Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I'm taking a break from blogging during the holidays. See you after the New Years!!!

Could Ron Paul Be A Racist?

Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul has gotten himself into a bit of hot water, with an old controversy over a 'newsletter' he published called the Ron Paul Political Report that contained some racist comments.  Michael Tomasky writes about it at The Daily Beast:

If you’re unfamiliar with the particulars, you should read James Kirchick’s original New Republic piece from 2008. These are not your run-of-the-mill euphemisms. These are blatantly racist comments by, I would hope, nearly any measure. Jews and gays get their moment in the sun, and there are code-word comments of the sort we’ve come to expect about matters like secession, the right of which “should be ingrained in a free society”; but all those are just warm-up acts for the race stuff. The “Special Issue on Racial Terrorism,” produced after the Los Angeles riots, offers many gems, including this advice: “I’ve urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming.”

I invoke this quote because the “I” in the above sentence is problematic. It would seem, in the pages of something called the Ron Paul Political Report, that that “I” would represent, well, Ron Paul. But he denies authorship—and more. As he said to Borger: “I never read that stuff. I was probably aware of it 10 years after it was written and it’s been going on 20 years that people have pestered me about this...”

So here is the first thing Paul can do, which is to provide an answer to a simple question: If he didn’t write those sentences, who did? Why not say? If he genuinely disagrees with the statements and truly disavows them, there could be no good reason not to name names. He acknowledges that he’s been aware of the sentences for a decade. Well, did he look into the authorship question at the time, when he was made aware? It seems to me that if I were a member of the House of Representatives (as Paul was at the time) and not a racist, and I discovered that racist screeds had been issued under my name, I’d want to know who wrote them. I suppose one could argue that they were written by a friend, and Paul is honorably protecting that friend from scrutiny. I might counter by stating that (again) if I were not a racist and discovered that racist screeds had been penned under my name by someone, it’s not very likely that that someone would still be my friend, on grounds of both his dubious integrity and our incompatibility of world views.

The second thing Paul could do is give a speech, or at least an informal talk, about his actual racial views. Paul has said that he doesn’t hold those views, and that “anyone who knows me” can affirm this to be the case. Well, doctor: a) that’s awfully fuzzy and doesn’t fill in much of the canvas, and b) the vast majority of us don’t know you. So how about filling in that canvas? If his views are as advanced as he assures us they are, there can be no downside.

Or can’t there? Paul will of course take neither of these steps. He won’t do the first because—well, the first theory of the case, hardly discredited to this point, is that he is in fact the author, and he’s clearly not going to admit that. But even if it is someone else, he won’t. It could be someone he’s still close to, someone he’s praised recently, or a dozen other things. And he won’t do the second because among his core supporters, there is utterly no reason for him to answer these questions. Doing so—giving some Obama-style “race speech”—would constitute capitulation to the liberal media, and if he committed that mortal sin, he’d quickly find himself back in the single-digit rooming house where he has flopped down for so many years already. And so, the real reason the truth is likely to remain unexamined, stated directly: Among Republicans and conservatives, there simply aren’t enough people who care whether he’s a racist or not. If there were a demand for an explanation, he would supply one. But there is not.

Between Life and Death

I have been waiting for just the right time to share something special with my readers, and I guess the  Christmas season is as good a time as any.

Hieronymus Bosch, "The Ascent of the Blessed", 1490

I have a friend from New York City, a Jewish woman about my age, that I first met through my wife's family six years ago at a family wedding in Phoenix.  Her name is Judy, and she is smart, witty, and generous.  She had been, by her own account, a non-religious, cultural Jew most of her life.

So, it was a little surprising that, within a very short time of meeting her, she shared with me an experience that she had had about 18 months earlier.  It probably helped that she knew I was a Methodist pastor.

The account following is what she told me at that time (written up later by her at my request, exactly as you read it). This is the first time this has been published anywhere, and I do so with Judy's permission.

On May 20, 2004 in Los Angeles, I had a Near-Death Experience.

I just had taken an anti-hypertensive medication which I had not tried before and, instantly, I started having breathing problems.

