How are Mormons—and Mitt Romney—on national identity?

(Note: Following Mr. Sutherland’s comment, Kevin S., a Mormon, explains that the Mormon church is not really liberal, but that it fails to convey this message clearly.)

Howard Sutherland writes:

In your latest post about Mitt Romney you say:

“Also, Mormons don’t seem to have the liberal utopian Christian-Jewish type profile, which makes them less dangerous. They don’t seem to have that restless need to transform the world. (Maybe because, as I’ve been told, they believe that each of them is destined ultimately to be the angel of his own solar system.)”

I don’t know anything about Mormon multi-solarism theology, but I have known Mormons and, more importantly, I have watched Mormon politicians in action. On the strength of the latter, in particular, I cannot be very sanguine about Mormons’ resistance to messianic one-worldism.

To take only three current examples of influential and militant open-borders Mormon politicians, look at Sen. Orrin Hatch and Rep. Chris Cannon, both Republicans of Utah, and Sen. Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada. All are fanatic boosters of mass legal immigration, as well as capitulation to and conciliation of illegal aliens. None makes any pretense of concern about preserving the United States as an American nation. Hatch (Numbers USA grade of C+; a lot better than he deserves) is the primary architect of the egregious “DREAM” Act, which would force state universities to offer in-state tuition rates to “resident” illegal aliens. Hatch also shares with John McCain the dubious distinction of being Teddy Kennedy’s best Republican friend. Cannon (recent NumbersUSA grade: C, though like Hatch better than he deserves), a “DREAM” Act co-conspirator, is perhaps the leading cheap labor shill, illegal alien advocate and all-round Hispanderer in the Republican Party, easily on a par with President Bush and Senator McCain. As for Reid (Numbers USA: F), his parliamentary chicanery in trying to force the nation-destroying Bush-Kennedy-McCain immigration bills through the Senate speaks for itself. (The other Mormon senators, Republicans Bennett of Utah and Crapo of Idaho, get Numbers USA career marks of C- and A-, respectively.)

I have known Mormons over the years, both in the Marine Corps and the Air Force Reserve. I known few, if any, in civilian life. Most were decent sorts, albeit in some cases a bit odd. One was my apartment-mate for a year in California, and a fine fellow. As far as I can tell, they abided by the Mormon proscriptions against alcohol, tobacco, caffeine and profanity. Fornication, as I recall, was no problem. All had performed their missions, one of them in the very belly of the Beast: Rome Herself. All saw the whole world as a mission field, and in that sense had a more internationalist outlook than was typical of Americans. Many if not most had done their missions in Latin America, spoke Spanish and were Hispanophilic, eager to speak Spanish at every opportunity with Hispanic enlisted men. I doubt any of the Mormons I knew (military officers and their wives) would have had reservations about mass immigration, and probably would have found talk of restricting or ending it distasteful if not racist. For all the innuendo about Mormon “racism,” I never detected anything like that among Mormons I knew.

So if Mormons do not have a liberal utopian profile as a result of their faith, I fear they may still have some serious one-worldism going. After all, every Latin American, Asian, etc., who comes to America is a prospective convert to proselytize.

As for the man himself, I had a look at Mitt Romney’s Wikipedia biography, and I’ll presume the recitation of facts about his background there is accurate. Romney is a Mormon, to be sure. He is also Establishment to his fingertips, and the American Establishment is quite self-consciously internationalist and certainly has been for as long as Mitt Romney has been on the scene. He is the son of a father born in Mexico, who was a Democratic senator’s speechwriter, Alcoa lobbyist and eventually CEO of American Motors and governor of Michigan—a quintessentially establishment Republican. Mitt grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (roughly to Detroit what Greenwich is to New York) and was educated at Cranbrook, a fine local prep school. I myself had fraternity brothers who were from Cranbrook—they described the school as self-consciously internationalist in a Council on Foreign Relations sort of way. Young Romney then went to Stanford briefly, left to do his mission in France, finished college at Brigham Young, then did a joint business/law program at Harvard. Brigham Young University has always been proud of its “strong” international student contingent, and Stanford and Harvard (especially the law and business schools) are among the most determinedly internationalist and now multiculturalist institutions in the world. All helped form Mitt Romney, I suspect with a very internationalist worldview.

I don’t know a great deal about Romney’s Bain Capital days, but hedge funds and predatory capitalism are no respecters of national identities, traditions or borders. Bain, during Romney’s time there, was accused of asset-stripping target companies, thereby unemploying lots of American workers. I would expect Romney’s business milieu only reinforced the sort of CFR internationalism Cranbrook, Stanford and Harvard have always pushed, and that is being pushed at Davos at this moment.

