal judiciary.

The Gospel is a "straight and narrow" path, and any such path implies by definition conflict and incongruence with anything outside the boundaries of that path. Depending upon the issue, those conflict can be relatively minor, or, as with many modern political issues, which involve massive cultural changes and destruction of cherished and long standing societal norms, quite large.

For example, Mromon libs and conservatives could agree to disagree on the proper function and role of Unions in the American economic order. Mormon leftists and Mormon conservatives would lock serious horns, however, when confronted with coercive closed shop unionism in which if one does not join the union and drop his individuality off at the union hall door, he cannot engage in gainful employment.

A socialist Mormon who wants to deprive me of my constitutional liberties regarding property and my ability to pursue happiness in any way I so choose so long as that pursuit deprives no one else of those same rights, and impose artificial barriers to the material wealth I can generate for myself and others, and the manner in which I can use and dispose of my property, is my political enemy. There is simply no way around this fundamental fact.

In a similar fashion, a leftist Mormon who wants the country to surrender in Iraq, and retreat from the war on global Islamofascism, raises the specter of more 9/11s on our own soil, an escalation of terrorism, and economic blackmail by our enemies. He is my political enemy, and there is simply no possible reconciliation of these oppositional views.

A Mormon who is pro abortion has indicated that, although he claims to adhere to the Church's teachings on the subject, he does not feel secure enough in his position to be wiling to extend restrictions on this kind of behavior to others. The Brethren have warned that abortion, and other similar sins will bring about the disintegration of civil society as described in the scriptures. How then, could a 'faithful" LDS be a party to bringing about the foretold calamities of the Latter Days? How, understanding the nature of homosexuality and the consequences of its practice, could a faithful LDS approve of homosexual marriage (while simultaneously understanding that, according to Church teaching, it destroys the souls of its practitioners and, if accepted by a critical mass of a society, can be instrumental in that society reaching its "ripeness" for the judgments of God)?

[_Droopy]

Can one be considered a faithful LDS and support a socialist economic order? No (not because socialsim cannot work economically, but because of much deeper doctrinal issues surrounded the concept of agency, which is a core, foundational LDS doctrine).

To simplistic. What about Hugh B Brown? What about members of the Church who live is socialist countries like France or Finland? Or even Canada. I know Canadian saints who are all for social health care. Are they lousy members? Hardly. One could argue that to let 40,000,000 citizens with out health care is actually evil.

Hugh B. Brown was a Depression era Democrat. Was he a left wing Democrat? What were his political views? Just being a New Dealer would not, in my view make him a socialist (with the understanding that many Americans who supported those programs never had any clear idea what foundational ideas lay behind them).

Jason, who is "letting" anybody go without health care? This very question indicates that, to some extent, you've already accepted some central leftist assumptions about economics and the proper role of the state. Be that as it may, I guess I need to explain all over again that every year, thousands of Canucks flee their country to this benighted capitalist mosh pit for health care they cannot receive in a timely or effective manner in Canada, and for drugs that are not available there. The Canadian, and British system, are an utter mess.

Quote:
Can one be considered a faithful LDS and support pornography? No.



Agreed

Quote:

Can one be considered a faithful LDS and support high, confiscatory tax rates? I don't think so, given Joseph Smiths statements on the proper role of government in the D&C.

I think it depends what you call confiscatory tax rates.

How about any tax rates or forms of taxation that cannot be harmonized with the Constitution? That is, tax rates that fund the government only in its limited and enumerated tasks and responsibilities.

If I had to be arbitrary, I'd say anything above, perhaps 20%. The present top marginal rate of 35% is confiscatory, but the 70% rate under Kennedy and Carter and the 90% rate prevailing when Kennedy took office, cannot be described as anything but outright expropriation. The death tax topped out at 50% (Obama wants to raise the death tax back to levels near this), and capital gains taxes were once in this range (the appropriate capital gains tax is zero)



Quote:

Can one be considered a faithful LDS and support anti-personal self defense laws. I don't think so.

Why?

So, you do not believe I have the unalianable right to defend myself and my family from criminal attack with appropriate weapons or means?

Quote:

Can one be considered a faithful LDS and support radical feminist ideology and social aims. No.

Why?

Are you being serious?


Quote:

Can one be considered a faithful LDS and support the modern environmental movement. No.

Can one be a faithful Latter-day Saint and not care for the environment and even recklessly exploit it and destroy it. Seems to me that there is an ideal of being a good steward. but your one liner is to simplistic. The environmental movement had lots of ranges within it.

Yes, it had some ranges within it...forty years ago. The entire movement is radical, as we speak, and has essentially destroyed the old conservation movement, of which I consider myself a supporter. So, you agree that one can support the modern environmental movement, which is, in all probability, the most anti-liberal, anti-democratic, anti-free market, anti-western civilization, anti-modern, anti-Christian movement, outside of Nazism and Communism themselves, in all of modern history?

Environmentalism is, when not simply a front for the remnants of the old revolutionary socialist Left and its agendas, a religion that could be described as militant gnostic pantheism, and hence, would be in direct conflict with the Gospel on these ground alone (we are to have no other gods before the God of Israel - including nature or the earth).

[_Droopy]

Can one be a good Latter day Saint and support preemptive wars like the one we are involved in now?

Absolutely. The Old Testament is full of them, and I see no moral or doctrinal barrier to them if in a just cause and when they were intended, as the Iraq war was intended, to preempt far greater catastrophe (an Iraqi bioweapon, chemical weapon, or suitcase nuke going off in an American or other peaceful country's city, or continuing to be a major training center, as it was, for people and groups who would do so with their own resources).

Tell me this then: around 1937, Churchill floated the idea that the French and British should together launch a preemptive strike on Hitler to destroy his war making capability before it was mature. The liberals of the day, pacifists as they are today, pursued the coarse of appeasement and negotiation.

Jason, go online somewhere and take a look at what WWII cost the world in lives and resources, and then tell me that, destructive and unfortunate as it might have been (as are all wars) a much smaller and less costly preemptive strike on Germany would not have been more moral than letting things take their course.