Falling support for Bush's handling of Iraq among Mormons

Recent Gallup polls have shown a 21 point drop in favor of Bush's handling of the Iraq war among Utah Mormons. American Mormons in general have been among Bush's most staunch supporters and how he has handled Iraq, so what has caused this sharp drop in support?http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_5517138According to the above article, the LDS church leadership have instructed their millions of followers to support Bush in Iraq, but recent comments by LDS President Hinkley about war in general seems to have been interpreted by many Mormons to be "permission" to oppose the Bush's management of Iraq.What I would like to discuss is this.I find it incredible and frankly, morally repugnant, that so many Mormons supported Bush and the war just because their church leaders told them to. Further, they continued to support it merely out of obedience rather than out of any real conviction, as this sharp drop in suppor seems to show.Isn't this a case of people not owning their own morality, as Ringo has said?And isn't this how genocides and other atrocities are made possible; when people place obedience to some authority (religious or otherwise) above everything else and choose to not question it, let alone reject or oppose it?Not sure where this should go.

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Are they not owning ther own morality, just because they are following leaders?

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As the sharp drop in support suggests, many Utah Mormons were against Bush's handling of the war, but previously disregarded or subsumed their own moral convictions as secondary to those of their leaders'.That means, by definition, that they do not own their own morality, but wait to be told what their morality should be from an external source and do not ever consider questioning if that external source's morality is adequate, let alone superior.You must understand, rat, that this drop in support for Bush among Utah Mormons was along the lines of a 20 point plummet in a very small time frame. That is pretty much unheard of.

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Can it just be that in light of all the evidence, the leaders have just changed their minds about Bush, and the rest of the followers understand the leaders position?

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No, I don't think so. Otherwise, there would not have been shuch an incredibly sharp drop.

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I think you would have to prove that mormons are being brain washed, and have no free will at all.

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While that is one possible explanation, I don't think it is the most likely.I think the most likely explanation is that the Utah Mormons, as a group, are willing to discount or hide their own moral sense if their leader tells them to. Clearly, a great many of them didn't actually support Bush's handing of Iraq, but were told by their leaders that they must, so they ignored their own moral sense and did. Once there was the barest inkling that it was "OK" to disagree with the war and still be a "good Mormon", they finally felt free to express their long-held disapproval.Thus, they don't truly own their own morality.

What polling data are you referring to regarding the Jews?What radical change in polling results were there as a result of what some Rabbi said?The rest of your post is merely a bunch of personal doubts with no logical argument to justify them, so it's pretty much a non-substantive response.

Where did I say that Mormons have no morality?

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You said they don't own their morality, if they don't own it, then they don't have any.

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Nope, that's not what "not owning one's own morality" means.

Yeah, in a manner of speaking.

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So basically, since they don't really own it, then they have none.

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No.If I lease a car, I don't really own that car, but I do "have a car".If those Mormons in question actually objected to the Iraq war and didn't truly support Bush's handling of it, then they shouldn't have pretended that they did just because their leader told them to.If they had owned their own morality, it wouldn't have been a problem for them to have objected all along instead of going against their true feelings out of obedience to their religious leader.

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Yea you have one, but you don't own it.
Whatever, it is stupid nit-picking.

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LOL! No, that is the point I was trying to make and now you agree.

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There may be other reasons involved, not able to be seen by a simple survey.

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Sure. This is all speculation.However, the survey results, I will remind you, are pretty much unheard of. That kind of large shift in opinion just doesn't happen.That's the biggest reason I think that there were a large numer of Utah Mormons who were just waiting, so to speak, for the smallest signal from their religious leader that they were permitted to disapprove of Bush.

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And it certainly doen't mean they do not own their own morality.

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Yes, that is what it means.If they owned their own morality, they wouldn't have waited for permission to disapprove of Bush.

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If anything, it shows that their morality leads them to stick together.

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IF true, that means that those individuals who seemed to be "waiting" for permission to disapprove of Bush think that their own moral sense is second in importance to that of their religious leader's.That means that those individuals don't own their own morality, but subsume it to another's.Maybe you have a hard time with that, because your idea of morality only includes individualism.

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I see it happen all the time within the Jewish community. They stick together.

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No, what you would need to show is a similar large shift AWAY from "sticking together" as soon as a prominent Rabbi merely hinted that it was OK to do so.You haven't shown any sort of poll results, anyway, so your comments about Jews being similar are useless to your argument.

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Was the signal from their religious leader to not support Bush, or was it for them to form their own opinion?

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Read the article I linked to in the OP.The leader never mentioned Bush in the speech that sparked the discussion among Mormons on message boards and led to the dramtic shift in the poll results. He only lamented the terrible costs of war. I think that this is pretty good evidence that many Mormons had long disapproved of Bush and were only saying they supported him out of obedience to their religious leaders.That, to me, is a lie. It is a lie about one's own personal morality. That means that these people believe it is expected of them that they lie in a poll out of obedience rather than state their honest opinion.If that isn't an example of not owning one's own morality, I don't know what is.

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Maybe you have a hard time with that, because your idea of morality only includes individualism.

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Maybe, or their morality is to stick together, not that they don't have one. I am pretty sure they aren't locked in to one view.

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I think it's really funny that you contradicted the statement about morality and individualism above, because I didn't write them; you did. To me. I forgot to put quote boxes around them in my last reply to you and didn't notice it dangling there at the end of the post.Edited by nator, : No reason given.Edited by nator, : No reason given.