Thus, today, brethren, we are in danger of actually surrendering our personal and property rights. This development, if it does occur in full form, will be a sad tragedy for our people. We must recognize that property rights are essential to human liberty.

Former United States Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland, from our own State [Utah], carefully stated it as follows: “It is not the right of property which is protected, but the right to property. Property, per se has no rights; but the individual—the man—has three great rights, equally sacred from arbitrary interference: the right to his life, the right to his liberty, and the right to his property. The three rights are so bound together as to be essentially one right. To give a man his life, but deny him his liberty, is to take from him all that makes life worth living. To give him liberty, but take from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty, is to still leave him a slave.” (From George Sutherland’s speech before the New York State Bar Association, January 21, 1921.)

The bond of our secular covenant is the principle of constitutional government. That principle is, in itself, eternal and everlasting, despite the pretensions of temporary tyrannies. The principle of tyranny maintains that human beings are incurably selfish and therefore cannot govern themselves. This concept flies in the face of the wonderful declaration of the Prophet Joseph Smith that the people are to be taught correct principles, and then they are to govern themselves. Dictatorship, however, argues that the people should be governed by the individual or a clique who can seize power through subversion or outright bloodshed. Further, the people are declared to be without guarantees or rights, and the regime is claimed to exist beholden only to the plans and whims of the ruling tyrant.

Our founding fathers, despite some natural fears, clearly regarded the promulgation of the Constitution of the United States as their greatest triumph.

Source: President David O. McKay
General Conference, October 1962

Topics: Freedom, Loss of; Rights

As the happiness of the people is the sole end of government, so the consent of the people is the only foundation of it, in reason, morality, and the natural fitness of things. And therefore every act of government, every exercise of sovereignty against or without the consent of the people is injustice, usurpation, and tyranny. It is a maxim that in every government there must exist somewhere a supreme, sovereign, absolute and uncontrollable power; and it never was, or can be delegated to one man or few; the great Creator having never given to men a right to vest others with authority over them unlimited either in duration or degree.

When kings, ministers, governors, or legislators, therefore, instead of exercising the powers intrusted with them according to the principles, forms, and proportions stated by the Constitution, and established by the original compact, prostitute those powers to the purposes of oppression; to subvert, instead of preserving the lives, liberties and properties of the people, they are no longer to be deemed magistrates vested with a sacred character, but become public enemies and ought to be resisted.

Source: John Adams
Works, I, p. 193.

Topics: Government, Good; Government, Loss of Freedom

It was never intended that our life on earth would be one of ease, since this life is but an interlude between two eternities.

Is there a need in American schools to teach our young men what America should really mean to them? And what about the young men of America who are not in our schools? Who will alert them? Because these secret youth organizations will be aimed directly at America’s young people, leaders of state and city governments should investigate every new youth organization seeking to become established within their respective jurisdictions. Our danger is greatest from within. If America is to be destroyed, the enemy knows full well it will have to be weakened from within.

Young men of America, stand by the traditions of your founding fathers. Make no compromise with the enemies of your freedom. Stand for your rights. Be true to your government. Be known and remembered for your patriotism, for your contribution to the freedom with which you would bless your posterity as you have been blessed by those who have paid the price and gone before.

Young men of America! Do you labor under the illusion that you can fight only behind a gun to defend your priceless heritage? Be not deceived! We are at war right now—not a shooting war but a contention as real and deadly as any shooting war ever fought in the history of man. Think of the uncounted millions already enslaved by the enemy without the horrors of a shooting war.

Each one of us should resolve to do everything he can for his country, which has done so much for him; assist in helping the rest of the world realize what freedom is and to keep aglow the fire which can truly light the world. You share in the noblest privilege of man, which is to make God’s work your own. “Men must choose to be governed by God or they condemn themselves to be ruled by tyrants,” was the way William Penn pronounced our death sentence as a nation or expressed our hope for survival.

Source: Bishop Thorpe B. Isaacson
General Conference, April 1961

Topics: Citizenship; Duty; Responsibility

A new nation had come into being at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It had been ordained of God to accomplish his divine purposes. The past and the future met within it, for the formation of the government of the United States was an event ordered of God for the bringing in of his Kingdom upon the earth. A republic is the highest form of political institution, De Tocqueville wrote, and this we know to be true. Our government was made up of different nationalities brought under one government and one flag. Such a republic had been unknown before in history.

