Friday 3 June 2011

A Mormon President?

Sharron Angle's ties to Scientology, Christine O'Donnell's dabbling in witchcraft, and Rand Paul's Aqua Buddha, cheered on by the Moonie-founded, and until recently Moonie-owned, Washington Times. Middle America, this is not. Any more than are the tenets of Mormonism. Still, at least it is difficult to see how a President's being a Mormon would make much, if any difference, to policy.

Whereas any belief in “al-Qaeda”, or in any conceivable connection between the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and the Shia-persecuting “Taliban”, or in “the global terrorist network”, or in “Taliban” distinct from the Pashtun as a whole, or in any connection between Afghanistan and 9/11, or in any connection between Iraq and 9/11, or in WMD in Iraq, or in such WMD as a threat to any Western country even if they had existed, or in an Iranian nuclear weapons programme, or in such a programme as a threat to any Western country even if it existed, has always put those who held it on exactly the same level as birthers, or as truthers, or as those who liken Obama to Hitler, or as those who likened Bush to Hitler, and as the followers of Lyndon LaRouche.

All exactly as sane as belief in the Book of Mormon, complete with its quotations from Shakespeare because Joseph Smith thought that they were from the Bible. But all an awful lot more dangerous in practice.

2 comments:

  1. They are totally pro-life and these days strong activists for traditional marriage, while also having a strong line on social justice and a record of forcing both parties to scale down MX missile deployment in Utah so far that it had to be abandoned in the end.

    The Tea Party has a real problem with them, getting rid of Bob Bennett the former LDS military chaplain married into a leading Mormon family, and now going after Orrin Hatch the Mormon bishop.

    Romney does not live up to all of this but there is potential. As you say, sooner a Mormon than those whose out of the mainstream beliefs caused the wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and wherever is next on the list.

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  2. Anon is right, but Romney is just a Republican who happens to be a Mormon. Not realy pro-life. Quite open to gay marriage or something close enough to it.

    Hopeless on social justice, early Mormons were abolitionists from the start, it's in the Book of Mormon, and they were persecuted as much for their holy communism as their polygamy. Hopeless on peace, among other things he wants to encircle Russia with enemies bearing US nukes.

    If a serious Mormon ever runs, it will be as a Democrat.

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