Article VI Blog

Yesterday at Buzzfeed, McKay Coppins, a Mormon “embedded” with the Romney campaign, wrote a retrospective of his view of the issue.  I have largely been disappointed in Coppins coverage of the campaign.  He seemed more interested in making the Mormon issue an issue, presumably so he could uniquely “shine,” than in genuinely reporting on the campaign.  That trend continues in this piece.

There was one part that I found very interesting:

This was how much of the political class was treating Romney’s religion at the start of 2012: too awkward to discuss in an open forum, yet too tantalizing to ignore altogether.

That lends credence to a theory I am working on about the election just passed.  That is that in 2008 the issue was rendered “too awkward to discuss,” but that it remained an issue in the minds of many during this cycle.  I would draw an analogy to racism in the deep South.  Once segregation was outlawed and racist utterances were rendered politically incorrect, it was not discussed publicly in the South.  But it lived, and still does to some much lesser extent, in dinner parties and bridge clubs.  We do not have data, and likely cannot get since it is “too awkward to discuss,” whether this was an unspoken issue this election.

Maybe the tribalism I worried about yesterday is really coming to pass.  Ann Coulter certainly seems to think so.  The problem with Coulter’s piece and other like it is that it fuels a sort of lash-back tribalism that is not at all helpful.  The American ideal is NOT that “Demography is Destiny,” but that we can change our demographics.  That is to say, things like skin color that cannot change do not matter, but that people are free to move between  economic and social classes thus rendering demographics a measure of societal change, but not a measure of destiny.

There is no doubt in my mind that this election was a move towards tribalism and away from the American ideal.  The exit polling data seems to bear that out.  Whether Mormonism fit into that picture or not is not known.  But it is not a pretty picture, regardless.

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Some say, “No big deal.“  I disagree.  Clearly Romney’s Mormonism was not a big deal to the Evangelicals that voted, but was it an “energizer” to the left as it was to the hardcore Evangelicals in Iowa in 2008 and did it have an suppressive effect in Evangelical turnout generally?  Turnout was way down in an election that should have had high conservative turnout.  I keep noting similarities between this general and Iowa 2008:

We’ve heard very little about what went wrong on the record from top-level campaign staff. Today Romney’s political director Rich Beeson gave a very perplexing interview to National Review’s Katrina Trinko. He told Trinko,

“We hit the numbers we needed to hit. Our ground game turned out the people it needed to turnout. They just turned out more. They turned out 18 to 29 [year olds] at a higher level. They turned out African-Americans at a higher level. They turned out Hispanics at a higher level.”

That sounds remarkably like what we heard after Iowa 2008, just different demographics.  I have seen no data on religion in this mix – it would be interesting.

Is the Evangelical Right now dead?  Is it now up to Catholics?  We concluded long ago that the Catholics hod now taken the lead in the Evangelical/Catholic coalition.  But I think there is a bigger rethink than just demographics in order when it comes to the religious approach to all of this.  There are some good ideas in this Powerline post, but it is still demographic/issue focused.  There are also some good thoughts in the messaging focused Breitbart offering.  But what I am talking about is something much deeper than issues, demographics, or messaging.  I think Romney actually lead the way on this.

Let’s begin with this:

The back cover of the advance reading copy says that “the ‘Age of the Martyrs’ is a fiction” and that “these stories were exaggerated, invented, and forged, often centuries later, in order to fight heresy, inspire the faithful, and fund churches.”

The book’s author is a professor of New Testament and early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame.

You see, there is some deep sickness even in the church and its institutions.  Then I turn to a favorite Catholic blogger, The Anchoress:

What we’re seeing with the Petraeus sexcapades is a classic magician’s misdirection. Two months past the attack on Benghazi, which resulted in the death of an American Ambassador and three others — an attack we are told the White House watched while ordering no response; an attack the mainstream media helpfully blacked-out, at first, then allowed to be spun — we are now being served The Prestige, where all of reality is being turned on its head, and the audience isn’t even sure what it’s seeing, so it simply becomes giddy, and content to be led.

