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On Wednesday last, I posted a blog entry (\u201cOn Dealing With \u201cScum\u201d Who\u2019ve Entered Our Country Illegally\u201d<\/a>) in which I took issue with an ostensible Latter-day Saint over at the \u201cLDS Freedom Forum\u201d who calls himself \u201cFred.\u201d \u00a0I objected to his use of such terms as scum<\/em> to refer to illegal immigrants to the United States. \u00a0I\u2019ve since learned that \u201cFred\u201d has also used words like monkoids<\/em> and chimps<\/em> for people who don\u2019t share his particular skin pigmentation, and that he seems to be an unabashed white supremacist.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve wondered how \u201cFred\u201d can claim to be a Latter-day Saint with such attitudes. \u00a0And, in fact and perhaps even somewhat to my relief \u2014 and, yes, I\u2019m struggling<\/em> with that feeling \u2014 he may no longer be<\/em> an active or believing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: He seems to be upset with the current leadership of the Church for, among other things, their having received the \u201cdeath jab\u201d during the COVID pandemic. \u00a0(Pretty predictable, that: There\u2019s now a crazy \u201cright wing\u201d offramp out of the Restored Church that\u2019s comparable to the left wing offramp with which we\u2019ve been all too familiar for a long time. \u00a0It puts me in mind of something that Elder Neal A. Maxwell liked to quote from the dissenting English clergyman William Law [1686-1761]: \u00a0\u201cIf you have not chosen the Kingdom of God first, it will in the end make no difference what you have chosen instead.\u201d \u00a0It also reminds me of the Lord\u2019s statement, in Doctrine and Covenants 1:16, that \u201cevery man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world.\u201d)<\/p>\n Yesterday, Friday, I posted a blog entry entitled \u201cI Can Easily Imagine Worse Deaths.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 That blog post\u2019s title was inspired by the title of a new Interpreter<\/em> article that went up yesterday: \u201cDeath by Chocolate: Considering the Wine Imbibed by the Lamanite Guards.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 I like chocolate. \u00a0In all its forms. \u00a0I began this morning, as I often do, with a chocolate breakfast drink. \u00a0And, as it happens, I had a bit of a really good Mexican chocolate mole<\/em> meat dish last night for dinner. \u00a0During my mission in Switzerland, I was sometimes literally like a kid in a candy shop. \u00a0In yesterday\u2019s blog entry, referring to the Interpreter<\/em> article, I remarked that \u201cI can think of far worse ways to die than by some form or other of chocolate.\u201d<\/p>\n I also devoted a few lines in yesterday\u2019s blog entry, though, to the language used by a poster over on the Peterson Obsession Board to rejoice at the death of the prominent Evangelical Protestant child psychologist James Dobson. \u00a0\u201cDumb-Dud\u201d pronounced Dr. Dobson a monster and hoped that he is now being tortured in Hell. \u00a0Others there have since joined in to label Dobson \u201codious,\u201d a \u201ctoad,\u201d and \u201cfilth,\u201d and, metaphorically, to invoke sexual violence upon him.<\/p>\n I never read any of Dr. Dobson\u2019s books. \u00a0I doubt that I\u2019ve ever read more than a few paragraphs that he wrote. \u00a0Over several years altogether, I heard perhaps thirty minutes of his radio programs. \u00a0I didn\u2019t follow him. \u00a0Although I\u2019m a political conservative \u2014 or, I would rather say, because<\/em> I\u2019m a political conservative \u2014 I don\u2019t share his enthusiasm for a certain current president of the United States. \u00a0But what little I heard from him always seemed pretty commonsensical and reasonable to me. \u00a0For that reason, such responses to his passing as this from USA Today<\/em><\/a> strike me as balanced and fairly accurate.<\/p>\n Perhaps, though, there was another side to him. \u00a0In the past day or two, I\u2019ve encountered some extraordinarily harsh things said about him, and seen a great deal of cruelty and abuse and loss of faith blamed on him. \u00a0(See, for example, this lengthy and quite nasty piece from the \u201cFriendly Atheist\u201d: \u00a0\u201cJames Dobson, an architect of evangelical Christian cruelty, is finally dead at 89: His toxic teachings on family, sex, and politics left generations scarred\u2014and America worse off.