Of Elections and Personal Responsibility

Personal involvement in the community, including thoughtful and diligent participation in elections and other essential elements of self-government, is not just a good idea.  It is central to the achievement and preservation of freedom.  For Latter-day Saints, it is also a sacred commandment.  Modern prophets have taught that the establishment of a constitutional-based nation in modern times was not an accident, nor can it be preserved by indifference.

In December 1833, the Lord declared,

I established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose, and redeemed the land by the shedding of blood. (Doctrine and Covenants 101:80)

This teaching would have been no surprise to the Founders of the nation.  Many wrote of the protecting hand of God in the American Revolution and sensed His inspiration in the development of the principles on which our constitutional government was built.

When the Constitution was established, now some 225 years ago, the Lord was not finished with His interest in the American experiment.  God declared that perpetuation of that work was an ongoing responsibility.  The Constitution was to be “maintained for the rights and protection of all flesh” (Doctrine and Covenants 101:77).  Note the Lord’s intended role for the United States as a benefit for all mankind. 

In his book, The Battle, Arthur C. Brooks observed how the United States has been a refuge of freedom for people from many nations.

For immigrants from around the world, the United States represents the land of second chances, a place where you have the possibility of determining what you will become. (Arthur C. Brooks, The Battle, p.82)

America’s influence for good has not been reserved only for people who have immigrated.  Since its founding the United States has acted on the world stage like no other nation in history.  While not neglecting the national security, the positive influence of the United States internationally has been obvious, not the least by those who hate what the United States has done to promote respect for individual rights and human progress.  The Islamic terrorists, the Marxist revolutionaries, the Nazi tyrants, the monarchists of earlier years, and oppressors of every other stripe for more than two hundred years have correctly seen the United States as a threat to their core beliefs.  Arthur Brooks described it in these words:

The claim that American militarism is to blame for the world’s woes is indefensible.  In World War I American military strength brought to an end the bloodiest, costliest war that had ever been waged up until that point in history.  In World War II, which began for the United States when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and Germany declared war on us, the American nation mobilized to end the twin evils of Japanese militarism and Nazism—and converted Japan and Germany into prosperous, free nations.  And through victory in the Cold War, won without a direct engagement of troops, America gave freedom to hundreds of millions of people previously in the shackles of Soviet communism.

(Arthur C. Brooks, The Battle, p.121)

 Historian Victor Davis Hansen echoed that theme, writing,

When we list the rogues’ gallery of thugs and killers that the United States has gone to war against in the last three generations—Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Kim il-Sung, Ho Chi Minh, the Stalinists, Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, Osama bin Laden—while providing postwar aid rather than annexing conquered land, it reminds us that no other country has had either the capability or willingness to take on such burdens.

(Victor Davis Hanson, “Is America Periclean?”, The New Criterion, October 2011, p.12)

In August of 1833, the Lord reemphasized that personal rights of freedom under constitutional safeguards are indeed unalienable, as the Founders held in the Declaration of Independence, a divine entitlement for all of His children.

And that law of the land which is constitutional, supporting that principle of freedom in maintaining rights and privileges, belongs to all mankind, and is justifiable before me.  Therefore, I, the Lord, justify you, and your brethren of my church, in befriending that law which is the constitutional law of the land; and as pertaining to law of man, whatsoever is more or less than this, cometh of evil. (Doctrine and Covenants 98:5-7)

That these rights may be violated history has amply proven and modernity continues to demonstrate.  But their virtue never goes away, as these rights continue to assert themselves, as all eternal things do.

I would also note, which is my key point today, that Latter-day Saints have a particular responsibility in “befriending” constitutional law as the protector of freedom.  That is because, as the Lord went on to explain in the revelation of August 1833, “when the wicked rule the people mourn.” (Doctrine and Covenants 98:9)  Constitutional government is demonstrably the least violent and most successful means for a people to deliver themselves from the oppressions of wicked rulers.  The United States is not and has not been immune to them, but our remedies for over two centuries have been ready at hand.  For Latter-day Saints, there is an obligation to join with our fellow citizens to use those constitutional remedies.

The Lord also gave counsel on how to meet that obligation:

Wherefore, honest men and wise men should be sought for diligently, and good men and wise men ye should observe to uphold; otherwise whatsoever is less than these cometh of evil. (Doctrine and Covenants 98:10)

Before each election the leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints remind the people of this duty.  The Latter-day Saints are not told who to vote for, as discovering that is part of the personal responsibility to seek “diligently,” but the duty and the purpose cannot be escaped, to find and support the honest, the good, and the wise.  Anything less than that is evil, for Latter-day Saints, and for anyone else who holds his rights and privileges of freedom to be unalienable and dear.