Wild Bells

Of Abraham Lincoln and Another Birth of Freedom

2012-02-12T19:17:00.000-05:00

On the 203^rd anniversary of the birth of AbrahamLincoln—to our national embarrassment a day no longer celebrated as a nationalholiday—I once again picked up a copy of the compelling lecture by WalterBerns, commemorating the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth. Delivered on February 9, 2009, at theAmerican Enterprise Institute, Berns’ lecture concluded with these words:

We say that a man canbe known by the company he keeps. So Isay that a nation, a people, can be known and be judged by its heroes, by whomit honors above all others.

We pay ourselves thegreatest compliment when we say that Abraham Lincoln is that man for us.

(WalterBerns, “Lincoln at Two Hundred: Why WeStill Read the Sixteenth President,” AEI Bradley Lecture, February 9, 2009)

Berns offers a compelling statistic as a measure of thenation’s recognition of Lincoln and his greatness:

Morehas been written about Abraham Lincoln than about any other president or, forthat matter, any other American. The amountis prodigious: no fewer than16,000 booksand goodness knows how many journal articles.

Abraham Lincoln was president for slightly more than fouryears, assassinated one month after his second inauguration, when the Civil Warwas not quite over but its end was in clear sight, Robert E. Lee havingsurrendered the rebels’ largest and most successful army just a few daysbefore. Soon after his firstinauguration the war began.

What are the grounds for asserting and recognizing Lincoln’sheroism, having fought a war and not quite finished it? Because he did fight the war and perseveredand put in place what was needed for its inexorable conclusion in the victoryof the United States. I do not sayvictory of the North, but rather victory for the whole nation. North, South, and all of the later states of theWest and all of their people and their descendents were blessed by thatvictory. So was the rest of the world,for that victory showed that a free people could triumph in self-government,having rejected the tyrannies of Europe and overcome the challenge of anarchyoffered by the rebels of the old South. The United States has done a lot of good for the world since then, allof which would have been impossible but for that victory.

Lincoln’s immediate predecessor, the Pennsylvania Democrat JamesBuchanan, opposed the rebellion of the South but refused to do anything aboutit. He dithered and dallied as stateafter state fell into rebellion and even seized U.S. Army and Navy supplies andfacilities while doing so. Berns quoteshow then Senator William H. Seward mimicked Buchanan’s near traitorousdereliction of duty with the impotent formula, “the states had no right tosecede, unless they wanted to, and the president had the duty to enforce thelaw, unless someone opposed him.”

Lincoln came to office with a singular focus from which herefused to be distracted, to meet foursquare the national emergency, that is,to unite the nation and preserve that unity. And he knew why. He knew what theUnited States meant for freedom, for Americans, and for all peopleeverywhere. In his Gettysburg Address,Lincoln reminded his countrymen that the war was a test whether our free nation“or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, could long endure.” The answer must not be allowed to be anythingother than “Yes.”

As another mark of greatness, Lincoln knew that this was notabout Lincoln. As the war progressed, hefully expected to be defeated in the election of 1864 by the candidate of theDemocrats, former Union General George B. McClellan, on a platform of endingthe war by negotiating a truce with the South. Lincoln pressed Generals Grant and Sherman to win the war before Lincoln’slikely successor could surrender.

Moreover, Lincoln repeatedly pointed the nation away from himselfand to who it was who fought the war. Atthe new National Cemetery at Gettysburg, he reminded the nation that it was “thebrave men, living and dead” whose national sacrifice had consecrated the wareffort, far above the poor power of speeches by political leaders to add ordetract from it. Later, as the end ofthe war could be seen approaching and the end of his own life near if unseen—soonto be added to the many others who paid the price of preserving self-government—AbrahamLincoln again pointed the people to those who fronted the battle. His second inaugural address could have beena moment of triumph and self congratulation against great odds. Instead he asked the nation “to care for himwho shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan”.

Lincoln was great because he rose to the challenge of thetimes without shirking or excuse and sacrificed all that he had to fulfill thepromise of the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal,which principles were given force through the Constitution. The force of those constitutional principleswas correctly interpreted by the southern slave holders as leading to the inevitableend of slavery, confronting them with the acceptance of the end of their “particularinstitution” or rebellion. They choserebellion and anarchy, and Abraham Lincoln rallied a nation to refuse to walkaway from that challenge to liberty for all.

Today again we face a rather divided nation facingfreedom-threatening dangers, not the least of which is impending nationalbankruptcy. Fortunately, our nation isless divided than the press would have us believe (opinion poll after opinionpoll shows large majorities who support the principles of the Declaration ofIndependence and the Constitution). Thistime, however, we have a president who not only avoids the national fiscal crisisbut feeds it. To distract attention fromthat irresponsible policy he seeks every opportunity to encourage division andcreate new divisions. President Obamaseeks to divide the nation by income, by race, by class, by religious belief. He indicts whole industries and groups of people one by one as ineffect enemies of the nation, whether it is the energy industry,pharmaceuticals, banking, health insurance, or Catholic leadership. The solutions that he promises all boil down to “vote for me” in amedia-supported national cult of personality.

Every cult of personality throughout history has ended badlyfor its people and their fearless leader. The current one does not look to be changing that historical trend. And yet, we still have the power to electour leaders, and the year of national election has begun. It may not be too late.

As I ponder the birth, life, and service of Abraham Lincoln,I choose his example, because he rejected the cult of personality but insteadgave his life for individual freedom and self-government. I have hopes that the policies of dependenceon government and the surrender of freedom will be rejected so that theAmerican experiment will witness yet another “birth of freedom—and thatgovernment of the people, by the people, for the people” will continue to be abeacon and example around the world.

Of Holy Ordinances and Meaningful Lives

2012-02-05T18:35:00.000-05:00

One of the benighted ideas that American society inheritedfrom the benighted 1960s is the idea that marriage and other sacred religiousordinances are just meaningless ceremonies. Forty years later the tracks of trouble and sorrow caused by this andrelated assaults on marriage should be readily apparent, yet the conceptsurvives, supported particularly by people who see life as a carnival ofselfish delights, where one grabs for all of the gratification that he can—andthen dies.

That is after all a doctrine of isolation and death. Sooner or later the commitmentlessself-centered world view ends in death, leaving a heritage of broken kewpiedolls, regrettable memories, shallow relationships, and psychological emptiness. In fact, periodically statistics show us thatit shortens the mortality ride. Forthose who follow that lifestyle—and most of America’s social leaders do andincreasingly seek to impose it on everyone else—life seems short, cheap, and a despairingstruggle for meaning of some sort. When itis over there is a profound sense of loss, not only the loss in terms of theend of life but in terms of the loss of a lifetime that has been lived sobereft of redeeming value.

Many of the acolytes of this doctrine of death throughoutthe ages have been desperate to extend life but only to live it with moreemptiness. Others who are overcome alongthe way by the vacuum of meaning in the lifestyle have sought to end it allsooner than later, only to find that they have brought their empty life viewwith them into yet another life in the world of spirits, where they fearfullyawait the tallying up of their lives’ events into pitiful sums of value.

Our Heavenly Father instituted sacred ordinances from thebeginning as tools to convey and reinforce meaning, each ordinance pointing to theSource of meaning in this life and in the eternal worlds to come. At the coreof each sacred ordinance is a covenant and promise between God and man. The form of each ordinance from God isdesigned to point the mind to Jesus Christ, whose atoning sacrifice inGethsemane and on the cross gave meaning and value to this life.

