The first classes were held at Brigham Young University. The school had 79 students.
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Showing posts with label Mormon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mormon. Show all posts
Saturday, January 3, 2026
Sunday, December 14, 2025
Friday, December 14, 1945. Tragedy and ethnic Germans, the LDS and conscription.
As its copyrighted and I don't have permission to post it, I'll merely note it, it was of German women in their children, formerly of Lodz, waiting for a train in Berlin with hopes of going to the west. One of the children is sick, and died during the photo session.
The First President of the LDS issued a postwar statement on the draft to Utah's Congressional delegation.
Press reports have for some months indicated that a determined effort is in the making to establish in this country a compulsory universal military training designed to draw into military training and service the entire youth of the nation. We had hoped that mature reflection might lead the proponents of such a policy to abandon it. We have felt and still feel that such a policy would carry with it the gravest dangers to our Republic.
It now appears that the proponents of the policy have persuaded the Administration to adopt it, in what on its face is a modified form. We deeply regret this, because we dislike to find ourselves under the necessity of opposing any policy so sponsored. However, we are so persuaded of the rightfulness of our position, and we regard the policy so threatening to the true purposes for which this Government was set up, as set forth in the great Preamble to the Constitution, that we are constrained respectfully to invite your attention to the following considerations:
1. By taking our sons at the most impressionable age of their adolescence and putting them into army camps under rigorous military discipline, we shall seriously endanger their initiative thereby impairing one of the essential elements of American citizenship. While on its face the suggested plan might not seem to visualize the army camp training, yet there seems little doubt that our military leaders contemplate such a period, with similar recurring periods after the boys are placed in the reserves.
2. By taking our boys from their homes, we shall deprive them of parental guidance and control at this important period of their youth, and there is no substitute for the care and love of a mother for a young son.
3. We shall take them out of school and suffer their minds to be directed in other channels, so that very many of them after leaving the army, will never return to finish their schooling, thus over a few years materially reducing the literacy of the whole nation.
4. We shall give opportunity to teach our sons not only the way to kill but also, in too many cases, the desire to kill, thereby increasing lawlessness and disorder to the consequent upsetting of the stability of our national society. God said at Sinai, “Thou shalt not kill.”
5. We shall take them from the refining, ennobling, character-building atmosphere of the home, and place them under a drastic discipline in an environment that is hostile to most of the finer and nobler things of home and of life.
6. We shall make our sons the victims of systematized allurements to gamble, to drink, to smoke, to swear, to associate with lewd women, to be selfish, idle, irresponsible save under restraint of force, to be common, coarse, and vulgar, all contrary to and destructive of the American home.
7. We shall deprive our sons of any adequate religious training and activity during their training years, for the religious element of army life is both inadequate and ineffective.
8. We shall put them where they may be indoctrinated with a wholly un-American view of the aims and purposes of their individual lives, and of the life of the whole people and nation, which are founded on the ways of peace, whereas they will be taught to believe in the ways of war.
9. We shall take them away from all participation in the means and measures of production to the economic loss of the whole nation.
10. We shall lay them open to wholly erroneous ideas of their duties to themselves, to their family, and to society in the matter of independence, self-sufficiency, individual initiative, and what we have come to call American manhood.
11. We shall subject them to encouragement in a belief that they can always live off the labors of others through the government or otherwise.
12. We shall make possible their building into a military caste which from all human experience bodes ill for that equality and unity which must always characterize the citizenry of a republic.
13. By creating an immense standing army, we shall create to our liberties and free institutions a threat foreseen and condemned by the founders of the Republic, and by the people of this country from that time till now. Great standing armies have always been the tools of ambitious dictators to the destruction of freedom.
14. By the creation of a great war machine, we shall invite and tempt the waging of war against foreign countries, upon little or no provocation; for the possession of great military power always breeds thirst for domination, for empire, and for a rule by might not right.
15. By building a huge armed establishment, we shall belie our protestations of peace and peaceful intent and force other nations to a like course of militarism, so placing upon the peoples of the earth crushing burdens of taxation that with their present tax load will hardly be bearable, and that will gravely threaten our social, economic, and governmental systems.
16. We shall make of the whole earth one great military camp whose separate armies, headed by war-minded officers, will never rest till they are at one another’s throats in what will be the most terrible contest the world has ever seen.
17. All the advantages for the protection of the country offered by a standing army may be obtained by the National Guard system which has proved so effective in the past and which is unattended by the evils of entire mobilization.
Responsive to the ancient wisdom, ‘Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it,’ obedient to the divine message that heralded the birth of Jesus the Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of the world, ‘. . . on earth peace, good will toward men,’ and knowing that our Constitution and the Government set up under it were inspired of God and should be preserved to the blessing not only of our own citizenry but, as an example, to the blessing of all the world, we have the honor respectfully to urge that you do your utmost to defeat any plan designed to bring about the compulsory military service of our citizenry. Should it be urged that our complete armament is necessary for our safety, it may be confidently replied that a proper foreign policy, implemented by an effective diplomacy, can avert the dangers that are feared. What this country needs and what the world needs, is a will for peace, not war. God will help our efforts to bring this about.
