Ezra
Taft Benson
13th President
1985–1994
The
United States
Constitution
The
Bill of Rights
Declaration
of
Independence
Survival
and the
American Way
of Life
Civic
Standards for
Faithful Saints
America's
Challenge
Righteousness
Exalteth A
Nation
America's
Challenge
Near
Boston, Massachusetts, rests a large boulder on Lexington Green. Inscribed
on this rock are the words that Captain John Parker gave to his Minute Men
on April 19, 1775:
Stand
your ground.
Don't fire unless fired upon;
but if they mean to have a war,
let it begin here!
Said
Webster, "They poured out their generous blood like water before they
knew whether it would fertilize the land of freedom or of bondage."
But
they aroused their fellow Americans. Within one year John Adams faced the
body of men who were deliberating on whether to adopt the Declaration of
Independence. With the inspiration of heaven resting upon him, Adams was
said to have declared.
Sink
or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to
this vote. It is true, indeed, that in the beginning we aimed not at
independence. But there's a Divinity which shapes our ends. The injustice
of England has driven us to arms; and blinded to her own interest for our
good, she has obstinately persisted, till independence is now within our
grasp. We have but to reach forth to it, and it is ours.
Why,
then, should we defer the Declaration? Is any man so weak as now to hope
for a reconciliation with England? . . .
You
and I, indeed, may rue it. We may not live to the time when this
Declaration shall be made good. We may die; die Colonists; die slaves,
die, it may be, ignominiously and on the scaffold.
Be
it so. Be it so.
If
it be the pleasure of Heaven that my country shall require the poor
offering of my life, the victim shall be ready. . . . But while I do live,
let me have a country, or at least the hope of a country, and that a free
country.
But
whatever may be our fate, be assured . . . that this Declaration will
stand. It may cost treasure, and it may cost blood; but it will stand, and
it will richly compensate for both.
Through
the thick gloom of the present, I see the brightness of the future, as the
sun in heaven. We shall make this a glorious, an immortal day. When we are
in our graves, our children will honor it. They will celebrate it with
thanksgiving, with festivity, with bonfires, and illuminations. On its
annual return they will shed tears, copious, gushing tears, not of
subjection and slavery, not of agony and distress, but of exultation, of
gratitude and of joy.
Sir,
before God, I believe the hour is come. My judgment approves this measure,
and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, and all that I am, and all
that I hope, in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it; and I
leave off as I began, that live or die, survive or perish, I am for the
Declaration. It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it
shall be my dying sentiment, Independence now, and Independence forever.
(Daniel Webster Discourse on "Adams and Jefferson," August 2,
1826.)
I
recently read the great volume Quest of a Hemisphere by Donzella
Cross Boyle, published by Western Islands, Boston. I am grateful we have a
textbook for our children, grandchildren, and their parents that restores
that which has in many cases been removed by wolves in sheep's
clothing—one-worlders who would surrender all we hold dear as true
Americans. Chapter 8 is worth the price of the book.
Here
we read again, as some of us are old enough to remember, the courageous
and stirring words against the Navigation Acts, the Stamp Act of 1765, and
taxation without representation. In this real American history we have the
record of Washington, Jefferson, and the record of Samuel Adams of Boston,
who organized Committees of Correspondence and groups of young men banded
together as Sons of Liberty. We read again the words of James Otis that a
law was void if it violated the human rights of men and "a man who is
quiet, is as secure in his house as a prince in his castle. . . ."
Here
we read:
The
colonists fought the threat of aggression as much as agression itself. . .
.
With
grim determination, they opposed every attempt to rob them of any liberty
they had gained.
[To
the colonists—our benefactors—] it was not so much the amount as the principle
of taxation (without representation) that the colonists opposed. (Pp.
105-106.)
Here
again in this new history are also the fiery words "Give me
liberty" of Patrick Henry of Virginia, as well as his words: "If
this be treason, make the most of it." We find John Hancock, George
Mason, Paul Revere, John Dickinson and his Letters from a Farmer:
"We cannot be happy without being free. . . ."
