Utah's Republic

This is outrageous. Why is this not front-page news? What is the current status? Another reason why we need to ensure that parents are in charge of education in all venues, including public schools.

The more I look around me in Utah, I become increasingly more alarmed at how far our Utah culture has strayed from the fundamental principles that President Benson expressed so eloquently throughout his lifetime. I find myself (along with the teachings of President Benson) falling more and more out of step with the mainstream of my church. As a people, we have become silent observers of and participants in the circumstances that we have been warned about by President Benson and repeatedly in the Book of Mormon. A tiny fraction of the members of the Church make the connection and most members, through their actions now reject the premise outright. The general attitude seems to be, “that was then, this is now.” Church members who advocate that position are not looking very carefully. This has quietly infiltrated every aspect of our lives. In short order, our right to worship as we choose will be taken and I suspect, life will become more difficult for members of our church.
There is now a cultural and even institutional attitude that seems to encourage members to quietly accept these developments. The newsroom of LDS not org. states, “As the Church operates in countries around the world, it embraces the richness of pluralism. Thus, the political diversity of Latter-day Saints spans the ideological spectrum. Individual members are free to choose their own political philosophy and affiliation. Moreover, the Church itself is not aligned with any particular political ideology or movement. It defies category. Its moral values may be expressed in a number of parties and ideologies. Furthermore, the Church views with concern the politics of fear and rhetorical extremism that render civil discussion impossible. As the Church begins to rise in prominence and its members achieve a higher public profile, a diversity of voices and opinions naturally follows.” (The Mormon Ethic of Civility – LDS.org) I have had this sent to me from progressive friends to convince me that the Church is now moving in a new direction.
I haven’t been given any formal counsel that the fundamentals of what President Benson taught (below) have been rescinded but it appears that may be the case.

President Benson made this statement in General Conference.

“Basic to this all-important plan is our free agency, the right of choice. Free agency is an eternal principle. We enjoyed freedom of choice in the spirit world as spirit children. In fact, a counter-plan to the gospel of our Lord was presented by Lucifer, a plan of force that would have robbed man of his freedom of choice. Lucifer's plan was rejected, and the scriptures tell us that he, with one-third of the hosts of heaven, was cast out; and they continue their opposition to God's plan, which is based on the freedom of the individual… The scriptures make clear that there was a great war in heaven, a struggle over the principle of freedom the right of choice….

Why have prophets of God been commanded to proclaim liberty and lead the battle to preserve freedom? Because freedom is basic to the great plan of the Lord. The gospel can prosper only in an atmosphere of freedom. This fact is confirmed by history, as well as by sacred scriptures. The right of choice—free agency—runs like a golden thread throughout the gospel plan of the Lord for the blessing of his children.

…“Still earlier the First Presidency warned the Saints that ‘Satan is making war against all the wisdom that has come to men through their ages of experience. He is seeking to overturn and destroy the very foundations upon which society, government, and religion rest. He aims to have men adopt theories and practices which he induced their forefathers, over the ages, to adopt and try, only to be discarded by them when found unsound, impractical, and ruinous. He plans to destroy liberty and freedom—economic, political, and religious, and to set up in place thereof the greatest, most widespread, and most complete tyranny that has ever oppressed man. He is working under such perfect disguise that many do not recognize either him or his methods.…Without their knowing it, the people are being urged down paths that lead only to destruction. Satan never before had so firm a grip on this generation as he has now.’ (“Message of the First Presidency,” The Improvement Era, Nov. 1942, p. 761.)

In spite of the scriptural evidence and the counsel of modern-day prophets during the past more than 100 years, there are still some who seem to feel we have no responsibility to safeguard and strengthen our precious God-given freedom. There are some who apparently feel that the fight for freedom is separate from the gospel. They express it in several ways but it generally boils down to this: Just live the gospel; there's no need to get involved in trying to save freedom and the Constitution or to stop Communism. Of course, this is dangerous reasoning, because in reality you cannot fully live the gospel without working to save freedom and the Constitution, and to stop Communism. In the war in heaven, what would have been your reaction if someone had told you just to do what is right—there's no need to get involved in the fight for freedom? War in Heaven continues on Earth: Of course, the war in heaven over free agency is now being waged here on earth, and there are those today who are saying “Look, don't get involved in the fight for freedom. Just live the gospel.” That counsel is dangerous, self-contradictory, unsound.” (Ezra Taft Benson, Conference Report, p.120. October 1966).

Yes, and I encourage you to dig a little more. :) It’s not just BYU’s problem.