Respectfully submitted, GEO. ALBERT SMITH, J. REUBEN CLARK, JR., DAVID O. MCKAY, First Presidency.
I actually ran across this on Reddit, where it has been posted by an unhappy former Mormon. It might be noted, of course, that at that age a large number of Mormons go on missions, which is an effort to consolidate them in their faith, so there was no doubt some reason for Mormon's to be concerned. While I've heard it claimed that there's no pressure for them to do so, as a demographic, by my observation, they tend to marry young as well, which relates to one of the things noted in the letter, maybe more than one.
Still, the points made are interesting, and not necessarily invalid. Indeed, almost every point raised in this letter is correct.
There is actually a lot to unpack here, and my own views on this have changed back and forth over the years. In 1945, when this letter was written, there had only been a single instance of conscription into the Federal Army during peacetime in U.S. history, and that came right before World War Two. There was a history of mandatory militia service, but that had fallen by the wayside after the Civil War.
Also of note, the National Guard, in peacetime, still did not receive Federal basic training in 1945. Entry level soldiers were trained by their units by older NCO's delegated that task. Given this, the nature of the training was always local, but it obviously varied in other ways depending upon who was delivering it. In the case of this letter, the author could be assured that enlisting young men would have been trained by older soldiers of a like mind, with therefore much of the societal dangers noted avoided. I'm not sure when the training system actually changed, but I suspect it was by the very late 1940s or certainly by the 1950s. By the time I was in the Guard the Guard was incredibly integrated into the Regular Army, which is even more the case today. Enlisting men received regular Army basic and advanced training, and were in the Army when they received it.
When I was younger, I held the view that conscription was a bad thing, save in times of war, as it forced a person to serve against their will. That's a less developed point than the set of points noted above, but there is a point to it. Having said that, what I don't think I appreciated earlier is the dangers of a large standing Army, which is why the US had a militia system for defense in the first place. We're seeing a lot of those dangers come into fruition now. That's not directly related to conscription, it might be noted, but it somewhat is as we have a large, all volunteer, armed forces, which inevitably leads to a sort of military class. Armed forces with conscripts are much less likely do to that, and therefore they make a much more democratic force that's much less likely to act as praetorian guards for a would be dictator.
Additionally, as I've grown older I've noted that there's a distinct difference between people who served when asked, and those who avoided it. Our narcissist in chief in Washington D.C., who avoided serving due to shin splits, is a good example. Donald Trump would have benefited enormously from two years as an enlisted man in the military. But it's not just him, I've noted this in a lot of men who found a way not to serve. Their characters would have been better off if they had.
Last edition:
Thursday, December 13, 1945. Crimes against humanity.
Thursday, October 9, 2025
Sunday, October 9, 1875. Mormon Tabernacle Dedicated.
The structure had been largely completed and opened in 1867, but was dedicated on this day in 1875. Some ongoing construction was still occuring.
This is a remarkably early large structure for the American West.
Last edition:
Wednesday, September 29, 1875. Grant at the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Army of the Tennessee in Des Moines, Iowa, in which U.S. Grant expressed sentiments that would horrify MAGA today.
Tuesday, October 7, 2025
Tuesday, September 30, 2025
CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 104th edition. Buy the Big Ugly or we'll shoot this government. An Epstein offer somebody can't refuse. Ignoring Trump's dementia, Not knowing the details, Religious and Cultural appropriation, Why Wounded Knee?
Buy the Big Ugly or we'll shoot this government.
Headline says it all:
It's a game of chicken.
If this all seems familiar, it's because we went through this once before with under the Trump regime. Chuck Schumer, in his political dotage, didn't really know what to do, which has characterized his leadership of Senate Democrats since Trump's illegitimacy in general. The basic hope was that Trump would suddenly start acting semi normal. Since that time, he's acted more abnormal.
The GOP rails against Democrats being Marxist, Socialist, Communists, Fascist, Monarchist, Muslims most of the time, but now wants them to pay nice on a continuing funding resolution that, they say, will give them seven more weeks to work out a budget. The last budget, The Big Ugly, is so unpopular that the GOP is working on changing its name.
The risk here is who the public blames the looming government shutdown on. Republicans are already trying to blame the Democrats, even though they refuse to give the concessions the Democrats are seeking. Trump, whose "art of the deal" style of business tends to be all pressure base, is responding by saying he'll fire Federal workers.
Quite a few members of the populist far right will cheer that, at least up until it impacts them.
Democrats are accusing Trump of acting like a mob boss, and not without reason. His negotiation style often seems to resemble one.