Here
are the words of the closing paragraph of chapter 8:
The
British colonies were largely settled by people who had revolted against
their living conditions in other lands. They were rebels, in a sense, who
had the courage to flee from want and persecution, and face the perils of
a wilderness to seek a better form of life. When they found a better way,
they fought to keep it. Their children, grandchildren, and
great-grandchildren did not want any monarch to change their way of life.
They had plowed their own lands, built their own homes, and made their own
clothes. They had hunted in the forests, fished in the streams, and slept
under the stars. Who was their master? (Quest of a Hemisphere, p.
113.)
Chapter
7 closes with a discussion of freedom of the press and these stirring
words inspired by Peter Zenger: "The right to print the truth is a
necessary part of political liberty," and these by the famous lawyer
Andrew Hamilton of Philadelphia: "The loss of liberty to a generous
mind is worse than death. . . . The man who loves his country, prefers its
liberty to all other considerations, well knowing that without liberty,
life is a misery." (Ibid., p. 84.)
And
this is the closing paragraph:
Thus,
in colonial days, did the people of the colonies stand firmly against any
form of dictatorship. Thousands of immigrants came to the settlements
along the Atlantic seaboard, with only a vague idea of the freedoms they
were seeking, because they had not known many of them. They were pursuing
a vision. Freedoms sprouted in a wilderness like flowers on a vacant lot,
because each person who came had broken the pattern of life in his old
country and he was starting all over again. "Something new"
began to grow in the New World—a mere idea. People began to question the
right of government to interfere with their freedom to come and go, to buy
and sell, to own or lease, to talk or listen, to vote and elect. In other
words, people began to think they had the right to govern themselves. Yet,
a new nation had to rise in the Western Hemisphere before this idea gained
a force of law. (Ibid., p. 84.)
Reading
and promoting the book Quest of a Hemisphere will give you, as it
has me, a warm, satisfying feeling. This excellent book of American
history should be in every school and in every home to be read by young
and old. We need more works of life quality in the days ahead.
And
so today on Lexington Green, you will see a sacred old monument nearing
two hundred years of age that covers the remains of those patriotic Minute
Men and on this monument are inscribed these words:
Sacred
to liberty and the rights of mankind!
The freedom and independence of America
Sealed and defended with the blood of her sons.
This monument is erected
By the inhabitants of Lexington,
Under the patronage, and at the expense, of
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts,
To the memory of their fellow citizens,
Ensign Robert Monroe, Messrs. Jonas Parker,
Samuel Hadley, Jonathan Harrington, Jr.,
Isaac Muzzy, Caleb Harrington and John Brown
Of Lexington, and Ashael Porter of Woburn,
Who fell on this field, the first victims to the
Sword of British tyranny and oppression,
On the morning of the ever memorable
19th of April, An. Dom. 1775.
The die was cast!
The blood of these martyrs
In the cause of God and their country,
Was the cement of the Union of these states, then
Colonies; and gave the spring to the spirit, firmness
And resolution of their fellow citizens.
They rose as one man, to revenge their brethren's
Blood and at the point of the sword, to assert and
Defend their native rights.
They nobly dared to be free!
The contest was long, bloody and affecting.
Righteous heaven approved the solemn appeal;
Victory crowned their arms; and
The peace, liberty and independence of the United
States of America was their glorious reward.
Built
in the year 1799.
With
independence won, another body of men assembled; and under the inspiration
of heaven, they too drafted a document, probably the greatest instrument
ever struck off at a given time by the mind of man: the Constitution of
the United States.
Said
President J. Reuben Clark, Jr., a great constitutional lawyer:
The
framers [of the Constitution] were not political tyros flying a political
kite to keep in order the henyard, that is, the colonists. They were men
widely experienced in affairs of government. . . .
The
Constitution was not the work of cloistered, fanatical theorists, but of
sober, seasoned, distinguished men of affairs, drawn from various walks of
life. They included students of wide reading and great learning in all
matters of government. . . .
The
Constitution was born, not only of the wisdom and experience of the
generations that had gone before and which had been transmitted to them
through tradition and the pages of history. . .
