What's Wrong With Us? Some ideas.

Perhaps I'm just in a bad mood, politically, but I made a list of what's wrong with America right now.  Enjoy:

1. Pointless, horrible wars that we won't end.
2. An assault on our civil liberties, mostly due to the Patriot Act.
3. A complete lack of initiative and desire to do something about climate change and out-of-control consumption of fossil fuels.
4. The deterioration of our public school system.
5. The ever-growing income disparity chasm between the rich and poor.
6. A broken health care system and no universal health care on the horizon to fix it.
7. Underregulated crony corporatism.
8. Insulated, unaccountable politicians.
9. Incivility and bigotry.
10. The New York Yankees.

To sum it up: we have a bipartisan assault on peace, liberty, niceness, the poor, and the environment.  Am I missing anything?

Divide and Conquer, Religious Style

NYDailyNews.com

Rep. Peter King is using his position as chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security to terrorize Muslims.  He is instituting hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims based on vague accusations that ordinary Muslims and their leaders have not done enough to speak out against terrorism.  He has yet to produce, of course, any proof of any of his claims that American Muslims are becoming more radicalized and that they are not adequately assisting the police and counter-terrorism officials.

The impetus for these hearings likely has nothing to do with the radicalization of Muslims, and everything to do with politics.  By turning Americans against each other politicians can pursue the old divide and conquer technique.  Anyone who knows American Muslims knows that they are just like everyone else.  They are mostly good, hardworking, honest people who value their freedoms and abhor oppression.  They are serious about their religion and embrace their cultural and familial roots.  While most are good, some are not.  The same could be said about nearly every group of Americans, no matter how you dissect them.  You could say the same about Catholics, Mormons, atheists, middle class, lower class, New Yorkers, Utahns, blacks, whites, and on and on. It is cliche but still basically true that the things that tie us together are both more numerous and more important than the things that differentiate us.

Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holidays

Americans love war analogies.  It probably stems from our love of actual war, which I think is an actual collective sin we are committing.  So analogies between war and other non-war things are pretty unsettling and off-putting for me.  In the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for instance, there are over 100,000 dead civilians, tens of thousands of dead combat troops, and millions of wounded.  So when we use frequent war allusions in sports and politics and the like I think we're being rather callous and glib.  If we paid more attention to our language and how we use it we might end up making different and better political choices in America.

That was all a slight tangent I started pondering as I considered this most special time of year when we can come together and debate whether or not there is a War on Christmas.  The weapons in this war are not missiles, bombs, drone attacks, and machine guns, but phrases like "Happy Holidays," the removal of nativity scenes from government-owned public places, and "X-mas."  The casualties are not human lives lost or permanent physical or psychological injuries and disfigurement, but . . . what?  I'm not sure.  Hurt pride, I guess.

President Obama as a Muslim and Religious Tests

How one in five Americans view the President

A recent Pew poll showed that 18% of Americans think Pres. Obama is a Muslim, 34% correctly think he is a Christian, and a whopping 43% say they don't know.  There are various interpretations of where this misinformation is coming from, ranging from a right-wing effort to cast doubt on the president's Christianity to the president's failure to tackle the issue head-on to the fact that some (many?) Americans are just stupid.  Of course it is a combination of all of these.

The poll gets to an issue Americans have struggled with for a long time: whether the religion of our president and elected leaders should even matter at all.  George W. Bush famously claimed that God told him to invade Iraq (I'm thinking I worship a different God than him), Ronald Reagan was distinctly irreligious, Bill Clinton was actively religious but of course that was muddied by his personal, shall we say, indiscretions.  We know all of this, and much more, because we tend to care a great deal about the religions of our presidents and elected leaders.

Another recent poll, this one from Gallup, showed that one-fourth of Americans wouldn't vote for a Mormon, and over half wouldn't vote for an atheist.  A Fox poll showed about the same numbers and also showed that Americans would be even a little less likely to vote for a Muslim than a Mormon.

Glenn Beck v. The Mormon Ethic of Civility

Can you guess which is which?