I said to Harry, "I think I'll lie down," and I stretched out on the floor. I am not given to napping on the floor.

Predictably, he called 9-11.

I heard the sirens coming closer and I was relieved.

As soon as the EMTs walking into the condo, I said, "I need oxygen."

They put a mask on me and took my vital signs. Vital signs? I had none!

Harry was hysterical. He asked that they take me to UCLA Medical Center, which is where his mother's doctors were. I heard every word clearly.

Yet UCLA was about 3 miles from his condo, in Brentwood in West LA.

They explained that, when a patient was as sick as I was, they legally were required to go to the nearest hospital. In this case, that was St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, about 2 miles away.

Then they said to Harry, attempting to comfort him, I think, "Don't worry, mister, they're just going to declare her DOA."

He did not find this comforting.

We raced to the hospital, siren blaring, and the techs were on cell phones with the ER trauma team.

When we drove into the ambulance bay, the whole team raced out to meet me.

I was rushed into the ER and hooked to many different IVs, in my arms, wrists, ankles.

I was watching everything, in no pain, from above.

I could hear everything.

I was calm.

It was exactly the way the movies show near-death scenes and I was wondering how those writers had known how to describe the experience so accurately and with such detail.

I was in the tunnel, yes, the tunnel they always show in those scenes.

I was being drawn, effortlessly and with no control, toward the light, almost as if a super-magnet were moving me along the path.

People always mention that "light," but it was more of a phosphorescent glow. I am very precise about language. And it was irresistible, literally: I wanted to reach it.

The tunnel was long, however, and I only got about halfway toward the light when I had a conversation.

This was a conversation without words. I would have to describe it as telepathic. I was speaking with a Higher Authority. For lack of more precise definition, I would term that Authority to be God.

I said -- telepathically -- that I wanted to go forward.

And the Higher Authority said that it was not my time, that we human beings deluded ourselves in thinking that we had control of our own lives, but that none of us determined our own destinies.

He told me that we all eventually will go to the same final destination, but we will take different paths to get there and that we do not control the route.

I said that I wanted to see my father, my uncles. I said that I wanted to meet Jesus. (This detail drives my Jewish friends crazy and my Christian friends always are surprised when I tell them this.)

Yet, again, the Authority let me know that it was not my time.

Immediately, there was a huge shout, and the medical team said, "She's back."

I returned to life with no physical effects of the experience.

I had been flatlined for about 20 minutes.

They expected me to have heart damage, brain damage. They put me into Intensive Care for four days to monitor me, and they did not know what to make of me.

I was clear from the moment I came back as to the day, the place, the name of the President.

Eventually, they released me after making me promise that I would be vigilant if I showed any symptoms.

I never have had a sympton relating to the NDE, but not a day has gone by when I did not wonder exactly why I had been sent back to this plane, this dimension, that we call "life."

By now, I've read explanations that so many people who have NDEs have similar experiences because the experience has been suggested by scenes in movies. Another explanation is that this is a delusion of a dying brain -- except that my brain, Thank God, did not die.

I have no personal theories. I simply wonder....

Judy has since come down with serious, life-threatening cancer, for which she is receiving intensive chemotherapy in NYC. She has had several more experiences of a similar nature, which I will share in the future. Her positive spirit and, dare I say it, 'faith', is an inspiration to us all.

Update (12/11/2012):  Judy passed away after a long and courageous battle against cancer on December 7, 2012.  She has, I assume, now completed her journey down that long tunnel....

'Living in Truth': A Tribute to Vaclav Havel

A great world citizen died Sunday: Vaclav Havel, the former dissident turned President of the Czech Republic.  Anne Applebaum, one of the best foreign policy columnists with the Washington Post, wrote a wonderful tribute to Havel, which also sums up what we can learn from this distinguished life.

Vaclav Havel

First and foremost, Havel not only opposed the communist regime, he also articulated a theory of opposition. His plays — as turgid, alas, as the communist bureaucrats they are meant to satirize — will not survive, except as curiosities. But his famous political essay, “The Power of the Powerless,” will live forever. The appeal of “The Power of the Powerless” is universal. I have given Havel’s essay to Iranian friends, and I once discussed it with would-be dissidents in pre-revolutionary Tunis. In both places, it seemed — seems — relevant.

