If your criteria is following the Constitution and promoting liberty and prosperity, the five best are:

1)George Washington
2)Grover Cleveland
3)Calvin Coolidge
4)James Monroe
5)Ronald Reagan

The five worst are:

36. Jimmy Carter
37. George W. Bush
38. Richard M. Nixon
39. Woodrow Wilson
40. Lyndon B. Johnson

Note: Obama was not in the survey. FDR was number 35.

As something of an amateur historian, I agree wholeheartedly with these results, although I might quibble here and there with some placements. For example, I am not convinced Reagan should be rated above Thomas Jefferson. But in general, yes, this is the way I see things.

[This post is seventh in a series. To read from the beginning, go to A Faithful Joseph.]

Joseph Smith, Sr.

When discussing Joseph Smith’s plural marriages, many have simply presumed that Joseph initiated marriages whenever there was a plausible opportunity for Joseph to be in the same town or house or room as a putative wife. This seems to be the rationale behind Compton’s assertion that Joseph married Lucinda Pendleton in 1838 or the belief that Joseph fathered children with Hannah Dubois in the early 1830s.

I propose that instead of looking for possible trysts, we look at the deaths the ripped Joseph’s cautious soul enough to open a path for the restoration of eternal marriage, including plural marriage. The deaths of which I speak are in the historical record, though largely unknown. There may be more than the six I enumerate here: brother, son, friend, wife & mother, daughter, and father. But I believe these six were sufficient to open Joseph’s mind and heart to the meaning of God’s promise to the fathers and children stated in Malachi and quoted by the Angel Moroni.

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This is a post I wrote back on March of 2012 and was originally titled “The M* Post I’ll Probably Never Post – The Priesthood Ban.” In light of the Church’s recent statement on the ban, Jettboy’s article on it, and TT’s response to M* in reaction to Jettboy’s article, I have decided to post it after all. I then added an afterward directly as a response to Jettboy’s and TT’s posts.

I was in an online conversation with a numbers of Mormon friends. The question of the priesthood ban came up. Immediately (as is to be expected) there was an eruption of competing explanations offered. I wanted to give my two cents on these explanations and explain why none of them work for me.

First, let’s remember that the LDS Church’s official teachings (as comes from the Church leaders) is that we do not know why the priesthood ban existed. So anything I say is pure speculation and should be taken that way. Indeed, in my opinion everyone that insists on publicly speculating – including myself – should be publically flogged. Continue reading →

This is a guest post by Michael Towns.

Several weeks ago, I wrote a small treatment entitled “Yes, God is a Child-Sacrificing and Misogynist Bigot”. The ideas were largely based on concepts that were elucidated by Blake Ostler in his latest work, “Fire on the Mountain.” In it, Ostler discussed the Akedah (the Binding of Isaac in Jewish parlance) and the sacrifices involved with polygamy. The provocative title was chosen on purpose. Regrettably, some people simply read the title and then proceeding to build a case against me.

Ostler brought up, in my opinion, some truly deep and astounding points regarding the lengths that God will go to in order to reveal Himself. Exploring the notion further, not only does God wish His children to know Him personally, but He wants a deeply profound and intimate relationship. Ostler himself draws extensively from the work of Martin Buber, who was a prominent 20th century Jewish philosopher. Buber postulated the idea that in order to truly know a person, you have to leave certain preconceived conception behind. (I would heartily recommend that you pick up a copy of Oster’s book.)

By way of example: if I have a certain neighbor who happens to be an attorney, and that is the only way I ever view him, then I never see the reality of who he is: a divine child of God and future god. Instead, all I see is an attorney at law and all my interactions stay fused to that myopic coda.

However, if I do in fact see the divinity in my neighbor (perhaps the attorney analogy is misguided), then all my interactions with him change. The potential for true friendship and intimacy grows leaps and bounds. He and I can go on to greater heights of spirituality.

So it is with God. If the only way I view God is that he is an advanced hedge fund manager in the mode of George Soros, dispending funding to any number of progressive causes like subsidizing birth control pills, then is it not possible that I am missing something profound in His nature? The shoe fits on the other foot: surely God is not a caricature of Ronald Reagan, lowering taxes and bringing down Iron Curtains with the rod of his mouth. If that is how some conservatives view God, then they are missing profoundly important dimensions of who God is.

Here is my point: God will reveal Himself to us, and he will not be who we think he is. In a way, he plays a heavenly hijink on us. He desperately wants us to know Him, and to cast aside our preconceived ideas.
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