I agree, and I wonder if there is more being covered up than simply Benghazi.  With reports of precincts with 100% of the votes cast for Obama and others with turnout in excess of 100% one can see where a major misdirection might be needed for the administration.  But the fact that the public is taking the bait is where I see the real issue.

So what is the approach I see going forward that Romney lead the way on?  Simple – goodness and character.  No one that matters, left or right, denies the essential decency, goodness and outstanding character of the man.  The humility born of such prevented Romney from making an issue of it – but we look around and we see a church denying its own founding principles and a nation enthralled by sex over substance.

When it is about issues and demographics people tend to value winning the issue over matters of character.  Presidents don’t decide issues, legislatures and courts do.  We should, as a nation, be rising above demographics, and yet we are sinking into them like tribes in some very unsavory parts of the world.  I have witnessed first hand tribalism in some of its grossest forms.  It makes the segregation of the South that I witnessed in my youth look quite decent.

We need leadership now that does not decide issues but that models character.  Nobody really knows what an administration is going to face and any agenda they may proclaim will likely be overcome by events.   Presidents react far more than the act.  In point of fact, my greatest hope for the next four years lies in the fact that events are likely to force this administration to set its agenda aside.  He is likely to make bad decision about those events, but at least they will present us with an opportunity to discuss and will take him off what we know he wants to do that will be bad.

In such a model it is character and ability that matter, not issues and demographics.  Had we succeeded in making this election about those things we would have won going away.  To some extent we have to overcome our own humility on these matters.  More, when appropriate, we have to be willing to make the charge about a lack thereof in our opponents.  No one of character likes to play that rough – but do we have a choice?

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Big Question:

Were Christians winners or losers in the election or somewhere in between?  Here’s how we voted.

Little Question:

What if less than half a million people showed up or voted differently?  Romney would have won.  My father always said “What if” questions were a waste of time.  But then again, Dad never read comics.

Huge Question:

DO YOU REMEMBER when school cafeterias and restaurants around the nation served fish on Friday because our Catholic friends did not eat meat?  Apparently that change in practice created a void:

The Los Angeles City Council has declared every Monday to be a so-called ‘meatless Monday,’ and is urging all residents to participate in the weekly day of vegetarianism.

NBC Los Angeles reports that with the vote Los Angeles has become the largest city to embrace the Meatless Monday campaign, a nonprofit with the goal of cutting down on meat consumption for health and environmental reasons.

Neither city officials nor law enforcement will be allowed to force residents to not eat meat, The Los Angeles Daily News reports. Rather, the resolution is meant to encourage residents to not eat meat once a week in the hopes of starting a city-wide trend.

Somehow I think this goes back to the first question this post asked.  We HAVE to be engaged in politics and government because if we are not the alternatives will be.

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I find myself torn this morning.  USAToday reports:

As the East Coast began to experience the initial flooding from Hurricane Sandy on Monday, Mitt Romney appealed to his supporters to consider donating to the Red Cross and to keep those in the path of the storm in their “hearts and prayers.”

I cannot agree more.  Initial reports, late last night, indicate that the devastation in lower Manhattan may be extraordinarily significant.  The press being the press, I have seen little of elsewhere; they do tend to be a bit New York centric.  Having served clients up and down Manhattan and the Long Island sound, I find myself preoccupied with their welfare.

But the press is also full of reports, articles and punditry on the election and religion.  The beat goes on.  Therefore, I pray hard for the entire eastern seaboard and ask you to join me.  But with that placed firmly in God’s hands I find I must turn to the normal business at hand.

For the second day in a row, we run into an article saying Mormons were socialistic in their founding.  I find this charge leveled now and at Mormons truly odd.  There is a long history of socialist thought in Christianity generally.  (I wonder if a reporter ever read Acts 2?)  I have often marveled at the fact that this “charge” was never leveled at any candidate claiming Christian credentials.  This is not a place where Mormons and normative Christians part company, and yet they seem to want to make a big deal of it right now.  This reveals deep political motivations on one hand and a total misunderstanding of Christianity on the other.

