Perspectives Re: Latter-day Saints and Nazis

[CV75]

53 minutes ago, JVW said:

If I understand you correctly are you saying that freedom and security are only two sides of the same coin if people are unrighteous? If everyone was righteous we could have both to ghe greatest degree? I'm reminded of the parallels between the law of consecration and communism. The only difference between the two is one of them is voluntary and the other is not, and one of them is managed by God and the other by the State. The law of consecration, I think, seeks to maximize security, and the freedom is retained because it's 100% voluntary. Communism seeks to maximize security, but requires an authoritarian arm to enforce because of people's unrighteousness. Am I kind of connecting the dots with what you're saying or am I totally off base here?

The thing is though is that I think I'm seeing things in a more absolute manner. Either there is freedom of speech, or there isn't. Freedom of only virtuous speech isn't true freedom of speech because one does not have the right to say whatever they want if it isn't virtuous. If speech was restricted to only good things, then there would definitely be security, but that would be cutting off a large portion of what one is currently free to speak in order to maintain that level of security. 

Also, I don't think the freedom vs security thing is only applicable to America. I think this applies to any power dynamic, any nation, in any time period. And I think it's particularly relevant to the rise of Nazism in the '30s.

I am all for the law of consecration and not at all for communism (or Nazism)!

I acknowledge degrees of freedom, security and virtue to avoid the no true Scotsman / appeal to purity fallacy. I do speak in absolutes when envisioning and attaining an ideal, such as those based in Jesus Christ.

The principles are universal, but I find the teaching model that juxtaposes the philosophies of Adams and Jefferson in terms of freedom and security in understanding the US Constitution to be culturally America-centric. This is why I find the Book of Mormon teachings on agency so useful – they are explicitly universal.

[Doctor Steuss]

20 hours ago, webbles said:

[...]

  But Nazism and Fascism don't act like this.  They declare that a threat is always present.  There is always a fight that has to be done.  Followers feel like they must always hunker down and give up freedoms.  The threat will never go away and that allows the leaders to take away more and more freedoms.

I think one other thing worth noting within these systems is that often while they take away freedoms by maintaining the fear of the constant threat, they sometimes also reward key groups/demographics with additional freedoms.  As an example, within Nazi Germany, gun rights for ethnic Germans were greatly expanded (German Weapons Act), while they were restricted for Jews (Regulations Against Jew's Possession of Weapons).

Sometimes granting (or maintaining) key freedoms for certain groups is as important as restricting freedoms from other groups or the society as a whole when making otherwise abhorrent systems acceptable to the power-granting demographic(s).  Disproportionate application of law can be more palatable when you're in a group that not only isn't losing freedoms but is actually gaining new freedoms.

[JVW]

On 11/15/2024 at 12:25 PM, webbles said:

In the various forms of democracies, citizens also voluntarily select who makes decisions as a group.  So I don't see an issue with the citizen leaders making decisions for the good of the rest of the citizens.  It is the same thing to me.

I think it depends. I don't know how legal systems are setup in other countries, but in America if a decision by government leaders goes against the Constitution then there's a problem.

On 11/15/2024 at 12:25 PM, webbles said:

If a lot of the restrictive measures had become standard, it would show that the governments were becoming less democratic and more authoritarian.  The restrictive measures didn't last all that long and that is a sign of how much resistance did happen.  The elected officials couldn't implement really restrictive measures because too many people were fighting them.

It was a long two weeks to flatten the curve.

On 11/15/2024 at 12:25 PM, webbles said:

I, personally, think everything you mentioned was a smart idea so I don't see why anyone would resist doing it.  None of the things took away freedoms or the ability to do anything.  If the government had started to weld people into their houses, then I'd agree that resistance is needed.

Schools were closed. Businesses were closed. Churches were closed. Freedoms were obviously infringed. The signs I presented were indicators that there wasn't much resistance.

[webbles]

10 minutes ago, JVW said:

I think it depends. I don't know how legal systems are setup in other countries, but in America if a decision by government leaders goes against the Constitution then there's a problem.