Baptism, the first sacred ordinance offered to men and womenin this life, is a useful example. Through baptism we accept the vicarious suffering of Jesus Christ in ourstead so that we do not have to suffer for our sins, in exchange for a covenantand promise that we will change our lives and refrain from sinning, a promisethat we will turn away from the meaningless life of self-indulgence to a liferich in meaning and value focused on love, kindness, achievement, anddevelopment of virtue. We are briefly “buried”in water, simultaneously burying our life of death and washing away itsfilthiness. We arise from the water tonewness of life, cleansed from our sins.

The marriage ordinance provided by God is an eternal pledgebetween husband and wife of perpetual faithfulness and dedication to thehappiness of each other, as a foundation for living a joint life forever, afitting and appropriate platform for bringing children into the family. These covenants and promises are made byhusband and wife to each other and also to God, whose power changes and uniteshearts to reinforce faithfulness and to give these promises power that extendsthroughout eternity. Taken altogether,this becomes a highly significant and holy ordinance with profound impact onthe memory and the heart. Compare thatwith the world’s version: hey, want tolive together?

Glorious versus pitiful. The pattern is repeated for all of God’s ordinances versus men’ssubstitutes, the holy versus the hollow.

Of Individuals and Societies

2012-01-29T16:35:00.000-05:00

In a world of several billion people it can be hard toimagine where the individual finds a place. When governments and politicians talk of classes and masses each one ofus can feel like he or she is left out or, worse, just combined and lost in themix.

Fortunately in the end we remain individuals in the eyes ofGod, related in one way or another to each other but separate and individualall the same. Consider some of the mostmoving and intimate contacts of God with man. These were profoundly individual experiences. God spoke directly with Moses on MountSinai. The laws that He gave to Moses,the Ten Commandments, all govern individual behavior, whether a man or woman’s conducttoward God, or to his or her parents, or to his or her fellow beings. The Twelve Apostles were each called one byone. The first word that God the Fatherspoke to the young Joseph Smith in 1820 was, “Joseph,” just as God had calledthe young boy, Samuel, by name thousands of years before.

Even when involved with crowds, the Savior’s attention wasreadily drawn toward individuals. Thefollowing is but one example of Jesus’ attention to one amidst the pressing multitude,one possessing no particular distinction beyond strong faith in Him and Hishealing power and her own worth to God:

And a woman having anissue of bloodtwelve years, which had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could behealed of any, came behind him, and touched the border of hisgarment: and immediately her issue of blood stanched. And Jesus said, Who touchedme? When all denied, Peter and they that were with him said, Master, the multitudethrong thee and press thee,and sayest thou, Who touched me? And Jesus said, Somebody hath touched me: for I perceive that virtue is goneout of me. And when thewoman saw that she was not hid, she came trembling, and falling down beforehim, she declared unto him before all the people for what cause she had touchedhim, and how she was healedimmediately. And he saidunto her, Daughter, be of good comfort: thyfaith hath made thee whole; go in peace. (Luke 8:43-48)

Doubtless among the multitude were others with ailments and afflictions,but only one sought healing, and that one was healed, and Jesus was aware ofher.

On another occasion, in the Americas, Jesus Christ followingHis resurrection visited with another multitude. This was a multitude of faithful, not apassing multitude preoccupied with many lesser things. There were sick among them, too, and theSavior healed them all, “every one as they were brought forth unto him.” (3Nephi 17:9) I presume that He could havehealed them all at once as a group, but each had faith, each sought healing,and He valued each one as meriting His personal attention.

Earlier that same day, in one of the most moving events inthe history of the world, Jesus gave the people, twenty-five hundred in number,a personal and irrefutable witness of His death and resurrection. He said to them,

Arise and come forthunto me, that ye may thrustyour hands into my side, and also that ye may feelthe prints of the nails in my hands and in my feet, that ye may know that I amthe Godof Israel, and the God of the whole earth,and have been slain for the sins of the world.

And itcame to pass that the multitude went forth, and thrust their hands into hisside, and didfeel the prints of the nails in his hands and in his feet; and this they diddo, going forth one by one until they had all gone forth, and did see withtheir eyes and did feel with their hands, and did know of a surety and did bearrecord, that it was he, of whom it was written by the prophets, that shouldcome. (3 Nephi 11:14, 15)

Those twenty-five hundred personal witnesses are now inforce and offered to all the world.

I offer one more example out of many more, this one againfrom the Old World. During the LastSupper before the Savior’s atoning sacrifice, Jesus gave important instructionto Peter, the leader of the Twelve:

And the Lord said, Simon, Simon,behold, Satanhath desired to haveyou, that he may sift you aswheat: But I have prayedfor thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted,strengthenthy brethren. (Luke 22:31, 32)

Unaccustomed as we are in modern English to the subtletiesof the use of “you” and “thou” we might miss some of the meaning in the Savior’smessage. I admit that I only noticed itwhen I read the passage in Spanish (where the plural vosotros and singular tú aremore obvious). The Lord was warningSimon Peter that Satan wanted to destroy Peter and his fellows (the plural, “you”)but that Jesus had prayed for Peter (thou) and for his faith. When Peter was fully converted, then it washis personal assignment to strengthen his brethren. This is all very personal and veryindividual, albeit within the context of an organization of individuals, theTwelve Apostles.

Of course we are all members of groups and societies, fromfamilies on up to nations and beyond. Allgroups and societies are composed of individuals, with individual worth,talents, rights, and virtue. All justsocieties—God’s societies included and setting the standard—recognize that theyare societies of individuals, for the benefit of the individuals who make themup. All others are despotisms, for thebenefit of the individuals who run them, who wish to sift the society’s membersas wheat.

Of American Exceptionalism and Human Happiness

2012-01-22T16:08:00.000-05:00

It is clear to most Americans that America is a unique and extraordinaryplace, not only unlike anywhere else in the world but in important waysbetter. That is not a boast. It is proven reality that needs to berecognized and understood. It needs tobe understood, because America’s uniquely important position in the world isneither accidental nor imperishable. Weneed to know why it is, what made it, so that we can know what we need to do topreserve and promote it.

As one place to start, we have a federal system of governmentwith the central organization founded on a powerful written constitution,inspired of God, focused on the worth of the individual, with a governmentanswerable to the people, restricted in powers and authorities divided amongthree separate and co-equal and dependent branches. With some lapses and unhappy seasons, theAmerican people have largely and successfully steered the nation safely and wellbetween the rocks and whirlpools of tyranny and anarchy, however loud andaggressive those forces have been. The1930s of the Roosevelt years were an unhappy season of tyranny, while the CivilWar was the agonizing response to the challenge of anarchy.

To point out another field of evidence of Americanexceptionalism, we have a very exceptional military system that has yieldedimportant and valuable results for Americans and for the world. Unlike anywhere else in modern history or nearlyall of ancient history, the American military has always been subject to civilianauthority, ensuring that it has been servant to America and the ideals of theAmerican people, never our master. HistorianVictor Davis Hanson described recent American military history in these words:

When we list the rogues’ gallery ofthugs and killers that the United States has gone to war against in the lastthree generations—Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Kim il-Sung, Ho Chi Minh, theStalinists, Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, Osama bin Laden—whileproviding postwar aid rather than annexing conquered land, it reminds us thatno other country has had either the capability or willingness to take on suchburdens. (Victor Davis Hanson, “Is America Periclean?”, The New Criterion, October 2011, p.12)

Our freedom from oppression by enemies or by our owngovernment has allowed free enterprise and human opportunity to thrive herelike nowhere else in the story of mankind. Our system does not cause these, it merely allows and protects them. People by nature seek growth, progress,advancement, development, innovation, achievement, and all that goes intocreation. It is part of our divinenature as children of the great Creator, the Father of growth and progress andhappiness. All of these things go intowhat humans find as happiness.

