Mormons are a conservative lot and, for a lot of reasons, they’re a natural fit for the Republican Party. We shouldn’t forget, though, that the most powerful Mormon in the country is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat. When it comes to politics, I don’t like to critique people’s religious beliefs. Ask me what I think of a particular religion in a private setting and I’ll tell you, but I don’t want to try to score political points by running down someone’s private faith. I understand that a lot of Democrats (e.g., some in the gay community) feel like the Mormons are trying to oppress them and are very willing to fight back with tough language. I sympathize. I do. But even Democrats who fight back against Mormons do so with mockery and snark, not with incitement to fear. Even when Howie Klein, in the above cited piece, cites some history to show that the Mormons have been interested in winning the White House ever since Joseph Smith ran for the White House, he doesn’t say “egads, the Mormons are all out to get you and turn this country into a theocracy.” Yeah, Joseph Smith wanted to do that, but that doesn’t mean that Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman have the same intention. Nor does it mean that Harry Reid will switch parties to support a fellow Mormon’s presidential campaign.
But, you know, we could make that argument. We could treat Mormons exactly the way that the Republicans treat Muslims. We could forget all about Mitt Romney’s record and his ever-changing positions on the issues, and we could demonize his religion. We could pick it apart and make it seem silly. We could make it seem incredibly sinister. The whole left-leaning media world could get on board to one degree or another in pushing that narrative. We could even add in a little hysteria to mirror the right’s hysteria about Latino immigration. We could point out that Mormons are outbreeding the rest of us and they’ll only need a couple more centuries to become the majority in this country.
We could do these things, but we don’t, and we won’t. And that’s because we actually believe in a few things that are more important than winning. We won’t just say anything that can instill fear in people in order to manipulate them. We won’t make naked appeals to tribal/racial/sectarian feelings. We won’t step all over the spirit of the First Amendment and Article VI, paragraph 3 of the Constitution.
Likewise, we won’t try to win elections by making it harder for targeted Republican groups to vote. I could go on at length about the things the Left won’t do, but could do, to win elections. It can be frustrating to support a party that often fights with one hand tied behind its back while the other side is kicking us in the crotch, but I’ll take the frustration over the morally bankrupt tactics of the other side.
You could do the same for any religion when it comes right down to it. The only reason why certain faiths like Mormonism or Scientology seem especially vulnerable to ridicule is that they’re so far out of the mainstream that most people don’t have the lifelong familiarity with their core teachings.
So when you hear, for instance, that Mormons believe you go to Planet Kolob with all your wives when you die, it sounds utterly ridiculous. But if you examine the Christian religion, even Magic Mormon Underwear isn’t really any sillier than some of the beliefs that many of us grew up with. Or if you don’t like the term “sillier,” you can say “less plausible.”
So we’ve elected a black man to the White House. Personally I hope someday we can elect somebody who doesn’t profess any institutional religion, but chances are we’ll have to elect a Mormon or two before that ever happens.
Scientology is in a league of its own, and I don’t mean in silliness factor. It has a litany of criminal activities under its belt including fraud, illegal wiretapping, and theft; it targets “enemies” using the Fair Game strategy, and it keeps its members away from people who aren’t Scientologists.
No, Scientology is not “just another silly religion.” I consider it dangerous and outright criminal.
I’d be surprised if you didn’t understand what I was getting at. Ask any random person off the internet what the two craziest religions they know of are, and chances are very good that Scientology is going to be one of the answers.
As far as criminal activity goes, they may be better at it than other denominations, but they’re not the first to break into that territory and they sure won’t be the last. Nor are they alone.
That’s one reason why it’s not cool to single out one religion to bash for political advantage.
Another is that politicians are supposed to represent all their constituents, not run them down and marginalize them.
In the past, we did elect people who didn’t profess any institutional religion. Abraham Lincoln was one such person. And I think there were many more in the early decades of this country.
Zealots have chipped away at the freedom of and from religion to the point where we now have “faith based charity,” taxpayers paying for parochial school bus transportation, intrusion of religion into health care, the bedroom, etc. And in today’s atmosphere, no candidate would dare express him/herself honestly on religion.
Lincoln had a beard, too.
True enough
Of course, most men had a beard then, too. Or at least a mustache and/or sideburns.
