Every reform must be vested with sacredness, and a nation that is great is not incompatible with righteousness. The spirit of progress and nationality must be related to the divine purposes. There is a call of God to the nations as well as there is to men. The nation which has the bravest, the most trustworthy, the most thoroughly developed conscience will have the right of way in the onward march of civilization.

Source: Elder Levi Edgar Young
General Conference, April 1936

Topics: Morality

What we need today is a group of high-souled men, men of vision and high morals, to put our nation in order, and to bring back that old-fashioned conscience of the nation, which recognizes the fact that the highest laws are the laws of God. Every man should put himself clearly and openly into some relationship of responsibility, for we are today beset with the mob spirit, which always acts apart from the organization of government. This is why the mob spirit is wrong. We should honor our past in the present; our dead in the living. What I want to hold up before us all is the conscience of our nation and government. Moral integrity, moral purposes, moral restraint are the necessities of the hour. If these things can be brought about, the nations of the world will have this to say of us: “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.” Ideals must be established in the minds of the rising generation. While we realize that the age in which we live is new, the youth will never find anything more true and noble than the spirit of the pioneer America, when the first impulse was the joy of enterprise, initiative, and newly awakened powers. Honesty of purpose must be re-established; honesty of endeavor, honesty of word, honesty in our relationship with our fellow-men. “Look unto the rock, whence ye are hewn,” wrote Isaiah of old; and Solomon in his wisdom said: “Remove not the ancient land-mark, which thy fathers have set.”

We must hark back to the finer fundamentals of life, we must make every law and principle of right effective in our very lives. The end of the State is not to live, but to live nobly, and this can only be done as we realize the truth of truths, that the teachings of the Master must become the guiding stars of our lives. “For as the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth; so the Lord will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations.”

Source: Elder Levi Edgar Young
General Conference, April 1936

Topics: Christianity; Culture; Honesty; Morality

I now appeal to you and to all other good citizens to unite and help enforce the laws which have been enacted for the regulation of the liquor traffic. I appeal for the election to office in every branch of our government those who live in accordance with the law and those who favor its enforcement. Will you be good citizens and go to the primaries and to the polls and help as best you can to see to it that no one is elected to public office who owes allegiance to the liquor traffic or to any of its allied evils?

Source: Elder Richard R. Lyman
General Conference, October 1935

Topics: Law; Prohibition; Voting

These two things [The Free Agency of Man and The Knowledge of Good and Evil] are God-given attributes. We inherited them from our divine parents. They are not the gift of any government—they are our inalienable rights with which we have been endowed by our Creator and we may not rightfully be deprived of them by any human power.

Source: Elder Rulon S. Wells
General Conference, April 1935

Topics: Free Agency

Endeavoring To Establish Modern Paganism

So well known is this, so thoroughly is it understood that the dictators of the world are now seeking to take hold of the religion of the people over whom they rule. They are doing away, or trying to, with the churches of Christianity. They are trying to establish, even in great and progressive nations, a modern paganism. That can never be done under the Constitution of the United States, and that is why its protection and preservation come to us as one of the most vital duties we can have in life.

Source: President J. Reuben Clark, Jr.
General Conference, April 1935

Topics: Paganism

In Need Of Convictions

Convictions are the great need of the people of the world today. Men need to be convinced of something. They need religious convictions, and it is not, in the first instance so important what those convictions may be, looking to the peace and ordered condition of the world. The people of the world need convictions regarding righteousness in civic and political life; they need convictions on the eternal verities of right and wrong. Great masses of people everywhere in the world are wandering aimlessly in their religious, in their intellectual, in their social, and in their civic lives, without any guiding principles; “every wind of doctrine” strains the moorings that have held them for generations.

This must be changed.

Source: President J. Reuben Clark, Jr.
General Conference, April 1935

Topics: Christianity; Morality

Ten Thousand Commandments

The breakup of the leading integrated companies and the divorce, divestiture, or dissolution of the biggest producers and distributors, whether integrated or not, is a luxury the country cannot afford. Its “great concentrations of economic power” in American industry are more essential to the nation’s defense than its great concentrations of administrative power in Washington.

The new interpretations of the antitrust laws endanger the political structure of the country. They disintegrate the law, making it a respecter of persons, which tends to be no law at all. They upset the balance of power between Congress and the courts, by judicial legislation, which is a usurpation of Congress’ role. Whatever “power” they take away from business organizations will not revert to the people but is automatically being appropriated by government agencies.

Source: Harold Fleming
The Freeman, January 1993, p.18

Topics: Government, Loss of Freedom; Law

The Flight from Values

Strong, cohesive societies are based on even stronger belief systems sustained by the people as they make their daily fundamental political, economic, and cultural choices. Over the ages, people creating strong civilizations made such choices not because they felt they could be “proven” correct (science barely existed), but because they believed their choices were right and arose naturally from their common belief system. Today, however, we seem to have abandoned the idea that a common belief system is necessary at all—a result, in part, of a general decline in faith, and the moral strength derived from it. Instead, we like to think that all values are equal or “relevant”—that just about anything goes. This attitude has arisen not from any deeply honest confrontation with past or present values but from a flight from values altogether.

Source: William D. Gairdner
The Trouble with Canada

Topics: Morality; Society

Readily and, I trust, feelingly acknowledge the duty incumbent on us all . . . to provide for those who, in the mysterious order of Providence, are subject to want and to disease of body or mind; but I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for making the Federal Government the great almoner of public charity throughout the United States . . . .

Source: President Franklin Pierce
From a veto message in 1854

Topics: Welfare

•  ⟨⟨ 
•  ⟨ 
•   |  
•  ⟩ 
•  ⟩⟩