Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts published in “Day: September 17, 2009”

Thoughts after a DMV visit

September 17, 2009

From Linda Watkins, after a visit to the Division of Motor Vehicles . . .

I used to work for state government. I worked in a couple of departments as well as for one statewide elected official. I am not one of those people who believes that all government workers are stupid, lazy, or just putting in their time until they can retire and take advantage of the public retirement system. I also do believe that there are good reasons for some government regulations and requirements. I'm not one of these folks who thinks we're sinking into a socialist morass, nor that we need to "get government out of our lives."

In other words, when I walk into a government office, I enter with the assumption that these are nice people who are doing a necessary, if sometimes difficult job and in these days of economic shortage, doing it under a great deal of stress and pressure. Which makes my experience the last two days with the Oregon DMV all the more unnerving.

The whole thing started last Saturday when my purse was stolen from my closed, locked car in the middle of the day in a busy parking lot in a Northern California city park. Of course my driver's license and ATM cards were not recovered. I've spent the last six days reconstructing my life, to include police reports, bank account closings and openings, insurance claims, car repairs, and of course replacing that Rosetta Stone of modern day life: my driver's license. (more…)

A shout from the past

September 17, 2009

Three decades ago, when I was covering politics in eastern Idaho for the newspaper at Pocatello, the most conservative of the local Republicans (a few office holders, and a few additional candidates, and all or nearly all Mormon in faith - that being the other characteristic they had in common) were members of the John Birch Society and other groups toward the right edge, and cheerfully offered to share their favorite readings and authors. Probably no author was then in stronger circulation in this group, in the very conservative LDS community in the Intermountain area, than Cleon Skousen.

Skousen has been, for me, a true name from the past; I've not heard it for a long time, and since he died in January 2006, has seemed unlikely to resurface. But he has. The TV talker Glenn Beck (scheduled to appear at a rally in Seattle on Saturday) has led a Skousen resurgence, pushing hard on air and at appearances an old Skousen book (The 5,000 Year Leap, for which he wrote a foreword and which he called "divinely inspired") and a number of his ideas. Skousen may have been the biggest single influence on Beck; which, once you know something about Skousen, explains a great deal. The line from the most-conservative LDS group of the 60s and 70s (the church distanced itself from Skousne by the 80s) to Beck (an LDS church convert) looks direct and clear; know one, you know the other, except that Beck has a national megaphone.

Rather than run through the whole Skousen story, which includes a scattershot law enforcement meshing into more strident and conspiratorial outlooks, we'll suggest some reading of our own, a new piece in Salon by Alexander Zaitchik, "Meet the man who changed Glenn Beck's life." It'll give you most of the background you need to understand how the the strangest public figure with a real (if misguided) following got to where he is. Call it a cautionary tale.

A piece of Zaitchick's description: "'Leap,' first published in 1981, is a heavily illustrated and factually challenged attempt to explain American history through an unspoken lens of Mormon theology. As such, it is an early entry in the ongoing attempt by the religious right to rewrite history. Fundamentalists want to define the United States as a Christian nation rather than a secular republic, and recast the Founding Fathers as devout Christians guided by the Bible rather than deists inspired by the French and English philosophers. 'Leap' argues that the U.S. Constitution is a godly document above all else, based on natural law, and owes more to the Old and New Testaments than to the secular and radical spirit of the Enlightenment."