Mitt Romney: Disgrace to Mormonism

Sun, 28 Oct 2012 23:00:00 +0000

IN 1884 THE JOURNALIST Edward Bellamy, struggling with an idea for a utopian novel, visited the only actually-existing Communist society on earth: Utah. More precisely, he spent a week in Brigham City, seat of Box Elder County, where Apostle Lorenzo Snow (who would later become fifth LDS president and the last to have personally known Joseph Smith) showed him the workings of a dynamic community based on pooled wealth, producer and consumer cooperatives, and the use of labor scrip instead of money.

Bellamy, like many previous Gentile visitors, was greatly impressed by the Mormon gift for disciplined cooperation. A decade earlier the celebrated explorer-scientist, John Wesley Powell, had championed the Mormon principle of communal water-management in his landmark but controversial Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States. But Bellamy — like Lincoln Steffens returning from Russia in 1921 — was even more enthusiastic: he had seen the future and it worked.

Salon.com > Brigham Young

Mitt Romney: Disgrace to Mormonism