Tag Archives: Politics

Selling a Life—Marriage

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I have spent countless hours mulling over the loss of my marriage covenant, what went wrong, what mistakes I made, and what meaning my experiences have for the larger picture of life. I believe I have gleaned yet another lesson by comparing marriage to the contract of citizenship.

Growing up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with parents who have a strong marriage, I was taught what a marriage entails. There are many explicit agreements, including a wife listening to her husband when he listens to the Lord and the covenant to remain together throughout eternity. Even as a teenager and before I had a husband, I took the marriage covenant seriously enough to study it and to shape my life around its expectations. In doing so, I adopted several implicit obligations in a covenant marriage, including the expectation to grow together, to be patient and forgiving of my spouse’s faults, to give everything I had.

Under the government, in one sense my life and my liberty are theoretically unalienable, which means that even I do not have the right to sell them or trade them. I cannot put myself into indentured servitude or slavery, request a doctor to end my life to donate organs to save another, nor legally volunteer to be executed or incarcerated on another’s behalf.

But like everything, there are shades of grey. I can accept employment which pays me far less than the work is worth, or risk my life to donate organs to save another, so long as death is not guaranteed. I can sacrifice my time, talents, and even my personality for another. I can be raised or manipulated to believe I have no other choice. So these so-called unalienable rights are not as unalienable as we sometimes think. There is not really any such thing as an unalienable right in reality, only in the world of legality. And many people, as I claimed in the last post, confuse the difference between reality and legal rights.

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Selling a Life—Politics

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A great many seeming unrelated conversations have sparked a flurry of self-reflection. Discussion of political concepts like “inalienable rights,” “liberty,” and “force,” and reminiscing mission stories with my brother over the Thanksgiving holiday, have crept into my analysis of the collapse of my personal world which is always lurking in the back of my mind. Like many of the best science experiments, unexpected contamination is breaking new ground in my journey to be a disciple of Christ.

Since it is too complicated for one post, I’ve broken down my thoughts into three loose groups, politics, marriage, and missionary work. I will cover the other two in future posts.

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Thoughts on Income Taxes, Theft, and the Making of a Blog Debate

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Politics are patently ridiculous, “testimony” masquerading as rationalism — SilverRain.

I had an epiphany while engaging in this thread that eventually turned into a side thread about whether or not ‘taxes’ were the same as ‘theft.’ I wanted to write it down to remember it. I hope Geoff (who I have to use as an example) will realize that I’m in no way knocking his position. In fact, I hope Geoff will see that he successfully helped me understand his position better.

First, a quick summary of the ‘taxes = theft’ debate. The whole debate was between various conservatives. No liberals or even moderatres (unless you consider me a moderate) were part of the debate. Geoff and some of the more libertarian leaning commenters (LDSP, Rame, Skyler) took the stances that taxes were theft. Adam, SilverRain, and myself (to a lesser degree on this thread, though I’ve engaged in this argument elsewhere) took the stances that taxes, while they should be minimized, are not equivalent to theft. (In a humorous moment, Adam — regularly perceived as an extreme conservative — sent an email to some of us on the thread and said how much he enjoyed finding himself on the other side for a change.)

I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I realize that there is a really important point that came out of this that I personally didn’t want to forget, namely that from a certain point of view, both sides were right. Continue reading →

I Was Constrained By The Spirit That I Should Vote For…

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[Cross Posted from Sixteen Small Stones]

One of the important aspects of the LDS doctrine of personal revelation is that the Holy Spirit can and does sometimes instruct individuals to act contrary to our own reason and understanding.

So here is a little supposal:

Think of a presidential candidate that you do not support.  Now put the candidate’s name into the appropriate places in the following passage:

And it came to pass that I was constrained by the Spirit that I should support [a specific candidate] for President; but I said in my heart: Never at any time have I supported a [candidate of that ideology/party/record]. And I shrunk and would that I might not support [her/him].

And the Spirit said unto me again: Behold it is the Lord’s desire that [that candidate] be President of the United States…

We spend a lot of time debating and defending our political beliefs, and comparing political candidates to our ideals. But what if, regardless of political party, or ideology, or record, or aptitude, or personality, or anything else we might use to judge our candidates, the Lord for His own reasons wants you to support a candidate different than the one you would choose?

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–Ans, –Ites and –Isms

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Political ButtonsFor a long time, I have wrestled with the notion that I need to commit to a political party. Every time I have gone to declare an allegiance of one kind or another, something has stayed my hand. I have been ashamed of this for some time, thinking that perhaps I was too wishy-washy, too uncommitted, too weakly opinioned. I have been enticed by several political ideologies, most notably feminism and libertarianism, and have come close to choosing one on several occasions.

But again, something has kept me “aloof from all these parties” despite engaging in their several discussions as often as I felt drawn to them. Finally, I believe I have reached the root of the issues I have with choosing a political party.

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