As governor of Massachusetts, Romney was certainly no strong defender of conservative principles. His job didn’t give him much of a forum re immigration and the National Question—or at least he didn’t use it as one.

I think your strategy of taking a stand against McCain and Giuliani in the Republican primaries—Romney is tactically useful there—while reserving judgment on the national election makes sense. Still, I think it also makes sense to look at who Mitt Romney is and where he comes from. I see little in his background to give me hope that he will be solid on any of the issues that most concern VFR.

Kevin S. writes:

As a member of the LDS church my whole life (I also served a two year mission—in France like Romney), I can state that there is much more going on than indicated by Howard Sutherland. Though some of my comments may sound heretical to other members, I assure you I am devout and attend service weekly and the temple regularly.

It is understandable but lamentable that the church itself is unwilling to state more emphatically and in great detail an official position on internationalism. Understandable if one looks at early church history as well as that of the last several decades. Lamentable because the purposely vague and sparse nature of such statements allows “boobies” like Orrin Hatch to feel justified in their demented actions.

The early decades of the church involved more than a little pain and suffering all around. Unfortunate decisions and actions occurred on both sides of the fence. Those who feel it was a one sided affair in either direction are welcome to their myopic view of things. Long story short, the church ends up moving outside the United States, but then ends up back under the federal thumb in much the same flavor if not scale of the unconstitutional behavior which lead to our (United States) wholly unjustifiable civil war. Despite that reality Utah consciously remained a “very different place” until several decades ago.

Starting in the 1950s there began a well considered and concerted effort by the church to become more mainstream American. The doctrine could remain the same, but the members no longer felt bound by peculiar social and cultural traditions. President of the church at the time David O. McKay is the shining example of this. Gone was the long gray beard and frock coat. He was clean shaven, outgoing, dressed as a conservative business man of the time. The result is as so many other posters have stated: Mormons today are “strange” mostly in the sense they tend to have large families, are a generally quiet and conservative lot, and seem mostly to be hard working decent folk.

The unfortunate part of this mainstreaming is that, mixed with the conservative ideals of the church, it generally produced a sort of “super-Republican” brown shirt. The percentage of church members who consider themselves anything other than REPUBLICAN! is in the single digit range. Pointing out non-conservative actions/beliefs of the current president is practically a high crime because he is a REPUBLICAN! Members tend to feel a strong sense of devotion to the government itself instead of to the constitution and its principles.

The church itself makes every effort to stay as far back as possible from any involvement with government. Members are counseled to marry within their race, culture, and religion, but not frequently and in great detail, because that would be construed as racist and political. Zion (a piece of heaven on earth if you will) and the path to personal salvation are to be established LOCALLY within the nations and communities where people join the church. Again, to state that in great clarity and detail going in to all the implications would be seen as racist and political. As a result, wrong-thinking yet compassionate members (and there are more than a few) do everything they can in the causes of immigration and internationalism. They fail to understand the intent of programs like the perpetual education fund which provides both money and training programs to those in impoverished nations but on the condition that they remain a member of that community and help build it up INSTEAD OF immigrating here.

The bottom line is that the church is unlikely to become more detailed and emphatic in the counsel given to members, and that members remain largely unable to connect the dots in this area. Like many conservative religious organizations the difference between critical thinking and believing oneself clever enough to have understood the mysteries of God is practically non-existent. My own case in point was the time I was foolish enough to bring up the discussion of the implications of women voting in this nation. (Thank you for the courage to have gone there.) That despite the notion being completely in harmony with official church positions.

LA replies:

If I understand Kevin S. correctly, he seems to be saying that the Mormon church has, in practice, a national, particularist, non-universalist orientation, but that it does not articulate and teach this approach in an open and principled way. And as a result, many Mormons simply drift with the prevailing liberalism and universalism of our society.

That would fit with VFR’s analysis, that implicit or customary non-liberalism is not enough; non-liberalism must be principled and articulate if it is to have any chance to resist liberalism.

Kevin S. replies:

Your response to what I wrote is dead on.

LA continues:

And further, as Kevin S. explains, a reason for the church’s failure to teach clearly its own non-universalist position is that it does not want to seem to be impinging on areas of politics (partly based, perhaps, on its past contentious relations with the U.S. government). But this only leaves politics in the hands of the dominant liberalism.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 24, 2008 05:21 PM | Send