Watchman on the Tower: Ezra Taft Benson and the Making of the Mormon Right

[smac97]

19 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Quote

I have lived in Utah County for virtually my entire adult life.  I can count on one hand, with a few fingers left over, the instances of someone quoting or referencing ETB in a political context.  So I guess the "so many Latter-day Saints" thing is a bit of an unproven assumption.

I think you are a statistical outlier.

Says the guy who has "never lived in Utah or Idaho."

19 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

I have never lived in Utah or Idaho and I would have to do more than go barefoot or wear sandals to count how often I heard quotes used this way. Happened in meetings, informal conversations, chatting with fellow missionaries, online, everywhere.

To quote a guy: "I think you are a statistical outlier."

What people say online, particularly social media, is not necessarily an accurate indicator of IRL attitudes of broad swaths of Latter-day Saints.

19 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

That is not even counting the times where I recognize that someone is paraphrasing something ETB said. My dad generally leans slightly right and would complain about the catastrophic mindset of many people who would use ETB’s writings and quotes.

Huh.  I have a pretty big family.  Two brothers and three sisters here in Utah, plus my parents.  All are married with children.  My wife has her parents and a sibling in Utah, and another sibling in Idaho.  They too are all married with children.  I've lived in the same house for 15+ years.  I have known my long-term neighbors for many years, and we have had hundreds of young families (going to BYU and/or UVU) cycle through out ward.  I've been lawyering in Utah and Salt Lake Counties for 17 years now.  I regularly interact with other attorneys, with paralegals, with clients, with court staff, and so on.  

In short, I interact with a lot of people in Utah County, and have been doing so for a long time.  It's not that hard to detect the "ultraconservative" vibe from some.  First off, I think there are not nearly as many people as folks like you seem to think.  Second, I just don't think they got that way from reading stuff from ETB originating from half a century ago.  Third, i think their political inclinations have been far more influenced by more recent sources.  Of these, Glenn Beck has obviously been influenced by ETB, but that's about it.

So as far as the "chicken or the egg" question arises, I 'm inclined to surmise that the writings of ETB are a retroactive bolstering afterthought used to justify political views, more than an originating source of those views.

But I'm open to more data.  I need to read the book.

19 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Of course the weirdness of using quotes about an imminent communist threat decades later to say there is an imminent communist threat is often lost on those who use the quotes. 

Yeah.  I question how prevalent the use of such quotes is these days.  

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited January 7, 2022 by smac97

[The Nehor]

12 minutes ago, smac97 said:

The many Latter-day Saints of my acquaintance have a variety of opinions about things, but most lean conservative.  But I don't think they are conservative because they have been reading Ezra Taft Benson's writings from a half century ago.

Some do but the predominance of leaning that way politically stems from ETB. Many of those people took in that ideology “with their mother’s milk”. Their parents or their grandparents or their church leaders or whatever (actively or passively) shared it and they picked it up and kept walking.

[smac97]

1 minute ago, The Nehor said:

Some do but the predominance of leaning that way politically stems from ETB.

Too conclusory for my taste.

But again, I need to read the book.

1 minute ago, The Nehor said:

Many of those people took in that ideology “with their mother’s milk”. Their parents or their grandparents or their church leaders or whatever (actively or passively) shared it and they picked it up and kept walking.

We seem to be characterizing ETB as the "unmoved mover," the fountainhead, of ultraconservative Latter-day Saints.  

Well, for some, maybe.  But that starts to become pretty derivative and diluted.  There are a lot more ingredients in the stew of their political inclinations than the writings of Ezra Taft Benson (if ETB is in there at all).

Thanks,

-Smac

[Duncan]

23 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Says the guy who has "never lived in Utah or Idaho."

To quote a guy: "I think you are a statistical outlier."

What people say online, particularly social media, is not necessarily an accurate indicator of IRL attitudes of broad swaths of Latter-day Saints.

Huh.  I have a pretty big family.  Two brothers and three sisters here in Utah, plus my parents.  All are married with children.  My wife has her parents and a sibling in Utah, and another sibling in Idaho.  They too are all married with children.  I've lived in the same house for 15+ years.  I have known my long-term neighbors for many years, and we have had hundreds of young families (going to BYU and/or UVU) cycle through out ward.  I've been lawyering in Utah and Salt Lake Counties for 17 years now.  I regularly interact with other attorneys, with paralegals, with clients, with court staff, and so on.  