In this essay, Havel didn’t talk about marches or demonstrations. Instead, he asked the inhabitants of totalitarian countries to “live in truth”: that is, to go about their daily lives as if the regime did not exist, to the extent that was possible in societies where the state ran all businesses and all schools, owned most of the property and banned free speech and free press. By the late 1980s, “living in truth” was widely practiced across central Europe. The first time I went to Poland in 1987, I stayed with friends. According to the law, I was supposed to register my presence in a private home with the police. “We don’t do that,” my friends told me. “We don’t believe the police have the right to know who stays with us.” I didn’t register — and because thousands of other people didn’t either, that law became unenforceable.

But Havel proposed more than mere civil disobedience. He also argued in favor of what we would now call civil society, urging the inhabitants of totalitarian states to found small institutions — musical groups, sporting groups, literary groups — that would develop the “independent life of society” and prevent their members from being totally controlled from above. This, too, was widely practiced, in Prague’s famous underground philosophy seminars, in the illegal printing presses all across the communist world, in Poland’s independent “Flying University,” and, most successfully, in Poland’s independent trade unions.

Funeral Procession in Prague

Havel also practiced what he preached. But unlike many others, he did so not only before the fall of communism but also afterward. Upon being elected president, Havel stopped wearing blue jeans and started wearing suits. He moved his headquarters into Prague Castle, where he repainted the offices, took down the steel barriers and acquired a set of red, white and blue BMWs (the colors of the Czech flag) to use in his presidential cavalcade. He ceased to be a dissident. He stopped staying out all night at parties. His friends complained he was no fun anymore. This was his second great achievement: He became an establishment politician, and he created, anew, the institution of the Czech presidency.

Havel was different, in the end, from so many of his generation. Obsessed for so long with the tactics of destruction, few of them understood the importance of reconstruction. In fact, victory was not just toppling the old regime, victory was creating the institutions and symbols that would replace it. Because he was far-thinking enough to understand this, he will be mourned deeply and long remembered, across central Europe and beyond.

The Threat--and Promise--of Ron Paul

What would happen if Ron Paul wins Iowa?  Dave Weigel speculates:

If Paul wins Iowa, [the soft treatment] stops. The conservative press, which has been bored but hostile to Paul all year (just see the National Review’s cover story), will remind its readers that Paul wants to legalize prostitution and narcotics, end aid to Israel (as part of a general no-aid-for-anyone policy), and end unconstitutional programs like Medicare and social security. The liberal press will discover that he’s a John Birch Society supporter who for years published lucrative newsletters studded with racist gunk. In 2008, when the media didn’t take him seriously, Paul was able to get past the newsletter story with a soft-gummed Wolf Blitzer interview. (“Certainly didn't sound like the Ron Paul that I've come to know and our viewers have come to know all this time,” said Blitzer.) This was when Paul was on track to lose every primary. It’ll be different if the man wins Iowa.

And the Washington Post has a major article this morning on Ron Paul's new electoral strength:

As the first votes in the Republican presidential race approach, Rep. Ron Paul has become a serious force with the potential to upend the nomination fight and remain a factor throughout next year’s general-election campaign.

Although few think the congressman from Texas has a realistic shot at winning the GOP nod, he has built a strong enough base of support that he could be a spoiler — or a kingmaker.

Ron Paul has always been--and remains--a libertarian outsider to the Republican Party.  Mostly the Republican establishment tolerates him, as long as he doesn't appear to be having much influence.  The conservative media--like Fox News--does everything it can to discredit him and to make him appear like a clown or a lunatic.

Why is this?  Because Ron Paul is a pure, faithful, uncompromising libertarian.  And libertarianism, while useful at times to the Republican Party, is also seen as terribly threatening in other ways.