@ConcernedCitizen:
Joseph F. Smith was not the founder of the LDS church, but was a later President of the church. Nowhere in the founding of our country will you see our founders talking about the separation of church and state. It's not in the constitution or any other founding document. That was in a letter from Jefferson to a friend in reference to ensuring that we never had a state religion forced on the populace such as there was in England with the Church of England (COE). There, if you weren't a member of the COE, you couldn't hold public office. Nowhere will you find our Founders saying the leader of a religion cannot make statements about government, but you will find them saying governmental leaders should not interfere in the role of the conscience of individuals in their preferred religious prescription.

Also, our Founders including Jefferson wanted the Bible taught in schools in a non-denominational, non-doctrinal way. The Bible contains many valuable stories of morality which our Founders called an “indispensable support” to public morality and education.

I live in the ASD. The Superintendent is in my stake and is a former stake president. I challenge you to find a more Christ-like man whose desire is to provide the best education for his students. This blog is so full of misconceptions, misleading fallacies and breaches of logic to give a professor of rhetoric an entire semester worth of “how-not-to” material. I don’t have the time or the inclination to engage with ultra, ultra-right but otherwise good people. FYI, I am a Reagan conservative who was sorely castigated by my peers at one of the nation’s most liberal universities when I was the campus representative for Goldwater back in the 60s.

To the poster who talked about “separation of church and state”- It is Freedom
OF religion not freedom FROM religion. The point being that the Founding Fathers wanted to make sure the government could not assign a specific religion that must be followed. This after they lived through this tyranny in England, France, etc and being told what they could or could not believe. Along with this is Freedom of Speech, where we should be allowed to speak of religious things in any setting- church, school civic meetings. The government more and more is taking away these rights, punishing those who do speak. More and more the Progressives are twisting the truth to serve their own purposes. Wake up.

Reb – if you happen to come back and read this:
I have no doubt the members of the ASD School board are good, decent, Christ-like people! That does not mean however, that they do not individually have different political views from me and that they do not subscribe to philosophies, particularly educational philosophies, that could be concerning. The BYU School of Education webpage, from which ASD has taken the mantra seen within the district of “Enculturating the Young in a Social and Political Democracy” IS linked to from ASD's website, and within that website you may be surprised to find some rather left-centre, or left-leaning ideas for education (google social democracy). This does not mean these are bad people. But they may be following philosophica/educationall ideologies that do not ring true or clear with many parents in the ASD. I would like to invite you to share with me, and anyone else on this blog, what the misleading fallacies, breaches of logic, and misconceptions are that you are finding on this webpage. I am TRULY interested! I can't make informed opinions and decisions based on comments that (pardon the expression) “sling mud” without back-up info. If you come back to this site, would you mind posting here, or giving a link to a post, where I and others who might be interested, can learn more about YOUR concerns? I think everyone benefits when we engage in clear and concise communication.

Wow, Insanity runs deep in Utah. Or it's just full of over-reactive, bored housewives. Either way, this shows the state of mentality within the State. This is EXACTLY why politics should be taught in school. New generations need to be shown that there is a differing view point out there besides the one that God is a republican.

The Internet is a tangled web. A link to a single page can pull you in many directions. As a web master, if I had to figure out the number of ways that any individual could be offended by a single statement on some web page that I didn't know was there, I too would be as insane as that individual. As a species, we are prone to jump to conclusions and accept whatever ideas we formulate as the only relevant truth to any given situation. Oh, and DON'T try to prove us wrong once we accept our own beliefs as conclusive facts. Then you WILL have a fight on your hands.

Standing up and fighting for what is right is what helped build this Country to where it is now. But fighting the good fight also means that we should be fully versed in what we are fighting for. If we accept our own conclusions as the only truth, then we miss a whole different world of thought and education. Narrow mindedness only leads down a dangerous road.

Should Jesus ever be categorized as a vampire? Never. After all, He died for us and then rose again from the grave, so at best, He should be considered a zombie.

Well said. Keep politics and religion out of schools. Nobody is endorsing a political party. Just because Republicans sound like Republic and Democrats sound like Democracy, bears no necessary resemblance and was never designed to. We should be teaching the constitution in the words of our Founding Fathers.

Thomas Jefferson: “On every question of construction, [let us] carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probably one in which it was passed.”

On this warning, I always tend to take these things suspiciously. The warning tells of a link that used to be on the alpine school district to a radically left-thinking politician, William Meyers. The picture isn’t hard evidence. So I looked up the page in google and looked at the cached version. (Google maintains copies of web pages that they update about one a week) The link is on the cached version of the page. Take a look for yourself before it’s updated. Search for “Mission Statement Mission Statement Alpine School District” and click on the “Cached” link of the first result.