In short, I interact with a lot of people in Utah County, and have been doing so for a long time.  It's not that hard to detect the "ultraconservative" vibe from some.  First off, I think there are not nearly as many people as folks like you seem to think.  Second, I just don't think they got that way from reading stuff from ETB originating from half a century ago.  Third, i think their political inclinations have been far more influenced by more recent sources.  Of these, Glenn Beck has obviously been influenced by ETB, but that's about it.

So as far as the "chicken or the egg" question arises, I 'm inclined to surmise that the writings of ETB are a retroactive bolstering afterthought used to justify political views, more than an originating source of those views.

But I'm open to more data.  I need to read the book.

Yeah.  I question how prevalent the use of such quotes is these days.  

Thanks,

-Smac

https://mylifebygogogoff.com/2021/12/ezra-taft-benson-a-time-of-crisis-in-america-april-1968-general-conference.html

https://mylifebygogogoff.com/2021/12/if-william-barber-ii-was-a-shock-test-byus-faculty-and-students-failed-it.html

 

This guy is looney tunes but his blog and FB are fairly popular 

 

another interesting blog is Millenial Star with Benson highlights

https://www.millennialstar.org/?s=benson&submit=Search

Plus a litany of youtube videos of Pres. Benson

 

Edited January 7, 2022 by Duncan

[The Nehor]

7 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Says the guy who has "never lived in Utah or Idaho."

Are you suggesting that conservative leaning saints would be more common outside of Utah and Idaho. If so, LOL!

8 minutes ago, smac97 said:

To quote a guy: "I think you are a statistical outlier."

I doubt it and I am not basing this on just anecdotal little me. I have talked to many other saints from Utah, Idaho, elsewhere in the states, and virtually all have stories of people quoting ETB in a quorum meeting or as part of a testimony when they want to get political without being obvious.

10 minutes ago, smac97 said:

What people say online, particularly social media, is not necessarily an accurate indicator of IRL attitudes of broad swaths of Latter-day Saints.

I agree. I am not particularly active on social media and don’t like it. I have monitored it more in recent years as part of some of my ‘volunteer’ work but I don’t use it to gauge the population as a whole.

12 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Huh.  I have a pretty big family.  Two brothers and three sisters here in Utah, plus my parents.  All are married with children.  My wife has her parents and a sibling in Utah, and another sibling in Idaho.  They too are all married with children.  I've lived in the same house for 15+ years.  I have known my long-term neighbors for many years, and we have had hundreds of young families (going to BYU and/or UVU) cycle through out ward.  I've been lawyering in Utah and Salt Lake Counties for 17 years now.  I regularly interact with other attorneys, with paralegals, with clients, with court staff, and so on.  

In short, I interact with a lot of people in Utah County, and have been doing so for a long time.  It's not that hard to detect the "ultraconservative" vibe from some.  First off, I think there are not nearly as many people as folks like you seem to think.  Second, I just don't think they got that way from reading stuff from ETB originating from half a century ago.  Third, i think their political inclinations have been far more influenced by more recent sources.  Of these, Glenn Beck has obviously been influenced by ETB, but that's about it.

How often do you talk politics or ask people where their views come from? I can be a friendly or (hopefully rarely) obnoxious anthropologist with my desire to understand why people believe and do things. I am usually not super overt. I am told I have a very trustworthy vibe and sometimes people will just spill intimate things with me because I tend to be open with my own concerns. Maybe that is how I get more of it. My family is also bigger and many of them are in Utah and Idaho and I have picked their brains on this. Siblings, their spouses, uncles, aunts, cousins, and all of that. Just in case the size of one’s family matters for some reason.

Are you familiar with ETB’s most popular talks and the arguments he used and would you recognize someone paraphrasing them or (too often) using a distorted caricature of them? I am not arguing that they need to be “ultraconservative”. Most of the ultraconservatives by their very nature are either going to be reading ETB themselves or feeding on those who were themselves fed by him. They care and that usually means spending some time reading or listening or whatever. I am arguing that the general leaning towards conservativism amongst those who vote the way their parents did or just picked up a few principles here and there and find they work or whatever also comes from ETB. Just more ‘watered down’ for lack of a better term.

22 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Yeah.  I question how prevalent the use of such quotes is these days.  

