The people described in the book of Mosiah in the Book of Mormon are constantly on the move, and as they move around they repeatedly set up new societies. Some of these societies are morally just – moving toward Zion – and others are morally unjust – clearly Babylon-like. Hence, a careful reader will easily discover what social justice meant to the people of Book of Mormon times.

The model society is the one described in the beginning of this book, the society of King Benjamin in Zarahemla.

King Benjamin famously encourages people to voluntarily give of their substance to the poor because they are serving God by being in service to their fellow man. He also points out that people should not deny money to beggars because “are we all not beggars? Do we not all depend upon the same Being, even God, for all the substance which we have, for both food and raiment, and for gold, and for silver, and for all the riches which we have of every kind?” (Mosiah 4:19).

King Benjamin’s model society also has the following characteristics:

*The king encourages all to follow the commandments and to engage in temple worship.
*The king works alongside the people and does not ask them to support him.
*The king avoids levying taxes.
*The king says he prizes individual liberty.
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Mitt Romney is not my favorite candidate. I find his foreign policy dangerous and foolhardy from a financial perspective. I think his budget proposals do not provide the budget cuts we need. I am a Ron Paul supporter.

But discussing the future is always fun, and I think Mitt Romney will win in 2012, so I thought I should explain why I am making such a prediction.

Here are the reasons:

1)The worldwide economy is about to tank. You may have heard that JP Morgan is reporting a $2 billion trading loss. This sounds a lot like 2008 to me. I predict chaos as the entire banking system, which is a house of cards, begins another collapse. Meanwhile, Europe is falling to pieces and even India and China reported slowing growth today. There is no real job growth in the U.S. economy, which is on life support and addicted to Fed money-printing. Sorry to report: things are about to get even worse.

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Most readers are familiar with evil King Noah in the Book of Mormon. He is the prototype of the evil king, as we all know. My question is: where did the people in his kingdom come from?

Here’s the history: we read in Mosiah 9:1-7 of Zeniff, who was King Noah’s father. This is about 200 BC.

Zeniff took two trips from Zarahemla to Nephi. The first ended in failure because of infighting. During the second trip, Zeniff took “as many as were desirous to go up to possess the land” and headed back to Nephi. This time, they were “smitten with famine and sore afflictions.” Nevertheless, a few of them arrived at Nephi and convinced the king of the Lamanites to “depart out of the land.”

So, this group of Mulekite-Nephites possesses the land, repairing the walls of the city of Nephi (also called Lehi-Nephi) and the city of Shilom. My question is: how many people came with Zeniff, and how did they grow into a kingdom by the time of King Noah?

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The president tried to run some victory laps on Friday after the official unemployment rate fell to 8.1 percent. This is a bit like the guy who came in last claiming he won. Let’s take a look at the real numbers.

Below is the labor force participation rate. This is the percentage of the population that works. You will see that it is at historic lows. When the economy grows, new jobs are created, and people who wouldn’t work otherwise go find work. When the economy is in a recession (or depression), people stop looking for work and drop out of the labor force. Based on the labor force participation rate, which of the two things is happening, a growing economy or a receding economy?

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HT: BCC.

We all owe some thanks to Jon Stewart, who has made it clear that anti-Mormonism simply isn’t cool, whether it comes from the right or left.

Here is the link:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-may-2-2012/mormon–mo–problems