Indeed, the root of freedom is responsibility. The stem of freedom is discipline. The flower of freedom is vigilance.

Responsibility, discipline, and vigilance can be dispensed neither from the U.S. Treasury nor from private donations. This perception was shared by the Deputy Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia, with whom my associates and I spoke earlier this year. When we asked what specific aid could be rendered to Czechoslovakia’s new democratic government, he replied: “We don’t need material goods or technology. We need a new spirit. We need moral values. We need the Judeo-Christian ethic back in our curriculum. Please help us to make this a time of spiritual renewal for our nation.”

In April of this year we met with the Minister of Education in the Republic of Estonia. We asked him a similar question. He replied that the Estonian economy is changing rapidly. He noted an urgent need to educate his people differently. He said: “There is much work to be done in rewriting our text books. We have the hope that religion can be taught in all of the schools and that the spirit of Christianity can be woven within the fabric of our curriculum.”

As he made those remarks I thought of the irony that strong forces in these United States are trying to eradicate all evidences of religion or piety from our public schools. Meanwhile, citizens in these European nations that have been so deprived of religious influence now feel the detrimental impact of that loss.

Source: Elder Russell M. Nelson
Address given 1 July 1990 at the Freedom Festival at Provo, UT.

Topics: Freedom; Responsibility

He [George Washington] was, indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man . . . . It may truly be said, that never did nature and fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great, and to place him in the same constellation with whatever worthies have merited from man an everlasting remembrance. For his was the singular destiny and merit, of leading the armies of his country successfully through an arduous war, for the establishment of its independence, new in its forms and principles, until it had settled down into a quiet and orderly train; and of scrupulously obeying the laws through the whole of his career, civil and military, of which the history of the world furnishes no other example.

Source: Thomas Jefferson
Personal letter to Dr. Walter Jones
Monticello, January 2, 1814.

Topics: America, Heritage

Alexander Hamilton and others gave three reasons why the Bill of Rights was not necessary. First: the Constitution is a declaration of rights from beginning to end; nearly three hundred rights are pinpointed in the document itself. Second: under our limited form of government, with only twenty specific, enumerated powers granted to the federal government, there is absolutely no authority included to regulate or invade a citizen’s freedom of religion, freedom of press, freedom of assembly, or freedom of petition. Third: there was a danger in making a list of individual rights, because under the law any right accidentally left off of the list might be presumed to be forfeited.

In spite of all this, however, the people insisted on a Bill of Rights. They feared from the bitter experiences of the past that the courts or government executives might somehow twist the meaning of certain words of the Constitution so as to deprive them of their rights, precisely as King George and his officers had done.

That is why George Mason, a leading patriot from Virginia, declared that he would rather have his right hand chopped off than to sign the Constitution without a Bill of Rights. It was on December 15, 1791, that the Bill of Rights was ratified, marking the first ten amendments to the Constitution.

Source: Elder L. Tom Perry
Address given 23 June 1991 at the Freedom Festival at Provo, UT.

Topics: Bill of Rights

Of course, we continue to need the dramatic leadership of the likes of Washington, Franklin, Madison, Jefferson, Lincoln, and so many others. But in addition we need to show that it really works all the way down to the grass roots level. We need a real demonstration of leadership in our homes, our neighborhoods, our schools, our communities, and our state.

Mediation is proper between two alternatives that are both right, but compromise is totally unjustified when it is between a right and a wrong course of action. Our founding fathers were inspired to deliver to this nation a conscience, a standard of values, with which we have been richly blessed in over two hundred years of our history.

Though times and seasons do change, foundation principles do not. This season of celebration and commemoration is an ideal time to focus on our glorious history and make firm resolve that we will not be just spectators but also participants in ensuring that the foundation principles are being preserved, safeguarded, and practiced in our own lives, with leadership, enthu siasm, and spirit.

Our faith, our conscience, our integrity, our industry, our hope—these can never be allowed to erode to mediocrity. Literally, the hope of those nations with the newly found freedoms depends on our continued example that this system works even better now than it has over our two hundred years of history.

Source: Elder L. Tom Perry
Address given 23 June 1991 at the Freedom Festival at Provo, UT.

Topics: America, Destiny; America, History; Compromise

Why America Was Discovered And This Nation Founded.

If there is one thing I am proud of, it is that I am a Latter-day Saint, or one who professes the principles of a Latter-day Saint; and, next to that, I am proud of being an American. I love my country, I love its institutions, and desire with my whole heart that our glorious nation shall go on to the fulfilment of its God-given destiny.

I believe God inspired Columbus to discover this land, that a nation might rise and flourish here—a nation dedicated to freedom and equal rights, including the right to worship God in obedience to the dictates of conscience; and I believe that this nation was founded that the great work of God might come forth and not be crushed out by the tyranny of men.

I believe, also, that what God has committed to us, both as a Church and as a Nation, we owe to the rest of mankind, so far as they can be induced by peaceful persuasion to accept our principles. This Church has a mission to evangelize the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ, “the perfect law of liberty;” and I have always dreamed that our Nation has a mission not merely to receive into its bosom the outcast, the refugee, the oppressed of other nations, but also to leaven with American principles the rest of the world.

