An interesting discussion is taking place on the Article VI blog. They are trying to figure out, definitively and with objective information, whether bigotry killed Romney and also what people, mormon or otherwise, should do about it.
Larry Elder, a conservative whom I respect, points out in a new book that if you are going to play the victim card, blaming your misfortunes on others and demanding it all be made right before moving on, you are going to end up on the sidelines. This is what happened to the majority of the black community. Every black person who demands that the whites give something up to make everything fair, rather than working harder themselves to make it in this life, is building a wall between themselves and everyone else. Meanwhile, every black person who shrugs off the inevitable racism and discrimination, and works to better their position in life, is building a bridge to future success and equality.
The black people have got to ask themselves: what has all the cries of “I’m a victim” bought them? Are they in control of the Democratic Party? Do they have a voice in the Republican Party? Do any politicians out there look at them as anything more than a modern vote plantation? Has their situation really improved that much since a hundred years ago, or are they stuck with no hope of getting out?
The ghetto, the social, economic, political, and physical ghettos, that the black people find themselves in were not concentration camps built by racist white men. No amount of persecution, hatred, or bigotry can build a ghetto. They were built by themselves, for themselves, and they have to live in them by themselves. They cut themselves out of the bigger picture, and now they are living with the result.
You see, if you spend your life complaining that life isn’t fair, you are missing a major lesson of life: Life isn’t fair, but it is up to us to make it fair, and we make it fair by living Christian lives filled with the charity of Christ. We replace injustice with justice; hate with love; intolerance with compassion; evil with good. And if we all get busy focusing on ourselves and our own position and our own morality, then everyone will benefit and we will create a fair, just, and compassionate society. After all, it only takes a little bit of salt to flavor the food, a little bit of light to light the room, and only a few people to change the world.
As a member of the LDS church, I am over Huckabee. I don’t care what he did or didn’t do. He is yesterday’s news, piled onto the heap of history that includes those people who raped and murdered and used government to persecute my ancestors. He goes the way of the mob that charged into Joseph Smith’s jail cell and shot him unjustly. He goes the way of the federal government that seized the church assets and drove the church leadership underground and violated the principles of ex post facto, constitutional federalism, separation of church and state, and trial by a jury of peers.
These things were all terrible injustices, in some instances far more injust than some of the injustices suffered by blacks, and yet, it’s history, and I don’t hold a grudge against anyone for it. I don’t hate the Republican Party for setting its party platform on persecuting the LDS church with the arm of the federal government. I don’t hate Huckabee or his supporters for trying to get the nomination by slandering my church, my religion, and my church’s founders.
I don’t want to build a modern, mormon ghetto. I don’t want to minimalize my voice because I complain and whine at every injustice. I want to be part of society and politics and our culture, and I want to influence it for good. I want to be the salt, the candle, the person that makes the world a better place for everyone else.
That means, I am going to forgive and forget what Huckabee and his supporters did.