I also doubted the link from William Meyers to vampires. On Meyer’s web page that Alpine school district used to link to, there is a “disambiguation page” (http://www.williampmeyers.org/wmdisambiguation.html) to differentiate him from others named Bill Meyer. He clearly states that he is also runs the iiipublishing.com page where those wacky vampire books are sold. See http://www.iiipublishing.com/religion/vampires.html where he says: “Most people think vampires are fiction, but our research has shown they may be very real, indeed.”

I have a hard time believing it but it sure sounds wacky.

Jesus was a socialist. He insisted that those who had would share with those who had not, as he recognized those with money and power usually were benefitting from the sweat of others and from the stability of a healthy society that cares for all of its members. He insisted that those with ability do their part to help those without ability; to share a loaf even when the other person did not bring one to the feast. To hold back the brutal stones of judgment and realize that you were on the other end of the rock at some point. He certainly was not a capitalist or a fundamental christian as we have today, telling people who should marry, who should feel like a leper on christmas, and who is more deserving of healthcare if they have more money.

He spoke truth to power – the arrogant and overly-religious Pharisees who forced those around them to submit to authority and were too busy meddling in the private lives of citizens to bother being an example of mercy and wisdom. The poor kids who live with parents like Susan would do well to avoid her example of arrogance, over-reactionism, and intolerance of competing ideas in her limited mental space.

?Perhaps she needs some medication to soothe the savage animal trapped within? If a simple (and silly) website really threatens children, then we should just pull the plug on the human experiment tomorrow…

Oh and a republic is a form of democracy so whatever. Think of democracy as one side of a scale and theocracy on the other – we see a deference to authority increasing until you worship the rules of a non-existent and unaccountable fiction of human history, or we see a deference to the wishes of every single person around you – including the felons, the poor, the stupid, and the incoherent like Susan.

I for one am glad she was able to stop dragging her knuckles long enough to type up her screed so that we all could enjoy a laugh and a sigh over lunch, instead of the opposite world where a religious officer hauls me to heresy jail for having an idea, of all things…

And really the important point of all those stories – no matter if he was real like a dollar bill or real like capitalism – is that you have to work hard to go out of your way to be nice to people, to extend the benefit of the doubt, even when you see that person taking advantage of your hospitality or being insincere. And that the miserable people around you are people too – you may find yourself in their soggy shoes one day. I have so much respect for the spiritual and religious people who do social (a dirty word!) work and commit incredible acts of charity to those who are less fortunate. I have no respect for the spiritual and religious people who lean on words and fables in order to justify selfish and hateful behavior. But as role models and ideals go, Jesus is pretty awesome. He's a lot nicer than Old Testament God, Buddah, Confucious, and especially nicer than those golden-plated or child-marrying frauds Mohammed & Joseph Smith.

Religion was created as a way to explain scientific happenings that we as a people could not explain at the time. If it was not so deeply rooted in our societies by the time we were able to explain rationally and scientifically why things are the way they are here on planet earth religion would have been done away with long ago. It is a useless crutch that people hold on to because they are afraid of death and are scared to be alone. If there ever was a “God” he created us and walked away from the experiment long ago. Your “God” is most likely the snot from another civilization in another galaxy that made it's way to earth. Wake up and accept the facts. And besides, Jesus is a zombie, not a vampire. He came back from the dead. Seems to me people should have destroyed his brain then and there because he spread his lifeless, brain dead way of life so far I believe you religious zombies will kill our world one day.

Susan Schnell is a moron and should be studied by psychiatrists. Grow up people. God isn't real. You made him up to feel better about death and what comes after. And Jesus is a zombie, not a vampire.

Thanks Dan for so eloquently and kindly presenting the views of our Utah teachers union to this forum. If you are interested in expressing those points to a larger audience, I hope you will consider presenting this topic in our professional development workshops for K-12 educators at our convention next October 20-21 at the South Towne Exposition Center. In the meantime, you might consider adding your thoughts to other voices of similar tone on the reader comments on every news story published daily in the Salt Lake Tribune.

The “Jesus is a vampire” line is a JOKE, playing off of the ironies in the close alignment between the Twilight frenzy and Christian fundamentalists. I understand the objection on grounds of taste, but your school district is not connected to a delusional nut, merely to someone whose sense of humor doesn't work very well for you.

Furthermore, representative democracy and republicanism are practically inseparable, though not indistinguishable, concepts, and the partisan politics of party nomenclature is the only reason to get so upset about the choice of terms. Direct democracy is the real distinct alternative to republicanism, and it has primarily been a tool of the right wing; to link it to socialist ideology is just silly.

Jesus was not a socialist. Socialists enforce involuntary philanthropy, Jesus taught people to choose voluntary philanthropy. The difference is choice, in other words, liberty. For the difference between a democracy and a republic, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DioQooFIcgE&feat….