Entire treatises have been written this subject from a theological and sociological perspective.  I cannot begin to unpack it all here.  Let’s try and sum this up simply.  There is a major and important distinction between a community that holds all things commonly on a voluntary basis, driven by religious impulse – that’s charitable – and a society in which the coercive force of government is used to confiscate all things and distribute them in accordance with some perceived hierarchy of need.

And while we are thinking deeply, if you have not seen this creepy apocalyptic pro-Obama ad, you really should check it out.  It is black-and-white, featuring small kinds singing.  Here’s a sample of the lyric:

We’re the children of the future
American through and through
But something happened to our country
And we’re kinda blaming you

We haven’t killed all the polar bears
But it’s not for lack of trying
Big Bird is sacked
The Earth is cracked
And the atmosphere is frying

The ad is frightening both in the power it assigns the presidency and the hope it places in the man it seeks to support for the job.  I have taken a lot of heat from some quarters in the last couple of years becasue I honestly did not believe that Obama could do as much damage as he has.  I thought that the checks and balances of our government would serve to temper his natural inclinations.  It looks at this juncture like the ultimate check – the vote – will do that job – but a lot of amazing stuff has transpired between votes.  We almost don’t remember now, but there was a huge turnover in the administration in the first couple of years.  In retrospect, it was the adults leaving the building.

When Obama was elected, I looked at his appointments and figured that the obviously under-experienced president was surrounding himself with old hands that would temper his unchecked youthful exuberances and the results would not be too extraordinary.  But then the old hands started leaving like rats on a ship going down.  Clearly, this was a guy that would not listen to reason and that you could not work with.

G.K. Cheaterton once said:

When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing — they believe in anything.

I see that maxim so clearly illustrated in this ad.  It really is frightening if you think about it.

Finally, I want to turn briefly to this call for Christians to abstain from voting.  It is an interesting argument, actually couple of arguments.  On the one hand it calls for disengagement from politics if politics has become some sort of idol.  Political idolatry is precisely the sin we see in the ad we just examined.  The answer; however, is not withdrawal from politics, anymore that starvation is the answer if food has become an idol.  One must learn to balance one’s commitment to God with the world in which we live.

The other argument the author advances by quoting Thabiti Anyabwile :

It seems to me that if we really believe the system is broken but we vote anyway, we simply nullify our contention that the system is broken.

I find this to be extraordinarily binary thinking.  God KNEW we were broken, but He did not abandon us, rather he redeemed us.  The system is not functioning well, but is it irredeemable?  I doubt few would claim that.  And its redemption comes not from holding it at arms length, but by diving in and seeking to correct.

I understand the distaste for much of politics, particularly in light of ads like the one we looked at a moment ago.  But the only way to make it tasteful is to get busy.  The best way to start getting busy is to vote next Tuesday.

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As the desperation sets in on the Obama campaign and their supporters, things are, as expected, getting ugly out there.  The anti-Mormon stuff that has always been on the fringes is getting louder, uglier and pushier.  And for the first time we see some major outlet breakthrough.  But before we get to that episode, there is one vitally important thing we have to examine.

An English language Iranian news service “reports” that it was the “Mormon Mafia” inside the CIA, at Romney’s instructions, that are “responsible” for the Benghazi attacks.  We have seen references to a “Mormon Mafia” in and out of the intelligence community before – from the very left American press.  With the appearance of this piece, this meme is much more than simply the crap that floats around in presidential campaigns – it is now a disinformation and propaganda tool of our enemies.  There are two important consequences of this story and their use of the “Mormon Mafia” meme.

The first consequence is that it makes clear that Barack Obama is the candidate of choice for our enemies in Iran.  The people that are about to complete a nuke and that have threatened its use on numerous occasions want Barack Obama as president of the United States.  If that does not make the case for the international weakness of this administration, I don’t know what does.

The second consequence of the appearance of this story from this outlet is that anyone that deals in Mormon conspiracy mongering is in fact aiding and abetting our enemy.  You can support Barack Obama with every ounce of your being and use all the energy at your disposal towards that end, but if you use this tool – the tool of a Mormon conspiracy – you are aiding the nation of Iran in its disinformation campaign.  A nation which has as its official policy the destruction of Israel and the United States.

