An Outrage

Check out this Newsweek article on Mitt and the influence of his faith. In sum, the only thing the authors credit the Church for is that we good wheeling, dealing, organization men, a more eccentric version of the Protestant work ethic.

As for me? I found it outrageous. For those who feel likewise, I would recommend dropping a letter to the editor. Just click on the "Contact Us" button. Every member a public relations specialist.

The Boiler Room of the Soul

Recently, a question has been asked of me, a question so simple that it can get centuries' of philosophers' blood boiling: how do we know anything I was asked, "Russ, sometimes it seems that you make it seem far too easy to accept the doctrines of the church, as though the only ingredient necessary was facts. But it's not the only necessary ingredient. Some of us have a harder time buying into the 'facts.'" It was suggested that I share what thoughts I had on how one knows something. I reserve the right to not only cite philosophers (you know, those pesky 'thinkers' who aren't supposed to be sharing anything relevant--get back to your Ivory Tower!) but also the divine philosophy of the scriptures. After all, philosophy just means "the love of wisdom." I have long lost count of how many times Sunday School teachers point out wisdom's many positive attributes over that of knowledge.

First, a little Marxist philosophy (we're co-opting for it our own purposes here). Antonio Gramsci talked of the concept of "hegemony." We use the word today to refer to a bloc of power in some realm of global or domestic affairs (ie you could talk of an "American hegemony"). However, Gramsci initially envisioned a far more dynamic picture taking place. Gramsci posed the question of why the international socialist revolution never happened following the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. Gramsci argued that the working class had essentially accepted the values of the bourgeoisie; we hear such sentiment in Calvin Coolidge's famed axiom: "The business of America is business." Or one might cite Thomas Paine's work: Common Sense ; what was once considered a radical idea for American colonists--the idea of independence--in 1775 was accepted as simply "common sense." This is not to mean that other ideas have no place in a social system; they do. But they only stay on the terms set by the dominating force .

Why is this significant? Because, while Gramsci was using the term derisively against the power of the middle classes, I would suggest that this process is simply how the mortal world fucntions. And for those who believe that some realms have no dominant ideology or prevailing thought, I would encourage them to ask any American if it is a good idea to drink a poisonous substance or to do the cha-cha in the middle of a busy New York street. I haven't done the stats, but I'll bet a dollar (maybe two--I'm a cheap man) that 9 out of 10 would say that anyone who wants to do that needs at the very least, some real mental assistance. Societies have prevailing ideologies about appropriateness and if they are not adhered to, then there are real consequences.

But not only do they exist at a societal level; they exist at an individual level as well. All of us have competing ideologies, influences if you will, in our personal makeup. Everything from a random lesson learned in 3rd grade history to what your mother taught you about stealing to what Zach Morris taught you about drinking and driving. Now, of course, these ideas do not have an equal place at our mental tables--some sit at the end whereas others are right beside us. When some people speak of a kind of primal urge to jump off of a tall building (just for the thrill), they are obviously not talking about what they actually want to do. Their urge for self-preservation is sitting closer to their inner decision-making capacity. But what of the man who saves the burning child in a flame-engorged house? Certainly, something else even trumps the need for self-preservation. These urges, values, and desires seem to be constantly posturing, posing, maneuvering no differently than aspiring corporate bureaucrats at a boiler room meeting.

So how does knowledge real knowledge play into this? Well, as has been said many times before, knowing facts is insufficient. The question is: which ideology sits closest to the boss in this boiler room meeting of the soul? In other words, which value has established as the hegemonic value, the one that governs the existence of all the others? The answer to this question is crucial; without an answer, we are left with merely a problem so vast that we have no choice but to, if you will, fire all the board members, declare spiritual bankruptcy, and become a vagabond seeking to find spiritual housing wherever we can for the time being.

Forunately, the words of both a a Catholic apologist and a disillusioned Christian might provide us some answers. That answer, to put in the (fictional) words of John Nash from A Beautiful Mind is love. First (and those who know me know that I can't resist this), G.K. Chesterton provides us with a direct description of how one ought to go about the re-ordering of his hegemony: "The evil of the pessimist is, then, not that he chastises gods and men, but that he does not love what he chastises" (he proceeds to criticize optimists for being too willing to "soothe every one with assurances," for being unwilling to "wash the world but [will instead] whitewash the world"). Love is central to understanding what is wrong and how best to fix it.

