True Freedom

Someone has said, “There are two freedoms; the false freedom where one is free to do what he likes, and the true freedom where one is free to do what he ought to do.”

I think it is appropriate and timely to discuss some things as they are and can be, as well as to consider the difference between loyalty and disloyalty as pertains to the true and false freedoms.

First, loyalty to true freedom principles or causes embraces love, dedication, faith, allegiance, willingness to sacrifice, and many other qualities that contribute to achievement and happiness.

Disloyalty to true freedom principles or causes embraces betrayal, unfaithfulness, disaffection, sedition, infidelity, and other qualities that contribute to failure, destruction, and unhappiness.

Loyalty to false freedom principles can only bring delusion, a counterfeit happiness, and eventual destruction. False freedom principles include such things as the abuse of one’s body by the use of drugs, liquor, and tobacco, as well as sexual immoralities. False freedom principles likewise include the spread of communistic doctrine and protest by force.

In reality, true freedom can only exist in doing what is right, in being loyal—yes, in doing what we ought to do.

Source: Elder Franklin D. Richards
General Conference, April 1969

Topics: Freedom

Capital vs. Labor?

Obviously both capital and labor should be controlled in the interest of the public welfare and human freedom, which certainly includes the “right to work.” To secure this right why not let every one opposed to the tyranny and evils of the “closed shop” join a right-to-work league which shall secure through suitable legislative action an opening of the gates of opportunity to every one who is able and willing to work, independent of membership in any labor union or other organization. In other words, let us unite without delay to secure the laws and regulations necessary to insure to every worker the “right to work” without which the noble declaration that each of us has the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness becomes an idle mockery.

But a far better, much quicker, more desirable and vastly simpler plan is, under existing conditions, apparently in the realm of the ideal and therefore it must await the coming of better days. I refer to the Golden Rule plan.

There is a disagreement between employer and employee. In the light of Christ’s teachings what is the right thing to do? Obviously these two parties should sit down and talk things over, each strongly motivated to treat the other as he would like to be treated, if all the circumstances were reversed. Let each one try hard to put himself in the other’s shoes. To do this each one would have to recognize the other as a brother, and both should keep in mind their obligations to the public. Love and right, not hate and force must be the means employed to determine what is fair, honest, just and humane. Neither will ask for nor expect anything the Golden Rule could not award.

Source: Elder Joseph F. Merrill
General Conference, October 1941

Topics: Capitalism

The Constitution was not the work of cloistered, fanatical theorists, but of sober, seasoned, distinguished men of affairs, drawn from various walks of life. They included students of wide reading and great learning in all matters of government. They were among those who had successfully guided the Colonists through a long Revolutionary War, beset not only with grave problems of military necessity and strategy against one of the most powerful nations of the world, but also burdened with vital local problems of co-ordination and co-operation among and between a loosely knit confederation of thirteen different political entities, each jealous beyond measure of its own political independence and sovereignty, none with great financial strength, and all hesitant, at times to the point of unwillingness, to contribute the necessary funds for the common defense and for waging their war for independence.

Source: J. Reuben Clark
Stand Fast by Our Constitution, p135-136.

Topics: America, History; US Constitution; War, Revolutionary War

Slavery will not Prevail

In conclusion, I will hazard one suggestion:

Unless all history is reversed and its lessons and principles all blotted out, it is inconceivable that any system can be set up by a personal despot or by an oligarchy either of intellectuals or of cruel, heartless, ambitious men, that can permanently rob men of their freedom and put them in slavery. This never has been done. Sooner or later such a system has always broken down; it always will break down, because, despite what atheists and scoffers say or think, man is the child of God, who planted in man’s soul certain eternal concepts and urges that are stronger than mortal life or any of the intellectual or physical incidents of mortality.

Source: J. Reuben Clark
“Stand Fast by Our Constitution”, Page 79

Topics: Free Agency

Local Self-Government

Under this plan which the Lord established, we have a dual jurisdiction—State and Federal. The Federal Government may do only what we the people have authorized it to do; if it does more, it is guilty of usurpation. The people have reserved to themselves or to their State governments every right and power they have not delegated to the Federal government, which must always look to the Constitution and its amendments to find its rights, for it has none other. This system puts the great bulk of our daily life activities in the hands of our own neighbors who know us and our surroundings, and not in the hands of a bureaucrat in a far-away national capitol, who, to all intents and purposes, is an alien to us and our affairs. This plan gives us the largest possible measure of local self-government. Liberty will never depart from us while we have local self-government controlling and directing matters pertaining to our personal liberties and to the security of our private property; it will not abide with us if we shall lose this local self-government.

Source: J. Reuben Clark
Stand Fast by the Constitution, p. 187-188.

Topics: Checks and Balances

Under a proper social system, a private individual is legally free to take any action he pleases (so long as he does not violate the rights of others), while a government official is bound by law in his every official act. A private individual may do anything except that which is legally forbidden; a government official may do nothing except that which is legally permitted.

Source: Ayn Rand
Essays on Liberty, vol 11, p106-7

Topics: Free Agency; Law

Compelling Concepts

Among these elemental concepts is the love of freedom; it is found in man not only, but even in the brutes. Man and beast rebel against slavery. They yield to it only under compelling force.

Another elemental eternal concept is belief in God, which may ripen into a knowledge of God. Normal man ultimately demands this belief to make mortality tolerable.

Modern communism as explained by communists who are in places where they speak their real minds, deny God, declare that other men are beasts that must be tamed and worked as beasts. This is an enemy that threatens us within and without. This is not a Godless world.

But men cannot be led indefinitely, nor driven by a savage despotism, down this road to an intellectual and moral abyss. They may follow along for a generation or two. But they will one day rebel against the rule of liquidation. No group can permanently maintain itself by murder, as history proves from the days of the hideous proscription lists of Sulla till now. Fear and ruthless cruelty can rule for a time, but the spirit of liberty ultimately breaks forth and sweeps away everything that lies in its path.

So it will be with communism, which now on a world scale may well be only doing the work of the Paris mobs in the French Revolution, for there are fields of human endeavor where the power of birth and station still afflict man’s growth and development.

Source: J. Reuben Clark
Stand Fast by Our Constitution, p 79-80.

Topics: Freedom, Loss of

I hope the United States of America will be able to keep disengaged from the labyrinth of European politics and wars; and that before long they will, by the adoption of a good national government, have become respectable in the eyes of the world, so that none of the maritime powers, especially none of those who hold possessions in the New World or the West Indies, shall presume to treat them with insult or contempt. It should be the policy of the United States to minister to their wants without being engaged in their quarrels. And it is not in the power of the proudest and most polite people on earth to prevent us from becoming a great, a respectable, and a commercial nation if we shall continue united and faithful to ourselves.

Source: George Washington
before he became president, writing to a friend

Topics: Politics, International

I am decidedly of the opinion we should take no part in European quarrels, but cultivate peace and commerce with all, yet who can avoid seeing the source of war, in the tyranny of those nations who deprive us of the natural right of trading with our neighbors? . . . If the new government wears the front which I hope it will, I see no impossibility in the availing ourselves of the wars of others to open the other ports of America to our commerce, as the price of our neutrality.

Source: Thomas Jefferson
writing to George Washington

Topics: Politics, International

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