If we are going to use the argument that because the BoM was written for our times it thus behooves us to search out specific corollaries; then we ought to look for specific elements having to do with combinations as documented in the BoM as part of our effort to discover a “fit” in our day.

The BoM seems to be consistent in setting forth the idea that combinations involve binding oaths and are founded upon an ancient order of sorts. The ultimate goal is the over-through of all nations and the destruction of free society. The driving force behind the combination is the aquisition of wealth and power, even at the cost of human life.

The problem is in seeing what fits…

Mark, you make good points but IMHO you are shooting in the wrong direction. You can’t possibly believe that what you are doing in Iraq can be compared to the Germans in WWII. There is a logical disconnect between concentration camps and murdering innocent people, and providing support to a people you are trying to help.
I can’t envision giving credence to al-queda and their barbarous activities as being legitimate and the American activities as being illegitimate. Thirty years from now you may look back with regret but for different reasons than you suggest.

My point is that, according to Nibley’s interpretation, one can very much be a part of the “Gadianton conspiracy” and not even really be aware of it. We are very much a divided nation right now: it would appear that half the nation (and I could be off on the percentages; I’m basing it pretty much on election results) believes that our involvement in Iraq right now is absolutely unnecessary, and was predicated on (at best) inaccurate information, or (at worst) outright lies and cherry-picked intelligence, massaged and packaged so as to manipulate the public into allowing the government to do something they would not normally have allowed. The other half seems to believe that we’re doing God’s will by sending our armies to perform the “work of death” there, and that Iraq will someday be the next socially rehabilitated Germany or Japan. I would think that someday, we’ll arrive at a point where we’ll be able to look back and say either that the “pacifists” were absolutely right and that needless thousands of Americans, and tens of thousands of Iraqis, died for no good reason, or they were dead wrong, and that the world will then be a place where Iraq is seen as one of America’s successes in expanding the boundaries of liberty.

I hope it turns out to be the latter case, but I suspect it’s going to be the former.

People look back at World War II and inevitably ask the question: what in God’s name were the German people thinking? Are we going to reach a point where the same question is someday posed with regard to the Americans of our day? I do know that 30 or 40 years from now, nobody’s going to ask me about what I thought about it back then and get the response that “it seemed like a good idea at the time”.

The Book of Mormon was given to us, not only as a testament of Christ, but as a warning as to the path that is to be avoided should one wish to not become a part of yet another destroyed civilization in the western hemisphere. I can’t help but believe that we were given this history because we actually need the warning, and the events of the last year and a half sure seem to confirm it for me.

Those of us that have studied Nibley are well aware of this analysis. If your only point is to attack the government because you disagree with it you’ve missed the point.
The fact that you disagree with a political decision does not make it a conspiracy of Gadianton proportions.
Give some thought to this. The Lord has said that the Gospel is to be taken to all the nations of the earth. There is to be a Stake of Zion in every nation. There is to be a temple in every nation. Education is to be provided to the poor in other nations. That takes money. Guess who the Lord is using to bring to pass His purposes?
Just because Americans are prosperous and involved in trying to break down evil regimes does not make them Gadiantons.
Are there “gadiantons” running around? Of course there are. Are they the majority of the society? Not by a long shot.
The most generous people in the world are Americans. They are the first to go to the aid of any nation that has a disaster and they contribute the most. This is not the behaviour of gadiantons.
It might be well for you to count your blessings. I can almost bet that you are suffering from an anxiety that makes it difficult to be around you because of your fixation. Try changing your approach and you might find you are happier.
I don’t say that out of ignorance – I was once where you are. The monsters were around every corner.