That's because the citizens voluntarily accepted the Constitution to oversee themselves.  So, yes, if an elected official goes against the Constitution, there are routes to handle it.

13 minutes ago, JVW said:

It was a long two weeks to flatten the curve.

During the Spanish Flu, it was longer than 2 weeks and they shutdown far more things and enforced it with jail time and significant penalties.  I don't know how long Captain Moroni shut down the government and went on a war rampage against Amalekiah, but I think most members would consider that he did a good thing.

13 minutes ago, JVW said:

Schools were closed. Businesses were closed. Churches were closed. Freedoms were obviously infringed. The signs I presented were indicators that there wasn't much resistance.

People could still be educated (my kids attended school the entire time).  People could still do business (I had no problem going to stores or working).  People could still worship (I attended meetings with family and friends).  I find it interesting to look at the Spanish Flu experience.  All of those things happened as well.  And then the limitations were removed once the threat went away.  Same thing with covid.  If we have another pandemic, I would expect things to shut down again and then re-open.

[bluebell]

5 minutes ago, webbles said:

People could still be educated (my kids attended school the entire time).  People could still do business (I had no problem going to stores or working).  People could still worship (I attended meetings with family and friends).  I find it interesting to look at the Spanish Flu experience.  All of those things happened as well.  And then the limitations were removed once the threat went away.  Same thing with covid.  If we have another pandemic, I would expect things to shut down again and then re-open.

I think it depended on the state how the shutdown was handled.  In some places it was almost life as usual and in others everything not deemed essential was shut down.

But I agree with the general point you are making in that I don't think the shutdown infringed on any designated freedoms.

[JVW]

On 11/15/2024 at 12:30 PM, Calm said:

There is more that just that difference except on a superficial level if you studied the variations of the United Order and assume those were close to what God intends for Zion.

I am not talking about how communism exhibits in the real world, but the ideal version…which has potential for good unlike the real world version where imo men used the idea of communism to con others into giving them power (there were some true believers, but they did not end up on top).   There are very few similarities between real world communism and the law of consecration, so please don’t anyone jump on me for defending real life communism.  That falls into my “very not good” file.  As far as ideal communism, I have very strong views that it’s not possible.

What you quoted was unfinished. Agency and who the redistributing power is (the State vs God) are the differences. In my mind, the ideal version of Communism that people want and desire is what the law of consecration is, unless they want the State to be involved and/or want to force people to follow it. I don't believe it will ever be achieved in this life. One of my friends, his vision of the perfect communism is with the State removed and replaced with an AI to manage the wealth redistribution. So it's basically law of consecration but god is an AI. It's interesting and complex to consider that scenario and how it would play out in the real world as there is no historical precedence for it.

I think real world communism stems from the ideal. People want to all be equal, and everyone wants to have food on the table and not see any suffering. But then they give all of the resources they have to the State and what's a man to do with so much money and power? And there's the other problem of people not wanting to continue participating when they are performing an incredibly intensive and highly skilled labor and earning the same amount of money as the one picking up trash on the side of the road. There are just a lot of hurdles to jump through to get it to work if a person isn't one with God.

On 11/15/2024 at 12:35 PM, Calm said:

So you believe people should be allowed to slander others?  Incite violence?  Serious question meaning to explore how you see it working, not to challenge.

Freedom of speech is freedom of speech. The government doesn't get to set the rules on what people can and cannot say. I'm pretty sure it has remained relatively unchanged in American history, but problems with its existence have started to occur because of the moral rot in the citizens under the Constitutional rule. It's the same thing with freedom of religion. It's great until a religion gains traction that preaches to lie, cheat, steal, and murder to get what you want.