In my grade school years in south Florida we had a reader, Singing Wheels, that captured thisAmerican entrepreneurial spirit. RecentlyI was able to find and buy a copy of that reader. Written by Mabel O’Donnell, the book not onlyhelped teach me to read, but it helped make the American spirit part of my wayof seeing my country and the world, a source of inspiration to me as a youngchild that has not ceased to inspire into manhood. Here is a brief excerpt, in which the youngboy, Tom Hastings, and his father are talking on their hillside above theirvery new town only recently planted on the Illinois prairie.

“Yes, Tom,” said Pa .. . , “I guess that’s what we are, Ma and you and I and the rest of us—pioneers. We have opened up new country and have builtnew homes. But the people who followwill turn these rich prairies into farm lands, and towns will spring up. . . Wewon’t be pioneers long.”

. . . There was athoughtful, faraway look in Pa’s eyes, as if he were dreaming a dream which hehoped might come true.

“All that hillside isours, Tom,” he said. “Bought from thegovernment for only twenty dollars. Before another year comes round, the cabins will begin to climb thehill. And there on the very top, thereby the two big maples, will be our house, a frame house built from lumber sawedin our own mill. . . .”

Just as quickly as ithad come, the thoughtful, faraway look left Pa’s eyes. “Yes, that is the way it will be, son. But don’t forget! It takes hard work to make dreams come true,and there is work aplenty for all of us.” (Mabel O’Donnell, Singing Wheels, p.82, 83)

For 21^st Century Americans there remains work aplentyfor all of us, not the least of which is preserving our heritage of freedom,ever under attack from the ever present advocates of tyranny and anarchy. The next generation and much of the world depend upon our success.

Of Individual Freedom and the United States Senate

2012-01-15T21:53:00.000-05:00

The first lawsuit has been filed. There will likely be others. When President Obama, in an action more redolentof hubris than homage to the Constitution, gave recess appointments to fourindividuals to lead government agencies, even though the Senate was not inrecess, he initiated a constitutional crisis that is only beginning to unfold.

Three of these illegal appointments were to the NationalLabor Relations Board (NLRB). The NLRBhas been pushing a new requirement that all businesses put up posters, designedby the NLRB, encouraging workers to form a union. Businessmen have objected. Only about 20% of American workers havechosen to form or join unions, which frustrates the Obama Administration,because it relies heavily upon unions for political support and funding. Without those three appointees the NLRB doesnot have a quorum to finish its work on this new requirement. Pretending that it now has a legal quorum, the NLRBresumed action on the rule, and businessmen filed suit, complaining that PresidentObama did not just break the law; he is trying to break the Constitution. That is to say, this is not about the Senate;it is about the rights of American citizens, in this case the right to be freefrom imposed unionization.

Administration advocates would like to trivialize thiscrisis as a mere political dispute between the President and RepublicanSenators, yet another partisan spat. That would be a superficial view, and it would be wrong. Besides that fact that so far only oneDemocrat in the Senate has concurred with the President’s assertion that he rather than the Senate decides whenthe Senate is in recess, the core of the matter affects you and me far morethan it affects the Senate.

We must remember and never forget that the Senate (and theother branches of the United States government) was created by the Constitutionto be an instrument for defending the rights of the individuals who make up “We thePeople.” The Founders divided the powerof the government into three coequal branches specifically so that they couldblock each other from taking unilateral action. When the Senate asserted its authority against action of the President,it did so to preserve our freedom, in this case our freedom from being governedby people who are not accountable to the citizens. During the 1787 debate on ratification of the Constitution PennsylvanianSamuel Ryan described it this way:

Mr. [John] Adams’s sine qua non of a good government is three balancing powers, whoserepelling qualities are to produce an equilibrium of interests, and therebypromote the happiness of the whole community. (Samuel Bryan, “A Most Daring Attempt to Establish a Despotic Aristocracy”, in The Debate on the Constitution: Part One, p.55)

After all, we do not live in a monarchy where the kingappoints his ministers to impose their will on the king’s subjects. Our ancestors fought a war to get away frommonarchy or they fled from lands where lords, ladies, kings, dictators, andother tyrants governed. TheConstitution, first and foremost, was designed to preserve our hard-won freedomand protect us from arbitrary rule.

The Declaration of Independence cited numerous objectionsagainst exercises of despotic power by the British king. Consider these two, relevant to this wholequestion of whether President Obama, or any American President, should beallowed to appoint whomever he wants as judges or other government leaderswithout Senate consent:

He has made Judges dependent on hisWill alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment oftheir salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officersto harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

Under the Constitution, people with the power of governmentwere either to be elected or appointed with the consent of people who wereelected. The President can nominate, buthe must wait for the Senate to approve the nomination. That can be inconvenient to those appointed—Ihad to wait several months before the Senate confirmed my nomination as anexecutive officer—but it is very convenient for the preservation of freedom.

After President Obama’s unconstitutional appointments hisJustice Department—which reports directly to him—rendered its opinionthat the boss was right. The coreargument supporting its unsurprising (albeit late) conclusion is that theSenate should not be allowed to block what the President wants to do. Of course, in our system of government, thatis the Senate’s job, insisting that no one be given power to make laws andissue edicts without its consent. That isnot a part of the Constitution that our freedom can allow the President toskip.

Of Presidential Czars and Constitutional Crises

2012-01-04T21:42:00.000-05:00

In this age of crisis, one after another, it would not besurprising if you did not notice that the United States has entered into a constitutionalcrisis, brought on by recent political moves of President Obama. The resolution of the crisis will affect the balanceof power and authorities in our government, which balance was created by ourFounders to protect the freedom of the people.

That balance has worked very well for some 200 years,although elsewhere I have noted that American children no longer seem to use aphrase that was common when I was a child. In those days not so very long ago a child would commonly defy theintimidation or bullying of another by retorting, “This is a free country.” Our freedom has been eroding. It is in serious danger yet again.

Let us pause a moment to reflect upon our written Constitution. It is a miraculous document, created bypeople who had only a few years before risked their lives, their fortunes, andtheir sacred honor to throw off monarchy and tyranny and create a nation wherethe rights of the individual were not only respected but guarded. One of the first acts under the Constitutionwas to add to it a Bill of Rights, as if the Founders wanted to underline thatthe Constitution was all about personal liberty and preserving it. Each and every item in the Bill of Rights,our first ten amendments to the Constitution, is a further limitation on thepower of government over the rights of the individual.

Americans of various religious faiths, including those whodisavow the existence of God, have over the last two centuries recognized theinspired nature and deep wisdom of the Constitution. Many see and acknowledge even the hand of Goddirectly manifested in its inspiration and promotion (see Doctrine andCovenants 101:80).

The Constitution is based upon the dread, born of painfulexperience, of entrusting men and women with the power of government over therest of us. It takes little historicalresearch to find endless examples of how that power has been abused in nearlyall times and places of the world. Yetanarchy is no less a curse, one with which our Founders were also acquainted.

To balance and counter the two dangers, of tyranny andanarchy, the Founders relied upon a system of government that dividedpower. No one would have a monopoly oreven a predominance of power. To beginwith, the power of government overall would be strictly limited (and the Billof Rights limited it even more), all but essential government powers remainingwith the citizenry. Then government powerwas divided between State and Federal authorities. The power of the Federal government wasfurther divided between three separate and equalbranches of government.

