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