Somebody is getting an offer they can't refuse.
And speaking of that. . .
This is a nice look at a grim topic.
Trump isn't supporting releasing the government's files on Jeffrey Epstein as somebody is getting protected, and that somebody is afraid. We don't know who it is, but that's fairly clearly what's going on.
Somebody close enough to the Oval Office to impact it was screwing underaged girls provided by Epstein. Maybe it's a collection of somebodies. Or/and somebody is being blackmailed.
On this, efforts that seem designed to divert attention from this are getting just sillier.
Whoever the somebody is, they're wealthy.
The Democrats did release a new list of names of people who were pondered as flight passengers to Epstein Island, which included Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Steve Bannon. Musk has denied every going there, and his denial is likely completely backed up. It may be the case than none of these individuals went there, or if they did, they didn't do any kiddie diddling.
Still, it's clear that Epstein got rich as a procurer and it's nearly impossible to believe that everyone who went there didn't know something was going on. Epstein was targeting the rich. The video claims he was blackmailing them. Somebody is being protected right now, or perhaps blackmailed.
More and more unsound
Robert Reich posted this item the other day
Having seen dementia up close, I keep wondering the same thing. Trump is increasingly demented.
Have you ever been in the house of a demented person? It's demented. And that's what's occurring to our entire government right now.
Again: Why isn’t the media reporting on Trump’s growing dementia?
Trump’s increasingly bizarre behavior can no longer be attributed to a calculated “strategy.”
We are on increasingly dangerous territory. Those on the right largely want to keep claiming that we're just not used to Trump's unconventional management style, which is correct as he's slipping into dementia and we haven't had to contend with that in any fashion since Ronald Reagan, who was demonstrating signs of it in his last term. Reagan seemed ancient at 77, two years younger than Trump is now, when he left office.
A sign that we're in a dangerous area is the increasingly obvious fact that other people are suddenly really prominent in a way that they were not before. Steven Miller is an example. Miller is impossible to like but he's now very much in the forefront. J. D. Vance has reemerged quite a bit as well.
Some have asserted that in Reagan's decline Nancy Reagan took over some of his roles behind the scenes. This definitely happened when Woodrow Wilson had a stroke and Edith stepped up to the plate. As Franklin Roosevelt declined nothing like that happened, but then he didn't have mental lapses.
We can be rest assured that Melania isn't going to step in. The question is who is, and what are they doing right now.
Stake Center Shooting
We've become so acclimated to bizarre murders that it seems the news on the LDS Stake Center shooting in Grand Blanc, Michigan, has already cycled. Maybe it should have, as stories like this are local stories.
While we really ought not to notice it, we'll go ahead and note anyhow that in stories involving the LDS the Press, and politicians, clearly shows it knows nearly nothing about them. Almost all the Press reported the attack as being on a church, which isn't the way the Mormons characterize this, the most common variety of their religious structures. That probably doesn't matter but it'd be sort of like calling a synagogue or a mosque a church.
Some politicians were quick to claim it demonstrated increasing violence against Christians, which they've wanted to claim about the Kirk assassination as well. Trump, for instance, stated ""yet another targeted attack on Christians in the United States of America". Kirk seems to have been murdered because he spoke against transgenderism, not for an expressed religious position, but I suppose you could argue that his opposition to transgenderism was based on his faith, although that would be a rather underdeveloped argument.
The thing is, at least right now, is that we seem to have no idea whatsoever why this guy attacked the Grand Blanc stake center. Mormons actually are not regarded as Christians by at least Apostolic Christians, who are the first and original Christians, as their theology doesn't support it. Mormons do assert they're Christians, but they certainly do not believe in a Trinitarian God like Christians do. Indeed, their belief is so significantly different that an informed Christian really can't regard them as Christians, which doesn't have much to do with how they view themselves.
Anyhow, if the location was picked out more or less at random, well then it might have been targeting Christians. Or it might be an act targeted specifically at Mormons for some reason. Or this guy may just have been flat out insane.
As an aside, however, it's interesting to note the degree to which outside of the West, and more particularly outside of the Jello Belt, most people sort of assume that the LDS are sort of just very clean dressing Protestants or something. This isn't casting aspersions, but it reminds me of the occasionally questions I'll hear directed as Jews by really ill informed Americans which assumes that Judaism is basically a Christian religion.
And the speculating probably ought to cease until we have an idea about what was going on, which might never occur.
The first storm
The first of the storms we wrote about on Sunday will hit Quantico today. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth will address the flag officers.
Reporting so far is that Hegseth is just going to deliver a pep talk, in which case this is the most expensive example of boring people for no reason in the history of mankind. I continue to suspect that more than that will occur.
Probably not what Hegseth will sound like later today.
We want our symbols back, dude.
