Fabius, I respect your Catholic views and by your lights I, a LDS, am a heretic, as are all Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists and any and all other so-called Christians who do not recognize the authority of the Catholic church. At least you recognize that divine authority is indeed necessary to administer the ordinances of salvation such as baptism. We quarrel on where God's authority resides on earth today, but among Christians our two faiths are unique in making it central. I'm pretty sure the Catholic church didn't delegate authority to Luther, Wesley, Rick Warren or anyone else to start a new church. Joseph Smith claimed to receive the priesthood directly from Peter, James and John. It's Mormons, Catholics or nobody.

I think a lot of LDS misinterpret the BOM passage, "...for we know it is by grace we are saved, after all we can do." Some try to say we have to do all we can before we are eligible for grace. By that impossible standard, the Celestial Kingdom will be utterly empty because nobody, ever, has done "all he could have done." So what does it mean? I take it to mean "after all we can do, it is by grace we are saved." You could try and try, and try some more, but there is no salvation for you except by the atonement of Christ (grace). I don't believe, and neither should any Mormon, that God requires an impossible standard of perfection. He requires a broken heart and a contrite spirit, and a covenant that covers us in grace.

I love that the Dims are segregating themselves into urban areas--which will then erupt in violence when the assumptions underpinning their policies cause the whole welfare house of cards to come crashing down. Out here in the small towns, we still cling happily to our religion and our guns, and as the cities burn and the bankrupt libs eat each other, our gardens and farms are productive, and we'll sell our produce to whomever pays. We used to need the cities because that's where we got all our manufactured goods. But all that crap comes from China now, so what good are the cities, except to use as dumping grounds for worthless liberal human debris? Keep flocking to them, libs.

Yet, even though we have Chile as an example of what happens when you get the greedy hand of government out of people's retirement savings, still we hear the liberals and their hissy fits whenever the idea is floated for our own country.

Umm...then Chile changed its SocSec system to one in which the people were required to SAVE a small portion of THEIR OWN MONEY, in a private account nobody could touch until they retired. The government wasn't allowed to raid these accounts, government bonds were not allowed as investment instruments, all the money was kept in the voluntary sector--but people were required to invest for their retirements. Chilean retirees are now three times as well off as their American counterparts, and they are getting better off as Social Security dies here in the USA. Soon all Chilean retirees will have taken part in that system for their entire working lives, and their retirement stash will be far larger than the Chileans who are retiring today.

I'm sorry, I'm supposed to vote for the architect of Obamacare now, because he says he's really not, that he's really, truly, triple truly against it? Never, EVER gonna happen...in the primary. If he wins the primary I'm gonna be mad but I'll still campaign my hind end off for him to beat Obama. Because even though Romney is one of the worst possible GOP candidates, that still makes him better than the best Democrap.

When a dictatorship is being imposed on your country--against the expressed wishes of the voters--are you powerless to fight back? And how do you fight back if not with guns? Iraqi leaders will try to stop the jihadis from taking over...and they will fail. When the bullet overrides the ballot, no democratic self-government can take place. Our bullets have been there specifically to provide protection so that the decisions can be made by the Iraqis about how their country shall be run, rather than by the most ruthless thugs who are willing to be the cruelest. Your point is that you favor the 'ruthless thug' model. You've made that "Kristol" clear.

So it was the Bush administration that exported 'democracy' to Egypt? Libya? Now Iraq? If it were Bush in office now, we'd be committed to protecting the wishes of the Iraqi people against the violent thugs who wish to impose their will at the point of a gun. You can't 'impose' democracy. You can only obey the wishes of the people expressed democratically. The guns are there to prevent the imposition of dictatorship and the quashing of Iraqi self-determination. You will see in the next few months, the jihadist thugs will overthrow the Iraqis' democratically-elected officials and install in their place sharia-enforcing leg-breakers...at the point of a gun. You are philosophically incoherent.

PERMALINK

Good on 'im.