We agree! I knew it had to happen sooner or later. The difficulty in distinguishing between arbritrary/harmful and mutual/beneficial restrictions extends to liberals as well as conservatives. Most people agree that paying taxes for national defense or public highways is a beneficial imposition of taxes. Social programs like Social Security or food stamps, on the other hand, can be disputed by good arguments on both sides of the question.

I guess what I am also interested in the pre-drawn conclusions of many LDS, based on mingling LDS doctrines of agency into the political arena. In my mind, the applicability of agency doctrines is limited when it comes to legislation, largely because of the definitions I’m using. Am I alone in my usage, do you think? Can you be politically conservative and still maintain a separate idea of agency vs. liberty?

In my mind, agency is a necessary condition for growth: if you only have one option to choose, I’m not sure that we can learn from the decision. Even when we have many choices, when we are faced with the threat of coercion, our choice is altered. Instead of deciding whether or not to perform a certain action, our choice is now whether we will comply with or rebel against the rule. In many cases, this distorted choice can get in the way of our growth.

An example: A young woman gets pregnant, and her lover is considering marrying her (for the sake of my analogy, suppose that marrying her is the “right thing to do”). He considers whether he wants to take responsibility for his actions or run away (the “wrong” choice here). The young woman’s father then says to the young man, “marry my daughter or I’ll blow your head off with my shotgun.” His decision is no longer ‘do the right thing even though it’s hard’ or ‘do the easy thing even though it’s wrong’, but ‘live’ or ‘die’.

He might now be more assured of making the right choice, but I don’t think it does much for his spiritual progression.

Anyway, my point is that agency has a purpose, and coercion can get in the way of that purpose to varying degrees. That’s as strong a statement as I feel comfortable making at this point though. The whole issue si very complex, especially when generalized to political principles. I think it can be a (huge) stretch to use agency as a direct political argument, but I think it’s not very easily completely divorced from the question of liberty, either.

I’m just glad I had my shotgun.

;)

I like how liberty and agency are shown to be linked in your examples, but I’m not sure where that linkage takes us. After all, we never have total liberty — are we all going to cry about how our agency could never really be exercised? Clearly, at some point we can say that some restrictions on liberty are permissible (see Aaron’s post above). Abinadi is a horrible example, of course, but I’ll use him anyways: a situation where good choices were made, and agency properly exercised, even in the absence of liberty.

In a sense, we can grow more spiritually by exercising agency in the face of restricted liberty than when we have total liberty. Those saints who choose the right, and suffer for it — wouldn’t we say that they are more blessed or have grown more spiritually, than the saints who choose the right when doing so is relatively easy? So I don’t really see how having a lot of liberty is spiritually essential. (of course I can see how it is desirable, from a comfort and happiness perspective).

I suspect many “stereotypical Mormons” think they see the differences between harmful and beneficial restrictions on liberty quite clearly. The real issue is whether what liberals believe to be “beneficial restrictions” really are beneficial.

Aaron B

I agree–and that’s why I think it’s dangerous (or at least unecessarily contentious) for anyone to invoke the War in Heaven model in political discussions about agency/liberty. Not only does it apply an exaggerated sense of polarity, but also puts the invoker in the somewhat presumptuous position of comparison with Deity. I’m automatically suspicious of anyone assuming such status…

Jeremy

I guess this thread is akin to ideas being bounced around as to the appropriateness of introducing religious ideas in the political arena (during the recent immigration unpleasantness in UT). Surprising that we’re all agreeing here.

That’s why Satan’s plan was so contrary to God’s plan — not because it set extreme limits on what we could do (God’s plan, if followed, does that), but because our very ability to discern and choose would be affected.

Just one dude’s view. Like you said, Moses leaves interpretations wide open.

Aaron B