The Fact of My Ignorance

If you’re a reader of my blog then you probably already know that I’m a big fan of the concept of civil discourse,  both for practical and moral reasons.  And the decline in quality of our political dialogue stresses me more than pretty much anything else in the realm of politics right now.  I’m not just talking about recent events.  In many ways the anger, distrust, fear, misinformation, and outright hatred we’ve seen on display recently are just the natural result of several decades of steadily crumbling communities and increasingly isolated and individualistic lifestyles.  And quite frankly, new technological methods of communication that allow anybody with an internet connection to appear to be as credible as actual experts, that facilitate the specialization of news so that citizens can wrap themselves in a cocoon of their own perspective, and which enable people to say increasingly inflammatory things while hiding behind a veil of anonymity are just accelerating the degradation.

So can you imagine my delight to find that my church has chosen to speak out against this very problem.  The LDS church put out a press release a week or so go entitled “The Mormon Ethic of Civility” that I thought was well-written, insightful, and extremely relevant.  While it’s written by LDS leaders, it should be an interesting read for Non-LDS readers as well.  It can be found here on the original LDS newsroom website, but I’ve also posted the full text after the jump. Continue reading

Breaking News!  Tomorrow morning Pres. Obama is expected to announce that he has chosen John Huntsman Jr., governor of Utah and moderate republican as the new ambassador to China.  And sources say Governor Huntsman has accepted the ambassador position.  He learned Chinese while serving a mission for the church in Taiwan and he has an adopted daughter from China.  He also served as Ambassador to Singapore under President George H.W. Bush and worked in the Reagan Whitehouse.  I’ve always liked Gov. Huntsman and he seems to be extremely qualified for this position.  And I’m pleased to see Pres. Obama reaching across party lines to appoint more Republicans to important positions.  The full article follows:

SALT LAKE CITY — President Barack Obama intends to name Utah’s Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman, seen by many as a potential GOP presidential contender, to be ambassador to China, a source close to the governor said Friday night.

The popular moderate governor has accepted the appointment, said the source, who would speak only on condition of anonymity ahead of a White House announcement expected Saturday. Repeated messages to Huntsman’s spokeswoman and other staffers went unreturned Friday. The White House would not confirm the nomination.

Huntsman, a two-term governor, is fluent in Mandarin Chinese from his days as a Mormon missionary in Taiwan. One of his seven children, Gracie Mei, was adopted from China in 1999 after she was abandoned in a vegetable market.  He made headlines recently for encouraging the Republican Party to swing in a more moderate direction if it wanted to bounce back from the 2008 elections, angering some conservatives. Continue reading

Thanks to Joel for this tip.  It turns out my old stake president from my Glenwood days, Larry Echohawk, just got asked to head up the bureau of indian affairs!  Here’s a portion of the Salt Lake Tribune article about it:

President Barack Obama on Friday picked Brigham Young University law professor Larry EchoHawk to lead the Bureau of Indian Affairs, making him the first high-profile Mormon and first Utahn to join the administration’s senior ranks.

EchoHawk, a member of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, has lived and worked throughout the West. He made history in 1990 as the first American Indian elected to statewide office when he won Idaho’s attorney general race. After a failed bid for Gem State governor, EchoHawk, a Democrat, relocated to Utah, where he started teaching courses on criminal law and federal Indian law at BYU.

“Larry EchoHawk has the right leadership abilities, legislative experience and legal expertise,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said, “to bring about the transformative improvements we all seek for Indian country.”

The rest of the article can be found after the jump. Continue reading

Michelangelo's Jonah from the Sistine Chapel

Well its been a while since the last post, but I assure you its not because my blogging enthusiasm is waning.  Our son Jonah was born last Saturday, and that combined with an unusually packed school schedule has left me with less free time than usual.  Not that I’m complaining though.  Jonah is happy, healthy, incredibly cute, and just about the most amiable baby anyone could ask for.  You can see videos and pictures of him at our family blog GayLynnAndRyan.Blogspot.Com.  Now I said when I started this blog that it wouldn’t be one of those “online diary” kind of blogs and I’m still committed to that idea.  But I can’t let something as life-changing as the birth of our first child go by without some kind of acknowledgement on this website.  And I thought a good way to approach this would be to provide a little bit of insight into our choice of the name “Jonah” for our son, since we’ve had a few questions about it.

Of course there’s a lot that goes into choosing a name for a child.  Its got to sound nice when paired with the last name, its got to be something that isn’t too easy for kids to make fun of, it needs to be a name that won’t be considered a “grandpa name” or something like that when he’s still in high school, and of course there’s also the meaning of the name to consider.  The sound of a name is a subjective judgement and we personally think its got a nice ring to it, and we liked it because its unique while not being unpronounceable or difficult to spell.  The meaning of the name initially gave us pause but after much contemplation its become one of my favorite aspects of his name.  Let me explain… Continue reading