Similarly, Thomas Carlyle has a most poignant description of the power. To quote directly from Carlyle (pardon the block quotation; I just don't feel right cutting these words apart with my own):
"A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge. This it is that opens the whole mind, quickens every faculty of the intellect to do its fit work, that of knowing; and therefrom, by sure consequence, of vividly uttering forth...Hereby, indeed, is the whole man made a living mirror wherein the wonders of this ever wonderful universe are, in their true light (which is ever a magical miraculous one) represented and reflected back on us. It has been said: 'The heart sees farther than the head:' but indeed, without the seeing heart, there is no true seeing for the head...all is mere oversight, hallucination and vain superficial phantasmagoria (an optical illusion) which can permanently profit no one."

While both authors were indoubtably heavily influenced by Christian thought, perhaps we would do well to listen to them in spite of our own lack of conviction. Love is not the consummate virtue, but the virtue. Before it and after it, there is none other. It becomes interesting both Paul's and Mormon's words concerning charity: "the pure love of Christ"; "if I have not charity, I am nothing." In light of this, perhaps we would do well to listen to that lone, oppressed revolutionary voice who fights our sometimes selfish hegemonies of thought, who insists that in spite of the cynicism of the day, love is still en vogue.

Faithful Questioning: A Gospel Key

My friends, my friends. Today was a riveting day of gospel scholarship at Church. Why? Because I had a principle driven home to me: the importance of faithful questioning.

I was browsing the news this morning when I saw a very sad news account of a man who lost his faith over some little historical nuggets of which he had not been aware (you can see the story here). There are two tragedies here (the first being relatively minor, the second being more serious):

1) Would that we, as Latter Day Saints, had been more informed generally concerning this issue that when the topic came up (as it almost assuredly had), he could have heard these things from a friend and not some sneering journalist like Jon Krakeur.
This has been common knowledge and accessible (from sympathetic sources) for those who wanted to know. And more importantly:

2) Would that he, after all these years, had developed the intellectual independence, the hard-nosed determination to find the truth that he would not have been surprised at the finding. Other Latter Day Saints have known such things for years--including myself. Provided that this news report gives us the most "juicy" of the tidbits, then his faith must have been a blind one indeed.

In other words, he didn't ask the right questions at the right time in the right place.

It's an odd principle to learn; that much I will admit. But I think it is a sound one. Brent L. Top once remarked that "those with the most insight and inspiration as to God's will for mankind are often those who do the most poignant pleading and questioning" (C.S. Lewis, The Man and His Message, pg. 118) We trick ourselves, and worse, limit ourselves if we think that such questioning is inherently infidelitous to the gospel and the Church. The truth is quite the contrary: a good Saint is a well-informed Saint. We must be renaissance men/women of the gospel. As Elder Oaks once remarked: the day when of the theologian-husband and the "good Christian wife" are over.

Sometimes I even find myself limiting the scope of what "good questions" might be. For example, I have often (from my own lips at times): "perhaps we shouldn't ask 'why is this happening to me?' instead ask 'what should I be learning from this?" A good, even wonderful question to ask! But it naturally leads to other questions, questions which themselves have piercing answers. As we see in the case of Christ ("Why hast thou forsaken me?"), Joseph Smith ("Oh God, where art thou?") and Alma ("How long shall we suffer these great afflications, Oh Lord?), the mere asking of a question in faith is bound to bear fruit. Every affliction is itself a new frontier of knowledge. A good explorer would not travel the same road everyone else has traveled (While the imagery Lehi imploys of the 'strait and narrow path' is powerful imagery, it's not the only imagery). Moreover, afflictions are the specimen of life, and no scientist I know would only perform one test an newly found amoeba. Thanks to such a seeking spirit, we have been blessed with myriad medical treatments. Perhaps we could be similarly blessed if we had such a questing spirit concerning the gospel.

Good Ole' Fashioned New York Politics

Remembering Our Darkest Hour

There is a very nice speech by Elder Eyring on lds.org, delivered only days ago at the Mountain Meadows Massacre commemoration. In my opinion, it succeeds beautifully; he acknowledges guilt to the extent that it exists, but more importantly, he implores that we heal from this event. While the scars run deep due to mutual mistrust, I agree. Acknowledging the faults, even the crimes of select leaders, does not mean that we must abandon our testimonies of Christ, Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, or the Church--as much as our naysaying friends might say otherwise.