Direct quotations? Pretty rare. Paraphrases and bastardizations of the quotes? All over. That being said I have heard it quoted a lot too. The people who love to quote ETB REALLY love to quote him.

[The Nehor]

15 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Too conclusory for my taste.

But again, I need to read the book.

We seem to be characterizing ETB as the "unmoved mover," the fountainhead, of ultraconservative Latter-day Saints.  

Well, for some, maybe.  But that starts to become pretty derivative and diluted.  There are a lot more ingredients in the stew of their political inclinations than the writings of Ezra Taft Benson (if ETB is in there at all).

Thanks,

-Smac

He was in many respects the fountainhead. Saints were in those groups believing in unlikely conspiracies before but their numbers were small and he was the one preaching it from the pulpit and legitimizing it. It has been diluted since then for most but not all saints. Most took some of the better principles from what he taught. Some are still blaming the Jews for everything.

I see his ideas on this board pretty often. I wonder sometimes if the people doing it know they are doing it.

[smac97]

32 minutes ago, Duncan said:

https://mylifebygogogoff.com/2021/12/ezra-taft-benson-a-time-of-crisis-in-america-april-1968-general-conference.html

https://mylifebygogogoff.com/2021/12/if-william-barber-ii-was-a-shock-test-byus-faculty-and-students-failed-it.html

This guy is looney tunes but his blog and FB are fairly popular 

"Fairly popular" seems fairly nemulous.

32 minutes ago, Duncan said:

 

another interesting blog is Millenial Star with Benson highlights

https://www.millennialstar.org/?s=benson&submit=Search

Virtually every post referencing ETB is from one guy: "Geoff B."

32 minutes ago, Duncan said:

Plus a litany of youtube videos of Pres. Benson

 

The total worldwide views on this video since it was uploaded on 10/2/20: 649.  There are two other "Benson" videos on this channel, with 226 and 126 views each.

The number of subscribers to this channel: 17.

Thanks,

-Smac

[The Nehor]

36 minutes ago, Duncan said:

another interesting blog is Millenial Star with Benson highlights

https://www.millennialstar.org/?s=benson&submit=Search

This annoys me. My mission had a newsletter and, since we were in Britain, we decided to name it the Millenial Star as an homage. Salt Lake found it somehow and told us to stop using the name. We did.

Why are they using it?!?!?!?!?

And yes, I know it is different.

I should go digging through my old stuff. I have a few copies of the old Millenial Star I found while cleaning an old missionary department. They were older, the issues were from around the time I was born. No idea how they go in that house.

[Duncan]

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

"Fairly popular" seems fairly nemulous.

Virtually every post referencing ETB is from one guy: "Geoff B."

The total worldwide views on this video since it was uploaded on 10/2/20: 649.  There are two other "Benson" videos on this channel, with 226 and 126 views each.

The number of subscribers to this channel: 17.

Thanks,

-Smac

I refuse to go through  other Yankee propaganda videos on youtube but here is one from that Goff character 

 

over 12000 views since 2015

[Chum]

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

My mission had a newsletter and, since we were in Britain, we decided to name it the Millenial Star as an homage. Salt Lake found it somehow and told us to stop using the name

What is the significance of that name, that made leadership get their haunches up over it?

[Calm]

5 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Some do but the predominance of leaning that way politically stems from ETB. Many of those people took in that ideology “with their mother’s milk”. Their parents or their grandparents or their church leaders or whatever (actively or passively) shared it and they picked it up and kept walking.

We had one family like this in our ward when we moved down from Canada to small town next to Provo Utah. He wasn’t an activist in the sense of Bundy, but he did share comments from Pres Benson’s political years. 
 

But his kids weren’t as extreme and I didn’t know them well enough to know how deep the habit was. 
 

I was disturbed by the inclusion of a political book by Elder Benson and one from Skousen in my daughter’s history homeschooling texts for 8th grade.  There were no liberal books to balanced them so it wasn’t intended as an exploration of the range of thought, the core work was heavily influenced imo by Elder Benson and Skousen. It was a school that offered both typical in class and homschooling options recommended by a friend that videoed their classes for the homeschool side so my daughter could watch them whenever without the need for her work to be supervised by them and I loved their math and science classes, so we just pretty much ignored the history one. English was a bit weird as the teacher made some claims about what language was Adamic as if it was a fact, but she was pretty tame once we got past that. 
 

