In a real way, each generation of Americans has its chance to re-ratify the Constitution. We can do this by abiding by its principles and by leaving our own legacy to posterity; likewise, by both preserving our rights and filling our responsibilities. Otherwise, expressions of patriotism are no more than verbal veneration without actual emulation! Re-ratification will require statesmanship among both people and leaders. Statesmanship does not treat symptoms, but cures the underlying diseases. Our founding fathers did statesman-like work in 1776 and 1787. In our time, sadly, we seem preoccupied with treating symptoms, with quick fixes, and with getting by a little longer.

Yes, our Constitution has a marvelous system of checks and balances. But if uninspired individuals lack their own checks and balances, the inspired Constitution cannot correct that imbalance.

More remedies for our nation’s ills are to be found in individual restraint than in restraining orders. More remedies are to be found inside our souls than inside our courts. Or, in families than in legislative bodies! There is more need for neighborly affection than for litigation in resolving local disputes. Yes, courts can adjudicate between citizens, but courts cannot supply one citizen with esteem for his fellow citizens.

Washington in his “Farewell Address” counseled: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness—the firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity.”

Source: Neal A. Maxwell
Address given 4 July 1993 at the Freedom Festival at Provo, UT.

Topics: Government, Limited; Morality; Responsibility

Every faithful Latter-day Saint believes that the Constitution of the United States was inspired of God, and that this choice land and this nation have been preserved until now in the principles of liberty under the protection of God.

Source: President Heber J. Grant
General Conference, October 1944

Topics: US Constitution, Inspired

The world needs the help of those who have recognized and received the gospel of the kingdom. The world needs their inspiration and active participation in the affairs of life. We are an inspired people. That I know as well as I know that I live. We are responsible for the proper use of this inspiration. This inspiration is not confined to our spiritual lives but carries over into all temporal responsibilities, and included therein is our moral, our civic, our political, our social, our financial responsibilities. We stand ready to exercise this divine guidance together with the power of our priesthood in behalf of a neighbor, as well as in our own behalf. We look upon the children of our Heavenly Father as our brothers and sisters, no matter where they live, or what they believe, or what their ancestry may be. We cannot expect to do our full duty as we are inspired to do unless we can live and work in an environment of love, of peace of freedom—freedom at home and throughout the world.

Plato has put into words that the spirit of freedom is not a matter of laws and constitutions. "Only he is free," Plato says, "who realizes the divine order within himself, the true standard by which a man can steer himself." And I say true standards, ideals that lift life up, mark the way of true progress. Such ideals followed will never permit our light to be extinguished.

Pericles said: "But we regard him who holds aloof from public affairs as useless." They called the useless man a "private" citizen, idiots from which our word idiot comes. The citizens of the kingdom of God should set the pattern for the citizens of the kingdoms of men.

A reflective Roman traveling in Greece in the second century, A.D. said, "None ever throve under democracy save the Athenians. They had self-control and were law-abiding." That is what Athenian education aimed at, to produce men who would be able to maintain a self-governed state because they were themselves self-governed, self-controlled, self-reliant. It is said of the Athenians, "We yield to none in independence of spirit and complete self-reliance."

Source: Elder Henry D. Moyle
General Conference, April 1959

Topics: Citizenship; Public Duty; Self Control

A Kingdom That Will Never Fall

Our attention has been called, during this conference, to the establishment of the Lord’s work in the founding of these American institutions, and that God inspired the men who wrote the Constitution. We believe that his hand has been over it. I believe myself that it is part of God’s great work in the building up and establishment of a kingdom for himself when he will come, for come he will, to reign as King of kings. All the kingdoms of the world shall go on, attempting to solve their problems and utterly failing, until, in desperation, after the days of their sorrow, they will turn to him and elect him to be their King. He will reign as Lord of lords in his Church—this Church builded and established by him, and which shall go forward and never fail. Wonderful, is it not, to think that we are favored above all other men in the world, privileged to live in an age when we are contributing towards the establishment of that order of things that will never perish.

This government, its principles and doctrines, will never perish from the earth. Neither will this Church nor the principles and the doctrines that it announces. They are not competitors, they are handmaidens preparing the way for his coming. It is glorious to know that he has risen, and more glorious to know that he will come again and will live and rule and reign with his saints for a thousand years, and peace shall be here. This is the mission and the destiny of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. What then is our duty? My brethren, it is to go to our stakes and wards and rally our forces as watchmen upon the towers of Zion, to see the dangers that threaten, and while they are not disastrous now, being forewarned, forearm ourselves, and induce our brethren and sisters not to be weary in well-doing, but to subscribe their lives to these simple gospel principles, for in abiding by them is all this future glory assured to us. By keeping the commandments of God, we shall never cease to prevail until the kingdoms of the world shall become the kingdoms of our God and His Christ.

