Mitt Romney apparently wants to be known as the worst LDS senator ever.
Over the weekend he accused former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of spreading “treasonous lies” regarding Russia. And then yesterday he was the only Republican senator to vote to continue to force everybody — including two-year-olds — to wear masks. The Utah senator voted against lifting an HHS mandate, and as another senator said:
The Church released the following statement today:
The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has shared the following letter with Church leaders around the world.
Dear Brothers and Sisters:
Thank you for your patience during restricted temple operations that occurred because of the COVID-19 pandemic. We are eager to return the temples to full operation as soon as possible. Now that more people are immunized, we are pleased to announce that temples throughout the world will gradually return to more normal operations, including the elimination of face masks and capacity restrictions.
Based on local circumstances, the return to normal operations for each temple will be made by the temple presidencies and Area Presidencies in consultation with the Temple Department. Temple presidencies are invited to prepare plans to return temples to full capacity.
We are grateful for the sacred work performed in temples. We trust that our members will rejoice in the lessening of restrictions and will increase their commitment to temple and family history work.
Sincerely,
Russell M. Nelson
Dallin H. Oaks
Henry B. Eyring
Reminder: “immunized” means people either have natural immunity or have been vaccinated.
“Thou shalt not steal.”
“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s property.”
Anybody who has seen a James Bond movie can imagine one of the villains being patterned after a Russian oligarch. These guys use their government connections to amass billions and some of them certainly are loyal to Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. And Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is certainly an immoral act.
Nevertheless, it is still wrong for Western nations to seize these oligarchs’ property, including their massive yachts. You can read about it here:
The oligarchs are being charged with “avoiding sanctions.” These sanctions were imposed just a few weeks ago. Up until then, the Russian oligarchs, who head large Russian companies in the energy and steel business, among others, were simply being capitalists, which is what the West wanted Russians to do for decades when they were under Soviet rule. They were trying to use their connections, smarts and resources to make profits, which, let’s face it, is what all entrepreneurs do.
Are these oligarchs corrupt? Probably yes. But then so are many of the executives at Pfizer, who are deliberately promoting drugs they know are harmful, and paying off U.S. government bureaucrats and media companies while they do so. And it would still be immoral to seize the assets of Pfizer oligarchs, even though they have done plenty of seemingly iniquitous things.
Are these oligarchs crony capitalists? Of course they are, but let’s face it, so are the leaders of many large companies these days, from Facebook to Google to most large insurance companies.
Are these oligarchs breaking the law? Well, as I say, they are breaking laws that were arbitrarily imposed upon them by government officials just a few weeks ago in response to Russia’s invasion.
So, let’s say that a random country — Indonesia, for example — decides to confiscate the yacht of an American executive because that executive broke a law. Not all laws are morally correct, even if they may be legally correct. In the history of global capitalism, there have been millions of government seizures of property that may have involved the breaking of a law, but nevertheless the seizure of property broke moral laws against theft. Was it morally correct for the Bolsheviks to seize without compensation all of the property of wealthy Russians at the beginning of the Russian revolution? Well, if you have ever seen “Dr. Zhivago” you must have some sympathy for that poor family having their house stolen by those revolutionaries in 1917. And if you don’t, you have an empathy problem.
How would you feel if a group of people suddenly took your house or car or boat by force, deciding you “did not deserve it?”
What is happening to the Russian oligarchs is, at the end of the day, a group of powerful government officials deciding these rich people “don’t deserve their property.” Really? Do you know the work habits and the moral status of ALL of these people? And by what standard don’t they deserve their belongings? Remember, most Americans are wealthy by worldwide standards. The same standard applied to confiscating Russian oligarchs’ property can later be applied to you.
The problem with basing society on a standard of “that person doesn’t deserve their wealth” is that it promotes lawlessness, not the law. Whoever has the power gets to decide who deserves and doesn’t deserve something. It promotes theft, which is a sin, and it promote covetousness, which is also a sin.
Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, has decided to allow its users in some European countries to post calls for violence against Russians and Vladimir Putin.
You can read about it here:
Meta Platforms will allow Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion, according to internal emails seen by Reuters on Thursday, in a temporary change to its hate speech policy.
The social media company is also temporarily allowing some posts that call for death to Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in countries including Russia, Ukraine and Poland, according to internal emails to its content moderators.
“As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine we have temporarily made allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules like violent speech such as ‘death to the Russian invaders.’ We still won’t allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement.
This report comes just two weeks after Facebook changed its policy regarding the promotion of a neo-Nazi group in Ukraine called the Azov Battalion. Here’s more on that story:
Facebook will temporarily allow its billions of users to praise the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian neo-Nazi military unit previously banned from being freely discussed under the company’s Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy, The Intercept has learned.
