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Reflections of Ken Towery
Reflections:
by Ken Towery Reflections: Fundamental Latter Day Saints Upon reading Alice's column in the
Hesperian& which everyone who really wants to know what
goes on in this part of the world must read& we learn
that Floyd County may get some new citizens. The new citizens, who may or may not eventually move to this county, are members of an offshoot of the Mormon Church from a place in Arizona, where their leadership has a somewhat checkered relationship with various people. Specifically, a leader (Warren Jeffs) of that group (called the FLDS, or Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints), has had more than his share of run-ins with both his parent church and legal authorities. The leader of the Church of Latter Day Saints, (called the Mormon Church by most people) says, in so many words, that there is no such thing as the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints. The leader of the FLDS takes issue with this, and says his own group is merely holding on to the teachings of some guy named Joseph Smith. Long ago Smith issued an edict, if we can call it that, after he had had a "revelation" that polygamy was approved by him, and by God. Subsequent revelations from church leaders, when plural wives became an impediment to statehood, reversed that, but evidently there is a small group that, for one reason or another, will not accept the new teaching. Polygamy suits them just fine. Generally speaking, the women and children have little to say about this. As far as the men are concerned (reflecting the attitude of men going all the way back to Kings Solomon and David, and even Abraham), there's precious little wrong with polygamy. We have long since taken the position that a person's belief are his (or her) own, and we will respect that. There comes a time, however, when ones religious beliefs go outside the realm of acceptable legal behavior. We were thinking, as we read Alice's "By the Way" column in the Hesperian, about a guy named John Milton Addison, who (back in the early 60's) conned hundreds of people into giving him money for a hunk of metal he called an "Uranium up grader," at some place in Colorado. The people who "invested" were not stupid at all. May of them were what we call our up standing citizens. They thought, because Addison told them so, that they were investing in a project that would bring light to all of Africa, and most of them were more than willing to give of their life's savings so they could be part of that wonderful undertaking. And how many of us, after all, have not invested a few pennies each week to help someone in a foreign land that we don't even know. The District Attorney, a man named Carl Conley, of Raymondville, was defeated next election ( or didn't run, or something), one reason being that he sought to blow the whistle on a con man who was defrauding some of the town's leading citizens. That town's leading citizens, in this instance, did not wish to be seen as gullible people. The FBI ultimately caught the guy skipping town with a satchel full of cash he had gotten from gullible citizens. Addison, according to what I heard, ended up spending time in a federal prison. He had, along the way, made one small mistake. In a few instances, he had "sold" stock, rather than merely soliciting the money. The Feds finally got him on that. If my own experiences in that unhappy episode are indicative, we can safely say that very few came up to Conley later and told him "thank you." Anyone who has been in the newspaper business for any length of time learns to live with that. There are few exceptions, of course, such as the Veterans Land Scandals of the 1950's, and the current flap in Floyd County over whether or not the people want their new, proposed, citizens. Most local citizens, then as now, support what the editor is trying to do. Like I said earlier in this column, we respect other people's religious belief, as we do their political beliefs. Quite often we think they are wrong, and we say so, as we do many things about the current Administration. We think, for instance, that Mr. Bush was wrong when he ordered troops into Iraq, despite Pat Robertson's thoughts on the matter. We think our own intelligence service was entirely wrong, and we thought so at the time, when they advised Bush that Saddam had "weapons of mass destruction" ready and available before we went in. We think the American intelligence establishment (and subsequently more than one Administration) was led around by the nose by highly questionable foreign intelligence sources, primarily Israeli. (In this particular regard, readers of this column will discern nothing new: we have said that for years.) We think, on a personal basis, that the idea of multiple wives (as espoused by the leaders of the folks who are rumored to be about to move into Lockney's Tye compound, is wrong. Sometimes only one wife, or one husband, is probably too many, and judging from the number of abandoned children in this world, some people have too many children when they have just one, or two, or three. And we think the business of turning a blind eye to illegal immigrates is wrong, terribly wrong, even if most of them do believe in the Virgin of Guadalupe and vote in the Democratic primary when they have a chance. We think our system of taxation is wrong, even though it has improved lately. In short, we think many things are wrong in this world, but we don't want to leave it right away. The world here in West Texas, when we are fortunate enough to come here, is entirely too wonderful. Even when it's dry, and the dust is blowing, this is wonderful country. We would ask people to just settle down, relax a bit. Remember that if you have any honest beliefs, those beliefs will not be changed, cannot be changed, by the introduction of what are now regarded as alien beliefs. And who knows? In time we may see some merit to what the aliens are espousing. I can't think of any now, but who knows? Maybe we'll find out multiple wives are the wave of the future. Maybe Abraham and Solomon and David were right about women. Or maybe hard work, attention to the things that matter, will win out in the end. In the meantime we must gird our loins and prepare for whatever.
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