For all the many well thought out and truthful defenses of the Prophet Joseph Smith that FAIRMormon or FAIRLDS offers against dishonest anti-Mormon attacks, for which we are grateful, it is disheartening and a betrayal when they publish falsehoods and demonstrate intellectual dishonesty and thus undermine all the good established in the defense of Mormonism by damaging their own credibility. Such is the case when they undertake to treat Strangite history in the light of anti-Mormonism.
Now anti-Mormons are notorious for publishing claims that have long been soundly disproven and have no basis at all, maliciously taking advantage of disinformation and the confusion of topics by an overwhelming slurry of mud in the hopes that any at all will stick, and fully banking on the naivety of readers and the difficulty of obtaining impartial information. Such has never been the case of Strangites, who have always rested their arguments on the soundest of facts and evidence, from Strang himself to the prolific champion of the faith, Wingfield Watson, to the honorable Gen. George Miller, to the stalwart Samuel E. West and John Hijacek of recent times. None have ever needed to resort to anything less than sound logic and facts. Though each of us, personally, has history for which we only have our own testimony to establish, of the things we Strangites claim, that which could be proven has been, that for which no greater proof could be had has been testified to, and no claim has ever been more than countered with spurious hearsay.
Such cannot be said of Brighamism, whose leaders and prophetic claims are often disproved by their own contradictory published testimonies and myriad indisputable facts. Therefore we cannot help but notice when their advocates at FAIR do not handle critics of Mormonisms prophets with the same logic, principles of argumentation or standards of evidence, which is especially obvious when comparing Joseph Smith and James J. Strang. Like the best of anti-Mormon critics, they blatantly accept the hearsay of discredited witnesses against Strang, and are awkwardly silent on pertinent information that would support him that they could not helped but stumble upon in their canvass of the subject. The lives of the two men and the evidences of their callings are more closely parallel than that of two people could be, yet their narrow narrative focus on casual differences has all the left handed subtlety of a clumsy street magician while they direct focus away from any casual comparison of Joseph to Brigham Young.
We have very good proof that James Strang's oft resorted to accuser were nothing more than fanciful fabricators embedded in their own narrations. They make up elements of the story that do not match with published accounts, or claim things that could not have been. For instance, when Isaac F. Scott wrote to Joseph Smith III some decades after the fact claiming to repeat some firsthand hearsay about how James buried the plates so as to fool the credible witnesses who dug them up, FAIR reports his testimony as credible and conclusive. Scott, undoubtedly merely to appear relevant to the current prophet, hatched an elaborate story of using an auger with a fork attached to dig a 3" hole at an angle and insert a tube by which to deposit the plates under the tree. This is unquestionably a most creative solution, since the plates were small enough to potentially fit one by one down a 3.25"-3.5" wide tube if one overwrites into the narrative a lapse of observation explicitly charged upon the witnesses to account for the densely interwoven tree roots on all sides, the solidly compacted earth that made made a pickaxe a good deal of work, not to mention a fork and the appearance earth that had been undisturbed in every way "to be sure that they were not being imposed upon." As the saying goes, "When malice and envy sit judges, to be accused is to be condemned." However his story makes no sense because the plates were all encased together in a fragile earthenware case that couldn't survive extraction and there was a 12" by 12" stone, 3" thick, on top of the plates, which was buried three feet beneath the soil. Scott neglected to mention how much lubrication it required to get that stone down his 5 foot long, three inch wide hole. By the blunder of simply forgetting about the stone and the case altogether, we may know with certainty that his entire story, and every other that he told about Strang, are fabrications.
This does not stop Fair LDS from using his testimony to condemn James on their website, positively demonstrating that they do not use the same stick to measure the statements of the critics of Joseph Smith and those of James Strang, entirely discrediting the good faith they intend to establish as reporters, or is apology intended to be synonymous with bias and whitewashing? We take no pleasure in catching people who should be fair and honest as champions of faith in dishonesty and hypocrisy, but since it comes as a response to calculated efforts to impute the very same upon honorable men of God, it leaves us no choice. Who among us would be so unashamedly bold or manipulative when reporting facts that impact earnest seekers' most deeply held beliefs? And such a disparity cannot be excused to naive ineptitude by amateur historians and armchair reporters, for they with a surety know amply well how to turn on their brains to defend Joseph Smith. If there were any truth in advertising, their name would be unFAIRLDS.
FAIRMormon, honest people everywhere demand greater integrity and a retraction of your unsupported claims and biased distortions. If you can't say something virtuous, lovely, of good report or praiseworthy, please do not say anything at all. Rather continue the more than a century of deafening silence on the topic of James Strang, for though it shall in the age of information inevitably catch up with you, its bite upon your rears will be far less savage than provable falsehoods when it finally does.
For a thorough treatment of this and other inconsistencies sent up as smokescreen on the tablet of FAIRMormon in the hopes to get everyone to turn away, view my 2 hour and 35 minute talk here: https://youtu.be/WIHV3t6uX_4
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