You’re right about my critique. I just didn’t have my heart into it. Like I said in my post, I don’t care that President Hinckley supported the war. He’s perfectly free to do so. But I am disappointed that he did, and how he did it. In any case, I’m going to delete that post. I just don’t like it. It wasn’t good enough. Let me refer you to a more soundly written point I made on this same subject over on Connor’s blog. I explain myself better there.

BTW, if you’re interested in how Al-Qaeda or any other group could actually be cultivated inside the US, try reading Chris Stewart’s “The Great and Terrible” series. It’s fiction (as far as I know) but provides an excellent scenario where terrorism could actually come from within our own country. We have no evidence that the evil groups terrorizing the world today are not connected to the US (one more reason your analogy to the Gadianton Robbers is off base).

I was happy to see that you would do a critique on that talk. I put YOU in caps because I know you see yourself as expert, though torn apart on many occasions. You simply do not have facts straight and inject editorial too much.

By halfway through your ‘critique’ I thought “Dan, you are officially a hack”. By the end, I felt sorry for you for your 1) being a hack and 2) misinterpreting so wildly the assertions of President Hinckley. Your conclusions are illogical and you failed to extract the real purpose of the talks.

What a hack job. You officially have no credibility on the topic. Furthermore, you come of as quite a jerk with the assumptions you make. It is one thing to have your own mistaken position on the topic, it is another to drag GBH, a beloved prophet of God, into it by putting words into his mouth and misguidedly attacking the credibility of his counsel which had nothing to do with being pro-Bush or pro-Iraq.

My critical response has been added to the post. Again you are wrong, but this time, pathetically so.

Here you go: President Hinckley and the war in Iraq.

GBH never supported the War in Iraq in a specific way. Read that talk again. His conclusion is those three statements. They only relate to Iraq as much as you spin them to

Actually yes he did. If you want, I’ll do a critique of his talk on my blog and link to it here so you can read.

1. Don’t give judges and lawyers too much power.
2. Don’t constantly be at war.
3. Keep your society open and free from secrets.

I think those are quite a spin to fit your argument- they can be argued- well, at least #1 and #3. #2 has no relevance because it really only applies today. You could have said:

1. Don’t give judges and lawyers too much power.
2. Don’t use the sword to enforce ideology or otherwise. Only use force in defense of family, religion, liberty, and your way of life.
3. Keep your society open and free from secrets.

As it is, I still think #1 and #2 are silly. What is the solution to #1? We have only now come up with a medium by which each individual can be represented in real-time. Even then, the opportunity for hacking and unlawful behavior is too prevalent. And the amount of law in the world is so voluminous that it necessitates specialization and a huge amount of dedication paid by the hour. So we have people perform our judgments and dedicate that time for us. Unfortunately there are side effects that are unpleasant as everything in the world is twisted and spun in some way for greed. So here we come to lesson #1 from the BoM:

1. Jacob 2:
16 O that he would rid you from this iniquity and abomination. And, O that ye would listen unto the word of his commands, and let not this pride of your hearts destroy your souls!
17 Think of your brethren like unto yourselves, and be familiar with all and free with your substance, that they may be rich like unto you.
18 But before ye seek for riches, seek ye for the kingdom of God.
19 And after ye have obtained a hope in Christ ye shall obtain riches, if ye seek them; and ye will seek them for the intent to ado good—to clothe the naked, and to feed the hungry, and to liberate the captive, and administer relief to the sick and the afflicted.

Lesson 1= Pride. The downfall of the legal system, economy, and social system in the Book of Mormon.

Lesson #2 is easier:

As GBH said:
We are to “renounce war and proclaim peace” (D&C 98:16), only to take up arms as the Nephites at one time “not fighting for … power (or hatred, I add) but they were fighting for their homes and their liberties, their wives and their children, and their all, yea, for their rites of worship and their church.”…It is clear from these and other writings that there are times and circumstances when nations are justified, in fact have an obligation, to fight for family, for liberty, and against tyranny, threat, and oppression.

GBH never supported the War in Iraq in a specific way. Read that talk again. His conclusion is those three statements. They only relate to Iraq as much as you spin them to.

Lesson #3: This is obvious:

Which is to show unto the remnant of the House of Israel what great things the Lord hath done for their fathers; and that they may know the covenants of the Lord, that they are not cast off forever—And also to the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that JESUS is the CHRIST, the ETERNAL GOD, manifesting himself unto all nations (form title page.

This verse, Mormon 8:18: “And it came to pass in this year there began to be a war between the aNephites, who consisted of the Nephites and the Jacobites and the Josephites and the Zoramites; and this war was between the Nephites, and the Lamanites and the Lemuelites and the Ishmaelites” proves that politics were not divided solely among Nephite and Lamanites. Any bi-polar geopolitics can be directly related to generalizations/simplifications formed in our day: G8, not G8; West, not West; Muslim, not Muslim; etc.

I don’t think the Book of Mormon perfectly reflects any facet of our day except for the individual sins and shortcomings of people along with the explanation of covenants and plan of redemption, the reason for the Book’s existence. In general, it relates to a very high degree.

He must have missed the blogging that goes on here.

My apologies that I really haven’t gotten into this debate as much as I should, as you note that I haven’t really cited anything, nor offered much beyond my own words as my defense. In comment #7 you made the contention:

The Book of Mormon bears a far greater resemblance (and relevance) to current global civilization than it ever did to upstate New York in the 1820s.

