Law creates freedom

When I was young, I thought (like all children) that rules limited my freedom. I was told when and what to eat, when to sleep, what to wear, and how to behave. I was powerless in the world of the tall people and sometimes I rebelled the only way I could — by crying, yelling, … Read more

The straw man

Republicans frequently employ the informal fallacy. This category of faulty reasoning includes such problems as ad hominem (personal) attacks, begging the question, equivocation, false dilemma, faulty analogy, inconsistency and more. (Here is an interesting list). Informal fallacies are not fallacies of logic (those are called formal fallacies). Rather, they are fallacies caused by faulty premises … Read more

Brute Facticity

The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the earth’s center. Winston Smith (in the book 1984 by George Orwell) As an amateur rock climber in my younger days, I can tell you from personal experience that climbers are highly aware of gravity. The … Read more

Words without meaning

Words are important. They not only record and explain reality, they actually create reality. In fact, words are so important that “the Word” is actually one of the names of Jesus Christ. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.The same was in the beginning with … Read more

Beyond true and false

As a blogger in the Mormon Democrat space, I have recently realized that I may have been seeing the struggle through too narrow a lens. I had thought that Trumpism, and the even more radically fascist post-presidency Trumpism, was primarily a problem of lies versus truth. My response has been to relentlessly tell the truth … Read more

The Republican War on America

B

The First Russian Revolution of 1905 failed (though it did lead to some reform). Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (better known as Lenin) called it the “The Great Dress Rehearsal.” In 1917 Lenin came back from exile and founded Soviet Russia, which eventually became the Soviet Union in 1922. Adolf Hitler’s 1923 “Beer Hall Putsch,” an attempted … Read more

A consistent standard

In the library (and on the internet) in Heaven, all questions of fact will be answered completely truthfully. Those who write the books and post the data will be Celestial beings who have passed this Earthly test of character and who will never lie or have cause to deceive. When it comes to matters of … Read more

Are the LDS terminally naive?

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem....

In Matthew, chapter 10, Jesus gave his Twelve Apostles instructions before sending them out to preach the Gospel. He warned them that they would be made to suffer by other Jews (Matthew 10: 16-18), but that they should continue to speak out. Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be … Read more