The Founders did not believe in efficient government. Rather, they believed that an inefficient government was needed as anefficient means of preserving the rights of the citizens. While dividing authority among threebranches, it was intended that neither branch could operate without theeventual cooperation of the others. As hadbeen seen in the English battles between king and parliament, tyranny and oppressionresulted when either branch was able to rule without the consent of the other.

The United States has similarly suffered when weakness ofpresident or congress allowed the other branch of government to operate withoutadequate check or balance. The weaknessof President Andrew Johnson allowed the tyranny of carpetbaggers withCongressional approval to oppress the people of the broken South following theCivil War, promoting poverty and racial hatred that lasted there for a hundredyears. The tyranny of the FranklinRoosevelt administration turned a deep recession into a Depression that lastedfor a decade, disappointing people all around the world in the value ofdemocracy and encouraging the dictators in Italy, Japan, Germany, and theSoviet Union who brought us World War II.

The first two years of the Obama Administration witnessedanother period of weakened Congressional power, with a Congress all too readyto do the bidding of the President. Awilling Congress passed on to the executive branch control over the healthcaresystem, the financial system, and added trillions of dollars to government debt,only narrowly refusing to give bureaucrats authority to control the carbondioxide that all humans exhale.

In the elections of 2010 the electorate voted to restore thebalance by electing a congress that would object to the excesses of theexecutive branch. That is precisely whatthe new members of Congress, with uneven success, have been trying to do overthe past year.

President Obama is getting frustrated with thesituation. With the new year he hasannounced that he is going to try to govern without the Congress. At a speech in the wealthy Cleveland suburbof Shaker Heights, President Obama said the following, “when Congress refuses to act, and as a result,hurts our economy and puts our people at risk, then I have an obligation asPresident to do what I can without them.” Then to emphasize that he means what he says,he announced the appointment of Richard Cordray, the former Attorney General ofOhio, who was defeated in the last election, to be a new federal financialconsumer czar, without Senate confirmation. The Senate has refused to confirm Cordray,but President Obama plans to install him in office anyway.

The appointmentconfirmation process was one of the protections of the Constitution to limitthe power of the President. The Constitutioncarefully and explicitly divided the power to give government authority to unelectedofficials, placing with the President the ability to nominate but requiring thatSenate approval be gained before the nominee could take office. As I can testify from personal experience, itis a frustrating process. The Foundersmust have assumed that the Senate would from time to time refuse to consent tosome nominees, in which case the President could not proceed, the authority ofthe government would not be extended to that man or woman.

The Founders were also practical people. They knew that there would be times whengovernment posts needed to be filled when the Senate was not in session. So the Constitution allows the President tomake temporary appointments without Senate confirmation, but only when theSenate is in recess. This practicalelement of the Constitution was not intended to get around the normal procedurerequiring in effect President and Senate to agree before giving powers ofgovernment to unelected officials unaccountable to the people whom they wouldgovern.

The problem for President Obama is that the Senate hasrefused to approve the nomination, but they also refuse to go into a recess. What to do? President Obama’s solution is to declare on his own that the Senate isin recess and appoint Cordray anyway.

Hence, our constitutional crisis. Can the President give governmental power overthe people to anyone that he wants without Senate consent? The Constitution says no, and the Presidentsays yes. Normally, we would all takecomfort in the reassurance that the courts will enforce the Constitution, butcourt decisions of recent decades have shaken confidence. This presidential act of hubris is surelyheaded for the courts. If the justicesfail to do their duty, then the powers of unelected federal bureaucrats (unaccountable to people or Congress) willgrow, and individual liberty will be significantly eroded. For now, I am pinning my hopes on thejudicial branch rising to the emergency.

Of Resolutions and Getting Past Frustration

2012-01-01T16:39:00.000-05:00

Not to discourage you from making New Year’s resolutions,but how are your 2012 resolutions coming? Are you still on track? Given upon them? Thinking about it? They can drive you nuts.

The problem is not so much with making resolutions at thestart of the year. Psychologically, anew beginning that is tied to a new beginning of the calendar can be a goodmotivator, particularly to get started. Neither is there a problem with choosing to change something or dosomething for the better. Given a minuteor less, every honest person can identify a habit in need of change or apractice in need of adoption. Theproblem is usually not even that the aim is too high, the goal too unrealistic,the resolution too ambitious.

If anything, the real problem is that the resolution is toonarrow, too small, too unimportant, particularly if taken without a greatercontext. Each of us should be self awareenough to recognize plenty of material to work with to create a depressinglylong “needs improvement” list. Thequestion of where to begin—if we persist—may soon be overwhelmed by thequestion, where does it end? There are too many for any one to hold our attention. We need tolook beyond the individual sin or foible, on to why we are willing to sin.

Martin Luther was in large measure driven away from theCatholic Church because of its emphasis on specifically repenting of each andevery sin, correcting every personal flaw, large and small, with particularity. There was no apparent end in this life to thecorrecting, no bottom to the list of sins, especially with a list being addedto each day. Repenting of each and everysin, he never made enough progress on his own list.

Fortunately for Luther and for everyone else, the God ofHeaven has never called upon us to repent of each of our sins seriatim. Neither have His prophets. That is a man-made idea, and one that issure to lead to deep moral frustration.

To be sure, God cannot look upon sin with the least degreeof allowance (Doctrine and Covenants 1:31). Heaven is the ultimate “white room;” not a speck of evil can betolerated there, no room for anything unclean in the least degree (see 3 Nephi27:19).

God does not require us to repent of each sin. He requires thatwe repent of all sins. There is a difference, all of the differencein the world. The first suggests that wecan repent of sins in some kind of order, working on some sins while still playing with some of our favorites, even if onlytemporarily. The true doctrine is more demanding and more liberating: God wants us to give up sinning, the willingness to doevil. The focus on individual sins ismisplaced, as if the source of the problem is in the act itself, what we do, whereas the real source isfound in why we do what we do. God wants us to change our hearts (and willhelp us to do so), knowing that the nature of our actions will then take careof themselves.

Carefully search all Christian scriptures, ancient and modern,and you will find God consistently calling upon His children to repent of allof their sins. He does not ask for orcondone a selective repentance that focuses on this or that individual sin orever ask us to work down our personal list of evil. He asks us to give it up, all of it. What the Lord requires of His children to beacceptable to live with Him again is a change of life. The ancient American prophet Alma describedthis repentance, this change of heart, as a man who has “desired righteousnessuntil the end of his days” (Alma41:6). John, the Apostle of ancienttimes, referred to this change as walking “in the light” (see 1 John 1:5-10).

This change of heart comes from belief in Christ, a powerfulwholehearted belief that manifests itself in our actions. Another ancient American prophet, Samuel, declaredit with these words:

And if ye believe on his [Christ’s]name ye will repent of all your sins, that thereby ye may have a remission ofthem through his merits. (Helaman 14:13)

Notice that it is true, vitalizing belief that brings aboutthe change of action. A modern prophet,Spencer W. Kimball, explained true repentance in this way:

In connection withrepentance, the scriptures use the phrase, ‘with all his heart’ . . .Obviously, this rules out any reservations. Repentance must involve an all-out, total surrender to the program ofthe Lord. (Spencer W. Kimball, TheMiracle of Forgiveness, p.203)

One last point: note thatperfection is not required to enterinto the light. As the Apostle Johntaught, those who enter into the light are in the process of making themselvespure (1 John 3:3), Christ giving them the power to do so through thesoul-enriching influence of the Holy Spirit.

Make your resolutions and do them now, but put them in thecontext of changing your heart and thereby your whole life. Aim for the highest of all. Then we know where to begin and where it allends. And keep in mind, Christ allowsyou to start over when you slip up.

