And let me say that all men who say that Congress has no power to restore and defend the rights of her citizens have not the love of the truth abiding in them. Congress has power to protect the nation against foreign invasion and internal broil; and whenever that body passes an act to maintain right with any power, or to restore right to any portion of her citizens, it is the supreme law of the land; and should a State refuse submission, that State is guilty of insurrection or rebellion, and the President has as much power to repel it as Washington had to march against the “whisky boys at Pittsburgh,” or General Jackson had to send an armed force to suppress the rebellion of South Carolina. To close, I would admonish you, before you let your “candor compel” you again to write upon a subject great as the salvation of man, consequential as the life of the Savior, broad as the principles of eternal truth, and valuable as the jewels of eternity, to read in the 8th section and 1st article of the Constitution of the United States, the first, fourteenth and seventeenth “specific” and not very “limited powers” of the Federal Government, what can be done to protect the lives, property and rights of a virtuous people, when the administrators of the law and law-makers are unbought by bribes, uncorrupted by patronage, untempted by gold, unawed by fear, and uncontaminated tangling alliances—even like Caesar’s wife, not only unspotted, but unsuspected: And God, who cooled the heat of a Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace or shut the mouths of lions for the honor of a Daniel, will raise your mind above the narrow notion that the General Government has no power, to the sublime idea that Congress, with the President as Executor, is as almighty in its sphere as Jehovah is in his. With great respect, I have the honor to be Your obedient servant, JOSEPH SMITH. HON. (“MR”) J. C. CALHOUN, Fort Hill, S. C.

Source: Joseph Smith
History of the Church, Volume 6, Chapter 7

Topics: Government, Power; Government, Vertical Separation

Free institutions are not the property of any majority. They do not confer upon majorities unlimited powers. The rights of the majority are limited rights. They are limited not only by the constitutional guarantees but by the moral principle implied in those guarantees. That principle is that men may not use the facilities of liberty to impair them. No man may invoke a right in order to destroy it.

Source: Walter Lippmann

Topics: Rights

Wherever the real power in a government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Government the real power lies in the majority of the community...

Source: James Madison

Topics: Government, Oppression

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).

Source: Ayn Rand

Topics: Rights

Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.

Source: Ralph Waldo Emerson

Topics: Democracy

It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume...that every citizen is a criminal. Their one apparent purpose, pursued with a relentless and furious diligence, is to convert the assumption into a fact. They hunt endlessly for proofs, and, when proofs are lacking, for mere suspicions. The moment they become aware of a definite citizen, John Doe, seeking what is his right under the law, they begin searching feverishly for an excuse for withholding it from him.

Source: H. L. Mencken

Topics: Government, Loss of Freedom; Government, Power; Government, Tyranny

Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic.

Source: Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

Topics: Democracy

The concentrating [of powers] in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government. It will be no alleviation that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one.

Source: Thomas Jefferson

Topics: Government, Loss of Freedom; Government, Power; Government, Tyranny

Whether we recognize it or not, it is beliefs—the beliefs that get themselves accepted—that rule the world. Those beliefs may exalt a nation or drag it down to degeneracy and degradation depending upon their inherent quality. Ships and tanks and airplanes and guns, while necessary implements for waging physical warfare, are not the real source of a nation’s strength. Its strength lies in the basic integrity of its people and that depends upon the beliefs they cherish which fashion their lives.

Source: Albert E. Bowen
General Conference, October 1945

Topics: Morality

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