I have pretty good research skills but I am trying to find the craziest quote from ETB. Everything I find is him quoting someone else.

Anyone?

I think you'll find crazier ones from Joseph Fielding Smith...

I know but I'm being petty trying to make a point with a family member....I just hate that I'm not finding something completely loony tunes out of his mouth. I guess the politician in him knew better.

The moron ETB said Rachel Carson was "probably a communist."

perky Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The moron ETB said Rachel Carson was "probably a
> communist."

Maybe not a communist, but she was a nature writer, and not a scientist. DDT was unnecessarily banned because of her unscientific pamphleteering. Untold millions of 3rd World people have died because of malaria, scarlet fever, and other tropical diseases that could have been seriously curtailed by mosquito elimination with DDT.

Was EBT a jerk? Sure, I guess. But sometimes jerks are right, even if for the wrong reasons.

I understand this view of Rachel Carson is popular with Repubs, but have you ever heard of eagles, thin egg shells etc. The damaging affects of DDT and other ETB approved chemicals are very well documented.

In my view, you can't blame Rachel Carson for the pathetic ineffectiveness of African gov'ts.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/08/2014 07:52PM by perky.

I assume your conclusion followed detailed study of both sides of the issue, lest you be accused of the same blind faith that a TBM would have.

For example, I'm assuming you have checked out the studies listed at this site:



http://junkscience.com/1999/07/26/100-things-you-should-know-about-ddt/

She was a science writer, and was actually a bit upset that DDT was banned so quickly; she wanted it to be used more carefully. Just MO, from research I did for a film.

“Ezra Taft Benson, a Mormon elder who served as President Eisenhower’s Secretary of Agriculture, turned viciously ad hominem when he wondered ‘why a spinster with no children was so concerned about genetics?' He added his voice to those who saw Carson as an agent of subversion by concluding that she was ‘probably a Communist.’”

(from "Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental Movement," by Mark H. Lytle [Oxford University Press]; at: http://archive.audubonmagazine.org/books/editorchoice0709.html)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/09/2014 01:01PM by steve benson.

"Would it have shocked you during World War II if a Nazi folksinger had received a U.S. Government service award and had a government building named in his honor?

"Yet Woody Guthrie, an identified Communist who worked as a columnist for one Communist publication and contributed to another, received the Interior Department's Conservation Service Award in 1965, and Secretary Udall announced that a Bonneville Power Administration sub-station in the Pacific Northwest would be named the Woodie Guthrie sub-station."

The Hon. Ezra Taft Benson, in his foreword to "The Black Hammer", a lovely book explaining how the Civil Rights movement was a Communist Conspiracy™.

They named a dam substation in Washington after Woody Guthrie? Looks like the Commies have already won!

http://sainesburyproject.com/mormonstuff/The%20Black%20Hammer

"Who in the hell is 'iplayedjoe'?"

I hope you get an answer to that one, Steve.

Ron Burr

I always liked his piece called The Proper Role of Government.

In this day of blind obedience and worship of government, it would be good for more to read.


http://www.latterdayconservative.com/ezra-taft-benson/the-proper-role-of-government/

. . . about me to my own family, for heck's sake.

The following Grandpa Benson quote is one where I am quoting him--not him quoting quoting someone else. Alas, you won't find this gem in any Mormon church lesson manual or referenced in any General Conference talk because good ol' Grandpa made it during a personal phone call to my home on my birthday several years ago.

It was early in the morning and I was sleeping in. I was, however, suddenly awakened by my then-spouse exclaiming on the phone, "Grandpa!" and then laughing out loud. She hung up and I proceeded to ask her what that was all about. She said it was Grandpa Benson calling to wish me Happy Birthday and asking, "How is it living with that little turd?"

(Note: ETB was an Idaho farm boy from Whitney. My spouse was an Idaho farm girl, having been born and raised not far from there. ETB's T-word question was just another way of him asking about his cow pie-manure-feces-cow crap grandson was doing).

I later told the same story at a ward fireside, which prompted the indignant ward chorister to write me a scathing letter, accusing me of heaping disrespectful poo--poo on the Lord's Prophet True-True. I responded by explaining how the story made Grandpa Ezra T a real guy, accessible to the people and all that. None of this porcelain prophet ****, worthy of such a self-righteous "fit."