These
were the horse and buggy days as they have been called in derision; these
were the men who traveled in the horsedrawn buggies and on horseback; but
these were the men who carried under their hats, as they rode in the
buggies and on their horses, a political wisdom garnered from the ages. As
giants to pygmies are they when placed alongside our political emigres and
their fellow travelers of today, who now traduce them with slighting and
contemptuous phrase. (Stand Fast by Our Constitution, pp. 134-37.)
Those
two documents—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of
the United States—resting on the bedrock of the love of the Lord and of
liberty, became the foundation of our republic. And from this foundation
has come the greatest civilization on the face of the earth.
But
for every righteous principle the devil seems to design a counterfeit. And
so while our Constitution was being established in the land of America—a
land choice above all others—the forces of evil across the world were
laying the foundation of modern-day godless communism. Marx wanted to
dethrone God and to destroy capitalism. In the Communist Manifesto, he
called for "the forcible overthrow of all existing social
conditions." Lenin demanded "a small tight kernel consisting of
reliable, experienced, and steeled workers with responsible agents in the
chief districts, and connected by all the rules of strict
conspiracy." (Lenin on Organization, New York: International
Publishers, 1:74.)
And
from this foundation of communism has come the greatest tyranny ever
imposed on mankind in recorded history. Today communism represents the
greatest threat to peace, prosperity, and the spread of God's work on the
earth.
Recently
there was published a series of articles based on the observations of a
number of historians: Spengler, de Reincourt, Ferraro, Gibbons, and
others. The author told how Rome had known a pioneer beginning not unlike
our own pioneer heritage, and then entered into two centuries of
greatness, reaching its pinnacle in the second of those centuries, going
into the decline and collapse in the third. Yet the sins of decay were
becoming apparent in the latter years of that second century. We are now
approaching the end of our second century.
Some
time ago I spent two weeks in war-torn Asia. While there I held six
meetings with Mormon servicemen in Vietnam. In combat dress—sometimes
with guns stacked in the corner of the chapel—these faithful Latter-day
Saints, bearers of the priesthood, strained to hear the gospel messages
above the roar of helicopters and jet fighters leaving or returning from
bombing missions, with the background of gunfire heard in the distance.
After
shaking hands with more than eight hundred of these battle-hardened,
brave, and patriotic men, men hard as nails physically and filled with
faith and testimony, my right hand ached and my heart was filled with
mingled feelings of gratitude and sadness.
I
thought of the thousands of sons, brothers, and husbands who gave their
lives in this, the strangest war in our nation's history. I made side
trips by helicopter to visit others critically wounded in hospitals. I
thought of those who were reported missing or captured, and those who had
died from noncombat causes, whose loved ones also mourned the loss caused
by this strange war.
A
few days later at an Asia-wide Mormon Servicemen's Conference at Mt. Fuji,
Japan, I listened to testimonies of faith and love of country that brought
lumps to throats and tears to many eyes. These men, all American citizens,
came to the conference from Thailand, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Okinawa, the
Philippines, Hong Kong, Guam, and other points. Some had traveled 3,000
miles to get there.
These
were men who were ready to give their all in defense of freedom. These
American servicemen worried about reports from home of rioters, draft-card
burners, and other citizens—many times more numerous—who seemed
oblivious to the threats to our freedom as they continued to enjoy their
comfortable complacency. They worried about those many complacent citizens
at home, some in high places, who talk—some gullibly, others they fear
deceptively—of peaceful coexistence with the greatest, most destructive
and insidious evil in the world. They knew that as college campus riots
spread, so does the communist's role in the disturbances.
And
yet we have men, including some in high places, who declare that communism
is not the principal threat to the United States of America. People who
make such statements are either uninformed, sadly naive, or else they are
deliberately helping the communist conspiracy, the greatest evil in this
world and the greatest threat to all we hold dear.
No,
most of these servicemen—especially the officers—were not deceived.
They would hope that their fellow citizens at home would get one thing
straight at the very beginning: international communism is the self-avowed
enemy of every loyal American. It has declared war against us and fully
intends to win. The war in which we are engaged is total. Although its
main battlefields are psychological, political, and economic, it also
encompasses revolution, violence, terror, and limited military skirmishes.