Of the Advent of the Savior and the Second Coming of Christ

2011-12-22T17:02:00.000-05:00

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. The signs of the advent of Christmas are allaround and growing in number and urgency. Red and green appear with greater frequency and intensity on people’sclothes. Each day yet one more housesports Christmas lights. Our door is growingcrowded with Christmas cards. Thecalendar is filling with concerts, festivals, and celebrations. Appeals to buy, sell, and contribute arebecoming incessant. Carols have takenpriority for church congregations and choirs, and Christmas themes predominatein addresses from the pulpit. Theanticipation in children’s talk and faces is plainly growing. You cannot miss it, and it all makes me feelhappy, a perfect tonic to the growing darkness of the meteorological season. Christmas day is imminent.

And so it was prior to the actual birth of JesusChrist. Unlike for anyone ever born tothe family of Adam, the birth of the Savior was foretold again and again forthousands of years prior to the event, with signs to encourage the believers ofthe marvelous day when the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would come to liveamong men. As Adam and Eve were expelledfrom the Garden of Eden, Eve was promised that while the serpent (Satan) would bruise the heal of her seed (the Savior), He would bruisethe serpent’s (Satan’s) head. During theexodus of Israel from Egypt to the promised land the advent of the Savior waslinked to the appearance of a star as a sign to Jacob (see Numbers 24:17). Isaiah comforted King Ahaz by reminding himof the birth of Christ, giving him as a sign that “a virgin shall conceive, andbear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” (Isaiah 7:14) Micah foretold that the Messiah would comefrom Bethlehem, a prophecy so well known that King Herod directed the wise menfrom the east to go there to find the Christ child (see Micah 5:2 and Matthew2:1-8).

Across the oceans, on another continent, the Americas,ancient prophets similarly foretold of the birth of Christ. The prophet Alma declared,

For behold, I say unto you there bemany things to come; and behold, there is one thing which is of more importancethan they all—for behold, the time is not far distantthat the Redeemer liveth and cometh among his people. (Alma 7:7)

Another ancient American prophet, Nephi, had lived in theOld World before he and his family were led by God to the New World. He was given a vision in which he saw “Avirgin, most beautiful and fair above all other virgins . . . bearing a childin her arms.” An angeltold Nephi that this child was “the Lamb of God, yea, even the Son of the EternalFather!” (see 1 Nephi 11:14-21)

More than 400 years later yet another American prophet, arighteous king named Benjamin, reported to his people the testimony from anangel of the coming birth of the Redeemer:

And he shall be called Jesus Christ, the Son of God, theFatherof heaven and earth, the Creator of allthings from the beginning; and his mother shall becalled Mary. (Mosiah 3:8)

These and many other signs of the advent of Jesus Christ tothe earth, announced for the encouragement of all who through many ages lookedwith hope and joy to the birth of the Savior, were predicted and fulfilled asprophesied. The scriptural record couldconfirm, “it had come to pass, yea, all things, every whit, according to thewords of the prophets.” (3 Nephi 1:20)

Today we stand thousands of years after that event. Looking back, the signs and their completionare clear to see. But we need not onlylook back, for we also can look forward to the return of Christ, not as ahumble little baby but as the resurrected and glorified Messiah.

We too are living in the midst of a season of advent, expectantlylooking to the promised arrival of Christ to rule and reign on earth. As with the Savior’s birth there are manypredicted signs of the second coming of Christ, signs that are appearing ingreater number and urgency. For thosewho watch and are ready, it is a time of joy and happiness, even in a darkeningseason of the world. Just as surely asall of the prophecies of Christ’s birth were fulfilled, so can we look withconfidence to all that God’s prophets have foretold of His return. For there will come a day, and not far off,when we, too, can declare, “it had come to pass, yea, all things, every whit,according to the words of the prophets.”

May our Christmas celebration of Christ be enriched bylooking to His arrival in the past as the Babe of Bethlehem and forward to His return as Kingof kings and Lord of Lords.

Of Christmas in America and Life over Death

2011-12-17T21:56:00.000-05:00

Welcome to Christmas and the whole Christmas season, doublywelcome this year because of the national focus of the media on the excessivelytrivial, even while things that matter a lot to a lot of people are happeningall around us. The media masters whohave been running the presidential debates and proffering questions thatemphasize the banal and the silly over substance and principle could use avacation.

Welcome Christmas, when we can focus on things that affectreal lives and the things that matter in real lives. Welcome the opportunity to worship the Saviorwho brought meaning to our lives, while the leaders of men increasingly seek topull meaning out of our lives or, failing that, distract people from all thatholds lasting meaning and value and richness.

I include the routine censures of the “crasscommercialism” associated with Christmas. Those trite criticisms, trotted out at this time of every year sincebefore the lifetimes of any of us, are really beside the point. Is it wrong for people to seek in a myriad ofways to offer us their goods and services and to be rewarded when we eagerlyrespond to what they provide? In a worldof human interaction, what can be better than the free exchange of ourabundance in the free markets of America. Surely people can be as shallow in this season as in any other, and shunning bad taste merits no rebuke, but nopraise of poverty over abundance will cure these ills. Far from material things being irrelevant toChristmas, Christ and His creation and His atonement made possible the earth and the fulnessthereof and our freedom to enjoy them.

True Christmas celebration comprehends all thingsimportant. That celebration embraces thefulness of the goodness of the physical world in which we spiritual beings havebeen immersed. To deny the physical and condemnits enjoyment in full measure is just as mistaken as to deny and neglect ourspiritual being. They must be taken amplytogether, neglecting neither. As Christrevealed in modern times, “spirit and element inseparably connected receive afulness of joy. . .” (Doctrine and Covenants 93:33)

Christ promises to us “every good thing” (see Moroni7:25). Unredeemed Death puts all goodthings out of our reach. The sacrificeof Jesus the Savior overcame death in every significant way and brought allgood things within our reach.

That is precisely why a fulsome celebration of Christmasmust be a celebration of all good things, high and low, physical andspiritual. These are the things thatmatter to everyone every day. The brightnessof stars, the love of family, the warmth of a home, the goodness of a savory meal,the beauty of music, the satisfaction of work done, the joy of light, the scentof the evergreen, the charm of children, the exhilaration of creation, and manymillion other manifestations of the goodness of God to His children are whatChristmas means and are what power its celebration.

Christmas is the celebration of Life in all its goodness, arejection of Death and the culture of poverty and decay and their worship by somany who would rip at faith and freedom. Not accidentally faith and freedom--the very pursuit of happiness--were woven into the founding ofAmerican society. The birth and physicallife of Jesus Christ, including His own redemptive death and very realresurrection from the grave, merit all our praise, our worship, and our gratefulenjoyment, still celebrated in America more than anywhere else.

I say, bring it on.

Of Public-Private Partnerships and Public Corruption

2011-11-23T21:28:00.000-05:00

One of the popular phrases in Washington that makes me cringe every timethat I hear it is public-privatepartnership. This is a foreignconcept, alien to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The Founders fled from the institution. It had a rich history in Europe,and our Founders hated it, because it tended toward abuse (as it doestoday). They had been methodically abused by it.

One example, the infamous British East India Company was apublic-private partnership that engaged in colonization in America andelsewhere (perhaps most notably, India), harnessing the colonies withoppressive collars of monopolies that forced the colonists to do business onlythrough the Company that enjoyed the privileges and powers of the Crown. Those privileges were used to underpay thecolonists for what they produced and sold and overcharge them for what theybought. Fortunately for America, the Foundersbecame champion smugglers, taking advantage of a land with an extensiveseacoast and rich with usable harbors. The smuggling was fortunate also for Britain,for without it the new British colonies in America would have been strangledin their cribs.