The books were purged years ago and I had just skimmed through the political books (the general history text was decent, so we just used that) so I don’t remember what titles they were, just that I felt they were overly specific for her grade and was thinking why so much anticommunism ideology instead of what was actual American history and ideology. 
 

So at least one school in Utah Valley was pushing ET Benson’s political beliefs as something foundational that every kid in the Church should be following.  The school was offered as a better alternative to the less rigorous, but also social indoctrination of non gospel ideology that is present in public school to better prepare your children for a gospel oriented and socially responsible life.  There were a number of schools presenting that theme at the time .  Its English reading focused as much as possible on using LDS writers as well as the classical, avoided anything else modern iirc.
 

This was back in 2004 or 2005.  Since we paid up front, changing when the texts were sent out was not an option for us. I should have put more work into finding a school rather than going with the first that looked like it would work and should have looked at more than the math and science when I previewed it, but I was overwhelmed with her physical and emotional needs at the time, her schooling was out on the back burner more or less and I had the impression all the other schools I had heard about would be following the same ideology. 
 

I am pretty sure this is the school as it had moved to its new campus a few years before and it was still working in expanding programs and classes, but it is possible I am confusing it with another.  The sales pitch seems identical to what I remember.  Not online at the time.  Just DVDs sent as they were produced for each class (so we got them a week or two later) along with all their texts for auditing.

https://ahsworldwide.org/about-us/

Edited January 8, 2022 by Calm

[esodije]

The notion that “right wing” philosophy in the church had its roots solely in Ezra Taft Benson is a huge, mendacious fallacy. I don’t think Elder/President Lee was the only like-minded member of the Twelve in that era, either. The younger members of the quorum at the time learned to be publicly apolitical, but I feel certain they privately held similar views.

[Duncan]

6 minutes ago, esodije said:

The notion that “right wing” philosophy in the church had its roots solely in Ezra Taft Benson is a huge, mendacious fallacy. I don’t think Elder/President Lee was the only like-minded member of the Twelve in that era, either. The younger members of the quorum at the time learned to be publicly apolitical, but I feel certain they privately held similar views.

According to Pres. Packer "neither is true" . The leadership from that long, gone era Pres. Hugh B. Brown was a liberal and i've heard he would argue with Pres. Benson, and I have no idea as to what viewpoints on American politics the others sided with. 

"There are some among us now who have not been regularly ordained by the heads of the Church and who tell of impending political and economic chaos, the end of the world—something of the “sky is falling, chicken licken” of the fables. They are misleading members to gather to colonies or cults.

Those deceivers say that the Brethren do not know what is going on in the world or that the Brethren approve of their teaching but do not wish to speak of it over the pulpit. Neither is true. The Brethren, by virtue of traveling constantly everywhere on earth, certainly know what is going on, and by virtue of prophetic insight are able to read the signs of the times." Oct. 1992 GC

[Duncan]

11 minutes ago, esodije said:

 

 

Edited January 8, 2022 by Duncan

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, Chum said:

What is the significance of that name, that made leadership get their haunches up over it?

It was the name of the British church magazine and had been around a long time. It is the longest running magazine in Church history going from 1840 to 1970.

When an apostle was visiting he mentioned it and asked the mission leadership not to use the name. I don't know if he had heard it back home or saw it while he was here or what happened.

[The Nehor]

35 minutes ago, esodije said:

The notion that “right wing” philosophy in the church had its roots solely in Ezra Taft Benson is a huge, mendacious fallacy. I don’t think Elder/President Lee was the only like-minded member of the Twelve in that era, either. The younger members of the quorum at the time learned to be publicly apolitical, but I feel certain they privately held similar views.

You do know that he is using a completely different definition of the word "liberal" there right? It was common to refer to those who doubted church claims at the time as "liberals" or "liberal mormons". You can argue that there is crossover between those and political liberals and there was. If you want to demonize being liberal under all definitions then every President of the Church was a political liberal in the classical sense.

This was possibly partially a swing at Richard Poll's division between "Iron Rod" and "Liahona" Mormons a few years earlier. That talk still gets passed around occasionally but I haven't seen it in over a decade at least.

[Scott Lloyd]

In view of the red banner still atop this board, why is this blatantly political thread remaining open? 

Edited January 8, 2022 by Scott Lloyd

[Calm]

26 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

In view of the red banner still atop this board, why is this blatantly political thread remaining open? 

