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

Warning To Church Members

With great regret we learn from credible sources, governmental and others, that a few Church members are joining, directly or indirectly, the communists and are taking part in their activities.

The Church does not interfere, and has no intention of trying to interfere, with the fullest and freest exercise of the political franchise of its members, under and within our Constitution which the Lord declared: “I established . . . by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose,” (D. & C. 101:80) and which, as to the principles thereof, the Prophet dedicating the Kirtland Temple, prayed should be “established forever.”

But communism is not a political party nor a political plan under the Constitution; it is a system of government that is the opposite of our Constitutional government, and it would be necessary to destroy our government before communism could be set up in the United States.

Since communism, established, would destroy our American Constitutional government, to support communism is treasonable to our free institutions, and no patriotic American citizen may become either a communist or supporter of communism.

To our Church members we say: Communism is not the United Order, and bears only the most superficial resemblance thereto; communism is based upon intolerance and force, the United Order upon love and freedom of conscience and action; communism involves forceful despoliation and confiscation, the United Order voluntary consecration and sacrifice.

Communists cannot establish the United Order, nor will communism bring it about. The United Order will be established by the Lord in his own due time and in accordance with the regular prescribed order of the Church.

Furthermore, it is charged by universal report, which is not successfully contradicted or disproved, that communism undertakes to control, if not indeed to proscribe the religious life of the people living within its jurisdiction, and that it even reaches its hand into the sanctity of the family circle itself, disrupting the normal relationship of parent and child, all in a manner unknown and unsanctioned under the Constitutional guarantees under which we in America live. Such interference would be contrary to the fundamental precepts of the gospel and to the teachings and order of the Church.

Communism being thus hostile to loyal American citizenship and incompatible with true Church membership, of necessity no loyal American citizen and no faithful Church member can be a communist.

We call upon all Church members completely to eschew communism. The safety of our divinely inspired Constitutional government and the welfare of our Church imperatively demand that communism shall have no place in America.

Source: Heber J. Grant, J. Reuben Clark, Jr. David O. McKay
The First Presidency Published in The Improvement Era of August 1936.

Topics: Communism

I recall a sentence from a magazine editorial of not so long ago, in which the writer asked the question, after addressing himself to the world in general and to the men and women of America in particular: “Are there any principles for which you would stand unflinchingly?” Before asking this clinching question, he invited attention to the many acts of expediency and of compromise, and to the many motives which have prompted many actions and many decisions on the national and international scene. “Are there any principles for which we would stand unflinchingly?” This suggests a series of questions which we might well ask ourselves:

Is there any principle for which we would give up our comfort, our convenience?

Is there any principle for which we would give up some of our appetites and habits?

Is there any principle for which we would give up popularity?

Is there any principle for which we would give up our time, or our property?

Is there any principle for which we would give up being elected to public office?

Is there any principle for which we would give up life itself?

Fortunately generations of patriotic Americans and generations of members of this Church have answered these questions affirmatively many times over, and would again, I have no doubt. But so rapid have been the changes of the years in which we live, and so confusing have they been at times, that I am sure principles have been confused with some other things. And I am afraid we have sometimes let ourselves be over-impressed by the appeal of the word “change,” without discriminating as between good changes and bad changes. We have sometimes let “change” come to be synonymous with “progress,” which it is not. It may be, but is not necessarily.

Source: Elder Richard L. Evans
General Conference, October 1946

Topics: Principles

Our government rests upon religion. It is from that source that we derive our reverence for truth and justice, for equality and liberality and for the rights of mankind. Unless the people believe in these principles they cannot believe in our government. There are only two main theories of government in the world. One rests on righteousness and the other on force. One appeals to reason, the other appeals to the sword. One is exemplified in a republic, the other is represented by a despotism.

The government of a country never gets ahead of the religion of a country. There is no way by which we can substitute the authority of law for the virtue of men. Of course we can help to restrain the vicious and furnish a fair degree of security and protection by legislation and police control, but the real reform which society in these days is seeking will come as a result of religious convictions, or they will not come at all. Peace, justice, charity—these cannot be legislated into being. They are the result of Divine Grace.

Source: President Calvin Coolidge

Topics: Morality; Principles

The greatness of a nation is measured, not by its fruitful acres, but by the men who cultivate those acres; not by great forests, but by the men who use those forests; not by its mines, but by the men who work them.

Source: Lyman Abbott

Topics: Character

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