Defense of Truth

Part of my creed as a faithful member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (nicknamed the Mormons ) came as a response of founding prophet Joseph Smith to a journalist who was essentially asking what made us different. The text goes as follows: "We claim the privilege of worshipping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men [sic] the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may." I've had this eleventh verse in a series now known as the thirteen Articles of Faith memorized since I was about 10 years old, and still regard it as a profound and profoundly tolerant moral code for how I should regard the deeply held beliefs of others. This does not mean that I should not use all the persuasive powers I can muster to bring those with false beliefs into a knowledge of a true basis for judgment--this was the essence of my reason for volunteering to serve a two-year mission in the Côte d'Ivoire as I did--bu...

As part of my dissertation, I'm preparing to study the problem of the concept of "Nation" (as opposed to state, or ethnicity) in Africa. It's a particularly knotty problem in a lot of ways. First, one of the conditions the world imposes on itself is that there be states, governmental entities, with sovereign control over territories (whether they choose to enforce borders, or any other measure of their sovereignty is another matter and does not touch the at least formal equality of sovereignty that is assumed to exist among all nations of the world for the purposes of international communication, trade, diplomacy, and all other relations). The globe has been mapped, and boundaries have been in place, imposed or not, and now circumscribe groups of people which derive their rights only as citizens of states. African states cannot "enter", as it were, conditions of modernity, or any rapport with the world outside, without first developing states which operate ...