If Only Everyone were like Joseph Smith!?

Question

Joseph Smith was such an admirable and amazing religious leader, it's a shame that we don't have the same kind of people in politics today. If everyone in our political system were more like Joseph Smith, I can guarantee you that the U.S. would be virtually problem-free. Think about it, his colony was an utopia to live in and so would our country if we could eliminate jokes like Barack Obama and impeach our current President George Bush who seems to be a little too interested in the Middle East for my taste, and get real men like Joseph Smith in office. Then we'll be living the good life.

What do you think?

Answer 1

A lying, cheating philanderer who shut down a newspaper for printing stories he didn't want to hear. yeah, that's the ticket.

Answer 2

I agree with these two non-Mormon assessments of him by honest people who knew him:

"It is by no means improbable that some future text-book, for the use of generations yet unborn, will contain a questions something like this: What historical American of the nineteenth century has exerted the most powerful influence upon the destinies of his countrymen? And it is by no means impossible that the answer to that interrogatory may be thus written: Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet. And the reply, absurd as it doubtless seems to most men now living, may be an obvious commonplace to their descendants. History deals in surprises and para doxes quite as startling as this. The man who established a religion in this age of free debate, who was and is today accepted by hundreds of thousands as a direct emissary from the Most High,--such a rare human being is not to be disposed of by pelting his memory with unsavory epithets." [Josiah Quincy, Figures of the Past, p. 376]

"Here is a man who was born in the stark hills of Vermont; who was reared in the backwoods of New York; who never looked inside a college or a high school; who lived in six States, no one of which would own him during his lifetime; who spent months in the vile prisons of the period; who, even when he had his freedom, was hounded like a fugitive; who was covered once with a coat of tar and feathers, and left for dead; who, with his following, was driven by irate neighbors from New York to Ohio, from Ohio to Missouri, and from Missouri to Illinois; and who, at the unripe age of thirty-eight, was shot to death by a mob with painted faces.

Yet this man became mayor of the biggest town in Illinois and the state's most prominent citizen, the commander of the largest body of trained soldiers in the nation outside the Federal army, the founder of cities and of a university, and aspired to become President of the United States.

He wrote a book which has baffled the literary critics for a hundred years and which is today more widely read than any other volume save the Bible. On the threshold of an organizing age he established the most nearly perfect social mechanism in the modern world, and developed a religious philosophy that challenges anything of the kind in history, for completeness and cohesion. And he set up the machinery for an economic system that would take the brood of Fears out of the heart of man--the fear of want through sickness, old age, unemployment, and poverty.

In thirty nations are men and women who look upon him as a greater leader than Moses and a greater prophet than Isaiah; his disciples now number close to a million; and already a granite shaft pierces the sky over the place where he was born, and another is in course of erection over the place where he received the inspiration for his Book." [John Henry Evans, Joseph Smith, An American Prophet, p. v]

Answer 3

I kinda think you are just trying to spark the kind of responses you want and you know you'll read here, silly.

Answer 4

I dunno....Joe got bumped off early in the game so we really have no data on what his long term abilities may have been. Oddly, the Mormons in his time were 'socialists' before their time and even today in their society there's elements of that. Strange but true!

Answer 5

Joseph Smith was shot in the back trying to crawl out of a window in a Missouri jail. Ask Mitt Romney, Joseph Smith led the Mormon church to believe that a family with three children will be sacrificed on the doorstep of their temple in Salt Lake City before the new age of their church begins--seriously. Google it. That's just the beginning of the beliefs of a weird dictatorial cult that really has no answers for anything except how to make money by forcing even the poor members of their church to give them a portion of their money and turn over the title of their house to the Mormon church. Lots of shady dealings in that church that include the unwillingness to pay property taxes while their children attend schools financed by members of other religions and other taxpayers. Yea, old Joseph Smith is someone to admire--or not.

Answer 6

"Church leader Joseph Smith probably had 33 wives. One was 14. Five others were 17 or under. He married five pairs of sisters. Two of which were his own adopted daughters. After his death, another 335 women were sealed to him, many of whom he did not know."

Not bad if you're a guy.

BTW, Islam allows polygamy. That's over 1 billion people that believe in polygamy. By 2025, it is estimated that about 30% of the population will be Muslim.

Answer 7

I think you need to take a college religion course. Smith was barley literate and copied his book almost word for word from an English Pastors novel from the 1700's. A religion that uses the Bible and another book besides, is by definition a cult.

Answer 8

Putting aside the technical differences, Christianity is just Mormonism with about 1800 more years behind it, and Mormonism is just Scientology with 150 more years behind it. They all started out as stupid little cults and grew to take over the world. When will people stop fighting over their stupid little books?

Answer 9

"Traitors and Tyrants now fight him in vain!"

Answer 10

Having lived in the theocracy that is Provo, Utah, I think that America can do better in looking for a role model than a pedophile narcissist.

But that's just me.

Answer 11

Joseph Smith was nothing more than a polygamist cult leader. If you are so enamored with the Morman Church check out the link I have provided.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_massacre