Libertarianism is a radical political ideology.  According to one of the most respected histories of the movement--Radicals for Capitalism by Brian Doherty (himself a libertarian):

Its eventual goals include the abolition of all drug laws....the abolition of the income tax, the abolition of all regulation of private sexual relations...an end to public ownership and regulation of the airwaves, an end to overseas military bases and all warmaking not in direct defense of the homeland, an end to the welfare state, and an end to any legal restrictions whatsoever on speech and expression.

Libertarians' policy prescriptions are based on a simple idea with very complicated repercussions: Government, if it has any purpose at all (and many libertarians doubt it does), should be restricted to the protection of its citizens' persons and property against direct violence and theft....Libertarians' economic reasoning leads them to the conclusion that, left to their own devices, a free people would spontaneously develop the institutions necessary for a healthy and wealthy culture.  They think that state interference in the economy, whether through taxing or regulation, makes us all poorer rather than richer.

Their ideas and policy prescriptions seem unbelievably radical in the current political context.  But in many ways, libertarians argue, the United States was founded on libertarian principles.  The Constitution defined a role for the federal government much smaller than what it practices today, and it restricted government to a limited set of mandated powers.  Their vision of America has been lost, libertarians argue, through a series of expansions of centralized federal power dating back at least to the Civil War...and including as cusp points Progressive Era reforms, the New Deal, and the Great Society.

While the world has undoubtedly turned in some ways in a more libertarian direction...in many ways the libertarian movement remains a radical underground whose true influence is yet to come.

The Republican political and media establishment really don't fear a Ron Paul victory, I think, but they do fear his growing influence in the party, especially the ability to act, as the WaPo indicates, as a real political force or kingmaker at next summer's convention.

This is true especially in the area of foreign policy, where the Republican Party has for the last fifty years been very hawkish (as opposed to its pre-WWII history when it was more non-interventionist).  The military-industrial-congressional complex is not AT ALL happy with the prospect of a Republican Presidential candidate who will not grant their every wish.

Since I believe the Defense Department and its related military contractors have become a bloated parasite on the national economy, far exceeding our true national defense needs and realities, I hope Ron Paul wins Iowa!

But please, Congressman Paul, watch your back, because you are making some powerful enemies, and they have some very deadly ways of defeating their enemies.

Update on Weekly 'Rude Awakening' Audience

Here's my most recent weekly audience worldwide:

United States 327
Switzerland 59
Germany 55
Russia 48
Ukraine 38
Philippines 23
Netherlands 21
Canada 17
United Kingdom 11
Australia 10
Thailand 5
Brazil 4
Singapore 4
Ireland 1

Forgive me for posting this, I'm not bragging (because the total number is dwarfed by many bigger blogs), I'm just fascinated by the global diversity of my readership.  Blogging--even by someone as obscure as me--truly is a global village of ideas.  And for my readers, I hope you find your country listed above!

The Obama-Biden-Clinton Foreign Policy

Vice President Joe Biden gave an interview with Newsweek that was really helpful in spelling out some of the Obama Administration's foreign policy goals, it seems to me.  (I have to say that, on the whole--given his vast Senatorial and foreign policy experience, and his unusual 'avuncular' personality--he's been a real asset to this administration.)

On China:

BIDEN: I went to China at the end of August right at the time we had been downgraded. And every press guy in China, every press guy in the world was asking, was I coming to apologize. We had meetings with [Chinese President] Hu [Jintao]. I spent four days with [Vice President] Xi [Jinping]. We were in one of the big halls and the Chinese press guys asked me, why is China still buying U.S. Treasury bills? And I stood up and I said, you don’t have to buy any more. It’s OK with us. Don’t buy any more Treasury bills. I said, let me remind you, you own 1 percent of America’s financial assets—1 percent. You own 6 percent—maybe 7 to 9 percent of American Treasury securities. We don’t need you. It’s OK. Don’t buy them. Go somewhere else. (Laughter.)

NEWSWEEK: Because they have nowhere else to go?

BIDEN: Bingo. Second message was we are a Pacific power. We’re not going anywhere. Now you also live in the neighborhood, and you are an emerging power in the neighborhood. We can coexist as long as you abide by international rules.