This latter consequence is something Vanity Fair (that major outlet we mentioned) should have thought about before they published today a piece entitled “When Mormon Go To Washington.“  This bit of “journalism” uses coincidence and innuendo to make what I thought was the long dead case that Romney would be somehow programed by Salt Lake City.  Consider this example:

And in May 2006, with Romney eyeing a bid for the presidency, U.S. News & World Report enthused that the candidate “plans to copy, almost exactly, JFK’s winning approach. Romney says he’ll give a similar address, in which he will pledge allegiance to the Constitution, not the Mormon Church.” However, the conservative weekly had to wait 19 months before it could proclaim that “his long-awaited religion speech impresses even the critics.”

In fact, U.S. News & World Report had conducted an interview with a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, which seemed to prod Romney into making the long-promised speech. Its reporter asked M. Russell Ballard, “Has Mitt Romney sought any suggestions from you, or have you advised him in any way to talk about the church? Have you urged him to give the ‘Kennedy speech’ and talk more directly about his faith?” Apostle Ballard’s reply: “No and no. There’s a real brick wall between the campaign and the church. He’s going to have to make that decision about the ‘Kennedy speech’ all by himself.”

Perhaps it was merely happy coincidence that the speech, “Faith in America,” followed just three weeks later, in Texas.

That is so laughable in its fallacious innuendo that it almost makes me want to cry.  I don’t know what’s worse, calling “US News and World Report” a “conservative” weekly or declaring a coincidence in such sarcastic terms to imply there is no coincidence.  The thing roams the history of Republican Mormons in federal government all the way back to Reed Smoot, but conveniently forgets to mention Harry Reid.

This article is so bad that I do not think it will convince anyone of anything except those that already believe what it contends.  I take that as a good sign.  The pro-Obama forces are feeling so defeated that they are retreating entirely inside their fantasy bubbles, licking each others wounds.  What is truly sad is the wounds are self-inflicted.  What is truly evil is that retreating inside this particular portion of that fantasy bubble aids our enemies.

Nowhere is this retreat more evident, though in a much more benign form, than in the charges of racism in religious guise that are beginning to emerge with greater force than we have previously seen them.  I think it started with reports of a very racists tee-shirt at a Romney/Ryan rally in Ohio.  I am reasonably confident that had campaign officialdom seen the tee shirt, the man would have been asked to remove it and perhaps leave the rally.  These rallies have had 1000′s in attendance of late and not every tee shirt is going to be seen by someone with sufficient authority to act.  That has certainly been the theory that most of us on the right have operated under when we have suffered equally offensive barbs from the isolated few on the left.  But I guess when you are desperate, you push the story and the meme.

That “Religion Dispatches” has managed to push itself into the mid-majors of publication this cycle is admirable.  That it is a left-leaning publication is no secret, and accounts in part for its rapid rise. I find it far less admirable that the resident Mormon there used the occasion of discussing a book about perceptions of Jesus’ race to make it appear the CJCLDS is less than genuine in its turn from its own disreputable racial history – a history that all churches in America share to some extent.

Th source of much of this stuff is the LBGT community.  They seem to forget that the Civil War ended more than 100 years ago and that the nation has bigger issues that the size of the Romney’s garage at home.  (But then this community thinks there is no bigger issue in history than who they want to have sex with.)  In fact, they are so ticked off, it’s not just “Mormons lie,” it’s all religions lie.  (I am sorry, I have to laugh at this last one – poor Joel Belz.)

But back to where we started – as silly as this stuff can get, it has become deadly serious.  Our enemies are using it against us. If you are on the left, you might wantt o consider that the next time you are tempted to take the Mormon shot.

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Team Obama and the left seem to know better than to play the Mormon card, but they sure do seem to want to let us know it is in their hand.

Apparently the pro-Obama, anti-Mormon scripted calls are still going on.  This story keeps rolling and Obama better get it under control.  So far it is background, but it is gaining momentum with new data.  If he publicly acknowledges it, he blows the roof off of it, but he better get it shutdown or it is going to run away on him.