People should be allowed to do whatever they want (with consequences). Isn't that what liberty means? Isn't that one of the most important gifts God gives to mankind? Moral agency? Please note that people should not be allowed to do whatever they want without consequence. People should be raised to be good citizens and behave appropriately in society, and there should be laws in place to encourage good moral behavior because perpetuating the society should be the #1 goal of any government. In America, the law is that the government can't tell you what you can and can't say. I believe it should remain that way. I would also add, since life is a little more complex now, that the government shouldn't be allowed to tell companies what they can and can't say either. But companies can make whatever rules they want in order to make their business the best it can be according to management's vision.

If anything, freedom of all speech, even at it's worst during morally bankrupt times is still good to have because the transparency through it enables people to get a clear view into how the society is. If slander were prohibited, and nobody could write or speak anything slanderous, then how could any person use their judgment to determine if someone was a slanderous individual or not in order to exclude them from their personal relationships?

Getting into the real world scenario now. "Hate speech" is a really common term thrown around. And there are many who want to see it become illegal. Who defines what "hate speech" is? Who defines what the penalty for "hate speech" is? Who enforces the penalty for "hate speech"? Can the definition be changed? Let's say that "hate speech" is speaking to someone in the same manner that you would if you hate them. Now let's say you hate the government for banning abortion at the federal level. Or let's say you hate the government because there's a fascist in power who's making all sorts of stupid and dangerous positions. If you speak from that place of hate you have now committed a crime.

Recently there was a man in Provo who was killed by the FBI because he said some really stupid, hateful things on the internet like "I hate the president and want to x him". Any reasonable person knows you don't even joke about making death threats to the world's most powerful man. Dude was like 300 lbs, and 75 years old requiring the assistance of a walker to move around. The morning (at like 6 AM) that the president came to Salt Lake the FBI raided his house and shot him while he was in bed. Nobody knows what happened inside and the FBI will not be held accountable for what they did. Was what the man did worthy of death? Was what he did worthy of a raid on his house? Should what he did be made illegal?

The issue of freedom of speech is so complex because we all want to feel safe and accepted in society, but we also all value honesty and our right to speak out against anything we see as wrong. It's hard to know where to draw the line, but I do believe that limiting freedom of speech in any manner will ultimately lead to an authoritarian government rule. I'm pretty sure they didn't have freedom of speech under Hitler. And I know there is not freedom of speech under the CCP right now in China.

Hopefully my remarks didn't get into the politics territory. I'm trying to follow the red banner at the top of my screen.  Also, I'm curious how you would answer your own question, so I'll pose the question right back at you. Do you believe people should be allowed to slander others?  Incite violence?  Serious question meaning to explore how you see it working, not to challenge.

[JVW]

6 minutes ago, bluebell said:

I think it depended on the state how the shutdown was handled.  In some places it was almost life as usual and in others everything not deemed essential was shut down.

But I agree with the general point you are making in that I don't think the shutdown infringed on any designated freedoms.

I don't think there is a "freedom to play" enshrined anywhere, but I went to the park once to play with my kids and it was covered in police tape and closed off. I have a hard time seeing my life as not having had any freedoms infringed on. Not being allowed to go to school or church has got to be somewhere in the "freedom to assemble" category, but maybe Zoom calls online count as assembling? I always viewed it as a more physical thing because assembling together in protest is much more effective then holding an online seminar for protest.

[webbles]

28 minutes ago, JVW said:

Freedom of speech is freedom of speech. The government doesn't get to set the rules on what people can and cannot say. I'm pretty sure it has remained relatively unchanged in American history, but problems with its existence have started to occur because of the moral rot in the citizens under the Constitutional rule. It's the same thing with freedom of religion. It's great until a religion gains traction that preaches to lie, cheat, steal, and murder to get what you want.

The constitution apparently does allow the federal government to put restrictions on the Freedom of Speech.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Supreme_Court_cases_involving_the_First_Amendment#Freedom_of_speech has a bunch of Supreme Court decisions dealing with Freedom of Speech.  Earliest one is 1882 that deals with a civil employee making a political donation.  Another one in 1896 deals with obscenity.  The 1919 Debs v US case said that articles protesting World War 1 were not free speech.

