spokesNspin

I watched the movie Chocolat last night. It was my first time to see it. That indicates how often I go to movies and how much TV I watch. I enjoyed it. I don’t classify it as a chick flick. But it gave me a terrible urge for chocolate that hasn’t been satisfied yet.

It also reminded me of living in Utah, non-questioning and intolerant citizens led by even more intolerant and zealous leaders. Which brings me to the current question about if one should or should not vote for a Mormon to be president of the United States. I don’t believe that one should vote against Mitt because he is a Mormon. I believe there a lot of other reasons to vote against him.

The issues regarding Mormonism that should give one pause when considering one as an elected leader have nothing to do with what is generally talked about in the media. What it has to do with is the tendency among Mormons to not question leadership and the tendency of those Mormons in power to believe that their actions shouldn’t be questioned. To see what I mean take a look at the Utah legislature which is pretty much dominated by Mormons.

I have lived in eight states including Utah. I found the state legislature in Utah to be the most arrogant and intolerant of all the legislatures where I have lived. They are down right mean and nasty at times. The issue of private school vouchers in Utah  validates my point.

The polls pretty much showed that Utah citizens were against the state funding private school vouchers. The legislature passed one anyway. What is interesting is that Utah which has some of the lowest spending per capita for students in the the nation passed one of the most generous private school voucher programs in the nation.

The anti-voucher folks started a campaign to get the voucher issue on the ballot. The legislative leaders did all in their power to put up road blocks to getting it on the ballot. By the way, Utah does make it hard for people to get initiatives on the ballot. Hell, we can’t have the citizens telling the legislature what to do. Anyway the voucher issue made it to the ballot.

Then the legislative leaders starting working very hard against it. They threatened businesses if they didn’t work to defeat the initiative. But the initiative to do away with the voucher system passed by a wide margin.

Which brings me back to a Mormon in the White House. We have already been through 8 years of a President who brands anyone and everyone who questions him or his policies as defeatest and unpatriotic.

One’s religious beliefs, atheists included, should not have anything to do with qualifications for being president. But unlike many other religions, Mormonism is a culture all it’s own. It is a culture that embodies much more than Sunday religious worship.

If that cultural attitude of not questioning leadership falls over into civic life, then we should be concerned.

Seems that nobody likes poor brother Mitt! Boo! Hoo! Check this story out! Of course everyone in Utah will say it is just Mormon bashing and that the rest of the contenders are afraid of him.

Those Dems are getting pretty nasty also.  I love Pat Bagley’s cartoons.  This guy should be nationally syndicated.

Read this story about the LDS church and the immigration debate.  Maybe a country does have a right to controll it’s borders.  But I believe the “power” behind the immigration debate has long been hate and bigotry.