Posted on 10/11/2007 6:09:12 AM PDT by shortstop
You can tell a man's character by how he acts when he's a guest in someone's home.
By that standard, Harry Reid has none.
No character, no class, no honor.
He came to Brigham Young University this week, a guest of the school, and he acted like a fool. A dishonest, arrogant, manipulative fool.
Harry Reid is the Senate majority leader, a Democrat, and he is also a Mormon. A stealth Mormon. The kind who doesn't let it get in the way of his politics.
Certainly, that is rude and judgmental to say. But given the nature of his remarks at BYU, rude and judgmental appear to be two of his favorite things.
Like his comment on evangelical Christians.
Of evangelicals – whom he called “the Christian far right” -- Harry Reid said, “They are the most anti-Christian people I can imagine.”
On the campus of the Mormon university, the most senior elected Mormon in the country called evangelicals “anti-Christian.”
Does that mean he believes that they are collectively the anti-Christ? Is he completely ignorant of the biblical import of that word? Is he so politically and religiously intolerant that he would pass such condemning judgment on an entire class of people?
Is he so uncaring of other people's feelings that he would attack their religious self-identification?
Is his hatred for people with different political views so total that he would consign them all to hell?
Compounding the bigotry of the Harry Reid comments was the context. Mormons are keenly protective of their own identity as Christians. Just three days before – at the twice-yearly General Conference – Mormon leaders firmly rejected the claim of some outside the faith that their church is itself not Christian. The Mormon claim is that they alone can know what is in their hearts and if they say they believe in Jesus Christ then it is not anyone else's business to say different.
For a prominent Mormon to then turn around and say that the several million evangelicals in America are “the most anti-Christian people I can imagine” is reprehensible and incomprehensible.
He has offended both evangelical Christians and his own church.
And some speculate that he did it for political reasons.
Another prominent Mormon politician is Mitt Romney. His political future may well be determined by evangelical Christian voters in southern primaries. Their greatest stumbling block is the fear by some that Mormons aren't Christians. Mitt's supporters must convince them to suspend their religious suspicions and give him the benefit of the doubt. That becomes less likely when Mormon Harry Reid turns around and calls them “anti-Christian.”
It was a bigoted, inappropriate and patently false remark.
But it wasn't just evangelicals whose religion Harry Reid slighted.
Ironically, it was also Mormons.
For example, he assailed the concern of many Mormon people with values issues. Specifically, he said, “People in the (Mormon) church have to understand there are issues more important than abortion and gay marriage.”
According to Harry Reid, “more important than abortion and gay marriage” are socialized medicine and global warming.
It seems odd that he would be counseling “people in the church” that they “have to understand” his perspective and priorities, particularly when their perspective and priorities are in line with the leaders of their church while his are not.
Many Mormons, for example, join with Catholics and evangelicals in believing that abortion is a type of murder. There's not much more significant than killing a human being. Further, the leadership of the Mormon church – which fastidiously avoids politics – has repeatedly asked its members to oppose the legalization of gay marriage.
In fact, in the very building where Harry Reid spoke, a senior Mormon religious leader addressed these particular issues.
In 1995, then Mormon apostle James E. Faust said at BYU: “Abortion is one evil practice that has become socially accepted in our country and, indeed, in the world. Many of today's politicians claim not to favor abortion, but oppose government intervention in a woman's right to choose an abortion.” He went on to quote and endorse Mother Theresa and commentator Cal Thomas in condemning abortion.
In the same talk, on the subject of gay marriage, James E. Faust – who was himself once a Democratic politician – said: “The Church's stand on homosexual relations provides another arena where we offend the devil. I expect that the statement of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve against homosexual marriages will continue to be assaulted. Satan is only interested in our misery, which he promotes by trying to persuade men and women to act contrary to God's plan. One way he does this is by encouraging the inappropriate use of sacred creative powers. A bona fide marriage is one between a man and a woman solemnized by the proper legal or ecclesiastical authority.”
So what you had with Harry Reid at BYU was one Mormon telling other Mormons that the Mormon leaders are wrong.
And that's just not the way things are done.
And he didn't just do it by inference.
Harry Reid specifically mentioned former Mormon Church President Ezra Taft Benson – along with former BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson – and said, “These people have taken members of the church down the path that is the wrong path.”
Ezra Taft Benson was a Mormon apostle for 42 years and president of the church for nine years. For Harry Reid to suggest that his view of what the right “path” for “members of the church” to follow is superior to Ezra Taft Benson's is insolent and arrogant at best and insubordinate and apostate at worst. In practice, faithful Mormons do not badmouth their leaders, especially not publicly and especially not with cameras and microphones in the room.
Harry Reid also said that Mormons should embrace the social welfare agenda of the Democratic Party. He said the Christian command to care for others was brought to fruition in government welfare.
That view is exactly opposite that taught by a succession of Mormon religious leaders. The position of the church is that “the evils of the dole” should be avoided.
Harry Reid counsels just the opposite.
Harry Reid's appearance at BYU was troublesome not for his political philosophy but for his religious impropriety.
It is wrong to call millions of evangelicals “the most anti-Christian people I can imagine,” it is wrong to chide Mormons for following the counsel of their leaders and it is wrong to stand on the campus of a church university and condemn past leaders of that church.
Yet that is what Harry Reid did.
Which probably tells you all you need to know about Harry Reid.
I'll bet no one has ever heard Harry talk about Muslims like this.
Time for the Mormons to bounce this creep ~ and they do have their ways ~
Ummmm....did Dingy Harry just call Evangelicals “PHONY” Christians?
Harry Reid doesn’t act like a fool.....he IS a fool!
Is he going to back Mitt Romney? Maybe when he was a LAD going around as an ELDER peddling his bike selling Mormonism, he developed that feeling. Evangelicals typically don’t give many kind words to the evangelists.
Invites them in for tea, brings out his Bible, his Book of Mormon, the Doctrines and Dovenants, a Koran in 6 languages (including, of course, Classical Arabic), and sets down to business.
Guy knows his stuff.
Harry Reid is beyond analyzing. He’s a piece of dirt. Ignore the moron.
As a Southern Baptist, we are taught that Mormonism is a cult.
Now, if he starts saying these things outside the community, that is a horse of a different color.
This guy never peddled a bike for the church. He is an embarrassment.
the communist dialectic at work.
the socialists/communists/progressives are more christian than christians; except when the socialist/communist/progessives gain power. then the killing of christian enemies begins and the heroes of the soviet become more like the devil than the devil.
(how tragic that more than one half of the “american electorate” will willingly vote them into office.)
bttt
I wish I could apologize for Mr. Reid and his inappropriate and foul (fool) remarks about evangelicals. Southern Baptists are great people I grew up with them in Oklahoma. They are kindred spirits in the battle against the idiocy of the left.
Wow....I guess the great Harry Reid just said that Mormons aren’t Christian.
-his heart is in the dem talking points - killing the unborn and spreading the rest of the democratic “values”........the mormans have reid, the catholics have ted kennedy, let’s see who is is that claims jimmah?
Sorry I meant doses... I think he needs to go asap. There is just so much about him that makes me feel he is truly unbalanced.
There a numerous supposed ‘evangelical’ voters that are firmly in the Hillry camp, she did get a New York anointing by a famous evangelical.
“I think Harry needs high does of Thorazine & shock treatments.”
He acts and speaks as though that therapy has been used to excess in his case.
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