It is important to understand that Gadianton’s phenomenal success was due to the fact that the majority of the whole Nephite nation submitted to his plan of operation and his philosophy “and did build up unto themselves idols of their gold and their silver. And it came to pass that all these iniquities did come unto them in the space of not many years” (Helaman 6:31-32). But while the Nephites sank lower and lower in their cycle of producing and acquiring goods as the measure and purpose of man’s existence, the Lamanites set about to exterminate the Gadianton society among their own nations, and succeeded in a most noteworthy fashion. What were their weapons? No strong-arm methods were employed; no knives and poison, tear-gas and sawed-off shot-guns, or the usual arsenal of crime-bursting futility: they simply “did preach the word of God among the more wicked part of them” (Helaman 6:37) and that ended the crime-wave! If that sounds a little too idealistic, we must remember that we are dealing here not with the small and peculiar band of professional or congenital criminals, but with the general public gone mad after money—people not really criminal at heart, but unable to resist the appeal of wealth and the things it could buy. Among the Nephites these things actually “seduced the more part of the righteous until they had come down to believe” in the system of the Gadiantons and “partake of their spoils” (Helaman 6:38). Why not? they said, everybody is doing it! And everybody was: soon Gadianton’s Protective Association “did obtain the sole management of the government” (Helaman 6:39).

If the reader has imagined to himself the Gadianton band as abandoned wretches or street Arabs lurking in dark alleys and fleeing from the light of day in dingy and noisome hideouts, let him disabuse his mind of such a concept. They were a highly respected concern that made their handsome profits by operating strictly within the letter of the law, as they interpreted and controlled it. They were the government, the well-to-do, the respectable, and the law-abiding citizens. There was a dangerous and irresponsible element in the society, namely those improvident and negatively inclined fanatics who called themselves the “followers of God,” whose leaders constantly predicted the worst for society; but public opinion and common sense were strongly against such characters and made things pretty hot for them. They were the anti-social prophets of doom and gloom, the real criminal element (Helaman 6:39).

“And thus we see,” the record concludes, “that they were in an awful state, and ripening for an everlasting destruction” (Helaman 6:40). And thus we also see the meaning of the paradoxical statement that the disreputable Gadianton “did prove the overthrow, yea, almost the entire destruction of the people of Nephi” (Helaman 2:13). He did it not as a criminal and bandit but as one of the most able and successful men of his time, and entirely with the public’s consent.

Regarding these questions of wars, I often think and rethink to the meaning of scriptures like Mormon 4:5

“But, behold, the judgments of God will overtake the wicked; and it is by the wicked that the wicked are punished; for it is the wicked that stir up the hearts of the children of men unto bloodshed.”

But considering the initial question “Modern Gadiantons?�, I would like to invite you to jump out of the controversy about former and current national/international wars (it’s getting boring…), and comment more the meaning in a different context: the international LDS context, where despite of our national differences, we form a nation apart, a special people loving God, His son Jesus-Christ, righteousness and truth. When the Lord showed our world and our time to Moroni, he wrote many things for us and in particular in Mormon 8:39-40:

“Why do ye adorn yourselves with that which hath no life, and yet suffer the hungry, and the needy, and the naked, and the sick and the afflicted to pass by you, and notice them not?
Yea, why do ye build up your secret abominations to get gain, and cause that widows should mourn before the Lord, and also orphans to mourn before the Lord, and also the blood of their fathers and their husbands to cry unto the Lord from the ground, for vengeance upon your heads?”

Are modern Gadiantons not also all the people in this world today, who in one way or the other support such secret abominations (at personal, family, local, regional, national and international level) by their ignorance, by their words and their deeds. In our so-called democracies, who has the most influence on our choices, the people, the big international companies or some international organizations? It is quite interesting to have a look worldwide at the process how a political leader gets to the top, and how family and friend connections are working. They too rarely get to the top really caring for the widows or the orphans. It is too often a quite ugly struggle for power.
To be in the world and not of the world, namely not supporting such conbinations, is rather challenging today. I trust the gospel that tells us it is though possible.

I think sometimes we are too quick to label “right” or “left”

for example, I have professors who used to love “the Economist” because it was “liberal” until it came out in support of the Iraq War (even though it did so for “liberal” reasons). Suddenly, it was routinely being slammed as a right wing journal with no respectability.

It did endorse John Kerry, so some of my profs were willing to forgive it, but many still refuse to read that “right wing joke of a magazine” anymore – merely because it supported the Iraqi War.

It might be too much to ask, but could we debate things on the higher issues at stake, rather than what we personally think about Bush (whether it be hero worship or naked hate)?