After writing yesterday's blog, and alluding to how the prideful become intoxicated with anger, and reel to and fro like a drunken person, my memory is turned to an account in the Book of Mormon in which the combatants, likewise, were intoxicated with anger.
The people of Shiz and the people of Coriantumr, fighting to their deaths, to the total destruction of that society.
I open my scriptures in search of the passage, and find my eyes falling directly on the verse, Ether 15:22.
"And when the night came they were drunken with anger, even as a man who is drunken with wine and they slept again upon their swords."
The same anger displayed in war can be had in public debate. The same hatred of the other faction can be felt. The same intoxicating feelings can be present. The combatants of in the Book of Mormon -- the people of Shiz and the people of Coriantumr -- "were drunken with anger." Even so, Democrats and Republicans are intoxicated in their hatred of each other today. They sleep upon their swords, so to speak, as they are asleep to the fact they are prideful. Pride is their weapon, and they sleep upon it.
Anger is anger, whether in war or verbal confrontations. If you can be intoxicated, so to speak, in one situation, you can be intoxicated in the other. That is all I'm saying.
And the destruction of the nation? That Book of Mormon nation was totally destroyed. America may not be so unfortunate. Still, the intoxication of anger and the warfare between Republicans and Democrats is a harmful force. As surely as it was dangerous and harmful then, it remains dangerous and harmful today. Principles do not change, only the situations they play out in.
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