Blood Brothers: Mormons, Genocide, and the Nixon administration

Charles Radford, a Navy yeoman, present some fascinating questions about Latter-day Saints’ relationship with the government, the law, and politicians. Charles Radford was serving as a navyman aboard a ship in India. He was an active, married Latter-day Saint. In various venues, Radford was a trained stenographer who took down highly-secretive government documents about war actions in various sections of the globe. And he was a spy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

A colorful case in point: in March 1971, East Pakistan won the majority of the seats in the National Assembly. This would center power in the ethnically distinct Bengali East Pakistan region. However, the Western military dictator, Yahya Khan would have none of it. He sent his forces to repress the Eastern Bengalis en masse, killing hundreds of thousands of East Bengalis. This would culminate in a flood of refugees to Eastern India—somewhere to the tune of 10 million. This obviously caused strains for the Indo-Pak relations. War broke out quickly—a war which the East Pakistanis won. They eventually broke off and declared themselves to be an independent Bangladesh. Around this same time, a low-level bureaucrat in Dakka, Bangladesh named Archer Blood sent a barely classified (marked with only “secret” instead of “top secret”) memo declaring the U.S. government to be “morally bankrupt” for its complacency on the issue.

Radford had access to key U.S. documents regarding U.S. policy during this war. During the famed India-Pakistan War in 1971, Nixon notably declared the United States to be neutral. However, Nixon was privately “tilting” in their direction, a reality that Radford leaked to fellow Latter-day Saint Jack Anderson, a prominent newsman for the Washington Post through stolen documents . This was no mere geopolitical move, however; Jack Anderson would win a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the incident. Anderson would later find himself on Nixon’s enemies list and even a possible target of assassination. G. Gordon Liddy even talked to a doctor about putting LSD in his soup. Nixon’s men were also considered trying to tie Anderson and Radford together through a possible homosexual relationship. I do not take that claim at all seriously—this is Nixon after all (and my M.A. thesis is on Nixon—this is a man I know something about).

Faithful Latter-day Saints—what are we to do? Anderson was as active as they come. Radford as well. Was Radford’s actions justified given the horrific situation of genocide taking place? Anderson revealed secret documents about the powers-that-be to the world. Was he standing up for the right or failing to follow Christ’s counsel to “render unto Caesar” and Paul’s counsel to let the powers that be reign supreme until Christ comes again?

Stephanie Meyer and the New Mormon Anti-Feminism

Ah...the title of that already sounds like the rant of a leftist in the New Yorker doesn't it? Fret not, my friends...this is very good news.

So who knew that a Mormon housewife would be able to tap into the collective psyche of teenie-boppers girls world-wide? One might ask what makes them so gullible, so predictable, so prone to manipulation? But this, my friends, misses the point entirely.

The first common understanding we must reach is that the Twilight series is not only fundamentally anti-feminist but that it spits in the face of the feminist critique at every turn. The heroine is vulnerable and wildly susceptible to Edward's innate goodness. She's a tad erratic, always pushing Edward to go further than he wants to...upon which he, the level-headed priesthood holder that he is, always steadies the rudder and returns their impassioned love back to the boiling cauldron of teenage hormones.

So what would make girls scream over repressiveness? It seems downright puritanical when compared with even other relatively mild romances like Titanic or even your B+ grade chick flick. Never mind the relatively graphic battle scenes, scenes that should send your average girls back to watch Grey's Anatomy with her roommates, shuddering at how "scary" it all was. Instead, they scream with delight as Edward battles back evil. And no, you are not in the Twilight Zone...you're in the zone of piles of money based on seemingly ham-handed cinema that hardly rises above Dudley Do-right and his sniveling counterpart of a villain.

So what has happened to the fair daughters of Hannah-Montana America? Welcome to the next phase of American feminism, a backlash against a feminism that has been sucked dry of its femininity through the vampire of nihlism. The young women are simply exhausted with the feminist mantras. American feminism feels it will succeed when women can be as great of CEOs, presidents, doctors, and lawyers as men are. The success of Twilight shows a younger feminism bucking against women who have forgotten that being erratic can be charming, that being a clutz can be loveable, and that men can be something more than a super-tight "life partner."