The Boston Tea Party was a colonial revolt against monopolypowers exercised in the name of the British Government by the East IndiaCompany. That this revolt took place in Boston was not unusual, as the power and influence of the Crown-endorsedCompanies were stronger in Virginia and otherplaces to the south than they were in New England. The New Englanders were less accustomed to itand therefore felt its oppressions more keenly. Crown companies had much less of a role (but were not unknown) in lands settled by freedom-seekingPuritans and Pilgrims. The JamestownColonies were from the beginning Company expeditions. But the Virginians and many other Americansgrew increasingly weary of those public-private partnerships and thecorruptions that they fomented. The widelands of North America encouraged a freedomthat the public-private partnership of Crown and Companies was not able tostifle.

It took royal favor to create the public-private partnerships,and the maintenance of royal favor to continue them. No surprise, then, that such favor had to befunded by steady payments from the partnership to the government officialspossessing power to control the royal favors. In exchange, government discretion, including the judging of right andwrong, was all too often influenced by what favored the partnership rather thanwhat favored justice.

This was how public-private partnerships were corrupting ona personal level. They were alsocorrupting to the State, corrosive of freedom. In no small degree British freedoms from the King have been built by thepower of taxation controlled by Parliament. With great skill over centuries British Parliaments wielded the power ofmanaging the government purse to win new freedoms from the British Kings. Since there is money to be made by usinggovernment power in public enterprises, however, sovereigns can find ways tocash in on that value and avoid the accountability that comes with having toseek new taxes to pay for their programs. In the great conflict between the Parliament and King Charles I, theKing was long able to avoid resorting to Parliament and acceding to its demandsfor freedom by funding his operations through the sale of royal privileges toand by reaping revenues from the companies and other public-privatepartnerships. He carried it too far and eventuallylost his head, but the American Founders did not fail to learn the lesson.

Neither did our modern Presidents, many of whom haverevealed a fondness for public-private partnerships as a means to extendgovernment programs and influence, even to the exclusion of congressional andpublic oversight. Franklin Rooseveltloved creating government-sponsored monopolies, even while giving many speechesagainst the evils of monopolies. Todayour economy is riddled with public-private partnerships, large and small, andthey as always tend toward abuse.

At the heart of the recent financial recession was thehousing bubble supported by two of the greatest public-private partnerships inAmerican history, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Created to promote government housing policy without using taxes orappropriations—and thereby escaping public accountability—their governmentprivileges allowed them to borrow all the money they needed at prices littleabove government rates and use that advantage to drive competition out of themiddle of the housing markets that they occupied.

When the housing bubble at last burst, the Treasury’s TARP useda public-private partnership with banks (most but not all of whom were unwillingpartners) to push investors out of the banking markets and turn the financialcrisis into a financial panic. Once inoffice, the Obama Administration embraced TARP, to which they added a trilliondollar stimulus package that accelerated our budget deficit crisis. The Obama stimulus package was lousy with public-privatepartnerships, a significant reason why it failed so miserably to stimulate oureconomy, destroying one or more jobs for each one that it promised to createthrough government favor.

The Faustian bargain at the core of the public-privatepartnerships corrupts all involved and touched by them: the government that creates them, thepartners who sell their souls for the advantages, and those disadvantaged bythe whole unfairness. Former CongressmanDick Armey—a foe of public-private partnerships—has often warned that when youpartner with the devil, you are always the junior partner.

Of Civil Wars and Slavery

2011-11-06T20:47:00.000-05:00

One hundred fifty years ago today Jefferson Davis was“elected” President of the so-called Confederate States of

America

. For half a year up until then Davis had served asprovisional president of the rebellion, not subjected to a formal electionprocess. With the election he had thetrimmings of legality, enough to give him legitimacy in the eyes of most votersin the southern states. Still, all thatthe phony election could do was make him the acknowledged leader of an unconstitutionalrebellion against the best government then in existence on the earth.

There yet may be some shallow commentators who will claimthat the rebellion was not about slavery. You just need to ask them a couple of children’s questions—such as“Why”—to expose slavery as the fundamental reason for the break. The attempt at secession from the Union, although threatened for years, did not take placeuntil after the election of 1860 whenRepublican Abraham Lincoln defeated two different Democrat candidates and oneindependent. In accordance with theprocedures of the Constitution, Lincolnobtained a clear (and decisive) majority of votes in the Electoral College. Then southern politicians in southern statesstarted trying to peel away.

Why?, the six-year old asks.

Well, because they did not want to live under Lincoln asPresident, would be the modern firebrand’s reply.

Why?

Because he was in favor of the abolition of slavery andwould be unlikely to do what the Democrat presidents had done before him to keepCongress from passing laws that would destroy slavery.

So the war was about slavery, then?, you might be forgivenfor asking.

No, would be the reply. It was all about states' rights.

Which states' rights?, you could ask without being rude.

Like the right to determine their own future, their own culture,their own institutions.

Which institutions in particular?, you should be expected toinquire.

Well, the institution of slavery in particular, the southernapologist would rejoin.

Are there any other southern institutions that Mr. Lincolnor the Congress were threatening?

No, not really, responds your interlocutor, exceptmaybe free trade. Congress several timesbefore imposed protective tariffs and restrictions on trade, and one time thesoutherners did rebel. At least South Carolina did.

Did South Carolina reallyrebel and leave the Union over tradeprotection?

A truthful response might go like this: Well, no, not really. No other states weremuch interested, and President Andrew Jackson, a southerner, by the way,threatened to send in the army. Theaction became just talk and eventually died down.

So the only institution southern politicians feared for in1860 was slavery? So the rebellion isabout slavery after all.

Here the defender of the indefensible would be left with nothing but denials andcircular talk, leaving slavery as the only justification standing.

It is hard today to imagine Americans at war with eachother, slaughtering each other for the better part of four years and over halfa million people. It took a mightypolarizing canker at the heart of the nation to allow it.

It may be easier to imagine American politics getting allpushed into an impossible situation by failure to come to grips with amonumental problem that only grew worse. It was clear in the mid-1800s that slavery was unsustainable socially,politically, and even economically. Itwas poisoning American government and society and polarizing the nation, butneither Congress nor President was willing to take it on directly. Sure, there were several grand compromises,the heart of which was to avoid the problem rather than solve it. The problem was pushed off to another day forsomeone else to solve.

Keeping millions of people in servitude was increasinglyuntenable and at odds with the governing morality of the nation, the moralitythat comprised the central spirit of both the Declaration of Independence andthe Constitution. Neither of thosedocuments ended slavery, but both set in place governing principles intolerablewith slavery and that progressively undermined it. That is why it took one last grand breakingof the Constitution—the southern rebellion—to try to preserve slavery. Fortunately it was met by an even greaterstruggle to enforce the Constitution and as a result bring an end to theSouth’s “peculiar institution.”

We should be able to imagine that kind of an exercise inpolitical catastrophe, because we have a no less intolerable situationthreatening our nation today, a situation that only grows worse by the month astoo many leading politicians fail to address it. Those who try are lambasted by a mediasympathetic to the whole evil business. We have our grand compromises that in fact do very little other than put off dealing with the real problem. The social welfare society of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his politicalheirs down to President Obama cannot be afforded by any nation, not even the United States,the wealthiest and most prosperous of them all. A much less prosperous Europe is comingunglued over their social welfare system. The process of buying votes with government programs and benefits paidfor by future generations may make for temporarily clever politics, but it isfundamentally immoral, destructive of society and individual character, andeconomically unsound and unsustainable.

