Conservative Donnybrook

I guess today I am officially disgusted by the entire slate of candidates we have been offered. Let us catalog the faults in order:

1) Rudy Giuliani: He is not conservative. He holds positions in favor of gun control, abortion, and illegal immigration. He is a taxer and spender. However, he will be harsh will Muslims and anyone else who poses a threat to America. That appears to be his only redeeming quality, his tough stance against terrorists. But, I ask, ,which candidate loves terrorists?

2) Mike Huckabee: Mike appears to be a continuation of the so-called Compassionate Conservative movement. If anything, the last 8 years have taught us that that means more out-of-control spending. On virtually every issue, Huckabee is down-the-line conservative, except he cannot be trusted to hold the line on spending. And, this is, in my opinion, his Achilles heel. Continue Reading »

Mitt Romney gave what many are calling a stirring speech yesterday. Many are erroneously labeling it as the speech wherein he defended his Mormonism. This is not accurate. What Romney’s address was is a defense of the civic religion of the United States of America, which is to say that it was a defense of the precept of limited latitudinarianism.

The thirteen colonies along the Eastern seaboard had a significant distribution of Quakers, Presbyterians, Congregationalist Calvinists, Anglicans, Catholics, Anabaptists, and various dissenters. There was no large Jewish contingent. There was no “Mohammedan” enclave. There were, for that matter, no Mormons, seeing as how that peculiar bunch of people hadn’t got around to being thought up yet. It would be some 50 years after the initial foment and focusing of colonial energies that a kid from a sometimes-Methodist Episcopalian, sometimes-Presbyterian mother would allegedly receive his vision leading him on a quest under the guidance of an angelic being named Moroni. Said quest would eventually lead to his “discovery” of golden plates bearing “reformed Egyptian” hieroglyphics which only he, Joseph Smith, could translate into what is now recognized as the first of several versions of the Book of Mormon. This work bears the marks of someone educated with the King James Version of the Bible, and indeed some passages are almost verbatim from the KJV. Mormonism started in a period of religious fervor and was, apparently, originally a monotheistic, even Trinitarian Christian sect. I am told that the B of M does not contain a single reference to any polytheistic notions. Only after its initial period did Smith begin to develop later Mormon distinctives such as polytheism, progression from humanity to deity, marriage for time and eternity, etc. Continue Reading »