This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Gov. Mitt Romney is a philosophical contortionist. He rails against the president for wanting to redistribute wealth, preferring wealth-creating individualism. Yet Romney worships the man whose economic philosophy was that "all that believed were together, and had all things common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need" (Acts 2:44-45).
Would Romney, as many do, assert a justifying interpretation? If so, how would he explain this from his own Mormon holy writ: "But it is not given that one man should possess that which is above another, wherefore the world lieth in sin" (Doctrine and Covenants 49:20)?
Can Romney's economic beliefs somehow be reconciled with those of his supreme religious leader? I don't see how.
M.J. Ogden
North Ogden