I have never met Connor Boyack.  We are friends on Facebook, and I enjoy his blog Connor’s Conundrums, which deals with politics from a Mormon perspective.  Let there be no doubt:  Connor is a real libertarian, not a mamby-pamby fly-by-night libertarian like somebody like me.  He hates the state with a passion, and could correctly be described as a Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist.  He is anti-war, anti-state and pro-market, but most importantly pro-liberty.

But the truth is that we are living in the age of libertarianism, mostly because all of the predictions made by people like Rothbard are becoming true literally before our eyes.   There is no way of understanding our current economic malaise (in my opinion) without understanding the key role of monetary policy in creating stagflation and without understanding that business cycles are inevitable.   Markets must be allowed to clear.  Government intervention, as we have seen with TARP and the many bailouts, only makes things worse, and at the end of the day it is the poor and the middle-class workers who suffer the most while the well-connected profit from our misery.  Meanwhile, we are seeing the folly and horror of endless wars and the loss of our civil liberties.

Connor’s positions make many intellectual Mormons very uncomfortable.  He is clearly a smart guy, but he is so darned dogmatic.  And he seems to think he know the answer to everything.   And he is so consistent, always arguing for more liberty and less government.   Doesn’t he know the world is much more complicated than he claims?  And doesn’t he know that all good Mormons must always be in favor of more government to show they actually care about the poor.

Well, as Connor shows in his book “Latter-Day Liberty, A Gospel Approach to Government and Politics,” all good Mormons should be in favor of liberty, not confiscating other peoples’ money so you can be beneficent with it.  But make no mistake:  Connor’s book will also make many traditional conservatives very uncomfortable.  He is anti-war and lays out an unassailable case that the Book of Mormon creates a well-developed just war theory.  He is pro-immigrant, pointing out that “it is an inescapable fact that the current immigration laws are founded upon racism and protectionism.”  And he is against the war on drugs.

To sum up:  Connor Boyack will upset a lot of people with this book.

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I am offering this free of any personal observations.  I am not endorsing or condemning the evangelicals involved.  From a Mormon perspective, I just found this video fascinating.  A couple of evangelicals drove past several frat parties at Vanderbilt University over the weekend.  They then preached to the partiers.   Among the comments made by the evangelicals:  “No drunkard will go to heaven.”  “Women, put on some clothes.”  As you may imagine, some harsh words were directed back at the evangelicals.  Take a look.  I really would prefer charitable comments be left here.  I am not interested in comments condemning the evangelicals or the drunkards involved.

This is a guest post by Mike Parker, a frequent commenter on this and other Mormon blogs.

By Mike Parker

The horrifying events of 9/11 weighed heavily on many of us today. The video images of United Airlines flight 175 careening at full throttle into the south tower of the World Trade Center will be etched on our national consciousness forever, alongside Abraham Zapruder’s flim of the Kennedy assassination and NASA’s footage of the Space Shuttle “Challenger” exploding above the Florida coast. Al Qaeda’s leaders wanted to pull off an attack that would have maximum public exposure and reaction, and they succeeded.

There is no way to disentangle the events of that awful, horrific September morning with everything that has happened since then. Americans and all free people were shocked at the callous loss of innocent life that took place on 9/11 . Those same Americans have been largely silent at the callous loss of many, many more innocent lives that came afterward, in distant countries where the deaths have been largely hidden from the American press and public. As a result of 9/11, hundreds of thousands of people have died and millions have been displaced. Today we are less free, less safe, and trillions of dollars deeper in debt. Osama bin Laden wanted to draw America into a war that would exhaust our blood and treasure, and he largely succeeded in his goal. Continue reading →

Have you ever been to somebody’s house and seen one of those signs saying, “please take your shoes off” or, even sometimes, “shoes off!”  Well, Mister Manners says that is an incredibly rude message to send to your guests.

Before you get all huffy, let me make my case.

First, if you live in Japan or someplace where it is part of the general culture to take off shoes, then my complaint obviously doesn’t refer to you.  I am talking about places like the United States, Latin America and most of Europe where the general culture is that people do not routinely take off their shoes before going into a house.  If you live in some city in Italy where everybody takes off their shoes, again, Mister Manners gives you a pass.

Here is my argument:

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It seems to me that many arguments of many issues could be solved if we agreed on some terms. If a person says there is a problem, and you propose a solution, and you don’t agree on the solution because it is not ideal, sometimes you can agree by categorizing solutions as good, better, best and perfect.  Sometimes we can all agree that “good” is good enough.

Let me give an example. Problem: people should do their home teaching. Well, if Joe is not doing his home teaching at all, and he makes a change and visits two people (out of four) every month, that is good. Is it perfect? No. But it is good. So, we should all agree on that. We can break it out this way:

Problem: Joe is not doing any home teaching.
Good: Joe starts home teaching two people every month.
Better: Joe does all his home teaching every month.
Best: Joe does his home teaching because he loves all of the families he home teaches and becomes an integral, helpful part of their lives.
Perfect: Joe loves all of his home teaching families, inspires them to go to the temple, do their genealogy and serves them like the Savior would.

So many arguments, discussions and, frankly, contention could be avoided if we all agreed that “Good” is good enough for some people and that we can agree “perfect” is great but most of us are never going to get there. This does not mean you are against the “perfect” solution — it just means you recognize we all fall short of the ideal. So, two people discussing this topic on a Mormon blog are often in agreement more than they would admit — they are just using different terms and speaking different languages. One is concentrating on the “good” solution, and the other is concentrating on the “perfect” solution. The one who is concentrating on the “perfect” solution probably would settle for “good” in Joe’s case if he knew all the details. So, at the end of the day, the two people who are arguing really do agree for the most part.

Now let’s talk politics.

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