Mods (mod?) have a life going on elsewhere most likely and no one else can close threads.  It has been reported already. Time to be patient. Sometimes it can take a couple of days, but there has only been once in the past 6 months at least I reported a thread for being political (and I assume others did as well so not saying it was because I told them to do it) that it didn’t eventually get closed and I can sort of see why they didn’t in the one that didn’t get closed (politics was not the main or secondary focus).

Edited January 8, 2022 by Calm

[Scott Lloyd]

9 minutes ago, Calm said:

Mods (mod?) have a life going on elsewhere most likely and no one else can close threads.  It has been reported already. Time to be patient. Sometimes it can take a couple of days, but there has only been once in the past 6 months at least I reported a thread for being political (and I assume others did as well so not saying it was because I told them to do it) that it didn’t eventually get closed and I can sort of see why they didn’t in the one that didn’t get closed (politics was not the main or secondary focus).

But the character of this one is obvious from the title. 

[Calm]

46 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

But the character of this one is obvious from the title. 

Of course. I guess you think there is a mod showing up at least once a day to check?  (It is a reasonable expectation imo.)

My guess is they typically go a couple of days between checking based on how my reports have gotten responded to in the last decade or so when we appear to have dropped to 2 mods and mostly one (Nemesis).  They may hang around if they have had to ban people for a day or two, but my guess is then they go back to nonhelicopter supervision.

This thread was started yesterday.  My guess is it will be closed at least by Sunday.

They seem to be treating us as adults, capable of self government. 

Edited January 8, 2022 by Calm

[Cordelia]

There's a book that I have, but haven't cracked open, which talks about this on a larger scale. I think it's basically about how extreme evangelicals have hijacked the right. It's called, "Jesus and John Wayne".

Edited January 8, 2022 by Cordelia

[Cordelia]

3 minutes ago, Cordelia said:

There's a book that I have, but haven't cracked open, which talks about this on a larger scale. I think it's basically about how extreme evangelicals have hijacked the right. It's called, "Jesus and John Wayne".
 

dup

Edited January 8, 2022 by Cordelia

[teddyaware]

13 hours ago, Scott Lloyd said:

In view of the red banner still atop this board, why is this blatantly political thread remaining open? 

Probably because some political threads are more equal than others…

[kimpearson]

19 hours ago, smac97 said:

The many Latter-day Saints of my acquaintance have a variety of opinions about things, but most lean conservative.  But I don't think they are conservative because they have been reading Ezra Taft Benson's writings from a half century ago.

Thanks,

This thread points out a generational issue.  I am guessing from your posts that you are in your 40's.   I am 60.  I was born in a Church community in southeast Idaho.  All my relatives growing up were active members of the Church from southeast Idaho and Utah.  The Benson brand of Church politics reigned supreme in those communities in the late 60's through the early 80's.  I heard it in church almost every Sunday.  I heard it at youth conferences.  I heard it in seminary.  I heard it at devotionals at Rick's College and in the tabernacle.  I heard it in long lengthy discussions in family reunions in Idaho and Utah.  Cleon Skousen was another voice in this discussion.  Then a couple of events happened that really toned down the discussion.  First was the revelation on the priesthood in 1978.  When the revelation came out most everyone I knew was not very happy about it at first.  Over the next 5 to 10 years most came to accept it and see the correctness in it.  The other event was President Benson becoming prophet.  He stopped talking about politics and it generally became taboo to mention his previous political stances.  So the actual discussion of President Benson's politics was pretty much gone and on the surface forgotten about by the late 80's in the circles I was associated with in Idaho and Utah.  All my siblings are significantly older than me and even though they don't talk about President Benson's politics, they all deeply share his views.  My guess is that your parents and grandparents are similar to my parents and siblings.  Benson's political views where a large part of their lives but by the time you were old enough to be aware of politics, they had stopped talking specifically about President Benson.

[SkyRock]

In my home growing up in the 70s and 80s, we had a painting of David O McKay.  We had several apostles stay in our modest 3 bedroom home when my father was in the stake presidency.   

We celebrated the Proclamation on the Priesthood without reservation.  I  distinctly remember my father saying that some members would have a problem with it.

Likewise, my father mentioned on President Benson succeeding that some members would have a problem with it.

People at the extremes will have problems with certain things.   President Benson was a forceful speaker as prophet, but kept politics out of it.  It was nice to see that the fears of some were never realized.