That’s what I took issue with, your contention that the Book of Mormon bears such a great resemblance to our current global civilization. I’m one who never thought it resembled much of anything modern, be it Joseph Smith’s time, or ours today. The most important difference between both Joseph Smith’s time and ours today and that of the times in the Book of Mormon is that there are a far greater amount of players in the world today than there were back then. You can claim the various small, and somewhat insignificant breakaways like Zeniff’s party, as showing more resemblance to the modern system, but alas, they just simply don’t. Zeniff’s party eventually got eaten up by both of the two greater systems, the Nephites and the Lamanites.

Now, when I speak of the “Nephites” or the “Lamanites” my definition of them is fairly loose. I do so only because Mormon does it too. He states on several occasions that various sub-groups take on this or that “-ite” name, but eventually he himself lumps them together in one of the two major “-ites”, “the Lamanites” or the “Nephites.” If Mormon sees them as essentially the two major groups, we should consider his words well. The Zoramites, as much as they considered themselves apart from the other Nephites, were still closer to the Nephites, and thusly, in terms of how Mormon labels the various groups, a part of the Nephites.

There is no third party within the world of the Book of Mormon that endures longer than a few years separated from the larger two. The Gadianton Robbers are probably the longest lasting. They last about 80 years or so as a separate and distinct group that works contrary to the other two, the Lamanites and the Nephites. Zeniff’s group doesn’t last very long, and is also insignificantly small. It is no threat to either the power base of the Nephites or the Lamanites.

The people of Zarahemla are a third party in the whole scheme of things, but note, importantly that as soon as they come in contact with King Mosiah’s people, they relinquish that power, and assimilate themselves within the realm of the Nephites. Or so Mormon would have us believe, since it is his account we are reading. The people of Zarahemla don’t rebel against King Mosiah, but willingly choose him as their focal point, as their power base.

Within the Lamanite world, there is no significant breakup to consider there to be more than one main general power base. They may loosely allow provincial kings, but the main power is still at the central core. And there hasn’t been any account of a breakup of that system until the book of Helaman.

Amalikiah threatened the Nephite power base with his attempt to overthrow the judicial system and bring back the kingship. But, interestingly, he did not form a third party, as a counter to both the Lamanites and the Nephites. Instead, he shifted to the Lamanites and controlled them, became them to do his dirty deed. But he wasn’t a third party. His power only came from controlling one of the two main groups: the Lamanites and the Nephites.

Thus, I shall describe the Book of Mormon as being “ancient”, “bi-polar” and “limited geography”, and thus having little or no relevance to “modern”, “multi-polar”, and “global” geopolitics.

Now, hold on a second here. I have no problem with using “ancient” books in modern times. There are plenty of lessons that I recommend out of the Book of Mormon for us to learn today. In fact, I mentioned them in my earlier post:

1. Don’t give judges and lawyers too much power.
2. Don’t constantly be at war.
3. Keep your society open and free from secrets.

Those are great lessons to learn from the Book of Mormon.

Secondly, the limitations of the ‘bi-polar’ system and ‘limited geography’ only limit so much of what you can take as lessons from the Book of Mormon. I get the feeling that you are trying to say that the events of the Book of Mormon could be played out in a similar fashion today if we but applied them. I’m telling you that that is impossible because those limitations truly make an equal comparison impossible. There are just simply too many players with too much power today that are not accounted for in the Book of Mormon account. There is no “China” alternative in the Book of Mormon, for example. There is no “Russia” in the Book of Mormon. There is no “Europe.” But today there is. These exist, and must be accounted for if you wish to make a good, credible foreign policy. How you act in the Middle East is affected by your relationship to China and Russia because they too are affected by what you do in the Middle East. And your actions in the Middle East affect what you do with China in relation to Tibet or Taiwan, or Russia and Chechnya or Abkhasia.

As for Ammon and Lamoni: do you really think a Lamanite king would offer his daughter (and thus his throne) to an unknown, itinerant, servile Nephite (whom Lamoni’s father later describes as coming from a race of thieves and liars)?

Two points.

1. I really don’t think that King Lamoni knew who Ammon was, or what his lineage was. And I stand by that, unless you can show differently.
2. Lamoni’s father’s rage against the Nephites as a “race of thieves or liars” is not necessarily due to what King Lamoni’s father knew of King Mosiah. By Mormon’s account, we know very little of how much the two main parties, Lamanites and Nephites, actually communicated with each other. My guess is, as taken by Alma’s account in chapter 17, that they really did not communicate at all. Alma was overtaken by joy when he saw Ammon and his brethren approach him. They had been gone 17 years, and during that time, based on how this account played out, they had not communicated with each other at all. Furthermore, if the kings had been in communication, there would have been early warnings of impending Lamanite invasions, but there are too many accounts of Lamanites suddenly appearing, ready for battle. For example, the destruction of Ammonihah. The one time where the Nephites were actually prepared (Alma 43), was because Moroni had someone follow Amalickihah. This spy was shocked to learn that Amalickihah had banded together with the Lamanites. He rushed back and warned Moroni. That’s the only reason Moroni knew, and was ready.

Communication between the Nephites and Lamanites was poor at best, next to nothing at worst.