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 And this: \u00a0\u201cJames Dobson, Godfather of Child Abuse, Finally Dies: The radical cleric leaves behind a legacy of sanctified torture, destroyed children and broken families.\u201d<\/a>)\u00a0\u00a0Are those denunciations fair? \u00a0I don\u2019t know. \u00a0I\u2019m inclined to think not. \u00a0They certainly don\u2019t seem to fit the genial, kindly man that I heard on the radio. \u00a0When I think of \u201cradical clerics,\u201d I think of people like Muqtada al-Sadr and Anjem Choudary, not of James Dobson.<\/p>\n Since Dr. Dobson\u2019s death, though, I\u2019ve run across some quoted advice from him that seems, well, genuinely strange and, in some cases, much more approving of corporal punishment than I\u2019ve ever been. \u00a0Are such specimens cherry-picked? \u00a0Are they representative? \u00a0I don\u2019t know. \u00a0As I say, I didn\u2019t follow him.<\/p>\n I can think of only one occasion when I used physical punishment as a parent. \u00a0It stands out in my memory because it was so unusual and because it made me distinctly unhappy. \u00a0(It\u2019s just not \u201cme.\u201d \u00a0I don\u2019t ever even raise my voice.) \u00a0I was mowing the front lawn, and one of my sons, then quite young, was out there with me. \u00a0Our suburban neighborhood street has a fair amount of traffic on it for such a quiet area and, on that day, there were many cars parked along the curb because our neighbors were having some sort of gathering, perhaps a barbecue, at their house. \u00a0For some reason, my little boy began to be fascinated with darting out into the street from between the parked cars. \u00a0I was terrified that he would be hit by a passing vehicle, so I told him to stop it. \u00a0Repeatedly. \u00a0Over and over again. \u00a0Eventually, thinking that the threat would surely cause him to stop, I sternly told him that, if he did it even one more time, I would wallop his backside. \u00a0I imagined that that would take care of the problem. \u00a0But it didn\u2019t. \u00a0Almost immediately, he dashed between two parked cars into the street. \u00a0Now I was faced with a dilemma. \u00a0I didn\u2019t really want to strike him. \u00a0I\u2019d never done so before. \u00a0I wasn\u2019t even really angry<\/em>. \u00a0I was just worried<\/em>. \u00a0I recall being surprised and distressed that, despite my stern warning, my son had put me into this situation. \u00a0But, I reasoned, if I didn\u2019t spank him after he had plainly gone against my clear warning, any future warnings from me would have diminished credibility. \u00a0So I gave him a flat-handed spank on the rear, not really very hard, and sent him into the house. \u00a0As he closed the door behind him, he called out that I was the worst Daddy ever<\/em>. \u00a0I was actually pretty saddened by that episode, but at least he wasn\u2019t running out into the street any more.<\/p>\n So it\u2019s not as if I\u2019m a really enthusiastic fan of corporal punishment for children. \u00a0I\u2019m absolutely not. \u00a0And\u00a0I don\u2019t think that I\u2019ve ever called another human being \u201cfilth.\u201d \u00a0I\u2019ve rarely called another human being a \u201cmonster.\u201d \u00a0When I have, I\u2019ve reserved the term for people on the order of Jeffrey Dahmer.<\/p>\n And that points to the actual unifying theme of my Wednesday blog entry and my Friday blog entry: \u00a0I like people. \u00a0I disapprove of using words like filth<\/em> and scum<\/em> for other human beings. \u00a0Dehumanizing language is sometimes a precursor to dehumanizing actions. \u00a0Some good examples might be cited from 1930s Germany. \u00a0I\u2019ll offer just one: \u00a0Adolf Hitler dismissed humankind as \u201ca ridiculous cosmic bacterium\u201d (ein l\u00e4cherliches kosmisches Bakterium<\/em>), and his political actions were consistent with that view.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 On Wednesday last, I posted a blog entry (\u201cOn Dealing With \u201cScum\u201d Who\u2019ve Entered Our Country Illegally\u201d) in which I took issue with an ostensible Latter-day Saint over at the \u201cLDS Freedom Forum\u201d who calls himself \u201cFred.\u201d \u00a0I objected to his use of such terms as scum to refer to illegal immigrants to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":101306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4276,39056,39068,2905,788,7890],"class_list":["post-112493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bigotry","tag-illegal-alien","tag-james-dobson","tag-latter-day-saint","tag-mormon","tag-rhetoric"],"yoast_head":"\n