Edited, 8/25/11: So I guess I WAS having a really bad day. I deleted the previous comments and will make this a simple update post. Enjoy!
Since I spent some time on the internet instead of working on my book I thought I could at least do a blog post. So here is what I am doing:
Of course I'm working on my book. I'm still waiting to hear from publishers. My tentative title is "All the Arts of War: Ancient Warfare and Modern Lessons from the Book of Mormon". I have also renamed my chapter on Gadianton Robbers to "Bitter Exactors of Their Rights". I was thinking I could repeat the main title immediately underneath with Chinese characters. And then the cover would look something like the above picture.
Other Publications:
“Offensive Warfare in The Book of Mormon and a Defense of the Bush Doctrine” in Patrick Mason, Richard Pulsipher, and Richard Lyman Bushman eds. Mormon Perspectives on War Salt Lake City: Kofford Books, 2012. (Contracted)
“Qi Jiguang (1528-1598)” The History of the Philosophy of War and Strategy New York: ABC-CLIO Press, 2012. (Contracted)
Book Review "Sun Tzu at Gettysburg: Ancient Wisdom in the Modern World" by Bevin Alexander, New York: WW Norton and Co., 2011. in The Michigan War Studies Review.
Possible Publication:
Confederates Still in the Attic: Justifying the Civil War. The Justified Reader New York: Kansas University Press, 2012.
Presentations:
"The Infestation: Robbers in late Imperial Rome and the Chinese Period of Disunion", Society For Military History, May 10, 2012.
"Fed with the Flesh of their Husbands: The High Cost of Waging Economic War", Mormon Scholars in the Humanities, May 17, 2012.
As you can see I have a great many exciting projects on which I'm working. What are you doing?
Incidentally, for the South, it wasn't about slavery. The South didn't care about having slaves or not, economically, they needed that workforce otherwise the economics of it all would be thrown off. The south didn't necessarily want to enslave thousands of blacks and keep them enslaved, they just wanted their nice setup they had going.
ReplyDeleteThe north didn't have plantations so they were all about freeing slaves as they had little use for enslaving anyone for much of anything. You also had more progressive thinkers from the north so it just kind of turned out to be a north vs. south thing. Just sayin'...
The Book of Mormon taught me much about the morality of warfare:
ReplyDeleteEther 8:19. For the Lord worketh not in secret combinations, neither doth he will that man should shed blood, but in ALL THINGS hath forbidden it, from the beginning of man.
3 Nephi 12:21-22 Ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, and it is also written before you, that thou shalt not kill, and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment of God; But I say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of his judgment.
So, there is nothing wrong with warfare as long as not a single person gets killed. Other than that, Heaven help a nation that condones war at all let alone egregious was of aggression.
Thanks for the comments wage slave. There are several places in the BoM that explicitly endorse warfare "even unto bloodshed". I would be extremely careful about reading what we want into selected verses of scripture. We also need to understand the society in which the BoM was written in order to better apply its message for today.
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