The political world is astir. Economies are faltering. Public trust is waning. Individuals feel vulnerable. And social cohesion wears thin. Meanwhile, stories of rage and agitation fill our airwaves, streets and town halls. Where are the voices of balance and moderation in these extreme times?

So here you have Barack Obama going in and spending money on embryonic stem cell research. . .  Eugenics.  In case you don't know what eugencis led to; the Final Solution.  A master race!  A perfect person. . .  the stuff we are facing is absolutely frightening.
 
During a recent address given in an interfaith setting, Church President Thomas S. Monson declared: "When a spirit of goodwill prompts our thinking and when united effort goes to work on a common problem, the results can be most gratifying."

You self-centered, self-righteous, socialist, out-of-control, dangerous, man-hating bitch. Shut your mouth. We might have bought into this crap in the 1960s because too many people were doing LSD. We’re not on LSD anymore. You need to start making sense.

Further, former Church President Gordon B. Hinckley once said that living “together in communities with respect and concern one for another” is “the hallmark of civilization.” That hallmark is under increasing threat.

Speaking to a Muslim Congressman:  "I have been nervous about this interview with you because what I feel like saying is, "Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies". . .  And I know you're not.  I'm not accusing you of being an enemy, but that's the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans feel that way.

The Immigration List, Continued

An investigation into the now infamous immigration list has revealed that two state workers compiled the information illegally from state databases.  I wrote a little about it a few days ago here.  This entire episode has ratcheted up the level of intensity surrounding the immigration issue here in Utah and also nationwide.  Amidst all of this the Church's position is to approach immigration with a spirit of compassion, "careful reflection and civil discourse," and "the strongest desire to do what is best for all of God's children."

After skimming the Deseret News comment sections to some relevant articles and doing a little "web surfing" I'm finding that a lot of politically conservative members of the church aren't so thrilled with the vibe they are getting from the church on this issue.  They find themselves in a somewhat unfamiliar position of not being exactly on-board with a political issue into which the church has inserted itself.  The word you are looking for is: schadenfreude.

Religious Freedom and the Ground Zero Mosque

The Eleventh Article of Faith states: "We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may."

I stated in my last post that my evolving three pillars of Things I Care About The Most In Politics are peace, a healthy sustainable environment, and moral/religious agency.  I think if we safeguard these three things we can live in a pretty great world for a long time.  Of course the three are intimately intertwined.  War is usually based on scarcity of resources (the environmental aspect) or religious conflict.  If we could focus on cleaning up our religious conflicts and our environment, sustainable peace would surely follow.

Unfortunately, there are many right here in America who want to restrict the religious freedom of anyone that worships different than they do, thus creating more conflict and less peace.  The latest and most public incarnation of this bigotry is the uproar over the plans to build a mosque and Muslim information center a few blocks from ground zero.

The opponents of this mosque truly believe that those who died on 9/11 would be dishonored by the mere fact that Muslims would have a place of worship so near ground zero.  The only way this thinking makes sense is if you believe that all Muslims are responsible for the actions of al Qaeda and the extremist factions that want to harm the United States.  This is, of course, absurd and bigoted.

Moderation In A Crowded World

In 1800 just after the United States was formed and the Constitution ratified, the world population was about 978 million, just under 1 billion.  North America had about 7 million people.  If you had suggested to them at the time that they really should consider moderating consumption and conserving natural ecosystems, they probably would have laughed you to scorn.  "The world has more natural resources and available land than we ever could possibly develop," they would say to you with a condescending chuckle.  "Why on Earth should moderate anything?"

Today the world population is approaching 7 billion and North America has about 340 million people.  In a hundred years we'll be pushing 10 billion people.  It is a crowded world we live in now and it is not difficult to imagine running out of oil, chopping down the Amazon rain forest, and polluting our entire atmosphere and oceans to near sterility.  For thousands of years leading up to now humans have never had to moderate because the world was so big and we were so small.  So it is not altogether surprising, then, when so many people today, Americans in particular, continue to scoff at the idea of moderation, at the idea that we have to pull back in order to preserve what we have.