Oh don't you worry...the old school 60s feminists rail against Twilight...Bella won't even get an abortion to save her life, after all!. But no matter to the adoring fans...Bella is loved. That's what matters.

Just as Harry Potter has defined a childhood, so too can Twilight define womanhood for the coming decade. Don't be surprised if in about 10 years, you see the now-young women expecting a little more from their male acquaintances if they want the time of day. When men get assertive, they might wonder why he's not like a better gentleman (as the name, "Edward" subconsciously rings through their mind). Meyer's popularity might just be enough to cause a slight tectonic shift in the gender dynamics in America.

Censorship by Candlelight

You remember those cheesy re-enactments your priesthood/young women’s leaders made you do as teenagers? (ok, so some think they’re cheesy, others get a buzz out of them, and others just want to prove to the ladies that they’re “pioneer material” *manly grunt*)? These events are rituals intended to reinforce our identity as a people...our indulgence in the sociocultural phenomenon the Maurice Halbwachs called “collective memory.” “Collective memory” is seen by scholars as something to be analyzed, pieced together, ripped apart, and even enjoyed. One thing you don’t do...above all else...is take it personally.

Yet as I was listening that brilliant musical by Stephen Sondheim, Company, I heard an interesting tune about a man who was ruminating on what married life was like. The song bespoke a confusion: “Sorry, grateful/ Regretful, happy.” Everything and nothing in his life is because of her. Why, he says, look for answers about what marriage does when none seem to materialize? He always wonders “what might have been” if he had not met his wife. Essentially, the singer tells us, he and his wife had no established narrative of how they got together. Sure, he could tell us the precise events...but there was no sense of inevitability. No sense of “one and only-ness.” It’s a common aphroism in LDS (and really, general lore) that you know you should marry someone not when you can imagine living with that person but when you can’t imagine living without them. Not exactly President Kimball’s “any two righteous people can marry if they’re willing to pay the price” line...

Therefore, my statement is less about the actuality of “one and only”-ness and more about how the Holy Ghost conveys revelation. I have come to truly believe that since the gospel will never be truly demonstrated through empirical methods, we have to access the knowledge through other means. Yet we are talking about historical claims here...events that happened at a place and time. We can’t exactly “faith” our way through these things...at least using the pop culture’s definition of faith. There must be another way of establishing knowledge about divine truths...not the least of which is eternal marriage.

Full disclosure: this argument is blatantly teleological. It’s an argument based on what is and not on what might have been. For a historian, being so focused on the present might get one accused of “presentism,” one of the nastiest insults a historian can level at you. The founding premise of history is that we might understand why things happened the way they happen; this often requires that we understand what did not happen.

But there’s a reason that historians aren’t marriage/family therapists. Imagine me telling my wife: “I could have married so-and-so, but because of timing issues, global warming, the economy, and the shift in cultural norms because of event X, I’m with you instead.” Ah, I can feel the glow of the candlelight dinner. So I suggest to you that healthy marriages are fundamentally a-historical. It creates a contrived history out of a chaos of knowledge. After all, from a strictly historical stand-point, a couple has no business saying that they were “meant to be together” out of the thousands of individuals they would probably never meet. A good marriage requires the massaging of one’s history towards the current relationship, self-censorship if you will. You don’t talk about the ex, certainly not with any adoration. If one does indulge in memories, those memories are funneled into the present circumstances, even if by all other accounts they should not be. Those that cannot fit into the present are sloughed off as irrelevant or becomes points of contention.

So I say unto my married friends...revel in censorship. It might make your candlelight dinners a little more pleasant.

Why I'm Proud of America

I didn't vote for Obama. I have many concerns about his policies and associations.

