The Meaning Of Freedom

So much has been talked about liberty; so much has been said about fighting for freedom. What good is the winning of battles if we shall negate them by acts of unwarranted hatred? About this matter of freedom, I should like to say this regarding personal responsibility: too many people think of freedom in terms of license. Freedom is not the right to do as one “jolly well” pleases. Freedom stops for someone when someone else commits an act detrimental to his neighbor. I have no right to any conduct which would impede the progress of my neighbor. I have no right to any act which would take the freedom from someone else. And that thought carried a little further is of tremendous significance to the Latter-day Saints. This is a missionary Church. Upon us rests the responsibility of crying the gospel to the world because only by it can peace and liberty come.

Source: Elder Joseph F. Smith
General Conference, October 1945

Topics: Freedom; Responsibility; Rights

We have to accept some government limitations on freedom if we who live in communities are to have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A condition of uninhibited individual freedom would allow the strong to oppress the weak. It would allow the eccentric desires of one person to restrict the freedom of many.

Interferences with our freedom do not deprive us of our free agency. When Pharaoh put Joseph in prison, he restricted Joseph’s freedom, but he did not take away his free agency. When Jesus drove the money changers out of the temple, he interfered with their freedom to engage in a particular activity at a particular time in a particular place, but he did not take away their free agency.

The Lord has told us in modern revelation that he established the Constitution of the United States to assure “that every many may act ... according to the moral agency which I have given unto him” (D&C 101:78). In other words, God established our Constitution to [10] give us the vital political freedom necessary for us to act upon our personal choices in civil government. This revelation shows the distinction between agency (the power of choice), which is God-given and freedom, the right to act upon our choices, which is protected by the Constitution and laws of the land.

Freedom is obviously of great importance, but, as these examples illustrate, freedom is always qualified in mortality. Consequently, it would be better if we did not conduct a public policy debate in terms of a loss of free agency, which is impossible under our doctrine. We ought to focus on the legality or wisdom of a proposed restriction of our freedom.

Source: Elder Dallin H. Oaks
Free Agency And Freedom
Forty-Fifth Annual Joseph Smith Memorial Service
LDS Institute of Religion, Logan, Utah
Sunday, January 17, 1988

Topics: Free Agency; Freedom

Are We Different Now?

And it came to pass that they did number their people; and after that they had numbered them, they did desire of them the things which they would that they should do before they went down to their graves.

And it came to pass that the people desired of them that they should anoint one of their sons to be a king over them.

And now behold, this was grievous unto them. And the brother of Jared said unto them: Surely this thing leadeth into captivity.

Source: Ether 6:21-23

Topics: Kings

The Manure of Liberty

...And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

Source: Thomas Jefferson
Nov. 13, 1787

Topics: Citizenship, Dissent

15.       And it came to pass that thus they did agree with Akish. And Akish did administer unto them the oaths which were given by them of old who also sought power, which had been handed down even from Cain, who was a murderer from the beginning.

16.       And they were kept up by the power of the devil to administer these oaths unto the people, to keep them in darkness, to help such as sought power to gain power, and to murder, and to plunder, and to lie, and to commit all manner of wickedness and whoredoms.

17.       And it was the daughter of Jared who put it into his heart to search up these things of old; and Jared put it into the heart of Akish; wherefore, Akish administered it unto his kindred and friends, leading them away by fair promises to do whatsoever thing he desired.

18.       And it came to pass that they formed a secret combination, even as they of old; which combination is most abominable and wicked above all, in the sight of God;

19.       For the Lord worketh not in secret combinations, neither doth he will that man should shed blood, but in all things hath forbidden it, from the beginning of man.

20.       And now I, Moroni, do not write the manner of their oaths and combinations, for it hath been made known unto me that they are had among all people, and they are had among the Lamanites.

21.       And they have caused the destruction of this people of whom I am now speaking, and also the destruction of the people of Nephi.

22.       And whatsoever nation shall uphold such secret combinations, to get power and gain, until they shall spread over the nation, behold, they shall be destroyed; for the Lord will not suffer that the blood of his saints, which shall be shed by them, shall always cry unto him from the ground for vengeance upon them and yet he avenge them not.

23.       Wherefore, O ye Gentiles, it is wisdom in God that these things should be shown unto you, that thereby ye may repent of your sins, and suffer not that these murderous combinations shall get above you, which are built up to get power and gainand the work, yea, even the work of destruction come upon you, yea, even the sword of the justice of the Eternal God shall fall upon you, to your overthrow and destruction if ye shall suffer these things to be.

24.       Wherefore, the Lord commandeth you, when ye shall see these things come among you that ye shall awake to a sense of your awful situation, because of this secret combination which shall be among you; or wo be unto it, because of the blood of them who have been slain; for they cry from the dust for vengeance upon it, and also upon those who built it up.

25.       For it cometh to pass that whoso buildeth it up seeketh to overthrow the freedom of all lands, nations, and countries; and it bringeth to pass the destruction of all people, for it is built up by the devil, who is the father of all lies; even that same liar who beguiled our first parents, yea, even that same liar who hath caused man to commit murder from the beginning; who hath hardened the hearts of men that they have murdered the prophets, and stoned them, and cast them out from the beginning.

