Robert F. Smith

When reality is fully accounted for (career vs child-bearing, etc.), the gap is miniscule. In fact Claudia Goldin calls the gap a "motherhood gap." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13XU4fMlN3w https://youtu.be/P8P8eDSA5S0 There is a reason why Bari Weiss says that DEI is bad. There is a reason why she is now Editor-in-Chief at CBS.

Grooming young boys to believe that they are either trans or naughty by nature (and white boys especially with inborn racism), and then saddling them with enormous college debt and other absurd expectations, will of course drive them away from feminized and Marxist higher ed. No wonder they choose more practical trade schools. No surprise at male flight from the DEI dominated Democratic Party. Naturally, male and female political views now so strongly diverge.

Nonsense. Women have been receiving the same pay as men in the same fields, and far more women have been entering professional fields such as medicine and law. The lag time has influenced the interim figures, but that is a thing of the past. Women have been getting equal pay for equal work for some time. Asians with higher scores have been systematically excluded from top colleges. There are quotas to prevent colleges from being overwhelmed by Asians, just as was done in the past for Jews. Sounds like an excuse in search of a reason. A Mormon or Protestant work ethic may apply in some limited circumstances, but America at large is not so blest. A fentanyl or zombie culture is competing for attention.

The Mormon approach is pragmatic, not ideological. Even as an American Church, Mormonism represents praxis, not doxis. It goes back to the old joke about Saint Peter giving a tour of heaven to a group of new arrivals: When Pete offhandedly pointed downward toward Hell, and someone said "Yes, but it is so green down there," and Pete replies: "Those Mormons are at it again." Yep. That's why, before Xi, China had made great capitalist strides forward.

True enough, but the CCP is a top-down organization. Corruption actually gets things done just as it does in a mafia family. Xi is losing power, and the new order might shift back to special privilege for those who follow power Machiavelli style -- including imposition of some new order. The dictatorship of the proletariat is, after all, merely the new class.

Nonsense, the true expectation is that Asians and Jews will predominate, and Marxist Harvard (for example) has done everything possible to prevent that catastrophe. As to "men," again nonsense. Two-thirds of university students are women. So-called "white men" are being systematically excluded due their toxic taint.

Pres. Nelson had earned some sort of respect from the CCP, and our missionaries in Europe actually converted a lot Chinese students. Yes, they are quiescent. So you don't include Mormons in the nebish category?

So, why hasn't the CCP persecuted Mormons?

Correct. However, the twelfth article of faith declares, “We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.” Mormons are not known as rabble rousers. The CCP could easily adopt a 19th century Mormon United Firm/United Order communal approach. LDS chapels and temples could transform mainland China.

Perhaps, but also possible that it is highly accidental in nature. As if this is the way the LDS Church would have moved forward in any case, staid and unremarkable. Moreover, this Conference suggests that the Brethren understand very well that the fastest growth is in Africa. Too bad that Chairman Xi Jinping hasn't realized that his CCP could very profitably adopt Latter-day Saint tradition (real or a clone) in order to get China back on track. Currently in the doldrums.

Any of us can take the modern moral high ground and condemn people in the past, and we can even blame God for it all -- instead of describing how people lived in those times. This goes back to the false notion of infallibility of prophets or anyone else. Absolute judgments are easily made, but seldom amount to more than an evanescent value judgment.

Good. Now, how do you judge people living in the past who have done things we don't approve of today? Presentist like Ben McGuire apply current moral judgments to everyone in the past.

I appealed to a broad range of cultural facts (including state law in Joseph's day) which do not fit our later, presentist assumptions as a society. You carefully ignore the impact of very different societal norms -- which do change over time. Presentists pass absolute judgment, as you are doing, on the actions of past peoples. Anthropologists don't. Historians don't. They describe people as they were, warts and all. This is especially difficult for fundamentalists and literalists who read the Bible and are shocked by the horrors to be found in Holy Writ -- often attributed to God. Why are you afraid take people as they are? You are quick with accusations, but slow on the uptake on the infantilization of youth -- which entails treating teens as babies, instead of giving them responsibility. You claim this to be "abhorrent" only because you deliberately misinterpret the concept. It has nothing to do with your personal need to see it as sexual. It is rather the observable fact that young people raised with real chores to do, as a real part of the community, somehow mature more quickly -- whether living in a paleolithic group or on an Israeli kibbutz. Those are indeed our modern problems, which you use to attack a convenient and innocent target -- rather than simply understand in the broader historical context. That is true hypocrisy. As to politicians, you probably need to apply a Machiavellian interpretation to their actions. It's all about power, Ben. It always has been.

Yes, you can deliberately reverse the argument and play fast and loose with stats, which is your wont. All good arguments for complete relativism, if that is what you seek. Then anything and everything is "true." And all facts are then meaningless.

Yes, of course. You and I live in modern times and should avail ourselves of modern medical fact. However, blaming people in the past for not knowing all this is the true fantasy of presentism.