A Mormon President? God Forbid!

I will never vote for a Mormon as President of the United States of America? Is that bigotry? Maybe. Before you jump to that conclusion, however, let me explain why I am disinclined to cast my lot for a Mormon to fill the position of chief executive of the United States. My view is that a certain degree of intelligence and the persistent application of one's intellect to questions of importance is absolutely necessary in a President. It is exactly this kind of rigorous application of critical thinking that is absent from the Mormon mind.
To be a Mormon one must either be intellectually sub-standard or must, one way or another, exempt one's faith from critical examination. How else can one believe the absurdities of the kind anyone can discover upon even a shallow investigation into Mormonism? An intelligent Mormon must either compartmentalize his Mormonism into a thinking-free zone or adhere to Mormonism for purely social and utilitarian reasons (family values, positive community, business connections, etc.). The latter is a shallow religiosity uninterested in truth and unworthy of an honorable person's adherence.
Would I vote for an adherent of any religion other than my own to be President of the United States? Yes. Although I differ strongly with other truth claims, I can see how rational people can reasonably adhere to them and retain their honor. A Buddhist, Taoist, even an atheist could get my vote if the candidate's political positions were akin to my own. No Mormon, satanist, Marxist (it is a religion, you know), Shintoist, Wiccan, polytheist (Mormons are henotheists, a subset of polytheism), or Muslim will ever get my support in a run for the highest office in this land because the religion to which they adhere are all either blatantly irrational or doctrinally sinister or both. If that is bigotry, then I am a bigot.

Lies We Tell Ourselves

Some truths are too dangerous. The consequences of confronting them head-on would be too painful to us or others. So we soften the blow, hedge on the truth, use euphemisms and useful "half-truths." Sometimes we so want to avoid the truth that we convince even ourselves the pseudo-truth really is the truth.
The most common and dangerous example of this today is the way we speak about Islam and the problem it poses. We make up terms like Islamo-fascism, radical Islam, jihadism, Islamic terrorism, etc. Such terms stand in for a much simpler and direct term: Islam, and obscure the truth of our dilemma. The brutality in the daily news committed by Muslims is not some new phenomenon, some modern aberration due to an admixture of "peaceful Islam" and fascist ideology. We might as well call all dictatorial regimes of human history "fascist" if the term is that elastic. Islam existed long before fascist ideology and owes nothing to it. Its cruelties are its own.
We say "radical Islam" or "Islamic terrorism" because we want to think the inhumanities we see Muslims commit are aberrations. True, most Muslims will not commit such acts themselves (though I daresay a majority support such behavior, if only by their silence). But this is only true because most human beings want to go peacefully about their lives. It is only those few truly committed Muslims who perpetrate atrocities. If we are to put an adjective on this proportionally small segment of Muslims, we should call them orthodox or original or authentic or devout Muslims.
Some object that the history of Christian Europe is filled with violence, so Islam should not be singled out. Though true as a statement, its implications are not. First, though Christian Europe has its dark periods in history, they are often overstated by less than objective anti-papists (among which I may be counted) and modern secularists. The infamous Crusades, though they degenerated into plunder, were a response to centuries of violent Islamic advances into previously Christian territories and were primarily intended to liberate the Holy Land so that Christian pilgrims could visit sites sacred to Christendom without being waylaid by Muslims. Christian Europe never matched either the degree or volume of horrors achieved in the history of Islam. Second, humans universally wage unjust wars and commit atrocities. We are fallen. That is the human condition. The difference is that in the case of Christian Europe, such evils were perpetrated despite the teachings of Christianity whereas similar (actually much worse) evils were (and still are) perpetrated by Muslims because of, not in spite of, the teachings of Islam. Even a cursory reading of the Qur'an makes that plain. In any case, one evil is not excused by pointing to another evil.
"Islam needs to go through a reformation. Christianity was violent, too, until the Reformation." No matter how often I hear that I can't seem to keep from cringing. The Reformation was a return to first principles, to a more original Christianity. Devout Christians tend toward loving-kindness, peace, and selflessness. Devout Muslims tend toward hatred and violence toward infidels. Christian martyrs gave their lives willingly as a testimony to the love Jesus has for even those who kill his messengers. Muslim martyrs selfishly died trying to kill as many of infidels as possible to merit entry into a Paradise of carnal and purile pleasures. The last thing we want the Muslim world to do is go back to a more original Islam. In fact, that is what we may be seeing now. The departure from true Islam was the lull from which Islam may now be "reforming".
I understand the politics of avoiding labeling Islam as inherently violent. Why arouse the ire of the majority of peaceful Muslims by offending them and putting them of the defensive? Better to try to convince the Muslim world that they can be peaceful and still be good Muslims. Maybe so in the short-term, but the problem is intractable. The foundational writings of Islam can't be universally modified or suppressed and they are the source of the "radicalism" we descry. And since terrorism is asymmetrical warfare requiring relatively few participants to achieve large results, we will be eternally threatened by a portion of the Muslim population devout enough to actually adhere to the teachings of Islam as given in these texts.
If we are to withstand the revived expansionist Islam, we must be truthful to ourselves. We are not confronted with an aberrant, deviant, mutated, or hijacked form of an otherwise peaceful Islam. Drop "Islamo-fascist" and the like. The word we are all trying so hard to avoid is simply Islam.