President Obama hopes to buy a few more years before the dayof reckoning (enough to get him past 2012 elections) by talking of taxing therich. Unless he is stupid, he knows thathigher taxes—whether on the rich or anyone else—cannot solve the problem. Today 48% of the population pays little or nonet Federal taxes. What happens to ourrepublic when the line crosses 50% and the majority come to believe that theycan live by taxing the rest of the population? How long will the working minority put up with that modern slavery?

But here is another slavery that the government welfaresociety is creating. Even if we stop thewhole process now, ending all government deficits where they are—nonew debt—my children and grandchildren will still have to be twice asproductive as we are today just to maintain current standards of living. Today there are 4 workers for every retiredperson in America. Current projections show that during my timein retirement (should I ever reach it) there will come the day when there areonly 2 workers for every retired person. At that time, more than half the production of my grandchildren will goto support other people and pay the debts piled up in many cases before thechildren of today and tomorrow were born.

Anyone care to predict how America’s social fabric will beheld together then?

Of Good Times on Wall Street and Standing Out from the Crowd

2011-10-19T22:04:00.003-04:00

The lot of people engaging in the “Occupy Wall Street” (OWS)party in New York City are a lot of things to a lot of people, particularly ifyou rely upon the glowing news reports about them. Most Americans, let’s say 99% of them, havenot been near any of the party goers, so we have had to rely upon the newsmedia to tell us who and what they are. A colleague of mine witnessed their march in Washington on a recentSaturday. There were about 30 of themmatched—or even overmatched—by the number of reporters accompanying the march,so in terms of numbers the parties seem to be well covered.

Still, for all that coverage I have to confess that I havenot been able to get any specific or focused idea on who they are and what theywant. That is why I am indebted toDemocrat pollster Douglas Schoen, who had the bright idea of sending hispolling team to the party to ask the attendees themselves who they are, whatthey believe, and what they want. As faras I know he was the first to come up with such an obvious idea and remains theonly one to have tried it. The occupierswere fortunately candid and forthcoming in the interviews. I expect that they may be more on their guardin the future to repeat the party line, whatever that might be.

I understand that the OWS party goers represent 99% of thepopulation (I am not sure if they mean 99% of America, or of the World, or ofjust New York City—the lack of Yankees baseball caps in the media photos casts doubt on this last possibility), 99% because they said so and thenews coverage has repeated it, over and over again. I suspect that puts me in the 1%, at leastthat is the percentage of fat in the milk I drink (I prefer whole milk, but mywife refuses to buy it). In case you arewondering whether you are in the 99% that the OWS groupies represent, here is alist of characteristics of the New York City party goers, care of DouglasSchoen’s polling team, who interviewed 198 of them in their New York City partyvenue. See whether you fit the list,keeping in mind that, in the words of O.J. Simpson’s attorney, if the glovedoes not fit you must acquit.

· The majority are male.

· More than half are 30 years old or older.

· None of them are Republicans, although 14% areeither anarchists, socialists, or belong to the “Working Families Party” (thatsounds socialist to me, but maybe that just means that they are not Democrats).

· Somewhat more than half of them, 56%, voted inthe 2008 presidential election, and 74% of those for Barack Obama.

· When asked what bugs them the most, 30% claimedthe influence of corporate/moneyed/special interests; 5% claimed “everything”(sounds like the teenagers or maybe the college students); 3% identifiedAmerica’s democratic/capitalist system; 2% each for bureaucracy, Bush tax cuts,military spending, the Federal Reserve, and Obama abandoning the left; thatgets us up to 53% without moving on to the rest of the gripes that they offered.

· When asked what this was all about, there was asimilar variety of answers, with the lead going to the 44% who said mobilizingprogressives or influencing the Democrats the way that the Tea Party hasinfluenced Republicans (that may seem ambitious, but I suspect that it is astough as pushing on an open door given the rest of the OWS demands); curiously,5% favored a flat tax, a favorite of many conservatives; but 4% called fordissolution of representative democracy and capitalism, and another 4% were fora radical distribution of wealth, which amounts to the same thing; and that bringsus to 57% without getting to the rest of the somewhat confused list.

· When asked who is to blame, George Bush, BarackObama, and Wall Street tied at 7% each (suggesting that 1600 PennsylvaniaAvenue should be as much of a focus for them as Wall Street); while theRepublican Party only just edged out “The American People”, 16% to 15%; 5%identified the “Citizens UnitedSupreme Court ruling”; which again gets us to 57% without going any furtherdown the rather long list.

· The closest point to unanimity among the party goerswas that 98% agreed that civil disobedience was a good idea to achieve theirgoals, and even 31% believed that violence would be O.K., too.

· Surprising to me was that these anti-Wall Streetprotesters were almost exactly evenly divided over whether giving TARP money tobanks was a good idea, 51% opposed but 49% in favor.

· Last point here, though there were several otherquestions, 65% agreed that government had amoral responsibility to guarantee healthcare, college education, and a secureretirement for all, no matter what the cost.

You are excused if you have trouble finding a clear theme inall of this. If your head is spinning to some degree, just watch some TV orpick up a newspaper and you will learn once again what this is really allabout. I doubt that the reporters orcommentators will note that there is almost a universal attitude at the OWSparty that someone else is to blame for all things blameworthy. Nor are they likely to point out that thedemands of the unwashed 99ers revolve around getting others to do something forthem or give them something.

This latter point seems to me to be one of the moredistinguishing points separating the OWS Gimmees from the TEA Party activists. The hundreds in the OWS crowd predominantly wantto have government dictating to people how to live—while they have their handsout or want to put their hands in your pocket (a common complaint among the campersis that their stuff is constantly getting stolen by other campers). The tens of thousands of TEA Party activistswant to be left alone, want to keep what they have earned, want government tostep back from making rules to control their lives.

Maybe at this point you are feeling very special, which isnot a bad achievement for any writer. Ifyou feel that you do not fit into the Gimmees 99%, congratulations on being onein a hundred.

Of the Divine Traits of Humans and the Fatherhood of God

2011-10-14T19:54:00.000-04:00

The Iliad, the Odyssey, and the History of the Peloponnesian Wars are among the Greek classics thatare part of the classics-based education that my son receives at his school, aschool that embraces our rich westernheritage. You may suspect and correctlyso that he does not attend a government school (though we still get to pay—in manyways—for the bad education that other children receive in the governmentschools).

It is worthy of note that a common theme inmany ancient western texts as well as in most cultures around that world is thedescent of some person or group of people directly from God. Why is that theme found so commonly among theancients all around the world, east, west, north, and south? A reading of Homer, Thucydides, and manyother writers of millennia ago does not permit the conclusion that the ancientswere dumber or less enlightened than more modern writers who would scoff at theidea. The ancients seemed to have hadtheir share of the dull, the average, and the brilliant as can be found in allages, ours too.

Could it be that there is something to it, that there is a relationshipbetween God and man that is close enough to be properly called familial, evenof Father to son and daughter? Is this atheme of the ages that will not die because it is based on reality?

As the Lord prepared Moses for his mission to redeem the Houseof Israel from bondage in Egypt and restore them to their land of promise, Hegave to Moses a vision of His dealings with mankind from its earliestdays. In the vision Moses was shown aprophet named Enoch. Enoch was alsotaught by the Lord by vision, a vision in which he saw the panorama of theworld only as God Himself could reveal. When the mighty God wept because of the evil so prevalent among so many,the prophet was astonished and asked how the God of creation could weep. Part of the Lord’s answer to Enoch includedthese words:

And unto thy brethren have I said, andalso given commandment, that they should love one another, and thatthey should choose me, their Father; but behold, they are without affection,and they hatetheir own blood. . . (Moses 7:33)

Notice the relationship of Father to children, which alsomeant that in a real and not figurative way Enoch and all of the race of humanswere “brethren”. It was as a father in avery real sense that God wept for the misdeeds of His children and theircruelty toward their brethren, His sons and daughters. This is a warm and authentic relationship withdeity that men and women throughout the ages have craved and have instinctivelyfelt.

