The two posts below may have tipped you off, but I’ve decided to try to resurrect this old blog.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we had a new little person join our family in April, and I think I’ve adjusted to the schedule change enough to resume the bloggy-goodness. So come back! Comment! Let the verbal fisticuffs begin!

Following up on my last post, an e-acquaintance shared the following hymn that sums up what I hope patriotism means.

Free audio can be found here.

This is my song, O God of all the nations,
A song of peace for lands afar and mine.
This is my home, the country where my heart is;
Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine;
But other hearts in other lands are beating
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,
And sunlight beams on clover-leaf and pine.
But other lands have sunlight too and clover,
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
Oh, hear my song, O God of all the nations,
A song of peace for their land and for mine.

Patriotic/jingoistic displays in church bother me greatly. It’s hard to tell if this is a function of being a liberal in a generally conservative church (though happily, I’m not the only one), as liberals and conservatives tend to express their patriotism quite differently.

On June 30 in our sacrament meeting, we had one youth and two adult speakers who were all assigned the topic of “Liberty.” We closed the Sacrament Meeting by singing The Star-Spangled Banner. This past Sunday, the first Sunday after Independence Day, our church service opened by singing My Country ‘Tis of Thee and closed with America the Beautiful. And most of the testimony-bearers shared their feelings of gratitude for living in such a wonderful country, a free country, the land that God prepared for the restoration of the Gospel, for having an inspired Constitution created by men of God, etc., etc.

I love the United States - I love what it stands for (in general, despite various times, including the current one, in my opinion, of image-tarnishing by reckless leaders), and I am truly grateful to have been born in a land in which freedom of conscience is enshrined in the founding document.

But displays of patriotism in church make me really, really uncomfortable.

It seems that there is a tendency among LDS congregations, at least along the Wasatch Front, to get carried away from the Gospel of repentance, faith, charity, and service into the Gospel of America (I use “gospel” here in the literal sense - the “good news” of the US and its promised, if not always delivered, liberties). I cringe every time I hear someone mention how grateful they are to live in the land God saved for us. I wince every time someone offers their thanks to God for the troops fighting for our freedoms and implores Him to protect them. And I grimace every time someone states that the Gospel could not have been restored in any other land.

Why do I cringe? Well, I suppose that I take the reasoning of these people one step further than they do. If God really saved this land for “us” - whoever that “us” is (whites only? Mormons only?), does that mean that he condoned the slaughter of the American Indians and the corralling of them on reservations? I share the gratitude for those who’ve fought and died for this country, but are the troops in Iraq really fighting for our freedom - or are they fighting for some ideological vision of the Middle East? If we pray for the success of our soldiers, are we not praying death down upon the heads of our enemies - those whom Jesus commanded us to pray for? (See Mark Twain’s excellent short story, The War Prayer). Furthermore, aren’t we under an obligation to be a peaceful people? Finally, I find it very hard to believe that the gospel could not have been restored anywhere else. Surely an omnipotent God could have restored his Church anywhere he wanted. He could not have been restricted to Western New York.

But beyond my own personal thoughts on each of those particular expressions, there is something much deeper about those expressions that bother me. It is, I think, the underlying American exceptionalism - that is, the belief that America is somehow morally superior to other nations as a result of its founding, institutions, or ethic. Exceptionalism causes us to ignore the fact that other nations have just as many liberties and rights enshrined (if not more, or if not actually granted in deed as well as word), or that the US has been guilty of heinous crimes - slavery, displacement of native peoples, internment of Japanese Americans, and more recently, torture. It allows us to shrug our shoulders at the plight of other peoples - especially those in lands in which our soldiers are fighting. Worst of all, it condemns us to ignoring our common brother- and sisterhood with all the world - not merely our fellow citizens. It makes it easier to forget that an Iraqi in Tikrit, Pakistani in Islambad, North Korean in Pyongyang, a Shona in Harare, Zimbabwe, a Quecha in the Amazon, is a child of God, every bit as much as we are.

What is best about America is the belief that all people are created equal. One of the best features of the LDS Church is its assertion that all people “are alike unto God.” But mixing the two seems to result in a less uplifting brew - we exult in our Americanness and Mormonness.

And neither adheres very closely to the ideals of the United States of America or Mormonism.

Update: Derek in the comments points us to a post he wrote two years ago. It’s well worth reading and discusses the problem of chavinism in what passes for patriotism in the American LDS Church (and indeed, in America generally). Check it out.

But don’t tell Senator Clinton that.

Keith Olbermann says it all in 12 minutes. Watch it here.

I rarely agree with the Sutherland Institute. Paul Mero, the president of the conservative think tank, has penned opinion columns in the Tribune that make me want to simultaneously laugh and cry.

But a Deseret Morning News editorial directed my attention to something from Sutherland that I can agree with: the call for a sane and compassionate immigration policy, particularly within our state. The Sutherland Institute also released an essay, explaining their positions, citing heroes of the right from Milton Friedman to Thomas Sowell to William Buckley, Jr. explaining why a compassionate policy makes sense morally, politically, and economically.

President Reagan, who has “been nearly deified by political and intellectual conservatives alike, signed the 1986 immigration bill,” which granted amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants. Money quote from Reagan:

I have thought of America as a place in the divine scheme of things that was set aside as a promised land…and the price of admission was very simple…any place in the world and any person from these places; any person with the courage, with the desire to tear up their roots, to strive for freedom, to attempt and dare to live an a strange and foreign place, to travel halfway across the world was welcome here…I believe that God in shedding His grace on this country has always in this divine scheme of things kept an eye on our land and guided it as a promised land for these people.”

The “promised land” language always makes me nervous, but in this context, I find Reagan’s words reverberate with me.

Being the Sutherland Institute, the people who brought us Quiverfull “movement”, of course, they couldn’t fail to mention that many Hispanic immigrants have as strong, if not stronger, a reverence for the family as many Utahns (read: Mormons). Sutherland’s point here, of course, is that Hispanic immigrants fit well within Utah’s family culture and could contribute to strengthening it.

I know some liberals might consider it heretical to agree with a far-right wing group like the Sutherland Institute. Then call me a heretic (and this guy, too). When it comes to good public policy, particularly on an issue as emotional as immigration, we need all the allies we can get.

In almost any other Congressional district in America, of course, this would be a kiss of death.

C’mon, Utah county. Reality isn’t that bad.

I love this.

The irony of this is too sweet. Don’t miss the comments, either.

“For Big Brown, undefeated but having raced only three times, the Derby (4 p.m. ET, NBC; post time 6:04) is a chance to validate the hype that has made such an inexperienced colt the favorite among oddsmakers to win the most prestigious event in American horse racing.”

The Healthy Americans Act, a health care reform bill co-sponsored by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Bob Bennett (R-UT) may have just gotten the certification it needs to pass through both chambers of Congress.

As reported by the Salt Lake Tribune’s Matt Canham, The Congressional Budget Office completed an analysis of the bill, and found that it would be budget neutral by 2014.

Wyden’s plan would abolish employer-provided insurance. Instead, citizens would be responsible to purchase their own insurance through a state exchange. Insurers would be required to provide a minimum baseline of coverage to everyone, couldn’t charge different customer’s different premiums, and couldn’t deny coverage.

It’s not a single-payer plan, which would be my preference. But it is promising.

Update: I forgot to mention: The American Prospect has a great special feature on health care reform in this month’s issue. Be sure to see Ezra Klein’s article titled, “The Elusive Politics of Reform,” which gives a good description of Wyden’s bill.