26.       Wherefore, I, Moroni, am commanded to write these things that evil may be done away, and that the time may come that Satan may have no power upon the hearts of the children of men, but that they may be persuaded to do good continually, that they may come unto the fountain of all righteousness and be saved.

Source: Ether 8:15-26
Moroni, on Secret Combinations

Topics: Conspiracy

The Nature of Government

Government is said to be a necessary evil. The saying appears to be without merit. For can anything be at once necessary and evil? True, all governments have had a history of evil-doing, more or less. However, it does not follow from this experience that their good is indistinguishable from their evil. Governments—assuming a proper limitation of their activities—are necessary and not evil. Their evil begins when they step out of bounds. The only necessity is that their evil actions be discontinued. Such an achievement is unlikely until the principles prescribing the boundary lines are searched for and found.

Source: Leonard E. Read
Government—An Ideal Concept, p. 9.

Topics: Government, Limited

Sharing Ourselves

Why, then, is it offered to others? Because of this belief: If one were confined to a wheel chair stationed by a swimming pool and observed a child drowning unnoticed by any of the other nearby adults, there would be a moral obligation to announce the impending disaster. Not to do so would be as immoral as though the person himself had shoved the child into the pool. Similarly in society. If one observes something going on which appears to be destructive, there is a moral duty to proclaim the observation. Failure to do so is as immoral as though the person himself had participated in the destructive action.

There can be added what is at once a selfish and a metaphysical justification for passing on to others what one thinks he understands. Insight, cognition, revelation-call it what you will-is denied to those who withhold what they receive. If one is to gain in thought and consciousness, a precondition is the communication of that which has been revealed.

Having said this much, it is reasonable to assert that one’s obligation to others goes no further. Do the best with one’s own thinking that one can and make it available! Impose it on others, never! One person has as much right as another to regard his own insight as valid....

It is for each to utter that which he sincerely believes to be true; and, adding his unit of influence to all other units, leave the results to work themselves out.

Mr. Spencer might have concluded his statement as George Washington ended a similar theme: “The event is in the hand of God.” How much better the world would be were each of us to do his best and let it go at that, as contrasted with doing his worst by aggressively imposing himself and his ways on others!

Forecasting in areas where imponderable and little understood forces are at play is a hazardous business. Conceivably, however, an ideal theory of government, at this moment in history, may be utterly impossible of adoption. If this be true, it certainly rests in part on the fact that too many people have, for the time being, adapted themselves to governmental interventionism, to a way of life founded on downright viciousness.

Our real hope rests on the working of human forces far more profound and powerful than current adaptations to viciousness. Our real hope rests on (1) the general evolutionary tendency to grow, (2) the will to be free, freedom being the basic condition to any growth, (3) the striving for justice and truth, (4) the love of righteousness, and (5) a reaching for the ideal.

Thinking in terms of the ideal is the first step to moving toward the ideal. The accurate expression to others of one’s concept of the ideal is the second step. Not accurately to reflect what one believes to be truth is but another way of making one unworthy of its revelation.

The needed renaissance of this century consists of numerous individuals searching for the ideal and expressing their findings, unattentive to current applause or to popular condemnation. It would be the most practical movement that could possibly be gotten under way. The only way to aid a movement is to move to its aid.

Source: Leonard E. Read
Government—An Ideal Concept, pp. 6-8.

Topics: Responsibility

The Meaning of the Term Government

There are, though, reasons for regretting that we in America ever adopted the word “government.” We borrowed an old-world term with all its connotations of “to govern,” “to rule,” in an overriding sense. Government with the aim of directing, controlling, steering is not what we really intended. We didn’t mean that our agency of common defense should “govern” us any more than we intend the factory guard to be the company’s general manager.

Actually, in spite of the original intent, government in the old-world sense is what we now have. Our federal agency and many of the state, district, and community agencies have far exceeded the bounds of protecting the life and property of all citizens equally, and invoking a common justice under law. They do far more than merely suppress and penalize fraud, violence, misrepresentation, and predatory practices. Today our federal agency and many of the others are the citizens’ general managers-and autocratic ones at that!

It is not government as general manager of America’s citizenry that is here defended. Rather, the aim is to present and defend an agency of limited scope, not unlike what the Founding Fathers originally intended—except for the slavery and tariff features, they being infractions or compromises of the original intentions.

Source: Leonard E. Read
Government—An Ideal Concept, pp. 13-14.

Topics: Government; Government, Limited

Right To Life

The right-to-life concept and its acceptance must serve as the premise for this point. If a person has a right to life, it follows that he has a right to protect and to sustain that life, the sustenance of life being nothing more nor less than the fruits of one’s labor — one’s honestly acquired property. The right to life without the right to protect and to sustain life is meaningless. ... it is impossible in a division-of-labor economy to sustain life on one’s own specialty. Energy exchanges are as vital as one’s own produce. Therefore, the right to the fruits of one’s own labor involves the restraint or the removal of obstacles to exchange—not merely the obstacles to one’s own exchange, but the obstacles to other people’s exchange within any given society.

Source: Leonard E. Read
Government—An Ideal Concept, pp. 36-37.

Topics: Rights

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