I guess we're officially in trade wars with Canada, Mexico, and China now. If history and economics are any indication, this is going to result in a very significant increase in prices for goods from these countries.

This seems inevitable to me but if anybody has a cogent and fact-based explanation of why this won't happen I'm all ears.

In a nation that has more firearms than citizens this is a potentially incendiary situation so I hope I'm wrong.

I spend a lot of time struggling with how often, in our community, our politics do not match up with the principles of our faith. We often promote one morality for private life, but promote a completely different morality for public policy.

I was reminded of this verse recently, since to me this reflects the ideal we ought to strive for if we want to use LDS scripture as our guide, whether in public or private life. The Bible is full of calls to welcome and care for the strangers in our land, to feed them, to help them, and while our two major parties are not equally opposed to that principle, both fall far short of this ideal. Instead of finding ways to welcome newcomers, we deport them. We make it hard for people to come here legitimately, then condemn them for coming any way they can.

In that context, when we get to 2 Nephi 1:6, we learn that "none come into this land save they shall be brought by the hand of the Lord." As I read it, that means the folks who came here despite our efforts to make it hard to do so legally were still brought here by God, and I am reluctant to undo what God has done.

This is a prime example of where we find ourselves finding excuses not to live by the clear call to compassion, because it's impractical, hard, etc- people who would go out of their way to help someone in front of them backing policies that do the opposite in aggregate. I was recently reading Tolstoy's "The Kingdom of God is Within You," and his condemnation of Christians for taking for granted that it's not possible to actually live Christian ideals really struck home for me.

Obviously in the real world it is difficult to enact policy that fully embraces these ideals. But I feel like, if we are truly motivated by fidelity to those ideals, we should be doing our best to turn public policy in that direction, straining in the direction of the ideal as best we can. Resolving unclear questions in favour of compassion will go a long ways to help us get it right.

But often enough we do the opposite. It's a struggle.

Or at least provides the subset of text they think is relevant. I missed out on the conversation about banning X because the OP was someone I have blocked. Posting paywalled content is even worse. Only those that subscribe to that particular echo chamber media source are able to event opine on the content.