But I was proud of America last night. America is now the first Western nation to elect a minority as its President. Only 50 years ago, now-President Obama would have been staring attack dogs in the street of Montgomery. One hundred years ago, he could have been lynched as the white community looked on, considering his death to be a form of family entertainment. Now we've finally decided to get serious about breaking down the race barrier.

So here's to you, MLK Jr...

Villains in the Mormon Mind

Everyone loves a good villain…the bellowing laugh with hands thrown up in the air utter triumph. As a child, I found Dr. Claw of Inspector Gadget fame to be wildly amusing. The Joker has quickly reached pop-culture stardom as people would practice their Joker impressions of “Why So Serious?” Good cartoonish villainy makes for good parties.

Hadyn White maintains that every history, in spite of its claims to objectivity, is constructed in literary fashion with traditional literary tropes such as villains, comic reliefs, and heroes. Indeed, White would conclude, we see our very world as a story…and therefore, the job of a historian is to point out our way of making history more than the history itself. Hence, the title of his magnum opus, Metahistory.

So who gets under our collective skin? You know…the folks who have been able to get inside our heads and poke us where it hurts? As we will find (surprise, surprise), there is no one archetype for the Mormon villain. Each of these villains represents a strand of our thought our culture that has been particularly vulnerable. We will see the Benedict Arnolds, the political activists, the heretics, and the downright scoundrels. Some have even worn a denim jumper or two in their lifetime…

Some observations are in order:

A) Some of these individuals, I guarantee, will be seen as heroes by Mormon Matters readers. However, as I’m sure these readers recognize, these heroic efforts are generally those of a dissenter…and in order for a dissenter to become famous, s/he has to tick off the powers that be in large numbers. So alas…they make the list.

B) Most of these villains have varying degrees of admirable traits. We’re talking about perception and not reality. I, for one, would gladly eat lunch with most “villains” on this list.

So behold…

10. Emma Smith

Poor sister Emma…while she is beloved as a heroine in much of the contemporary Church (of course, we all have the resident Emma-hater), Emma was not always perceived as one. In the aftermath of the Exodus from Nauvoo, Emma not only stayed behind but also kept several of Joseph’s personal belongings that Brigham believed belonged to the Church. In addition, she offered some support to Joseph III in establishing the RLDS church. Her son, David, eventually went to a mental institution in the aftermath of learning of his father’s polygamy while he served an RLDS mission to Utah–thus blackening her name even further with the Utah leadership. Brigham Young even accused her of trying poison Joseph and called her a “child of hell.” Thankfully, we can appreciate Emma for her tremendous accomplishments now.

9. Sidney Rigdon

Sidney has, quite sadly, been classified among the “crazy uncles” category of Mormon history. Yet he served for nearly ten years as the Joseph Smith’s proverbial Aaron. Despite his impressive service and considerable contribution to the Church with his Campbellite congregation, he has something on record to annoy just about every faction of the Church–from “when the prophet has spoken the thinking is done” orthodoxy to the postmodern, “scripture is inspired fiction” free-wheelers. In the months leading up to the Missouri War, he proved his capacity to inflame when giving the famous Salt Sermon–which implied that the expulsion of prominent apostates such as W.W. Phelps and Oliver Cowdery would be forthcoming. He became the bete noire of the succession crisis as he attempted to convince the Latter-day Saints that Joseph Smith had appointed him to be the leader. In historical memory, Rigdon has not been painted in the darkest hues; his villainy is often viewed as delusions and nothing more–delusions that could easily be brushed off into the ash-bin of history

8. Albert Sydney Johnson

A significant figure in 19th-century American military history in his own right, it’s ironic indeed that his greatest legacy is outside scholarly circles is as a part of an anticlimactic military operation that saw no bonafide engagement of enemies: the Utah War. He led, in all, over 5,000 troops to put down a supposed rebellion of Utah against the federal government. Congress widely opposed the expedition (most notably Sam Houston), and eventually would deem it “Buchanan’s blunder.” However, Utah remained under military occupation (albeit limited) For modern Latter-day Saints, Johnson serves more as a symbol of the animosity between the pioneers and the federal government than as an actual executor

7. John D. Lee A looming figure in not only Mormon history, but in the history of the West, John D. Lee has been kicked around as the football in the hands of Mountain Meadows historians. Aside from the elephant in the room that is the MMM, John D. Lee was otherwise a hard-working LDS who contriubted significantly to his community.