At this point, I take the story as more evidence of his inability to run anything.  Remember in 2008 when his capacity to govern was called into question?  He relied on his management of the campaign as evidence that he could manage a large enterprise.   Well, his administration has proven his inability to operate the government, and it is increasingly looking like he can’t run a campaign either.  The fact that these calls are out there, even as a small story, is evidence of his incapability.

There are several stories out there that seem to exist solely to mention that Romney is a Mormon.

A Reuters story about Romney’s relatives remaining in England was all over yesterday.  I’ll link the Chicago Tribune as one example of at least 20 publications of this story that I saw.  It starts as an entertaining human interest story, bu then it goes all Mormon.  It returns to human interest only after the jump.

Buzzfeed ran a story about Harry Reid that makes it seem like Harry’s comments in re: Romney (Which have been pretty ugly you will recall) is really a struggle inside Mormonism between the left and the right politically:

Reid’s ideological differences with Romney represent deeper fault lines that run through American Mormonism. While the vast majority of U.S. Mormons are politically conservative, the church also contains a small but growing group of progressives, many of whom take defiant delight in parking their Obama bumper-stickered mini-vans in their church parking lots. Reid is a sort of folk hero to these types of liberal Latter-day Saints, and has long used his position to argue that Democrats have an important place in the faith.

That’s just proof Mormons have more in common with orthodox Christianity than most think.  There are a number of prominent Catholic Democrats that have a hard time getting communion in the Roman Catholic Church becasue of their pro-abortion stance, but they are also folk-heroes to liberal Catholics.

And this CNN story is just annoying:

The pastor who delivered a passionate invocation at Paul Ryan’s rally in Rochester, Michigan on Monday evening told CNN earlier this year that the man at the top of the Republican ticket, Mitt Romney, is not a Christian.

Hmmm….  At this point, my reaction is, “So what?”  He probably still thinks that, but Romney is the candidate and conservatives want to win.  He may have preferred someone he considered a Christian for the Republican nominee, but facts being what they are, he is helping the Republicans win.  This story exists for no other reason than to try and divide Republicans.  I have news for these guys, Obama’s cluelessness is a stronger binder than these religious differences are a divider.  Martin Luther sad, “I’d rather be governed by a wise Turk than a stupid Christian.”  For many orthodox Christians that may have Mormon issues, that quote sums up this election in a nutshell.

I thought this piece at PJMedia written by an Australian had a very interesting viewpoint:

To start with, there’s the matter of his faith. To Australians, Mormonism is one of those funny not-quite-a-cult things that Americans produce in ridiculous numbers. Before anyone gets up in arms — Australians hold this same opinion of most of the Baptist churches, practically all the mega-churches, 100% of televangelism, and a good chunk of the traditionally “black” churches. For most Aussies, if it doesn’t fall into the buckets of Catholic, Anglican (aka Episcopalian), or Uniting (formed by a merger of Methodist and Presbyterian), it doesn’t really count as Christian.

One could either discuss that for hours and hours or leave it lay – I think  I’ll leave it lay, at least for a moment.

And then finally, from a WaPo blog, this observation:

The lack of affirmative messages or even good explanations was made clear by David Axelrod’s comments on CBS’s “Face the Nation” yesterday. Axelrod said Obama was “taken aback” by Romney’s performance in the debate.  In other words, the president was intimidated. It is a shocking admission to say that when the president’s assertions are challenged, he cannot make the case for his own reelection.

And hence we can see the difference between self-image and character.  Barack Obama certainly has one of the strongest self-images we have ever seen in a public figure that was not in sports or entertainment.  Self-image is formed in praise and affirmation.  Remove the praise and admiration and an individual with a good self-image has nothing to fall back upon.   But character is forged in adversity and with humility.  Character is intimidated by little because it has withstood so much.   Good religion builds character because it starts with an understanding of the less-than-admirable flaws that are within all of us and helps us strive to overcome them, that forges character.

There are many churches in the US that build self-image, but not character.  While the line is fuzzier than he portrays it, the one drawn by our Aussie friend is indicative of this difference.  This election is going to result in a lot of changes.  Regardless of outcome, it will be historic for Mormons.  Here’s hoping, and praying, it will be renewing for orthodox Christianity.

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