J. Reuben Clark's Legacy

Yesterday, as I was attending my U.S. foreign policy class, I had the most delightful surprise. When you can find a professor of history at the University of Kentucky lauding the efforts of J. Reuben Clark, you know that at least one Mormon in the world has made a splash, has refused to hide his light under a bushel. Some background...

Since the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, the United States has taken a serious interest in maintaining its influence throughout the Western Hemisphere. In the early 20th century, Wilson sent raiding expeditions into Northern Mexico to capture Pancho Villa. Wilson also intervened in the elections of Dominican Republic and Haiti, threatening to impose democracy unless they complied. The United States pursued an even more aggressive policy in Nicaragua, where U.S marines were stationed in order to keep revolutionary governments out of power. No less than 5 presidents--from Taft to Franklin D. Roosevelt--supported or at least were apathetic about the occupation. By Herbert Hoover's time, the question had begun to loom large on the American psyche--why are we in Nicaragua? Universities, intellectuals, and pundits debated the question; prospects were glum for US interests in their "sphere of influence."

Enter J. Reuben Clark, once ambassador to Mexico and later Calvin Coolidge's Undersecretary of State. In December 1928, months before Hoover would take office, Clark maintained that the Monroe Doctrine and more specifically the Roosevelt Corollary (Theodore Roosevelt's doctrine that the US could intervene in the internal affairs of Western Hemisphere--basically, think the Monroe Doctrine but with soldiers to enforce it) could not be used to justify military intervention in the affairs of Latin America. While this memo was kept quiet initially, it eventually was leaked into a government publication in the 1930. Everyone in the administration repudiated it as unofficial musings--including Clark himself--but public opinion had essentially cornered the nation. Soon thereafter, Roosevelt withdrew the troops from Nicaragua and thus began the "Good Neighbor Policy" in Latin America-U.S. relations. The United States would treat Latin America as a good neighbor would--lend them goods, invest in them and avoid military intervention all the while.

Historians have debated the significance of the Clark Memorandum, questioning whether it was the cause of this shift in policy or if it simply marked the culmination of already improved relations between the U.S. and its hemispheric neighbors. Whatever the case, the Clark Memorandum demonstrates a tremendous accomplishment of a fellow Latter Day Saint, one that, at the very least, articulated (even if he did not actually help instigate) changes in U.S. imperial policy that can be counted as a humanitarian feat (a rare occurence in U.S.-Latin American relations).

Truth and Ambiguity--Two Complementary Principles

Examine with me the nature of the gospel milieu in which we live. Undeniably, the human condition is fraught with ambiguity. Things are seldom as they ought to be and folks (at least folks I know) almost never receive what they deserve--either for better or worse. Latter Day Saints have tilled this doctrinal soil well; tomes upon tomes spill much ink on how to reconcile the reality of suffering evil with the reality of God. Since there are certainly no perfect answers available to us in mortality (Jesus asked these kinds of questions in his moment of greatest anguish--"Why hast thou forsaken me?"), I would be reticent to present definitive answers when posed with these more probing questions. Granted, there is something to be said--in a beautifully paradoxical way--for the possibility that Christ's Atonement helps to heal us from the ambiguity of the questions he himself could not answer. But if truth one coherent whole, seamless and without contour, then how can one accept the existence of real and penetrating inconsistencies within our experiences?

Elder Bruce C. Hafen, Elder Neal A. Maxwell and (couldn't help it) G.K. Chesterton offer us some probing "answers" (if I dare use the term--perhaps "musings" might be more appropriate on these questions. In what I would call a landmark BYU devotional talk for its candor and directness ("Love is Not Blind: Some Thoughts for College on Ambiguity and Faith"), Elder Hafen tackles head-on the problem of ambiguity in mortality and even in our church experience. The gospel itself, Hafen maintains, is not the topic of our discussion, for its teachings are "potent, clear, and unambiguous." However, even the scriptures themselves offer cases of irony and out-of-placeness that force us to take a second look. The example of Nephi killing Laban is classic. Yes, I have heard the "when God commands it, all holds are off" argument and there is much merit to it. Yes, I am familiar with the argument that Nephi's action was consistent with a nuanced version of the Mosaic Law--with "thou shalt not kill" being a more qualified statement than we recognize. But the incident still gives us pause, could that rationale be used in other, less noble situations? Hafen points to the woman taken in adultery; was she not guilty? Yes, we know all about mercy and justice, but this method of application is not always how we have seen it in action. Why did Jesus let her free when we look so scoldingly upon such behavior? There is a reason, Elder Hafen maintains: There is indeed a principle of justice, but there is also a principle of mercy. At times these two correct principles collide with each other as the unifying higher principle of the Atonement does its work. Even though God has given us correct principles by which we are to govern ourselves, it is not always easy to apply them to particular situations in our lives."