Having Been depicted as everything from a loyal scapegoat and hack to a renegade, John D. Lee has borne much of the blame for the attacks. Juanita Brooks’ research demonstrated that Lee’s excommunication and execution was simply meant to relieve pressure from the federal authorities’ constant haranguing. Walker, et. al. has concluded that John D. Lee played a central role in the massacre in both planning and deed (the topic looms too large for extensive treatment in this, a rather superfluous article by comparison–see the book that needs no introduction, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, for more info). In either interpretation, Lee’s name is often one of the few names to be mentioned within popular discourse about the massacre, in spite of the dozens of Iron County militiamen participation. Lee has come to symbolize the violent streak–if there be one–within 19th-century Mormonism–the crazy uncle in the attic.

6. Fawn Brodie
Niece of President David O. McKay and husband of a famed of nuclear theorist, Bernard Brodie, who helped to craft Eisenhower-era nuclear deterrence strategy; Fawn Brodie made fame in both critical and liberal Mormon circles by publishing one of the first scholarly biographies of Joseph Smith to reach wide circulation, No Man Knows My History. Brodie was roundly denounced and excommunicated within a year of publication. Whether she deserved such denunciation or not (I’m intentionally avoiding that elephant in the room), Brodie’s name has come to symbolize the “pointy-headed intellectual” stock character for modern Mormons. One of my contacts has informed me that when Richard Bushman presented Rough Stone Rolling to Knopf, they initially hesitated. Bushman responded that they owed him one: “After all, you published Brodie.” The argument was persuasive.

From Independence to Darfur

The central question: Why aren't Mormons more radical??

A diaspora refers to the spreading of a people from their initial homeland to foreign regions. The population seeks to retain its characteristics even as they fend off the dominant culture in which they live. Latter-day Saints gathered in Utah from numerous nations; now the base of Utah Mormons have expanded back to the urban centers of New York, Boston, Washington, D.C. and elsewhere. We haven't had the Zionist mojo for some time (I don't exactly chant "Next Year in Jackson County" when I go to bed at night). What has that meant for the creation of culture?

Generally, in my cloistered academic world, diasporic and collective oppression carries a great deal of literary capital. If you can demonstrate how your identity has been unjustly persecuted by a dominant culture, you have "street cred." in talking about oppression. Yet we are woefully "square" in such areas; we're establishment men of the "Ask no questions and you'll be told no lies" brand. I don't suggest that we attempt to become a political action group or that we begin shouting about getting Missouri reparations. However, I do suggest that we, as a people, can and should identify more closely with oppressed peoples with whom we share a history in singular ways.

Similarities
1. Expelled en masseorders from the highest level of government
2. Lived under military occupation
3. Described using racialized terms (the famous anti-polygamy decision directly compared Mormons to Asiatic and African peoples)
4. Experienced directed assaults on our way life at the point of gun

Friends, while this is not precisely the same as racial oppression, in general, this is the stuff of which the "big ideas" about the oppressed masses is made. After all, there was a time when Mormons considered the term, "American" to be an insult. Yet now, Mormons will jump behind the Sean Hannitys and Toby Keiths of the world in justifying almost any military action.

While I hardly believe we're losing our identity (we do a very good job of being a "peculiar people" sometimes--and I really do mean that in a positive sense), I do wonder why we are where we are in American society when by all accounts, we should be a flaming radical like Franz Fanon. Granted, we did not experience the African slave trade, but we did experience systematic, institutionalized oppression from the highest levels of government.