One
of the greatest tragedies of all time—and a fact that an increasing
number of us are gradually coming to realize—is this: The growth and
increasing success of communism around the world has been primarily the
result of the support—yes, increasing support—that it has received
from right within the United States, and particularly from our own
government.
May
I commend to you the book by Werner Keller entitled East Minus West
Equals Zero, in order that you might see the documentation as to how
we deliberately established Russia's industrial and war-making power. May
I also commend to you the filmstrip The Great Pretense—How to Finance
Communism While Ostensibly Opposing It, a documentary on how the free
world finances communism.
Now,
some people may feel that this has just been stupidity on our part and the
mistakes of mortal men who really meant well but did not realize what they
were doing. I agree that there has been some stupidity on the part of some
people, but consistence has never been a hallmark of stupidity. I believe
it was Forrestal who said that if it were just stupidity, then we would
have made a few more mistakes on our side now and then, because stupidity
is not consistent.
Sometimes
we have appeared to take a step forward toward freedom, but it has
inevitably been followed by two steps backward toward communism. Not only
has this been true in our foisting communism onto other countries, but it
also holds true regarding the increasing socialistic-communistic trends in
America.
President
Clark said:
And
do not think that all these usurpations, intimidations, and impositions
are being done to us through inadvertence or mistakes; the whole course is
deliberately planned and carried out; its purpose is to destroy the
Constitution and our constitutional government; then to bring chaos, out
of which the new Statism, with its slavery, is to arise, with a cruel,
relentless, selfish, ambitious crew in the saddle, riding hard with whip
and spur, a red-shrouded band of night riders for despotism. . . .
If
we do not vigorously fight for our liberties, we shall go clear through to
the end of the road and become another Russia, or worse. . . . (Church
News, September 25, 1949.)
Thomas
Jefferson said:
Single
acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a
series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued
unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a
deliberate, systematical plan of reducing us to slavery. (A Summary
View of the Rights of British America, 1774.)
Do
you think we could have defeated Hitler in World War II if we had trained
his pilots for him, built his steel mills, sent him billions in aid,
traded with him, and let his men run for office in our country, work in
our defense plants, teach our children? Yet this is exactly what we did
for the communists, and our trade with them was in practically all the
essentials that they needed to kill our men in Vietnam.
Quoting
again from President Clark:
I
have wished to bring together and call to your attention a number of
matters, the close relationship of which it is easy to miss, and to
indicate to you that, so assembled, they make a pattern which cannot be
accounted for except on the theory that some group of minds is working out
a diabolical plan for the destruction of our liberties and freedom, our
divinely inspired Constitution and the Government our fathers set up
thereunder, and the wiping out of our constitutional guarantees and the
free lives, the security, the happiness, and the blessings we have enjoyed
thereunder. (Address given to the Utah Wool Growers Association, January
24, 1945.)
Of
the objectives for which the communists are presently pressing, how many
can you name where they are not presently succeeding in this country? The
communist party line is for increased East-West trade, peaceful
coexistence, disarmament talks, reduction in military spending, etc. Are
they succeeding?
Even
back in the FBI Annual Report for 1964, J. Edgar Hoover reported:
"The signing of the partial nuclear testban treaty was interpreted by
the Communist Party, USA, as resulting from a shift in the world balance
of forces in favor of communism and as a turning away from capitalism
toward `socialism.'"
Now
what are we going to do about it? Said John Greenleaf Whittier:
.
. . Where's the manly spirit
Of the true-hearted and the unshackled gone?
Sons of old freemen, do we but inherit their names alone?
Is the old Pilgrim spirit quench'd within us?
Stoops the proud manhood of our souls so low
That Mammon's lure or Party's wile can win us to silence now?
Now, when our land to ruin's brink is verging,
In God's name let us speak while there is time;
Now, when the padlock for our lips is forging,
Silence is a Crime.
—"A Summons"
So
let's speak up. James Russell Lowell was right when he said, "Our
American Republic will endure only as long as the ideas of the men who
founded it continue dominant."