Rah! Rah! Sis-boom-bah! Israel get that Hezbollah! Yaaay Team!

So Israel unilaterally withdraws from the Gaza strip. The thanks they get: kidnappings and rockets. So Israel was provoked and is now busy kicking terrorist ass. But wait! Europe squeals "Disproportionate response! Disproportionate response!" What do we want, a fair fight with terrorist barbarians?! Slow escalation just allows the enemy to catch its balance, adjust and adapt, thus prolonging the conflict. The more disproportionate the good guys attack is on the bad guys the better. "Disproportionate response"? Hell yes! Go Israel! Go!

Nominalism

Is anyone really what they claim to be any more? We have communists (literally) claiming to be "greens", liberals (i.e. socialists) claiming to be "progressives" or "moderates", and moderates claiming to be conservatives. What in the world are conservatives supposed to call themselves? Others, of course, call them radicals. I, being a Libertarian, am used to being defined out of the political spectrum. But at least I have a label that accurately applies. We live in a world of RINOs and DINOs. With the superficial press and generations of government schooled masses lacking any real ability to think critically, what one calls himself is more important than what one actually is. Labels are generally accepted as descriptive, more or less, of the actual article. We have Christians, even clergy, who deny the fundamental tenets of the faith to which they supposedly adhere, yet they have no qualms about continuing to called them selves by the label whose definition they no longer (if ever) fit. As with most problems, the solution is simple, but difficult. The solution is too difficult in fact to be applied by enough of the population to make any difference: ignore labels and examine substance. But, hey, I'm a dreamer.

Suckers for Jesus

Let me first say that I am a Christian. Sadly, I must go on to descry the utter naivete of the conservative Christian community in America that has supported George W. Bush despite a left-leaning agenda merely because he speaks in superficially Christian terms. I knew Bush was a liberal in conservative clothing long before he became president. His term of preference when running for his first term made his ideology clear: "compassionate conservatism". This of course implies that standard conservatism is somehow lacking in compassion and needs to be mitigated by "compassionate" governmental programs. Pseudo-conservative ideology mixed with religious language was used as a marketing tactic and it worked and continues to work. Is Bush a Christian? I don't know. I have my doubts about anyone who was (is?) a member of a secretive society (a no-no for a Christian). And his description of Jesus as a "philosopher" leaves one wondering what his Christology actually is. But his spiritual state aside, in what way is he "conservative"? Okay, he is for cutting taxation, I'll give you that, but is that necessarily conservative when combined with fiscal abandon? The man has never seen a spending bill he didn't like. He is a war-hawk, but the idea that being hawkish is conservative is a slander on conservatives. Conservatism is strong on national defense, not enthusiastic about war. Regarding national defense I think Bush has had a mixed record at best. Does anyone really think our ports or borders are secure? Taking the fight to the terrorists is a good idea, but trying to finesse a war rather than overwhelming the enemy is not a sign of strength in my view. On spending Bush is liberal. On domestic policy he is liberal. On growth of government he is liberal. On immigration he is liberal. In many ways he is liberal in his foreign policy. So why do conservative Christians support Bush? Merely because they think he is one of them and they think that only because he makes references to prayer, god, faith, etc. Whatever happened to discernment?

Outbred

I have been suffering from melancholy for some time now. I know the cause and I know there is no cure other than fatalistic acceptance of the distressing vision that has haunted me of late: that western civilization generally and its highest expression, the United States of America, are historical aberrations destined to be subsumed beneath the tide of the barbaric cult of statism that marks most of man's history. In previous years I had not considered that I might live to see the end of the American Idea. It has been scarred and obscured, surely, but there was always hope for its survival, even eventual victory. Lately, however, sheer demographic realities have brought me close to concluding that the last echo of the shot heard around the world would reverberate within my lifetime.

The West has been cursed with material prosperity which reduces the economic necessity of large families, makes contraception more readily available, and increases the tendency of a society to selfishness and hedonism. Child-rearing becomes an obstacle to self-indulgence easily avoided by contraception or short-circuited by abortion. All of this results in a reduction in birth rates. The West will be submerged under an irresistible demographic tidal wave. This would not, in itself, be a problem if it were not for one vital truth: heredity is the single most determining factor in the perpetuation of culture, and culture matters. By "culture" I do not mean language, or esthetics (dress, art, music, etc.). I mean the deep foundational values and world view held consciously or (more often) unconsciously by a society. It is the "deep culture" of the West generally and its pinnacle expression, the American deep culture, that is destined to be extinguished by sheer force of overwhelming numbers.

When the American deep culture, already marred and distorted by ideas contrary to its basic premise, finally lapses into the footnotes of history, with it will pass the ideals of inherent individual rights and limited, subservient government. The deviation from the norm of despotism will be leveled out. Mankind will return to varying degrees and statism. The power of the state will no more be in question, merely the length of the chain by which the individual is bound.