Source: Elder Levi Edgar Young
General Conference, April 1958

Topics: America, History

The present-day turmoil and bitter strivings threaten to undermine basic foundations of Christian relationship. Liberty, freedom of speech, self-government, faith in God, and particularly faith in the efficacy of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, are facing a bombardment from the ranks of error such as the world has seldom if ever witnessed.

Too many men quail under the impending onslaught, and cry vainly, “What can we do?” To members of the Church, to men everywhere, the Church answers, “Keep the commandments of God,” as named specifically, for example, by the Prophet Nephi:

”...God hath given a commandment that all men should have charity, which charity is love. And except they should have charity they were nothing....

“And again, the Lord God hath commanded that men should not murder; that they should not lie; that they should not steal; that they should not take the name of the Lord their God in vain; that they should not envy; that they should not have malice; that they should not contend one with another; that they should not commit whoredoms; and that they should do none of these things; for whoso doeth them shall perish.” (2 Nephi 26:30, 32.)

I commend this chapter to you.

Source: President David O. McKay
General Conference, April 1957

Topics: Responsibility

Constitution “Outmoded”

These defamers say that the Constitution, and our government under it, are outmoded; not responsive to present-day conditions of life and living; not sufficient to meet and solve present-day problems; and that we need a modern, up-to-date system of government. They let us know what should be done to meet their ideas and plans, which seem always to run to despotism.

I have observed that numbers of these defamers take advantage to the utmost of every liberty and freedom created and protected by the Constitution in order to destroy it and its guarantees, so to make easy the setting up of a tyranny that would deprive the common man of his freedom and liberties under it, so permitting these defamers to set up a government that would give place, power, and privilege to them in a despotism to be imposed upon the mass of mankind. We have witnessed this very despotism. There would be a Kremlin in every country on the globe, all under the super-Kremlin in Moscow.

Source: President J. Reuben Clark, Jr.
General Conference, April 1957

Topics: US Constitution

If it be admitted that a man, possessing absolute power, may mis-use that power by wronging his adversaries, why should a majority not be liable to the same reproach? Men are not apt to change their characters by agglomeration; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with the consciousness of their strength. And for these reasons I can never willingly invest any number of my fellow creatures with that unlimited authority which I should refuse to any one of them.

Source: Alexis de Tocqueville
“Democracy in America”

Topics: Power

Washington said that morality and religion were the firmest props of government. I say morality—private morality—is indispensable to a good society rounded on happy homes in nations of freedom. One of the disappointments that has come to me in the observation of our political life is that all too frequently our citizens are prone to tolerate private immorality in public office, and that by comity neither side will accuse the other. I do not make this indictment general, but I firmly believe that there are a sufficient number of cases of hypocritical living in public affairs, and a sufficient number of instances of infidelity in the homes of the land, exposed and unexposed, as to have furnished an example for youth which has not been encouraging. The need of the hour is for good example and good teaching, and teaching is very difficult without the fortification of example.

Source: President Stephen L. Richards
General Conference, April 1957

Topics: Morality

Just a word about our obligation as citizens:

When the Apostle Paul was being bound with thongs for a scourging, he said to the centurion that stood by, “Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, and uncondemned?”

Then the chief captain came and said to Paul: “Tell me, art thou a Roman?” and Paul answered that he was. “And the chief captain answered, With a great sum obtained I this freedom.”

I fancy that Paul straightened up when he said: “But I was free born!” (See Acts 22:25-28.)

I wonder if we freeborn Americans appreciate what it is to have the right to vote, to express by our vote our choice of those who are to rule over us. No, thank heaven, not to rule over us—to serve us in the service of the government. For you, the electorate, are the rulers in this great Republic.

Those who have taken out their citizenship I think appreciate it even more than some of us who have it by birth.

We have an election in November, in which you have the right to state who will fill the offices that are now to be filled in the nation, in the state, and in our local affairs. We ask, we plead that every member of the Church go to the polls in November and cast your vote for the men and women whom you wish to occupy the offices named. Now you choose, and choose wisely and prayerfully, but cast your vote.

Source: President David O. McKay
General Conference, October 1956

Topics: Citizenship; Voting

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