[W]e should help those who have been deceived or who are misinformed to find the truth. Unless each person who knows the truth will “stand up and speak up” it is difficult for the deceived or confused citizen to find his way back.

Source: Elder Ezra Taft Benson
General Conference, October 1961

Topics: Responsibility

[W]e should not make the mistake of calling people “communist” just because they happen to be helping the communist cause. Thousands of patriotic Americans, including a few Latter-day Saints, have helped the communists without realizing it. Others have knowingly helped without joining the party. The remedy is to avoid name-calling, but point out clearly and persuasively how they are helping the communists.

Source: Elder Ezra Taft Benson
General Conference, October 1961

Topics: Education; Responsibility

[E]ach member of the priesthood should set his own house in order. This should include:

1. Regular family prayer, remembering especially our government leaders.

2. Getting out of debt.

3. Seeing that each member of the family understands the importance of keeping the commandments.

4. Seeing that the truth is shared with members of the family, with neighbors, and with associates.

5. Seeing that each member is performing his duties in the priesthood, in the auxiliary organizations, in the temple, and in the civic life of the community.

6. Seeing that every wage earner in the home is a full tithepayer and fulfilling other obligations in financial support of the kingdom.

7. Providing a one-year supply of essentials.

In doing these things a member of the Church is not only making himself an opponent of the adversary, but a proponent of the Lord.

Source: Elder Ezra Taft Benson
General Conference, October 1961

Topics: Responsibility

Why are we so timid in standing up to a Godless communist police state which can’t even feed its own people, and whose economy, they know, will not support a major war. They “lead from weakness and we retreat from strength.”

I say to you it can happen here. It is happening here. We have retreated from the Monroe Doctrine. Our liberty is in danger. But we go blithely and gullibly on our way. Some of us fall for the Kremlin line as planned by the mass murderer Khrushchev and call patriots “extremists” and accuse courageous liberty-loving citizens of “dividing our people.”

Source: Elder Ezra Taft Benson
General Conference, October 1962

Topics: Freedom, Loss of

We in this land have a rich heritage of freedom. It has rewarded us beyond our brightest dreams. The key to further progress—the key to national security—is the preservation of the initiative, vitality, energy, and resourcefulness of our people. Our material progress is merely a by-product of our freedom. Our God-given freedom, a basic principle of religious truth, is still the most powerful force on the face of the earth.

Source: Elder Ezra Taft Benson
General Conference, April 1960

Topics: America, Future; America, Heritage

[A]ny system which deprives men of their free agency, which weakens the home and family, which depends on butchery for power, which denies all moral responsibility, which holds that man lives by bread alone, and which denies the existence of God, is of the devil.

This is the communist philosophy. There is no real evidence that it has been changed in the last forty years.

Knowledge of the enemy and knowledge of ourselves give us the strength to fight the good fight for freedom and world peace.

May it never come to pass that “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge,” (Hosea 4:6).

Source: Elder Ezra Taft Benson
General Conference, April 1960

Topics: Free Agency; Freedom, Loss of

All of us as Americans have a patriotic responsibility not to contribute to the inflation danger by needlessly building still higher the mountain of total debt. All of us as individuals—and above all, as members of families—have an obligation in conscience not to mismanage our resources.

Yes, there is a tendency for all of us to want to “keep up with the Joneses,” but even though our income is low we have plenty of company. This should make it easier to live within our income and resist borrowing from the future except in cases of necessity—never for luxuries.

Source: Elder Ezra Taft Benson
General Conference, April 1957

Topics: Economics; Responsibility

But there are developing tendencies, sponsored by selfishness, greed, and ambition that, if unchecked, will soon or late bring sorrow and ruin to our country. Among these tendencies is that of “something for nothing,” at least “more and more for less and less”—more pay for less work. And as I see it, in whatever words these tendencies are expressed, they all lead to some type of national socialism. And generally, socialism is an enemy of free enterprise in the development of which, I repeat, this country has become the greatest on earth. Then why does any honest, patriotic, intelligent citizen of America prefer socialism to free enterprise? Is it not in free enterprise that free agency, a divine gift to every human being, finds an environment favorable to growth and development and to living in harmony with our beautiful doctrine of eternal progression?

Source: Elder Joseph F. Merrill
General Conference, April 1950

Topics: Free Agency; Socialism

Whenever I think of the obligation of serving in government capacity, there comes to mind one of those old patriots who lived shortly after the Revolutionary War and prior to the Civil War, Henry Clay. When he was about ready to lay aside the mantle that rested upon him as one of the servants of his great state, he said:

I can with unshaken confidence appeal to the Divine Arbiter for the truth of the declaration that I have been influenced by no impure purpose and no personal motive, have sought no personal aggrandizement, but that in all of my public acts, I have had a full and single eye and a warm and devoted heart directed and dedicated to what, in my best judgment, I believed to be the true interest of my country.

I would to God that every public servant should have that attitude, and I am sure if they had it, we should receive a service at their hands which would perpetuate and preserve the great principles that this republic rests upon. We have been blessed with prophets of God, who from time to time have called our attention to the Constitution of the United States as being a revelation from God.

Source: Elder Joseph L. Wirthlin
General Conference, October 1946

Topics: Virtue

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