Letters to the Editor
Ben Alpers
Published Letters: 74 Editor's Choice: 2
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Amen
[Read the article: Chris Dodd's leadership vs. Clinton and Obama's game playing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]All of these efforts will matter only when Congressional Democrats know that their betrayal of what they were sent to Washington to do will result not merely in a loss of support and enthusiasm, but -- far more importantly -- will trigger active, strategically focused and well-funded efforts to work against them and defeat them.
This is exactly what needs to happen.
The Democrats don't need to grow a spine. Indeed, in the face of overwhelming public opposition, they've been steadfastly voting their pro-big-business and pro-national-security-state values for months.
Instead, they need to be made to fear defeat at the hands of the large majority of the electorate that is opposed to the policies put forward by both the Bush administration and the Democratic Congressional leadership.
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The "Logic" of Hiatt's "Argument"
[Read the article: Fred Hiatt's concern over "costly litigation" for AT&T and Verizon]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If Hiatt honestly believes this nonsense, why doesn't he endorse relieving the telecoms of the duty to follow any laws? Think of all the costly litigation and regulation-related overhead they'd be able to avoid if they could entirely operate outside the law!
Honestly, you'd think that even Fred Hiatt would be able to come up with something better than this.
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The Wrong Question?
[Read the article: "A vote for Romney is a vote for Satan"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As someone who is unquestionably not a Christian--I'm Jewish--the question "are Mormons Christians?" has always struck me as a little odd.
Christianity is a very diverse religion, theologically and liturgically, and has been at least since the schisms that began as early as first few centuries CE. Since then, the more practical question for Christians (of all stripes) has tended to be: what beliefs make putative co-religionists unacceptable? and what is the force of that unacceptability? the answer to that latter question has ranged from simply not accepting their ministers to actively slaughtering them.
Put another way, in order to answer the question "are Mormons Christians?" one would have to put forward a clear--and, given the nature of the question, entirely exclusive--definition of Christianity. And my guess is that to do so would be very difficult, especially if that definition would need to be mutually acceptable to all the groups that we would a priori want to include as Christian (i.e. mainline and evangelical Protestants, Catholics, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, and, possibly, Quakers, Unitarians, Seventh Day Adventists and the like).
Better questions would be: how different is Mormonism from Protestantism (in its various forms) and Catholicism? and how politically relevant will those differences prove to be to a Mormon candidate who is willing to espouse the political views of socially conservative Evangelical Protestants in order to win election?
I think the answer to the first question is "very different."
But while there will be some like Bill Keller who will see these differences as rendering Romney politically unacceptable, my guess is that most leading political Evangelicals would have little problem getting behind a Romney candidacy were he to win the nomination. And they would do so not because they will see Romney as a co-religionist, but because they see Romney's political agenda as helpful to their own. Evangelical "Christian Zionists" have a long history of working successfully with right-wing American Jews (who everyone agrees aren't Christians) in a similar fashion.
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An Absent Concern
[Read the article: "A vote for Romney is a vote for Satan"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've been struck by how little concern has been expressed about the structure of the LDS Church. Not that this much concerns me (my problems with Romney involve the policies he espouses). But it makes the Romney candidacy an interesting contrast with both Al Smith's unsuccessful 1928 campaign and JFK's successful run in 1960.
Both these Catholic candidates faced questions about their religion. And in both cases these questions often involved fears of dual loyalty, i.e. that the President might feel the need to answer to another (human) authority. It's easy to forget how powerful this strain of anti-Catholicism was in America, especially before Vatican II. Indeed, in the years between the 1930s and Vatican II, it was not uncommon for Americans to write about the Catholic Church as totalitarian in its structure.
Like the Catholic church, the LDS church is very centralized (though it's also very different, especially in its reliance on what is in many ways a lay ministry). Why hasn't this been more of an issue for the Romney campaign?
A few thoughts...
First, maybe it is an issue, but one expressed via dog-whistle politics in the use of words like "cult" to describe Mormonism.
Second, perhaps the fact that the Pope was often seen as a foreign power makes a difference. Whatever else can be said about Mormonism, its leadership is distinctly American.
Finally, in the years since 1960, evangelical Protestantism itself has become much more enamored of centralization. While Baptists once prided themselves on a tradition of local autonomy for individual churches, since 1979 the Southern Baptist Convention has been much more aggressive in dictating its views to individual Baptist churches.