Speaking of the wannabe War Secretary, we've noted here before that Hegseth is all tatted up. Indeed, we noted that in an earlier version of this trailing thread, in which we stated:
We also very recently had an article on Christian Dominionism.
Because of that I'll note use of these symbols by far right Evangelicals, and frankly Protestants in general, is cultural appropriation. If you dig what these convey, look into what the originally conveyed and study up. You won't remain in the New Apostolic Reformation camp for long.
Persistent cultural appropriation.
Bai-De-Schluch-A-Ichin or Be-Ich-Schluck-Ich-In-Et-Tzuzzigi (Slender Silversmith) "Metal Beater," Navajo silversmith, photo by George Ben Wittick, 1883
While I'm at it, I'll note that there's a politician I'm aware of who consistently angles for the Navajo jewelry look.
I guess that's the person's look, its just so persistent, black clothing with turquoise jewelry, that it's hard not to notice. Perhaps its meant to look Western, which if that's the case, it sort of does, but it looks Southwestern. And a person in this era needs to be, or should be, careful about that as the gulf between the regions Republican politics and Reservation views is growing a great deal.
Indeed, I've been wondering if we'll see Lynette Gray Bull run again for office locally. My prediction is that if she does, Harriet Hageman will not debate her.
My further prediction is that if Hageman is challenged from the center of her party, which is admittedly on the decline, she'll suffer a whopping defeat.
Remember Wounded Knee
Finally, Wounded Knee has certainly been back in the news, thanks to Hegseth.
What's going on here anyhow? It seems like an effort to turn back the clock in a way, but to what point on the dial? 1915? 1945? 1955?
Finally, some really important news.
Blackpink member member Lisa went to the Louis Viton fashion show in Paris.
Why can't se have Congress people who look like Lisa from Blackpink? Shoot, if we're aiming for cultural appropriation, given Kawaii a chance.
And Bad Bunny will sing at the Stupor Bowl.
I'm sure I will not watch that, but a coworker of mine loves Bad Bunny. I don't know why he's a bad bunny, and I'm not particularly inclined to find out, but I guess the Hispanic singer has been avoiding the mainland US due to the Sturmabteilung so it's a big deal to his fans.
Postscript:
Watching Patton one too many times.
Behind the stage on which Hegseth and Trump were expected to speak was a large American flag, with banners showing the words "strength, service, America" and the various flags of the armed services on either side.
Oh geez, now Donald Babbler is making an appearance and the stage is seemingly decked out like the opener of the movie Patton.
This just piles absurdity upon absurdity.
My prediction is the Trump speech will sound something like this:
And Hegseth's? It'll be rah rah, but when it falls flat, the next speech will be:
On a matter of serious concern, however, this is extraordinarily weird, but then much of what this administration does is extraordinarily weird. Still there's a little reason to worry that this regime is concerned that the military's senior leaders are not going to endlessly back illegality.
I have to wonder what it's like to get a rah rah speech from a guy who, when his country was calling, when to the doctor's office. Oh well.
More Kirk
I meant to put this up above, but I thought this interesting:
Because I paid so little attention to Kirk when he was alive, I still don't know what to make of the post mortems
Fr. Joseph Krupp, whose podcast and blog I follow, was a Kirk fan and had an interesting episode on him. He stated that Kirk was basically a middle of the road Republican by most measures up until our current times, when middle of the road, in his view, is regarded as right wing extreme. I'd agree that Kirk's views on things like transgenderism are in fact pretty average, up until quite recently.
Having said that, I also heard Kirk say that somebody should raise the bail money to bail out the person who attack Nancy Pelosi's husband, back after he was attacked. That's a flat out evil thing to say.
At any rate, I really think Cardinal Dolan let things carry him away. Kirk a modern day St. Paul? I don't think so. I suppose Cardinal Dolan meant that Kirk was killed for saying things that are true but unpopular, but St. Paul never excused violence.
As noted here the other day, I think that Catholics have to be really careful about embracing figures from the Evangelical right, which Kirk was. Kirk was headed into Catholicism pretty clearly, but hadn't yet made it there. Assuming he was a Catholic figure may be assuming too much and embracing Dominionism is assuming too much.
Related threads:
Storm Warning.
Labels: 119th Congress, 2020s, 2025, Donald Trump, Government, Pete Hegseth, Predictions, The Second Trump Administration
Labels: American Dumpster Fire, Catholic, Christianity, Donald Trump, Hypocrisy, Kennedy, Mae Winchester Effect, Men, Politics, Protestant, religion, Republican Party, Tattoos, The Crusades, Traditionalism, Women, Wyoming, Zeitgeist
Labels: 1870s, 1876, 1890, 1890s, Army, Battle of Little Big Horn, Immigration, Personalities, Pete Hegseth, Philippine Insurrection, Spanish American War, The Frontier West, World War One, Wounded Knee
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