What
were those ideas? Well, they were in part incorporated in our Declaration
of Independence and our Constitution. And George Washington covered them
well when he said:
Of
all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity,
religion and morality are indispensable supports . . . reason and
experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in
exclusion of religious principle. It is substantially true that virtue or
morality is a necessary spring of popular government. . . . (Farewell
Address, September 17, 1796.)
Only
a moral and religious people deserve or will defend their freedom. Edmund
Burke stated it well when he said:
Men
are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition
to put moral chains upon their own appetites—in proportion as their love
of justice is above their rapacity;—in proportion as their soundness and
sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption;—in
proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise
and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist,
unless a controlling power upon the will and appetite is placed somewhere;
and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is
ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate
minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters. (Works,
1888 ed., vol. 4, pp. 51-52.)
Elder
Albert E. Bowen said, "Self-government involves self-control,
self-discipline, an acceptance of and the most unremitting obedience to
correct principles. . . . No other form of government requires so high a
degree of individual morality." (Improvement Era, vol. 41
[1938], p. 266.)
And
how are we to accomplish this?
We
cannot accomplish this and be like the young man who lived with his
parents in a public housing development, rode the free school bus, and
participated in the free school lunch program. He obtained his degree at
the state university, working part-time in the state capitol to supplement
his GI education check.
Upon
graduation, he married a public health nurse and obtained an RFC loan to
go into business. He then bought a ranch with an FHA loan and obtained
emergency feed from the government. He later put part of his land into the
soil bank, and the payments soon took care of the loan on his ranch.
The
government helped to clear his land, and the county agent showed him how
to terrace it. Then the government built him a fish pond and stocked it
with many fish. The government guaranteed him a sale for his farm products
at highest prices.
His
children grew up, entered public schools, ate free lunches, rode free
school buses, and swam in public pools.
He
signed a petition seeking federal assistance in developing a doubtful
industrial project to help the economy of his area. He was the leader in
obtaining the new post office and federal building and went to Washington
with a group to ask the government to build a great dam costing millions
so that his community could get the benefit of a temporary payroll.
He
petitioned the government to give the local airbase to the county. He was
also a leader in the movement to get special tax write-offs and exemptions
for his specific type farming.
Then,
one day, after calculating his taxes, he wrote his congressman, "I
wish to protest the excessive government expenditures and attendant high
taxes. I believe in rugged individualism. I think people should stand on
their own two feet without expecting handouts. I am opposed to all
socialistic trends, and I demand a return to the principles of our
Constitution and the policies of states' rights."
Too
many of us are like this young man.
We
must be devoted to sound principles in word and deed: principle above
party, principle above pocketbook, principle above popularity.
After
we are soundly grounded in principle, the next two steps should follow
automatically:
1.
We must be well informed from sources that are consistently accurate on
the things of greatest consequence.
2.
We must take action after we have done our homework.
"My
people are destroyed from lack of knowledge," said the prophet Hosea.
Let's not let it happen to us. First, let's do our homework, because
action without the proper education can lead to fanaticism. But after we
have done our homework, then let's take action, because education without
action can only lead to frustration and failure.
Said
Lenin:
The
Party is the conscious, advanced section of a class, its advance guard.
The power of this advance guard is ten, a hundred times greater than its
number. Is that possible? Can the power of a hundred exceed the power of
thousands? It can exceed it when the hundreds are organized. Organization
increases power by tenfold. (Quoted in Political Education: The
Communist Party, Part III, New York: International Publishers, 1935,
p. 6.)
He
was right, and an organized Gideon's army in the fight for freedom can
defeat this godless communist conspiracy. And so, I commend and salute all
those patriots who have banded together to work in an effective and
honorable manner to accomplish the objective of less government, more
individual responsibility, and, with God's help, a better world.
May
God bless America and preserve our divine Constitution and the republic
that he established thereunder.
Jesus
Christ Joseph Smith
Jr.
Brigham Young
John Taylor
Wilford Woodruff
Lorenzo Snow
Joseph F. Smith
Heber J. Grant
George A. Smith
David O. McKay
Joseph F. Smith
Harold B. Lee
Founding
Fathers Spencer Kimball Howard Hunter
Gordon Hinckley First Presidency Elders
Citizens
Rule Book