But most importantly, why don't we give a hoot about populations who suffer worldwide? Perhaps our wealth and our ease have jammed our sensory nerves for "the fellow persecuted." Maybe we are comfortable in our consolidated position as only a frowned-upon church.

Maybe Darfur is a little closer to Independence than maps tell us...

Theological Realpolitik: The Church and What It Can't Do

The most recent argument concerning the church's involvement in Prop. 8 goes thusly:

1) The Church supports traditional gender relations

2) The Church does not speak out extensively (except for a few platitudes about how we proclaim peace) on major world issues (such as the Iraq War and Darfur)

3) Therefore, the Church is "on the wrong side of history."

I rank this is one of the most worst arguments--on either side--on the Prop. 8 issue.

So let's address the merit of each premise--in turn--and discuss its relationship to the conclusion (#3).

1) Traditional gender relations

Somehow, the Church supporting the legitimization of sexual unions that has given mankind its very existence for the past gazillion years has been construed as being "on the wrong side of history." It should be noted that they are using the concept of history in the classical sense of cultural Marxism--that of "progress," of the unfolding of a new chapter--as though the newness or "presentness" (this should be a code-word to you historians out there--"presentism"--which is high-browed insult of the first order to a serious historian) of a thing made it inherently worthwhile or useful. The idea of progress is a nebulous word, devoid of any real meaning. Ultimately, it boils down to a sugary glaze for anyone's political agenda. Its usage tells us nothing about an idea's merit.

I don't think I will insult the reader by laying out the benefits heterosexuality has given to the world. Frankly, it deserves a "privileged status" if for no other reason than because we owe our existence to it. Even Ancient Greece held monogamy in high regard (in spite of the popular stories surrounding their allowance of homosexuality), noting that Cecrops, a partially divine early king of Athens, both civilized mankind and establish monogamy as the divine order.

So it's odd indeed that the Church would be on the "wrong side of history," the same history that gives this writer his very life.

2) The Church does not mobilize politically for human rights abuses

To be sure, the constant streams of comments in General Conference about the wars in the world and about how Satan rules over the peoples with blood should indicate that Church is quite aware of human rights abuses. Alexander Morrison, a member of the seventy, has done work with the U.N. in researching tropical diseases.

This is correct. But why is it? Notice...the Church doesn't even mobilize for every moral issue. It has to be a winnable one--one where the Church can command influence. Whenever a federal amendment is proposed for homosexual marriage, the Church does no more than issue a two-line statement expressing its general support. Why? Because it does not command the human resources necessary to carry out an effective campaign on a national level. The author of the cited piece seems to be outraged at the Church for recognizing what it can and cannot do.

Let's imagine that every Latter-day Saint in the Church donated five dollars to a Save Darfur fund (and the Church has donated about 17 million to humanitarian aid in conflicts worldwide--not just Darfur--in 2006 alone). Let's say President Monson condemned it specifically (note, they have offered ample condemnation of these things in general)...where would be then where we aren't now? Does that suddenly give them "street cred" in the eyes of progressives? Perhaps it would have an impact on policymakers; but perhaps it would not.

In California, on the other hand, there is a mass of human and monetary resources that can carry out what the Church (and I) see as good policy. Disagree on the policy if you wish, but intelligent people should be able to distinguish some between a campaign that will have an immediate impact and a conflict where complex geopolitical actors are tragically pulling the strings. The Church has a built-in The most the Church can do in such circumstances is provide humanitarian aid and teach its members to abhor such bloodshed. Speaking for myself, LDS doctrine has successfully taught me and countless others to do just that.

In any case, to argue that the Church is "on the wrong side of history" is at best a limited and provincial argument that defines history as nothing more than the fodder for a political tract.

True, it's on the Huffington Post--but an outrageous argument becomes no less outrageous simply because it comes from someone known for their intellectual laxity. Additionally, I have seen this argument gain some traction amongst otherwise knowledgable people.

But it won't under my watch.

I'm a little outraged right now

I was familiar with the U.S. manual on counterinsurgency published in 2004. I had even read parts of it (for a class...I was pressed for time and just absorbed enough to make through the seminar without sounding dumb).

