Utah’s latest foray into the limited-edition territory of democracy is to invite the public to help name the professional hockey franchise here.
That is about as much democracy as the monopoly Republican Party and its parent entity, the LDS Church, will tolerate.
After all, the church has operated for 195 years on the basis of final decision-making by male priesthood leaders alone, having also opted from the beginning for a Roman Catholic-style top-down church governing system.
On the other hand, the Protestant Reformation not only reformed Christian doctrine, but also reset the secular and ecclesiastical governing systems of all of Europe to a much more democratic level.
Not so in the Protestant version of the Roman Catholic Church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its fellow-travelers, the Republican Party of Utah and the state Legislature.
Big business, big party, big government, and big church are just not interested in any viable competition for the devotion of the people of the state.
That is why it is absolutely imperative that ticket holders of the temporarily named Utah Hockey Club exercise their newly granted privilege of participating in consensual policymaking before that privilege evaporates from their grasp.
Kimball Shinkoskey, Woods Cross
