We are placed on this earth to work and the earth will give us a living. . . . It is our duty to strive to till the earth, subdue matter, conquer the glebe, take care of the flocks and the herds. It is the government’s duty to see that you are protected in it, and no other man has the right to deprive you of any of your privileges. But it is not the government’s duty to support you.

I shall raise my voice as long as God gives me sound or ability, against the communistic idea that the government will take care of us all, and that everything belongs to the government. . . .

It is wrong! No wonder in trying to perpetuate that idea, that men become anti-Christ, because those teachings strike directly at the doctrines of the Savior.

No government owes you a living. . . . You get it yourself by your own acts—never by trespassing upon the rights of your neighbor, never by cheating him. You put a blemish upon your character the moment you do.

Source: David O. McKay
Church News, 14 Mar. 1953, pp. 4, 15.

Topics: Communism; Responsibility; Welfare

Let us first consider the origin of those freedoms we have come to know as human rights. Rights are either God-given as part of the divine plan or they are granted by government as part of the political plan. Reason, necessity, tradition, and religious convictions all lead me to accept the divine origin of these rights. If we accept the premise that human rights are granted by government, then we must be willing to accept the corollary that they can be denied by government.

I support the doctrine of separation of church and state as traditionally interpreted to prohibit the establishment of an official national religion. But this does not mean that we should divorce government from any formal recognition of God. To do so strikes a potentially fatal blow at the concept of the divine origin of our rights and unlocks the door for an easy entry of future tyranny. If Americans should ever come to believe that their rights and freedoms are instituted among men by politicians and bureaucrats, then they will no longer carry the proud inheritance of their forefathers, but will grovel before their masters seeking favors and dispensations, a throwback to the feudal system of the Dark Ages.

Since God created man with certain inalienable rights, and man, in turn, created government to help secure and safeguard those rights, it follows that man is superior to the creature which he created. Man is superior to government and should remain master over it, not the other way around. Even the nonbeliever can appreciate the logic of this relationship.

A government is nothing more or less than a relatively small group of citizens who have been hired, in a sense, by the rest of us to perform certain functions and discharge certain responsibilities which have been authorized. The government itself has no innate power or privilege to do anything. Its only source of authority and power is from the people who created it.

Keep in mind that the people who have created their government can give to that government only such powers as they themselves have. They cannot give that which they do not possess. . . .

The proper function of government is limited only to those spheres of activity within which the individual citizen has the right to act. By deriving its just powers from the governed, government becomes primarily a mechanism for defense against bodily harm, theft, and involuntary servitude. It cannot claim the power to redistribute the wealth or force reluctant citizens to perform acts of charity against their will. Government is created by man. No man can delegate a power that he does not possess. The creature cannot exceed the creator. . . .

The Constitution of the United States, an inspired document, is a solemn agreement between the citizens of this nation that every officer of government is under a sacred duty to obey.

The Constitution provides that the great bulk of the legitimate activities of government are to be carried out at the state or local level. This is the only way in which the principle of self-government can be made effective.

The smallest or lowest level that can possibly undertake the task is the one that should do so. The smaller the governmental unit and the closer it is to the people, the easier it is to guide it, to correct it, to keep it solvent, and to keep our freedom.

Remember that the people of the states of this republic created the federal government. The federal government did not create the states.

A category of government activity that not only requires the closest scrutiny but that also poses a grave danger to our continued freedom in the activity not within the proper sphere of government. No one has the authority to grant such powers as welfare programs, schemes for redistributing the wealth, and activities that coerce people into acting in accordance with a prescribed code of social planning. There is one simple test. Do I as an individual have a right to use force upon my neighbor to accomplish this goal? If I do, then I may delegate that power to my government to exercise it in my behalf. If I do not have that right, I cannot delegate it.

If we permit government to manufacture its own authority and to create self-proclaimed powers not delegated to it by the people, then the creature exceeds the creator and becomes master. Who is to say “this far, but no farther”? What clear principle will stay the hand of government from reaching farther and farther into our daily lives? Grover Cleveland said that “though the people support the Government, the Government should not support the people.”

Once government steps over this clear line between the protective or negative role into the aggressive role of redistributing the wealth through taxation and providing so-called “benefits” for some of its citizens, it becomes a means for legalized plunder. It becomes a lever of unlimited power that is the sought-after prize of unscrupulous individuals and pressure groups, each seeking to control the machine to fatten his own pockets or to benefit his favorite charity, all with the other fellow’s money, of course. Each class or special interest group competes with the others to throw the lever of governmental power in its favor, or at least to immunize itself against the effects of a previous thrust.

Source: Ezra Taft Benson
General Conference, October 1968

Topics: Class Warfare; Government, Power; Government, Vertical Separation; US Constitution

There is no other platform that any government can stand upon and endure, but the platform of truth and virtue.

Source: Brigham Young
Discourses of Brigham Young, sel. John A. Widtsoe
(Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1941), p. 355

Topics: Government; Morality

When men are placed at the head of governments who are actually controlled by the power of God—by the Holy Ghost—they can lay plans, they can frame constitutions, they can form governments and laws that have not the seeds of death within them, and no other men can do it.

Source: Brigham Young
Discourses of Brigham Young, sel. John A. Widtsoe
(Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1941), p. 356

Topics: Government, Benefits of

What, then, has truth to do with liberty? Jesus gave the answer when he said to his disciples, “and ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” Free from what? Free from all unrighteousness and every sort of bondage that inhibits the growth and progress of the race. It requires but a moment’s consideration for any sane, logical person to reach the conclusion that there is no freedom and no liberty worth striving for and preserving that does not contemplate the exercise of free agency in truth, in virtue, and in righteousness. Any other hypothesis would mean complete frustration and ruin. This is the second foundation for liberty.