Thirdly, we want to see—literally this is what I told them—we want to see you succeed. The reason we want you to succeed is because you’ve got a big problem that we don’t have. You’ve got to come up with 5 million jobs a year to accommodate people coming into the workforce. We have a problem with our safety net, with our entitlements, but you guys? You will have increasingly fewer workers for every retiree.

And lastly, guess what, your economy cannot continue the mercantile practices you have because you’re going to be in real trouble. Not us, you.

On Iraq:

NEWSWEEK: One last question? After we get out of Iraq—and thank God we’re out—what continuing interest and responsibilities do we have there in case the place blows up or Iran threatens it?

BIDEN: Look, our responsibility and interest are one and the same. Our responsibility is to put Iraq in a position and enhance their prospect of them being able to be responsible and run their own affairs.

NEWSWEEK: But we’re not going to intervene again?

BIDEN: No, we are not going to have to intervene again. What would you look for in Iraq? For us to be out of there, have Iraq united, secure within its own borders, not a threat to its neighbors and no one able to fundamentally threaten them. That’s where they are now. I’m confident by our continued engagement with them we can strengthen that, and that’s overwhelmingly in our interest to do that.

On Afghanistan:

NEWSWEEK: What are our vital interests in continuing to fight a major war in Afghanistan?

BIDEN: We were in Afghanistan for two reasons. One is to deal with, curtail, begin to dismantle, and eventually eliminate al Qaeda. Not only from being able to come back into Afghanistan and control Afghanistan but from the region—to decimate al Qaeda.

NEWSWEEK: Almost an impossible goal to achieve.

BIDEN: No—to fundamentally alter their capacity to do damage to American allies and vital U.S. interests, to fundamentally alter that. We have done that. It doesn’t mean they’re not capable....The second reason for us to be in Afghanistan was to make sure that a country with tens of millions of people and nuclear weapons called Pakistan did not somehow begin to disintegrate or fall apart. That is a hell of a lot tougher job.

My takeaway:  The Obama Administration believes, first, that we are in a good position with regard to China.  Second, that we can continue to oversee our interests in Iraq and the surrounding region and still take our military out of there.  And third, that our primary goal in Afghanistan was never Afghanistan itself but the stability--and nuclear security--of Pakistan (I don't believe that al-Qaeda was ever our primary goal in Afghanistan, at least since Obama came to office).

Mitt Is Suddenly Omnipresent

Mitt Romney's strategy had apparently been to keep control of his campaign message by hiding out and not giving any interviews to the press.  But with the rise of Newt Gingrich, I think his handlers changed their mind.

Now, Mitt is EVERYWHERE.  He was on almost all the Sunday talk shows, he gave a long interview on Charlie Rose, he appeared on Morning Joe this morning, etc.  What the hell?!  Can't you just have a balanced approach to begin with?  It's not like he drools when he talks or accidentally farts in the chair.

That change from one extreme position to another is not encouraging, Gov. Romney.  It bespeaks of a weird dynamic in your campaign and, frankly, your sense of judgment.

Anyway, when you get him talking, he sounds like a pretty normal Republican, actually fairly moderate, as these things go.  He doesn't scare you, like some of the jokers in that deck.  He does talk as if Barack Obama has been some kind of left-wing radical, which is of course pure nonsense.  But I guess that's campaign boilerplate that he has to do in order to win over some of the hate-Obama crowd in the GOP and the Tea Party.

I think his point that he has been in business and therefore knows how it works is true.  Along with his point that Obama had basically never run anything before he was elected.  Romney has run a fairly large company, he has run an Olympic Games (2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games), and he has run the State of Massachusetts.  And each of these were, on the whole, successes rather than failures.

Furthermore, I find his Mormon faith to be a strength in his life, and a reason to vote FOR him, rather than the opposite.  He has, as far as we can tell, been a great husband and family man, which is a strength.  He comes from a great family as well, with a role-model father who was also a governor and ran for President.

On foreign policy, he leans toward the hawkish side.  Does that mean we're just going to go back to the bad old days of George W. Bush and trying to remake the world in our own image, with invasion after invasion?  How would he differ from the foreign policy of George Bush, if he's listening to the guys who took us into Iraq?   For that matter, how would he differ from the foreign policy realism of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton?  This is where I prefer Jon Huntsman and his foreign policy experience.  If Mitt would promise to make Jon Secretary of State, it would ease my mind somewhat about that.