Elder Maxwell has stated it even more directly: "Are there times when correct principles seem almost to be competing? Yes! The narrowness of the straight and narrow way involves achieving a balance between tugging yet correct principles. Usually we cite the balancing of justice and mercy. But meekness and judgment likewise qualify as needing balanced interplay. Gospel principles are not opposites at all, yet they do require the unequalled synchronization of the Spirit. Balance on the straight and narrow path is crucial." Correctness of principle seems to almost necessitate ambiguity. If it's an easy answer, according to Hafen and Maxwell, it is probably not a very worthwhile one.

Finally, given G.K. Chesterton's direct literary influence on both Elder Maxwell and Elder Hafen (Maxwell cites Chesterton more--if barely so--than he cites C.S. Lewis and the title of Elder Hafen's talk was inspired by Chesterton), a quotation by G.K. Chesterton would be fitting. Chesterton thought much on the nature on insanity; what made the modern world, on balance, stark raving mad (as Chesterton believed it to be). Moderns had lost their sense of mystery, Chesterton argued. They used "reason without root, reason in the void" (or we might say, in a vacuum). The ordinary Christian (and the sane one), in unknowingly allowed for a healthy dose of mysticism to color his world. "As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity." Faced with mere mortality, a man's worldview could not help but groan under the burden of meaninglessness. But when a man allowed the unknown to enter, when he "permitted the twilight." While he left himself "free to doubt the gods," he was also quite willing and able to believe in them." And significantly, Chesterton argued, he "cared for truth more than he cared for consistency...His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that." Truth is not monolithic (later, Chesterton would imply that it was, thus holding true to his overall paradigm--though even this would be reconcilable to his original position).

A touch philosophical, it's true. But as one author noted, if we cannot agree on how we view the world, how can we ever agree on how to run society?

Hillary Clinton adopts a southern drawl

Probably a nice lady and all, but come on, this is a little freaky.

'08 Election Unspun

Most of you who know me might agree with this simple statement: Russell Stevenson is a political wonk. To a degree, I cannot deny it, but I also cannot deny that I like to listen to public radio--something I don't exactly volunteer. Hey, we all have our little skeletons in the closet...

But for those who think that politics is simply a conflation of rhetoric, sound bites, and the ever-endearing art of the gaffe, I beg to differ. These website--FactCheckED.org and FactCheck.org, go a long way toward helping to realize how all candidates--all candidates--have delivered misinformation in their campaign. Every claim made by every candidate is traced to the source--whether it came from a think tank, a government document, or from the chili Fred Thompson (or any other candidate) ate last night. FactCheckED.org is especially useful for those who want to get a feel for basic economic terms that the candidates throw around. We can then decide for ourselves if a candidate's promise really is in our best interest.

To use the hackneyed cliche, knowledge is power and as Ralph Nader once noted (whom I consider to be generally unfit for any public office--but hey, he's not exempt from having good ideas): in our government, our representatives are speaking for us. When they make false claims that go unchecked, we too are allowing false information to used in our, "the people's" name. Being apathetic about politics would be like giving a complete stranger whose made a career out of getting the power of attorney, only for them to purchase a beach house in California. In such circumstances we shouldn't be ranting about the corruption of government; it was you who gave them power of attorney.

If we don't hold our leaders to account for what they say, then we are wrong to cry foul when they speak untruths. As one commentator on C.S. Lewis noted: it's like the man who plays the shell game at the carnival. Saying that we've been cheated when we play a cheater's game demonstrates generally means that we need to be taught a lesson.

FactCheck is one tool we can use in freeing ourselves from the cheater's game of sound bite politics. They are equal opportunity factcheckers--no party or candidate is exempt. Do enjoy, and remember, the point here is to empower, not disillusion.

And by the way, did anyone see the YouTube clip with Miss Teen America rambling about Iraq, South Africa, and people in America not owning maps? My heart goes out to her (when you're not used to being under the spotlight, you can say some funny things), but wow...