The oil gushing into the Gulf Coast at a rate of 210,000 gallons a day, which we are apparently powerless to stop any time soon, is a fitting example of how we are failing to be proper stewards of the Earth because we are not willing to moderate our thirst for oil.

But the idea of moderation in an ever more crowded world doesn't just pertain to the environment and consumption of goods.

Pres. Obama and Religious Tolerance in America

It will come as no surprise that I really liked Pres. Obama's speech in Cairo. I think it is absolutely necessary for America to overcome its fundamental distrust of Islam in general, as opposed to extremists in particular, in order to better secure ourselves and promote democracy abroad. Pres. Obama is doing well walking the sometimes fine line between finding common ground where it exists and condoning anti-democratic practices and customs.

But there was one section of his speech that I wanted to highlight that I thought was pretty relevant to this blog. In the section where Pres. Obama addressed religious tolerance, he said:

Among some Muslims, there's a disturbing tendency to measure one's own faith by the rejection of somebody else's faith. The richness of religious diversity must be upheld -- whether it is for Maronites in Lebanon or the Copts in Egypt.

...

Likewise, it is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practicing religion as they see fit -- for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear. We can't disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretense of liberalism. In fact, faith should bring us together.

We live in an America where we are lining up religion and politics, and I think that is extremely harmful to both. Politicizing religion and religious-izing politics sullies and impedes them both.

Look, I love seafood, and I love Nutella. But I do not think that they go well together. I try to keep them separate and enjoy them each on their own. I don't dip my shrimp in Nutella or smother my salmon in melted Nutella. It ruins them both when you eat them in the same bite. Likewise, religion and politics are two things that I love to talk about and debate and learn more about. But combining them almost always has very negative side effects. Of course, it is easier to separate Nutella from seafood than it is to separate your politics from your religion, but no one ever said this life was easy and it is something for which we should strive.

In America, the current trend is that the majority of those who attend church more frequently vote for Repbulicans and the majority of those that attend less frequently or not all vote for Democrats. This is becoming so pronounced that we are getting the two mushed up in our minds. Liberal activists see conservatives as a bunch of irrational, kooky born-agains and conservative activists see liberals as a bunch of godless hedonists. This then becomes a positive feedback machine where the deeply religious dig in against the liberals and the non-religious dig in against the conservatives and all of the sudden we aren't even talking about politics anymore and what is the best way to run the country, we are talking about whether a Mormon should even be allowed to run the country or if atheists can be trusted in federal office or if religion itself should be done away with because it is irrational and only leads to wars and bigotry.

On the one side, then, as Pres. Obama pointed out, we have hostility towards religion under the pretense of liberalism, and on the other side the championing of overt religion as the only way to effectively run the country. What's more, conservatives demand ideologically pure religion (with suspicious glances at conservative Catholics and Mormons). In the end it looks like we certainly deal with religious tolerance and freedom better than most Muslim countries, but we aren't really doing that great in our own right.

It does religion no good to get intertwined with politics. Whether it is fair or not, many liberals have simply discounted Mormonism completely because they see it as too politically conservative for them. Otherwise good people who love their families and believe in God have shut their ears to our message because of politics. Politics. Are we really willing to shackle our religion with politics and miss out on the chance to touch the lives of millions of Americans? I want to emphasize again that the purpose of this blog is not to justify liberal politics through Mormonism, but to show that they are at least compatible and that a diversity of political thought in the Church is good for its long-term well being.

And it does politics no good to get intertwined with religion. Religion is based on faith and personal conversion, whereas politics must be based on facts and societal good. Often what is good for one is good for the other, but using religion as the reasoning to justify politics never works. It only leads to arbitrary decisions, distrust, and disenfranchisment.

So as Pres. Obama urged Muslims to practice religious tolerance and freedom, I could not help but think of our own issues. Liberals are becoming hostile towards religion, conservatives are becoming hostile towards the non-religious, and religion in America is becoming too indistinguishable from politics. This can only turn out badly for both.