Romney says repeatedly that he cares about the situation of the middle class, and that he accepts the need for a safety net for the poor.  Part of me wants to believe that, given that he helped make possible virtually universal health care in Massachusetts.  Yet, on the other hand, I have yet to hear him say that our economy for the thirty years or so has done for little for anyone but the wealthy in this country.  What does he think about that?  And what is his analysis of why that has happened (allowing him to become very wealthy in the process), and what can be done to change it in the future?  Have we not been moving toward a more free-market economy over the thirty years, and yet things have only gotten worse for most Americans?  What is his diagnosis and prescription for what ails us?   He's certainly not convinced me that he has a real answers to those problems.

You've finally come out of your cocoon, Mitt.  Good, now talk to us.  We're listening.

The Iraq War Is Over

The Iraq War is over.  Or at least, the official historical marker has been planted by our government, as it withdraws the last large group of regular troops from that country and brings the colors home.  What remains of course is the world's largest US embassy (or so it's said), and a very large contingent of private military contractors to protect all the diplomats and spies and aid workers.

US Military Vehicles Line Up To Leave Iraq

All that to say, the war may officially be ended, but our involvement in Iraq goes on...and on....and on, just like every other place around the world we've invaded and occupied over the last century.

I was against the war from the beginning...or more accurately, before the beginning.  I didn't believe the official story of weapons of mass destruction, poised to be used against the West.  It only made sense that that wasn't true.  First of all, we'd smashed Iraq to smithereens ten years earlier, and had continued a huge containment since then, with vicious sanctions and no-fly zones.  Secondly, is it likely that we would have sent hundreds of thousands of American troops in there, if they could have been wiped out by WMD?  Not likely.

So I always figured the reasons were otherwise, mostly oil-related and some strategic, anti-Iranian, pro-Israeli reasons too.  After all, a group of neo-conservative and liberal interventionist hawks had been pushing for regime change there ever since the end of the '91 war, and now these were the folks heading up the Defense Department and Vice-President's office.  So it only made sense that this had been in the works for awhile.  9/11 was just a pretext for them, their 'Pearl Harbor', as they were wont to say.

But there was no stopping that war, once the propaganda machine in Washington got going.  It was a fait accompli.  I had a prayer vigil at my church the week before it began, praying for peace.  Almost nobody came, just my supportive wife and about five other people.  Funny, it didn't work.  All it did for me was to allow me to say, I told you so.  And that is not the outcome I was praying for.

So they got what they wanted.  How'd it turn out?

Not so good, I'm afraid.  Not so good.  Nothing really turned out as expected.  They didn't welcome us with flowers.  Lots of Americans got killed or wounded.  Many, many more Iraqis got killed or wounded.  Iraq hasn't become a Jeffersonian democracy.  Their infrastructure was mostly laid waste.  Iran has more influence now than ever.  The oil is going elsewhere, mostly.  Our American billions (maybe trillions) spent in the process are mostly down the drain.  The Kurds, Sunni, and Shiia are still at each other's throats.

I can surely understand our veterans, their families, and indeed, the American people as a whole, wanting to find some lasting meaning or honor in the adventure.  But unfortunately, it was a blunder and disaster, so that's hard (though not impossible, I suppose) to do.  The soldiers just did their duty, and so that will probably have to be enough.

As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wisely and bluntly put it as he left office recently, "In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’as General MacArthur so delicately put it."

Amen to that.

The Strengths of Mormonism

As a result of my study of Mormonism (out of curiosity due to the prominence in the Republican field of the Mormons Mitt Romney and John Huntsman), I have written quite a few posts on that religion, trying to explain where it came from and how it differs from traditional Christianity.  I've tried to be gentle and graceful in doing this, but I don't think I've always succeeded.

However, let me comment now on the strengths of Mormonism, because they are considerable.  Here I'm not so much referring to theological belief or truth but rather to sociological aspects, that help to account for not only its ability to be sustain itself over time against quite devastating attacks, but to also continue to grow, both in the United States and around the world.