The policy shift, made this week, is pegged to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and preceding military escalations. The Azov Battalion, which functions as an armed wing of the broader Ukrainian white nationalist Azov movement, began as a volunteer anti-Russia militia before formally joining the Ukrainian National Guard in 2014; the regiment is known for its hardcore right-wing ultranationalism and the neo-Nazi ideology pervasive among its members. Though it has in recent years downplayed its neo-Nazi sympathies, the group’s affinities are not subtle: Azov soldiers march and train wearing uniforms bearing icons of the Third Reich; its leadership has reportedly courted American alt-right and neo-Nazi elements; and in 2010, the battalion’s first commander and a former Ukrainian parliamentarian, Andriy Biletsky, stated that Ukraine’s national purpose was to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen [subhumans].” With Russian forces reportedly moving rapidly against targets throughout Ukraine, Facebook’s blunt, list-based approach to moderation puts the company in a bind: What happens when a group you’ve deemed too dangerous to freely discuss is defending its country against a full-scale assault?
According to internal policy materials reviewed by The Intercept, Facebook will “allow praise of the Azov Battalion when explicitly and exclusively praising their role in defending Ukraine OR their role as part of the Ukraine’s National Guard.” Internally published examples of speech that Facebook now deems acceptable include “Azov movement volunteers are real heroes, they are a much needed support to our national guard”; “We are under attack. Azov has been courageously defending our town for the last 6 hours”; and “I think Azov is playing a patriotic role during this crisis.”
Wow, it sure is difficult to keep track of acceptable social media policies these days. When Trump was president, Facebook had no problem with users calling for his death, but of course no such hate speech is allowed regarding President Biden. And who would have ever thought Facebook would allow the promotion of actual neo-Nazis?
As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I find this situation eerily familiar. The Book of Mormon, written for our time, warns us clearly that people throw out all morality during wartime.
I urge all readers to take time to peruse Jeff Lindsay’s excellent article in Meridian.
Lindsay’s point is that we as Latter-day Saints should be very hesitant to trust so many government authorities who are calling for American involvement in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including calls for “no-fly zones” and other military exercises that would widen the war.
Lindsay’s essay is long, but here are the key paragraphs:
The specter of war these days, as in days of old, is linked to corruption and villainy of all kinds. War is now the ultimate playground for the greedy and power hungry. We must approach war with the caution and alertness that Eisenhower calls for. It’s not a time for trust and blind faith in humans who tend to be wicked and easily corrupted. We want America to be the good guy, the knight on a rainbow-colored horse that brings happiness to the masses of the world, but as the Book of Mormon sort of says, constant warfare never was happiness.
As we begin a new round of “rumors of war” and the “patriotic” stirring up of the masses to prepare us to engage in another major war far from our borders, this might be a good time to ponder the red flags of war and of misguided trust before we blindly trust what we are told and asked to do. With the numerous and increasingly popular calls for the US and NATO to enforce a “no-fly zone” over Russia, we need to understand that such intrusion marks the beginning of a real war. Wars are often promoted as something simple — “we’ll just use a few airplanes and missiles, no boots on the ground” — but once engaged, things always get more complicated especially when we learn, sometimes year later, that the goal was not victory after all.
If the cause for war is just, we don’t need to rely on propaganda and censorship and must utterly shun deceit and lies. Let it be debated based on facts and let Congress declare it. But the cause for war is appropriate under the Constitution of this land, explain why it is necessary. There are bad guys causing war and invading countries all the time. Can we really be expected to join every battle? We seem to trust in bullets and bombs as the way to right every wrong, almost to the point of idolatry, as President Spencer W. Kimball once pointed out in one of the most neglected and most important messages from a modern prophet. In his June 1976 message in the Ensign, “The False Gods We Worship,” President Kimball made some strong comments that challenged many in the Church:
In spite of our delight in defining ourselves as modern, and our tendency to think we possess a sophistication that no people in the past ever had—in spite of these things, we are, on the whole, an idolatrous people—a condition most repugnant to the Lord.
We are a warlike people, easily distracted from our assignment of preparing for the coming of the Lord. When enemies rise up, we commit vast resources to the fabrication of gods of stone and steel—ships, planes, missiles, fortifications—and depend on them for protection and deliverance. When threatened, we become antienemy instead of pro-kingdom of God; we train a man in the art of war and call him a patriot, thus, in the manner of Satan’s counterfeit of true patriotism, perverting the Savior’s teaching:
“Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
“That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.” (Matt. 5:44–45.)…
What are we to fear when the Lord is with us? Can we not take the Lord at his word and exercise a particle of faith in him? Our assignment is affirmative: to forsake the things of the world as ends in themselves; to leave off idolatry and press forward in faith; to carry the gospel to our enemies, that they might no longer be our enemies.
We must leave off the worship of modern-day idols and a reliance on the “arm of flesh,” for the Lord has said to all the world in our day, “I will not spare any that remain in Babylon.” (D&C 64:24.) …
As we near the year 2,000, our message is the same as that which Peter gave. And further, that which the Lord himself gave “unto the ends of the earth, that all that will hear may hear:
“Prepare ye, prepare ye for that which is to come, for the Lord is nigh.” (D&C 1:11–12.)