I read today that the military adviser in host country where counterinsurgency operations are taking place (read: Iraq) need not concern himself with that country's democratization or with the democratic process. Even Captain Moroni bothered to get the voice of the people to support his lifting of the writ of habeas corpus, as it were.

Not that this a surprised to me, but normally, one must piece together egregious acts of the government. Here we have it plain as day.

I love America, but this is outrageous.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Birth Certificates

I have been deceived.

Alas, I must print my mea culpa here and state the truth clearly that no one may misunderstand...

Obama is not whom he says he is...

Here is the smoking gun evidence...clear as crystal...*sob* I have been deceived *SOB*...

Why the Law Does and Does Not Matter

An odd title, coming from me...considering that I see myself as a hardliner for evidence/legal reasoning. But frankly, Proposition 8, while a decidedly legal maneuver, actually has very little to do with "the law."

For us to believe that there is no connection between the societal values which we hold and the laws that we as a society pass is not sustainable by appeals to any sort of appeal to case studies. Yet homosexual activists, even the California Supreme Court, suggest that opening marital opportunities to homosexual just gives them more civil rights, that it has no effect on heterosexuals, that any opposition to these privileges must be born of good old-fashioned bigotry.

By sustaining the California Supreme Court decision, we are not just offering economic benefits to homosexual couples. I wish we were. However, just as a marriage license and a speeding ticket are not just pieces of paper but are cultural rudders, as it were, the legal definition of marriage as heterosexual is similarly a cultural rudder that would have not only legal implications but also fuzzier but more wide-reaching implications concerning our collective worldview. Legal decisions, alas, have consequences. I've discussed these consequences elsewhere...but how do they come about?

Discourse
The first is in our discourse...the "rectification of names." Bill Clinton famously refused to call the Rwandan massacres "genocide" because of the responsibility to act that naming would bring. To think that we can just words/metaphors loosely without it affecting our reasoning would be fallacious. In other words, words and ideas have consequences, as Richard Weaver has famously argued. There's a reason thinkers debated the number of angels dancing on the head of the pin was of tremendous importance to Middle Ages thinkers...because that question directly addressed how they saw the fundamental reality of the world...of time and space. That we discount it as nonsense simply shows that we no longer use ideas as our governing assumptions. The idea of heterosexuality, of homosexuality...it's all considered to be an artificial creation of our own minds which has, its heart, nothingness. And the idea that ideas aren't significant is itself a significant intellectual development for the modern world. We can no longer question the abstract utility of a movement, but only in terms of dollars and cents. Invoke the concept of morality and you'll be a right-wing demagogue (though I myself am averse to the term for merely tactical reasons).

State antagonism
Simply put, we can't trust that the state is our friend. While religions may not be required to perform gay marriages, taking the Court at its word, the state has now established itself to be directly at odds with the interests of various religious groups. And who has the greater power of dissemination when it comes to the spreading of ideology? As one scholar noted, the state holds the power of the Repressive State Apparatus (the public school system and the Courts), so while their precise ruling may give some wiggle room to churches to act as they will, the educational system will be mobilized as an ideological "means of production" (in Marxist theory) to assure the state's decision. We are wrong if we think the state to be a passive entity that simply follows our bidding at election time.

As my friend Ashly noted, we are essentially burning our conceptions of sexuality and gender at the altar of the government's god. Parents who oppose it cannot be notified of its teaching or even opt out of their children being taught it. The state has its interests. My opponents suggest that we are invoking fear...and yes, I am (fear is really the staple of all politics at some level...liberal or conservative). So suggesting that I use fear really sheds little light on the subject...they need to demonstrate to me that my fears cannot plausibly materialize. Given the track record, they will be hard-pressed to do so.

So let's not think that we're just offering civil rights to an oppressed group. That's a compelling narrative, but let's recognize that the forces against Prop. 8 are the same forces that will try to mold our next generation in the government's image.