I'm not sure how to rank these strengths but certainly one of the most important is the Mormon emphasis on marriage and the family, so I'll start with that.  We live, of course, in a time of marital dissolution and family discord, so the Mormon emphasis on these important social units is especially significant.  Marriage is thought to be eternal, as is the extended family.  Weddings are expected to take place in the Mormon Temples, so that they are given an honored place to begin with.

Furthermore, there is tremendous moral emphasis on both premartial chastity and marital fidelity.  This is taught consistently from cradle to grave, both in religious education and in church.  Furthermore, children are seen as a normal and expected part of life, something to be cherished, not to be shunned.  Put these things together, and you have a family stability that sociology tells us is often crucial to economic success and personal happiness in life.

A second strength is one I referred to in the previous paragraph, namely, the emphasis on religious education and formation.  Mormon religious and moral training is life-long.  It begins early in childhood, continues through high school and college as a part of school, and then continues in adulthood at church and in the home.  The beliefs and values are inculcated over and over again, making for a very strong belief- and value-system.

A third strength is the hierarchial, top-down nature of Mormon authority and decision-making.  It is as far from democratic as you can imagine.  All key decisions in the Mormon church are made by the key 15 men at the top, in the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Apostles, and they come down the chain of authority all the way to the individual members at the bottom.  Even in their local congregations called wards, all decisions on every issue are made by the 'bishop' who is the ward leader, a layman appointed to that position by the hierarchy above him.

Because of this patriarchal, hierarchical structure, there are no power disputes, no congregation vote-taking, no uncertainty as to what to do, no taking sides with or against the pastor.  Everything is streamlined and clear.  All Mormons submit obediently to the powers-that-be.  This may seem unattractive to non-Mormons (and who knows, perhaps some Mormons as well!), but it works very well to get things done in the Mormon way.

A fourth strength of Mormonism is the lay--and especially male--participation in key leadership and ritual roles.  In fact, there are no professional clergy as such in the Mormon church.  No pastor relies on a salary here.  Every leadership position is filled by a trained and able layman, and he is assisted by many more layman beneath him.  In fact, every Mormon boy, beginning around age 12, is initiated into the 'priesthood', either 'Aaronic' or 'Melchizadek', and this qualifies him to fulfill ritual and service roles inside and outside the congregation.

As a result, every man feels important in the Mormon Church.  They have a job to do, duties to perform, that everyone considers to be important to their faith.  Nobody sits in the back pew in the balcony, feeling like a fifth wheel.  How women feel in such a patriarchial organization is another question.  But female participation in church is rarely the problem for most denominations anyway.  It's always the men who tend to be sidelined and to drop out.  But not in Mormonism.  I wonder if Joseph Smith and Brigham Young borrowed this from the Masons, to which they both belonged, and which heavily influenced the Temple ritual?

The zenith of this comes about when young men reach the age of 18, and they are sent on their 2 year long mission.  There is simply no equivalent to this in any other Christian denomination that I know of.  It doesn't take much imagination to understand how important these mission trips would be for solidifying young Mormon men into their faith and their Mormon society.

A fifth strength of Mormonism is the presence of sharp membership distinctions and boundaries.  There is nothing wishy-washy about the Mormon faith.  It is black and white, with strong beliefs and moral values, that Mormons are expected to abide by.  And if you stray too far, you will be prevented from going to the Temple, and in extremis, possibly face excommunication from the church.  And there are social penalties in this world, and, they believe, eternal penalties in the next.

There are other Mormon strengths, I'm sure, but I'll stop with these five.  Evangelical Protestants and Catholics share some of these strengths, actually (as opposed to liberal or 'mainline' Protestants, who share almost none of them, unfortunately).  Yet ironically, it is evangelical Protestants who seem to be having the greatest difficulty accepting the possibility of a Mormon President.

There is much to admire in the Mormon faith and tradition (as well as serious problems, particularly in their history, that I've outlined elsewhere).  It is truly a unique product of American history and culture and continues to give Utah and surrounding states a distinct cultural flavor.