Source: Elder Melvin J. Ballard
General Conference, April 1928

Topics: America, Destiny; Heavenly Interest in Human Events; Responsibility; US Constitution, Inspired

To you young people, do not lose faith in the Church. Do not lose faith in the government. There may be things done by men in high places that you do not approve, but do not judge the government by that. Think of your founding forefathers, of your Constitution, divinely inspired of the Lord, and you will not lose faith in your land or in your government.

Source: Bishop Thorpe B. Isaacson
General Conference, October 1951

Topics: America, Faith in

We believe that the Lord has been preparing that when he should bring forth his work, that, when the set time should fully come, there might be a place upon his footstool where sufficient liberty of conscience should exist, that his Saints might dwell in peace under the broad panoply of constitutional law and equal rights. In this view we consider that the men in the Revolution were inspired by the Almighty to throw off the shackles of the mother government, with her established religion. For this cause were Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, and a host of others inspired to deeds of resistance to the acts of the King of Great Britain.

Source: Brigham Young
Discourses of Brigham Young, p. 359.

Topics: America, Heritage; Heavenly Interest in Human Events

Every government of the world has the seeds of its own destruction in itself. I hope and trust and pray that the government of our country may remain, because it is so good; but if they cut off this, and cast out that, and institute another thing, they may destroy all the good it contains. This, I hope, they will not do; they cannot do it. I expect to see the day when the Elders of Israel will protect and sustain civil and religious liberty and every constitutional right bequeathed to us by our fathers, and spread those rights abroad in connection with the Gospel for the salvation of all nations. I shall see this whether I live or die.

Source: Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses, Vol.11, p.262, August 12, 1866

Topics: America, Destiny; Government, Threats to

And, furthermore, not only did the Lord raise up these men and inspire them to write free agency into the government of this land, but he declared his intention that the elders of this Church should defend that Constitution and the freedoms and the rights allowed us in that great document. And so he said, “that law of the land, which is constitutional,” and I call your attention to the phraseology:

. . . that law of the land which is constitutional, supporting that principle of freedom in maintaining the rights and privileges, belongs to all mankind, and is justifiable before me. Therefore, I, the Lord, justify you, and your brethren of my church, in befriending that law which is the constitutional law of the land; And as pertaining to law of man, whatsoever is more or less than this, cometh of evil. (D. & C. 98:5-7.)

In regard to that last sentence, it is my interpretation that laws which are not in harmony with the principle of free agency and therefore not in harmony with the spirit of the Constitution, “cometh of evil.”

Source: Elder Mark E. Petersen
General Conference, April 1946

Topics: Free Agency; Heavenly Interest in Human Events; Responsibility

Divine Principle of Free Agency

I appeal to every Latter-day Saint to accept the divine principle of free agency and to adopt it in his life. I appeal to you to remember this principle when you are confronted by organizations and groups and movements in this country, which are now arising and assuming great power. Before you become engulfed in them, measure their practices and their purposes by the measuring rod of free agency, and you remember that God said it is not right that any man should be in bondage one to another. Remember, also, what Richard Evans told you yesterday, that it is not right that we should be commanded in all things, and don’t you allow yourself to be commanded in all things by any group or agency. You preserve the free agency that God has given to you, because if you don’t you will suffer all the days of your life.

You remember that you are to be true to the Constitution of the United States. I appeal to you to accept as the word of God, the declaration that appears in the revelation in section one hundred one of the D&C, wherein the Lord says he did raise up men and inspired them to write the Constitution. I appeal to you, every one, to be true to the trust that God has placed in you, to preach the gospel throughout the world, as has been declared here today. But remember that you cannot preach that gospel without freedom of speech, and you cannot publish that gospel without freedom of the press, and you cannot gather together in congregations without freedom of assembly, and you cannot worship the Lord your God according to the dictates of your own conscience without freedom of religion. And remember that every time you give up any of your freedoms, whether it be to some economic or political group, or to any other group, you jeopardize these four freedoms of which I have spoken.

I appeal to you to accept as the word of God that which I have quoted to you which says that you, the elders of Israel, are justified by God in defending your constitutional privileges. I appeal to you to be true to your one hundred thousand sons who have fought for liberty, to the eight thousand of your sons who have been wounded and bled in battle. Do not betray the five thousand Latter-day Saint boys who died that freedom might live. Remember that you have a responsibility to preserve freedom in America. Remember always the glorious prayer that is written into the last stanza of “America” which was sung so beautifully this morning by the Tabernacle choir.

Our father’s God! to thee,
Author of liberty,
To thee we sing;
Long may our land be bright
With freedom’s holy light!
Protect us by thy might
Great God, our King.

I pray that we may have the courage and the wisdom to accept the truth, that the truth may keep us free, and I ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Source: Elder Mark E. Petersen
General Conference, April 1946

Topics: Free Agency; Responsibility

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