What then is the application of these doctrines to conditions in the world today? I believe it to be this: that no nation under heaven can successfully preserve this great boon of liberty and freedom unless the people of that nation have a truthful conception of the status of man in the earth and also an adequate understanding of the exercise of the options and powers of free agency in conformity with the standards of righteousness. So surely as either of these concepts shall vanish, will bondage ensue. And this applies with equal force to the enlightened of the world as to those in darkness, as witness the countries of Europe today. Philosophies are more potent than armies in the progress of civilization.

Source: Stephen L Richards
General Conference, April 1939

Topics: Liberty; Progress

Observing the orderliness and unity of purpose obtaining among his followers, who had been gathered from various countries of the world and from numerous nationalities and creeds, a visitor to the Prophet Joseph Smith asked:

“Mr. Smith, how do you govern these people?”

Promptly came the pregnant reply, “I teach them correct principles and they govern themselves.”

Thus tersely is stated a concept fundamental in the creed of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—self-government fashioned upon fixed and enduring principles. It is a statement of the ideal in government. As concerns the individual, it is a statement of the law of progress, the law of salvation. . . .

Furthermore, if the process of the law had to be invoked to compel obedience to its established principles in every transaction in which men engaged, human intercourse would be impossible. The whole legal mechanism would come tumbling down of its own weight. Human society is able to carry on only because the vast majority of men freely and voluntarily and as a matter of individual morality conform their conduct to the body of principles laid down in the law. Indeed, because they observe principles of morality which have not been enacted into law—but are outside of and above its compulsions—they are self-governing, which brings us back to the second proposition of our discussion: Having been taught correct principles, “They govern themselves.”

Any system of government which depends for its continuance upon the compelled obedience of any considerable part of its citizens is foredoomed to ultimate failure, because it is violative of the principle of freedom which is a God-given quality coextensive with life, and, like life, one of man’s inalienable rights.

Source: Albert E. Bowen
General Conference, April 1938

Topics: Government, Ideal

So long as wrong is held in suppression by force, the force will still have to be maintained.

That is all basic in the teachings of Jesus. His ideal of government is self-government. His concern was for purging out of the human heart the ignoble desire supplanting it with worthy purpose. To this end He taught the principle of overcoming evil with good, of supplanting fear with confidence, of substituting love for hatred, of doing to others what we should like them to do to us, of being generous and unselfish and gentle and kind, instead of cruel and selfish and vengeful and insolent. We may withstand the invader of our homes, but so long as he has the will to invade we can know no contentment. A nation may repel the onslaught of a devastating foe but so long as the foe stands ready to strike, the nation may never lay down its arms. To maintain itself as a perpetual armed camp would be intolerable as well as impossible. Security and lasting peace of mind, the inescapable conditions of national peace and prosperity, can come only when the enemy has ceased to want to invade. This comes through teaching the better way, through soul-conversion that threat and force and compulsion bring no enduring rewards. In the end the way of the peace-maker and the meek must prevail.

In that respect the history of the world teaches but one lesson. No world conqueror has ever been able to perpetuate his empire. When the force that created it was no longer adequate to its maintenance, it has crumbled before the onslaught of the subject peoples who have nursed their grievances awaiting the day of retribution. The present attempt at swollen dominion is foredoomed to failure. It has within itself the seeds of its own destruction. It rests upon force and will be broken by force and in the end nothing but suffering will have resulted.

Source: Albert E. Bowen
General Conference, October 1941

Topics: Government, Ideal

A year later, in the summer of 1776, the Continental Congress met in Philadelphia and declared independence from England.

The doctrine of that crowning document—the Declaration of Independence—is this: That the Creator, God, endowed all men with basic rights, and that governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed.

Until the American Revolution, a millennium of political tradition vested powers only in monarchs and dictators. The formers of our republic simply declared the truth—that God gave all men the right to life, liberty, and property. Man, therefore, was master over government rather than the other way around.

That is what the American Revolution was all about—not just a separation from England, but a separation from the historical tradition that made one man another’s chattel and denied all men liberty and property.

While some vacillated on whether to separate from England and adopt the Declaration of Independence, the sentiments of John Adams were described by Daniel Webster as follows:

Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote. It is true, indeed, that in the beginning we aimed not at independence. But there’s a divinity which shapes our ends . . . why, then, should we defer the Declaration?

You and I, indeed, may rue it. We may not live to the time when this Declaration shall be made good . . . . but whatever may be our fate, be assured, . . . that this Declaration will stand. It may cost treasure, and it may cost blood: but it will stand, and it will richly compensate for both . . . .

My judgment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I hope, in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it; and I leave off as I began, that live or die, survive or perish, I am for the Declaration. It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment, independence, now, and independence forever. (The Works of Daniel Webster, 4th ed., 1851, 1:133-36.)

Source: President Ezra Taft Benson
“Righteousness Exalteth a Nation”
Address given 29 June 1986.

Topics: America, Heritage

From the standpoint of numbers, equipment, training, and resources the rag-tag army of the colonists should never have won the war for independence. But America’s destiny was not to be determined by overwhelming numbers, or better military weapons, or strategy. As Adams declared: “There’s a divinity which shapes our ends.” God took a direct hand in the events that led to the defeat of the British.

When the war was over, here is how Washington ascribed the victory: “The success, which has hitherto attended our united efforts, we owe to the gracious interposition of heaven, and to that interposition let us gratefully ascribe the praise of victory, and the blessings of peace.” (To the Executives of New Hampshire, November 3, 1789.)

Source: President Ezra Taft Benson
“Righteousness Exalteth a Nation”
Address given 29 June 1986.

Topics: Heavenly Interest in Human Events; War, Revolutionary War

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