![\"Salzburg](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2015\/12\/800px-Salzburgwinter1.jpg\")
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***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n A new Witnesses-related short feature has been posted for your viewing pleasure:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWitnesses of the Book of Mormon \u2014 Insights Episode 8:\u00a0What was the Cost of Being a Witness?\u201d<\/em><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n What price did the witnesses pay for being witnesses\u2014and for never denying their testimonies of the Book of Mormon?<\/span><\/p>\n This is the eighth in a series compiled from from the many interviews conducted during the course of the Witnesses film project. This series of mini-films is being released each Saturday at 7pm MDT. These additional resources are hosted by Camrey Bagley Fox, who played Emma Smith in Witnesses, as she introduces and visits with a variety of experts. These individuals answer questions or address accusations against the witnesses, also helping viewers understand the context of the times in which the witnesses lived. For more information, go to\u00a0https:\/\/witnessesofthebookofmormon.org\/<\/a>\u00a0or watch the documentary movie\u00a0Undaunted<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n Short clips from this episode are also available on\u00a0TikTok<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Instagram<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n Be sure to Like and Share this video, as well as subscribing to our YouTube channel at\u00a0https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/c\/theinterpreterfoundation<\/a>\u00a0and our other social media channels on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>,\u00a0Twitter<\/a>,\u00a0Instagram<\/a>, and\u00a0TikTok<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I simply haven\u2019t had much time for blogging over the past forty-eight hours.\u00a0 And yet it\u2019s my personal goal to post a blog entry of a certain minimal length every day.\u00a0 So, right now, in order to meet my goal for today and to make up for having fallen a tad short yesterday, I intend to cheat.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to share, again, an entry that I originally posted almost exactly four years back and that I\u2019ve lately remembered because I\u2019ve thinking about . . . well, Nazis<\/em>.\u00a0 Some of the references will be just slightly dated, but I haven\u2019t changed anything (including my now objectionable use of the term Mormon<\/em>):<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Some years ago, I read Ralph Hancock\u2019s<\/a> translation of Alain Besan\u00e7on\u2019s A Century of Horrors: Communism, Nazism, and the Horrors of the Shoah<\/a>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I believe it was in that book that I encountered this interesting observation:<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Nazism, Besan\u00e7on wrote (if it was indeed Besan\u00e7on), had a finite goal. \u00a0At least in theory. \u00a0Once the Jews and the Gypsies were gone, the Slavs enslaved, and so \u00a0on, the perfect Nazi society would essentially have been achieved. \u00a0Aryan supermen would be in power, and equilibrium would have been reached.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Communism, by contrast, would never be done. \u00a0The most minute deviations from the Party line, whatever the party line happened to be that day, would be sought out and lethally punished. \u00a0And there were always deviations. \u00a0The slightest differences of opinion were criminalized; the slightest policy variations were deemed treason.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The history of the leadership of the Soviet Union, Communist China, and other such states \u2014 with their continual purges of previously favored leaders and apparatchiks, their endless heresy hunts and show trials \u2014 illustrate that fact in spades. \u00a0I recall the story \u2014 I don\u2019t know whether it\u2019s true or not \u2014 of a\u00a0cabinet minister who once dared to suggest an alternative course of action during a meeting with Enver Hoxha, First Secretary of the Party of Labour of Albania from 1944 to his death in 1985. \u00a0Hoxha, it\u2019s said, pulled a pistol, shot him in the head, and continued with the meeting.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Ideologues are always searching for heresies and heretics, and they tend to be unforgiving.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s one of the reasons why I cannot sign on as a straight Libertarian, and it\u2019s among the reasons that I had reservations about some in the Tea Party movement, despite my inclinations toward the former and my deep sympathy with the latter. \u00a0I can\u2019t stand it when, so concerned with ideological purity that practicality goes out the window, we nominate obviously flawed candidates, support splinter factions, and effectively hand elections over to Leftists.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Anyhow, over the years responses to such things as my article on Islam in the April [2018] Ensign<\/em>, my criticism of a California bishop who (explicitly identifying himself as a Mormon bishop) published a blistering attack on then-Senator Harry Reid, and my reservations about President Donald J. Trump have been instructive. \u00a0Some have disagreed, which (though they\u2019re wrong) is fine. \u00a0Many, on the other hand, have agreed with my stances.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But some who disagree have been extraordinarily unpleasant. \u00a0And they\u2019ve been people who, I\u2019m guessing, mostly vote the same way I do, with whom I likely agree on many if not all political matters, and who likely worship the same way that I do on Sundays.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s the \u201cfriendly\u201d fire that\u2019s been most disheartening. \u00a0Really, at times, profoundly depressing.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n In online posts and personal emails, I\u2019ve been\u00a0denounced as a liar, compared to Judas Iscariot, pronounced a socialist, declared a \u201ccafeteria Mormon\u201d who doesn\u2019t really believe in the Restoration at all, unmasked as a \u201cpretend\u201d conservative who\u2019s masquerading as such for some unspecified but nefarious end, and exposed as someone who is morally indifferent to evil and who believes that politicians, and especially left-leaning ones, should be exempt from scrutiny because politics and morality have nothing to do with each other.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n To my enormous delight, one angry Mormon denounced me as a covert enemy of the Church and of Western civilization, linking me with my co-conspirators, Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf and Elder Patrick Kearon.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n One morning, I was rather ostentatiously unfriended on Facebook as a \u201cdefender of abortion\u201d by somebody who\u00a0probably wasn\u2019t even born yet \u2014 yes, I\u2019m that old \u2014 when I began to oppose\u00a0abortion with my voice, my vote, and my wallet. \u00a0If she can\u2019t even endure reading my wickedness online, though, could she stand with me in the temple? \u00a0Have I, like Senator\u00a0Reid, forfeited any right to fellowship with the Saints?<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And all of this because I think it wrong to demonize Brother Harry Reid, no matter how strongly \u2014 and it\u2019s very<\/em> strongly \u2014 I disagree with him on political issues; because I find the character and personality of Donald Trump worrisome and troubling; because I know too much about Islam to buy into the simplistic caricatures of it that some folks like; and so forth.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I take my stand \u2014 simply and solely but decisively \u2014 on the principle that merely political disagreements should not be permitted to sunder the fellowship of the Saints and to divide the Kingdom of God.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Yet I see that happening. \u00a0I\u2019ve experienced it myself.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n If you\u2019re one of those who wish to toss me out of the Church, please, at the very least, stop reading my blog and unfriend me on Facebook. \u00a0You\u2019ll do both of us a great favor. \u00a0Our lives will be much more serene. \u00a0Certainly mine will.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Posted from Ruhpolding, Upper Bavaria, Germany<\/p>\n \n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 \u00a0 *** \u00a0 A new Witnesses-related short feature has been posted for your viewing pleasure: \u00a0 \u201cWitnesses of the Book of Mormon \u2014 Insights Episode 8:\u00a0What was the Cost of Being a Witness?\u201d What price did the witnesses pay for being witnesses\u2014and for never denying their testimonies of the Book of Mormon? This is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n