Even earlier, in 1798, there was the Sedition Act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts#Sedition_Act).  It made it illegal to make false or malicious statements about the federal government.  It is widely considered to be unconstitutional but it is pretty amazing that many people who had helped with the Bill of Rights voted for this Act.

The argument over what Freedom of speech actually means is not a simple argument and has been argued since the Bill of Rights was enacted.

 

[Calm]

4 hours ago, JVW said:

The morning (at like 6 AM) that the president came to Salt Lake the FBI raided his house and shot him while he was in bed.

Neighbours heard him yell so even if he was in bed, he was aware of what was happening, likely knew it was federal agents given what some neighbors heard.  Not saying his mind was clear at the time, personally I think he likely had mental issues fully awake.  The claim is he pointed a gun at agents and given his past behaviour of threatening Google Fiber workers with a handgun and coming to the door to talk to police with a AR-15 refusing to put it down for several minutes, that claim is reasonable.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/10/27/craig-robertson-fbi-shooting-utah-00123483

Could the FBI have handled it better….yes.  Telling a guy who uses a walker to come out with his hands up isn’t realistic and then reacting relatively quickly makes me wonder how much they knew about the guy.  It would have taken him several minutes to visibly respond most likely, maybe even ten if he had as many mobility issues as my mom.

 I get they wanted to keep down casualties by not grabbing him outside his home and since he was a gun collector, there would be a risk of him hunkering down surrounded by guns and shooting wildly if they tried a siege to get him to surrender.  Neighbours could have been injured.  Still I don’t think he needed to die.  

Was he harmless because he had mobility issues?  Definitely not.  You don’t need a walker to roll over and grab a gun out of a drawer.  I am not claiming this is what happen, but acting like this guy was harmless and the only reason he got shot was for posting threats online is a misrepresentation of the facts.

 

Edited November 18, 2024 by Calm

[JVW]

21 hours ago, Calm said:

Neighbours heard him yell so even if he was in bed, he was aware of what was happening, likely knew it was federal agents given what some neighbors heard.  Not saying his mind was clear at the time, personally I think he likely had mental issues fully awake.  The claim is he pointed a gun at agents and given his past behaviour of threatening Google Fiber workers with a handgun and coming to the door to talk to police with a AR-15 refusing to put it down for several minutes, that claim is reasonable.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/10/27/craig-robertson-fbi-shooting-utah-00123483

Could the FBI have handled it better….yes.  Telling a guy who uses a walker to come out with his hands up isn’t realistic and then reacting relatively quickly makes me wonder how much they knew about the guy.  It would have taken him several minutes to visibly respond most likely, maybe even ten if he had as many mobility issues as my mom.

 I get they wanted to keep down casualties by not grabbing him outside his home and since he was a gun collector, there would be a risk of him hunkering down surrounded by guns and shooting wildly if they tried a siege to get him to surrender.  Neighbours could have been injured.  Still I don’t think he needed to die.  

Was he harmless because he had mobility issues?  Definitely not.  You don’t need a walker to roll over and grab a gun out of a drawer.  I am not claiming this is what happen,

I'm not saying what he did was ok. I'm also not suggesting that he didn't fight back in his home. I have no idea what happened in his home beyond some noises and gunshots and what time of day it was.

21 hours ago, Calm said:

but acting like this guy was harmless and the only reason he got shot was for posting threats online is a misrepresentation of the facts.

If he never posted threats online, he would still be alive.

My point is that him speaking like an idiot ultimately resulted in him dying. I don't think that's ok.

I'm still curious about how you would answer your own question if you'd be so kind. "Do you believe people should be allowed to slander others?  Incite violence?  Serious question meaning to explore how you see it working, not to challenge."

[Calm]

1 hour ago, JVW said:

If he never posted threats online, he would still be alive.

Not necessarily.  He held a gun on utility workers. He held an AR-15 when talking to the police where they were warning him where not to point the muzzle.  He was escalating his online behavior, he might have escalated his offline behavior as well.

