Vogel Responds To Starr

[ttribe]

Bushman is not hardly the only 21st century Latter-day Saint who struggles with enemy identification. It's a modish malaise.

Yes, I know it is one of your chief issues. I've long since lost my taste for the war rhetoric, but I know that's not your concern so I'll bow out. Just wondered what you thought was wrong with Bushman; I think I get it now.

Edited July 6, 2012 by ttribe

[Dan Vogel]

Here is an excerpt from Walker's Review. I will let the reader decided whether Vogel's claim about Walker's review is accurate or not, and whether or not Walker's review may lend some credence to what Starr suggested about the relevance of noting Vogel's lack of training and experience in psychology:

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

If you ever get a chance to read Walker’s dissertation where he tries to assess the Smith family’s dynamics using various criteria in detail, you will see that he goes far beyond anything I imagined, and on much thinner evidence. Using rather poor historical analysis, Walker tries to downplay Joseph Smith Sr.’s drinking and financial problems. For Walker, the Smiths were a functional family despite Joseph Sr.’s drinking, financial blunders, serious religious differences, which included Lucy rejecting her husband’s dreams and joining the church whose minister he despised, losing the farm by not being able to make the final payment and pursuing money digging instead. Walker doesn't want the Smiths to be dysfunctional.

[Dan Vogel]

Yes, I know it is one of your chief issues. I've long since lost my taste for the war rhetoric, but I know that's not your concern so I'll bow out. Just wondered what you thought was wrong with Bushman; I think I get it now.

Like Quinn, Bushman concedes too much to the enemy and they are not allowed to do that.

[wenglund]

If you ever get a chance to read Walker’s dissertation where he tries to assess the Smith family’s dynamics using various criteria in detail, you will see that he goes far beyond anything I imagined, and on much thinner evidence. Using rather poor historical analysis, Walker tries to downplay Joseph Smith Sr.’s drinking and financial problems. For Walker, the Smiths were a functional family despite Joseph Sr.’s drinking, financial blunders, serious religious differences, which included Lucy rejecting her husband’s dreams and joining the church whose minister he despised, losing the farm by not being able to make the final payment and pursuing money digging instead. Walker doesn't want the Smiths to be dysfunctional.

Fascinating bit of deflection, but it makes sense that from your extremist position you would view less extreme positions as "downplaying."

By the way, family dysfunction isn't so much determined by whether a parent may have a substance abuse problem (to one degree or another), or whether parents and siblings have religious differences, or whether the family as a whole has experienced financial problems, but rather how the family responds to those challenges. From my reading about the Smith family, they met those challenges admirably, and as a result they were strengthened individually and as a family. To me, it would take more than a little distortion from an agenda-driven lens to view them as dysfunctional--that, or a rash assessment from someone who pretends to understand family psychology but doesn't have a clue.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-