Yeah, but how many men sported an indented skull due to an adolescent mule-kicking incident?
Um, I thought it had to do with the total lack of a Mormon Jihad.
Not with what a bunch of sweet folks we are.
But, hey, you could be right.
Is there Latino jihad?
Why, no.
And neither is a war on Latinos.
Did you want one?
Or just to pretend that there is one?
Eh? Seems like instilling fear of Republicans has been a major undertaking the last few years. It’s not baseless so maybe it’s not manipulative, but it’s using fear to generate a political outcome to your liking.
With all due respect, I don’t think our side could demonize Mormons in an effective way. Jesus Christ, even in this environment we can’t even manage to demonize the stinking rich.
You’re right, but that’s also because we don’t have it in us. Which is a good thing.
“We won’t step all over the spirit of the First Amendment”
No, but we WILL step all over Amendments 4-7 while pointing at those horrible republicans who would do no differently.
There’s no explicit “war” on Mormons, however what there obviously is (due to typical conservative bigotry) is a great deal of discomfort with the Mormon “religion”. That’s why Romney can’t achieve stronger dominance within the GOP field of candidates– despite how thoroughly unelectable and bogus most of those candidates are.
Romney lost to Huckabee the last go around in Iowa; there’s no reason to believe he’ll fare better this time. He’s planning on beating whomever the GOP flavor-of-the-month candidate (Gingrich?) is in the other early primaries, and maybe he will.
But that’s a big maybe, IMHO. When it comes to actually voting for one candidate or the other, Romney is hamstrung due to voter’s opinion of his “religion”.
BTW, early in the history of the Mormon church, there was a war waged against it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Smith
“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36)
Thanks for reminding me why the good guys have less apparent freedom of action than the bad guys, and why it’s better that way.
While I agree that I will take the moral high ground of not doing anything to win, the seeming inability of the Democratic party to actually stand up to the GOP on just about everything makes it very hard to actually trust that they will ever do the right thing. Take the NDAA. Supposedly it only codifies existing law. But why do we need it if is existing law? And take the latest news that the Dems have dropped the millionaire surtax and will negotiate something else probably to benefit the 1% more than everyone else. Why is there no spine? The government shutdown idea as appalling as it is sounds way better than another capitulation. I not only worry about this country’s future, I worry that a majority of people like me who engaged for the first time and worked to get Obama elected will just say “Whatever, he doesn’t standup to the GOP ever so he doesn’t care about changing this country so I’m not voting.”
Most Mormons in America are WHITE PEOPLE.
erego, no war.
if most MORMONS had melanin in their skin…you bet your ass there would be a war on them.
It’s not just because it’s morally wrong. We CAN’T win that way. Divide and rule is a strategy to protect narrow interests and consolidate power. If your goal is more widely shared power and prosperity you have to organize around the broad interests that the vast majority – and in many cases, all people – share in common. To do otherwise only plays into the plutocrats hands. See Obama, Barack.
I think that is nearer to the heart of the matter. Mormonism is easy to mock because of so many controversies in its past and apparent fraudulent claims of its founder. But the Dem strengths come more from people power and coalitions while Repubs value authoritarian structures more. We can’t grow our coalitions without finding wide areas of common ground.
I’ve stayed away from the Cult Question because, well, they’re all cults. They all bow down to the same damned dog and, as i have noted elsewhere, pragmatically, if we were truly secular and adhering to the Article VI paragraph III No Religious Test clause we would elect only atheists.
But Romney’s cult, I know more about than I care to. Folks, you just gotta’ stop and think about this for a minute: for all of its weirdness – from the whole `Jesus’ visited `America’ and left a gospel behind on golden plates that can only be translated by gazing at translucent blue stones in a hat and the steal your soul after you die to make you their slave on another planet to having sex with children – Mormonism is not nor ever has been a friend of `America’. A hundred years ago Mormons were required to take a Temple oath to destroy the United States and it’s government. Romney’s father took it. His polygamist grandfather took it.
Ever heard of the Mormon “Book of Abraham”. We stumbled over it while my daughter worked on her hieroglyphics project for school.
Check it out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Abraham
Either 200 years of Egyptology is completely wrong or Joseph Smith was a con artist.