That doesn’t change my opinion that I think the FBI likely could have done it differently with a higher chance of resolution.  In the past I would have trusted they took all the variables into account including his relationship with his family and his health and mobility, I don’t have that level of trust anymore.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, JVW said:

. "Do you believe people should be allowed to slander others?  Incite violence?  Serious question meaning to explore how you see it working, not to challenge."

I do not believe people should be able to incite violence.  It gets tricky in whether it is explicit or implicit, I would say explicitly needs to be illegal. Slandering others…defamation suits are already an option these days.  I would not allow slander of minors including by other minors, parents would be in part responsible.  Penalties for slander should be community service.

[JVW]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

I do not believe people should be able to incite violence.  It gets tricky in whether it is explicit or implicit, I would say explicitly needs to be illegal. Slandering others…defamation suits are already an option these days.  I would not allow slander of minors including by other minors, parents would be in part responsible.  Penalties for slander should be community service.

In regards to "hate speech" what do you think about that and setting up limiters on freedom of speech for that?

I personally think that one day the words "Jesus Christ" will be regarded as the ultimate form of "hate speech" because Jesus preached that there are commandments and breaking them is a sin and anyone who is told, or made to feel like, they are doing something evil, wrong, immoral, etc. Can easily feel belittled, threatened, defensive, or hurt. Which I think are the feelings people often associate with "hate speech".

[Calm]

19 minutes ago, JVW said:

In regards to "hate speech" what do you think about that and setting up limiters on freedom of speech for that?

I don’t know the legal implications of “hate speech” as it depends on how people use it nor am I that familiar with the details of how it is reasoned to justify its limits.   If it’s about it inciting violence against minorities or even the majorities, I see that as falling under the general rule inciting violence. 
 

“Which I think are the feelings people often associate with "hate speech".”

My impression is legally “hate speech” leads to more in fear of loss of jobs, housing, and life and not just hurt feelings.  Google AI says in the US it’s incitement for violence or criminal activity.  That I can support as having laws against it.

Edited November 19, 2024 by Calm

[Calm]

15 minutes ago, JVW said:

I personally think that one day the words "Jesus Christ" will be regarded as the ultimate form of "hate speech"

In mainstream ideology as opposed to extremists?…yeah, I have major doubts about that given the percentage of the world currently Christian and Muslim (who respect Jesus as a great prophet) is 58% and a large portion of that population has larger families, so I don’t see that number dropping that significantly anytime soon.

Edited November 19, 2024 by Calm

[Rain]

4 hours ago, JVW said:

In regards to "hate speech" what do you think about that and setting up limiters on freedom of speech for that?

I personally think that one day the words "Jesus Christ" will be regarded as the ultimate form of "hate speech" because Jesus preached that there are commandments and breaking them is a sin and anyone who is told, or made to feel like, they are doing something evil, wrong, immoral, etc. Can easily feel belittled, threatened, defensive, or hurt. Which I think are the feelings people often associate with "hate speech".

If the name were to become hate speech I see it far more likely it is because some christians don't act like christians than because of the commandments.

[JVW]

13 hours ago, Rain said:

If the name were to become hate speech I see it far more likely it is because some christians don't act like christians than because of the commandments.

Do you think that this is why prophets were stoned and imprisoned in the past? Because they weren't acting like true Christians?

[Rain]

1 minute ago, JVW said:

Do you think that this is why prophets were stoned and imprisoned in the past? Because they weren't acting like true Christians?

You didn't specify the past.  You were talking about the future and I was replying about the future. 

I also think condemning something as hate speech is very different than stoning someone. I was talking about the hate speech when I quoted you.  You didn't mention stoning.

So now your question. I don't have enough info about the stoning and imprisonment of prophets in the past to make a conclusion. There is one side of the story in the scriptures that I have found (I'm not an expert in any way) and I can't make a judgment based on one side. 

But again, that was the past. We can learn many things from the past, but that does not mean the future will be the same as the past.  My reply was based on what is currently happening and how that might affect the future