Source: Elder Orson F. Whitney
General Conference, October 1919

Topics: America, Heritage

What Is Liberty?

We have been talking, and we do talk very much, about this wonderful, this glorious, this most choice principle of liberty, for which we are willing to sacrifice all that we possess in a worldly sense, and that we are also willing to add in that sacrifice our own lives to defend it. What is it? What is this liberty for which we are willing to fight, for which we are willing to sacrifice life and all that we possess in the world? Let me tell you. It is simply the liberty of all mankind to worship God in righteousness; that is what it is; for all mankind to have the liberty to do right, the liberty to do good, the liberty to pursue happiness, in honor, in virtue and in uprightness. But it cannot for one moment descend in any degree to license or to infringement upon the rights of others. No man has any liberty to impose upon his brother, to rob or to steal, to lie or to bear false witness, or to injure or wrong his fellowmen. When we are talking of this great and glorious principle of liberty it is that we may be free to worship God and to love him with all our hearts and minds and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves, and to protect the principles of virtue and honor throughout all the world. That is the liberty that we are looking for and that we are willing to fight for.

We are not trying to defend the liberty of mankind to be drunken, to be debauchees, to advocate crime, to interfere with the rights of others. This is not liberty. The law of nations, as well as the law of God, prohibits it, and it cannot exist except it exist contrary to the laws of righteousness and contrary to the principles of liberty that we are willing to fight for and that we are striving for.

Source: President Joseph F. Smith
General Conference, April 1918

Topics: Force; Liberty

Private Ownership Fundamental [in the United Order]

The fundamental principle of this system was the private ownership of property. Each man owned his portion, or inheritance, or stewardship, with an absolute title, which he could alienate, or hypothecate, or otherwise treat as his own. The Church did not own all of the property, and the life under the United Order was not a communal life, as the Prophet Joseph, himself said, (History of the Church, Volume III, p. 28). The United Order is an individualistic system, not a communal system.

Source: President J. Reuben Clark, Jr.
General Conference, October 1942

Topics: Private Property

The United Order

On February 9, 1831, at Kirtland, the Prophet received the first great revelation on the United Order. We find other revelations bearing upon that subject, the more important concerning it (though it was touched upon in many of the others) are sections 42, 51, 56, 70, 72, 78, 82, 85, 90, 101, and 105. The United Order has not been generally understood, and I think that I may repeat here again what I said on another occasion: that the United Order was not a communal system. It was an individualistic system. Every man was to own his own property. He was required, however, to give the surplus thereof for the benefit of the poor and for the building up of the Church. The United Order and communism are not synonymous. Communism is Satan’s counterfeit for the United Order. There is no mistake about this and those who go about telling us otherwise either do not know or have failed to understand or are wilfully misrepresenting.

The Lord tried us for three years to see if we could not set up the United Order; we could not. So then at Fishing River on June 22, 1834, following the dissolution of Zion’s Camp, the Lord told us that we should give up the United Order and that he would not reestablish it until Zion was redeemed, and that time has not yet come.

Between that time, June 22, 1934, and July 8, 1838, we again had no regular financial system.

On July 8, 1838, the Prophet prayed: “Oh Lord! show unto thy servant how much thou requirest of the properties of thy people for a tithing.” In response to that prayer the Lord gave the revelations now incorporated in the D&C as sections 119 and 120. In the revelation printed as section 120, the Lord said:

Verily, thus saith the Lord, the time is now come, that it [the tithing] shall be disposed of by a council, composed of the First Presidency of My Church and the bishop and his council, and by my high council [the Twelve]; and by mine own voice unto them, saith the Lord. Even so. Amen.

Source: President J. Reuben Clark, Jr.
General Conferenc, October 1943

Topics: Communism; United Order

Believe it or not, at one time the very notion of government had less to do with politics than with virtue. According to James Madison, often referred to as the father of the Constitution: “We have staked the whole future of American civilization not upon the power of the government far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.” (Russ Walton, Biblical Principles of Importance to Godly Christians [New Hampshire: Plymouth Foundation, 1984], p. 361.)

George Washington agreed with his colleague James Madison. Said Washington: “Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle” (James D. Richardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1897, published by authority of Congress, 1899, vol. 1, p. 220).

Nearly a hundred years later, Abraham Lincoln responded to a question about which side God was on during the Civil War with his profound insight: “I am not at all concerned about that, for I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord’s side.” (Abraham Lincoln’s Stories and Speeches, J. B. McClure, ed. [Chicago: Rhodes and McClure Publishing Co., 1896], pp. 185-86.)

Madison, Washington, and Lincoln all understood that democracy cannot possibly flourish in a moral vacuum, and that organized religion plays an important role in preserving and maintaining public morality. Indeed, John Adams, another of America’s founding fathers, insisted: “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion” (John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, Charles E Adams, ed., 1854).

Source: Elder M. Russell Ballard
Address given 5 July 1992 at the Freedom Festival at Provo, UT.

Topics: Government, Purpose; Morality; Virtue

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