This is not to deny that there is a lot of mythologyintertwined with the truth of man’s divine parentage. There are powerful truths at the core of allenduring myths, the story in the myth often highlighting or demonstrating somefundamental verity. While the scripturescan present truths in clarity and purity, even the myths of men preserve andtransmit fundamental realities of existence.

Thus, throughout the ages and into modern days themes ofdivine attributes of humanity persist, that raise man above the rest of creation. Men make and use tools,increasingly complex tools. In a parodyof the words of Walt Disney’s MaryPoppins, I often say to my children,

In every job that must be done thereis a tool.
You find that tool, and, snap, yourjob’s a game.
Without that tool your job’s ahassle.

So men have found since creation, and so tools have enhancedmen’s ability to be creators, a divine trait of the great Creator.

Recently I noticed what to you may be a commonplace. As far as I can tell, only humans havepets. Other animals may developsymbiotic relationships with other creatures, but only humans seem to developthose special relationships with other species, a relationship founded uponlove and affection, of master to pet. Iperceive divinity in it. If you haveever had a beloved pet, you may sense what I mean.

Perhaps the case of man’s divinity, his innate heritage fromGod, his Father, can be opened and closed by this one evidence: man’s ability to make music. Yes, yes, yes, birds whistle and wolves howl,and so forth. But they have been singingthe same songs since the beginning. Man’sability to create music is apparently infinite in extent and variety, becauseit comes from the Infinite. It is divinein origin and the clearest example to which I can point of man’s directfamilial relationship to God.

The facile retort to this is that men are so evil, how canthey be related to the divine? Irespond much as Fyodor Dostoevsky did to this old and thin objection: the existence of evil does not deny theinfluence of God, but rather the good that thrives in spite of the evil isproof positive of the presence and influence of God.

My final point would be that none of this is new. It is the oldest truth of all, understood bythe first man and woman. Paul taught it2,000 years ago to some of the most sophisticated people of his day, the saints in Rome:

The Spirit itselfbeareth witnesswith our spirit,that we are the childrenof God: And if children, thenheirs; heirsof God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him,that we may be also glorified together. For I reckon that the sufferings of this presenttime are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall berevealed inus. (Romans 8:16-18)

Of the World Bank and Washington Parties

2011-09-24T21:17:00.000-04:00

Last evening and this afternoon I was in Washington,D.C. That would be an unremarkablestatement, since I work in Washington. But I am not often there in the evening and even less often on aSaturday afternoon. I was in Washingtonat those unusual times because my son, I’ll call him Peter, was participatingin a choral program at a church in the city.

I write this to explain why in the world I would be inWashington not only on a Friday night and a Saturday afternoon, but of allweekends, on the weekend when the World Bank and the International MonetaryFund (IMF) are having their annual meetings. Two out of every three years they hold their joint meetings in thecapital of the Free World, the third year somewhere else. They like holding their meetings in thecapital of the Free World because they are very much interested in the capitalof the Free World.

Finance ministers, government economic development experts,and related hangers on from all over the globe gather to talk about poverty andeconomic hardship in the poor countries and how the rich countries have anobligation to channel more money in the direction of the poor countries. They have been doing this for something over65 years. And yet, with a fewexceptions, the poor countries seem to remain poor, the most notable growthbeing in the number of poor countries.

Early in my career in Washington, back in the early 1980s,these meetings used to be a lot of fun. The world’s largest commercial banks would hold lavish parties. In those days the big banks, encouraged bythe IMF, the World Bank, and their own governments, were big into lending moneyto the poor countries, billions and billions of dollars. That money was supposed to fuel economic growthby funding big projects that politicians could take credit for and where theycould have their pictures taken at elaborate ribbon cutting ceremonies. The projects were started, some of thembuilt, but very little economic development resulted. The poor nations were not very good at payingback the loans. In the mid-1980s italmost destroyed the banks. Since then,they have gotten out of that business. They stopped holding the parties, too.

Walking through Washington last night and this afternoon Icould see nevertheless that lavish parties were still going on. I am not sure who was hosting them. I think that at least some were sponsored bynon-profit groups. But they were stilllavish. It was very difficult gettingpast the fanciest hotels and restaurants and some of the popular museums. Stretch limos were packed in as the financialleaders of these poor countries were climbing out and milling around, dressedin tuxedos, evening dresses, and pricey jewelry, to hear speeches from well-paiddevelopment experts, delivering their latest reports on the tough financialtimes and their clever theories about the obligations of rich nations like theUnited States to send more money to the poor nations.

This afternoon we walked by Lafayette Square, within earshotof a group of protesters in front of the White House. Somebody was bellowing through abullhorn. I could not quite make outwhat he was chanting. I think it hadsomething to do with the World Bank and IMF not giving poor nations enoughmoney. As I say, I could not quite makeit out. My son said it sounded all theworld like,

No more pencils,
No more books,
No more teachers’
Dirty looks.

Of the Spirit of America and the Spirit of Tyranny

2011-09-14T21:15:00.000-04:00

Last week I experienced two memorable events, each in its own way pointing to the spirit of America. One, appropriately enough, was called “The Spirit of America,” the annual presentation of the U.S. Army’s Old Guard, headquartered at Fort Myer, in Arlington, Virginia. The program chronicled the history of the Army from its first days in the War of Independence to the present.

There is no reliance upon hyperbole in saying that the U.S. Army has been one of the most effective instruments in the history of mankind for the promotion of freedom. Without the Army, independence would not have been achieved and very likely not even attempted (the Army came into being a full year before the Declaration of Independence).

The very existence of the United States has been a beacon and stimulus to people around the world to strive for and obtain freedom. Would the colonies of Latin America have sought liberty without the successful example of the United States? How significant was the example of America to the struggles of the peoples of Europe to cast off their monarchies? To what extent did Great Britain learn from its painful mistakes administered by the citizens and Army of the United States and provide for a gentler path to liberty for its many colonies around the globe? The Army has been a reliable and effective protector of that beacon of American freedom.

With direct action, the U.S. Army became the essential element that gave force to Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Without the victories of the U.S. Army over the rebels who rose up against freedom and constitutional government Lincoln’s Proclamation would have been a scorned piece of paper that offered false hopes to millions laboring in slavery.

In the Twentieth Century the U.S. Army helped bring World War I to its end, the western republics triumphing over the central monarchies. It was the U.S. Army that not only played the central role in defeating the dictators of central Europe and Japan in World War II, but wherever it went the U.S. Army left free republics in its wake, including among the vanquished nations. Again in Korea, Viet Nam, Grenada, and Panama the U.S. Army fought for freedom and against tyranny. Throughout the Cold War the Army—together with the other important branches of the armed services, equally effective instruments of freedom—remained strong and active to protect the free world against totalitarian communism.

This idea did not originate with me. Our grandfathers knew these things. They were commonly understood until recent generations witnessed the armed services and even national defense itself become open questions with left-wing academics seeking to reintroduce into America, and dress in pseudo-intellectual clothes, the exploded Old World programs of tyranny and rule by elites. That the idea of the liberating role of the American military can seem fresh and insightful is a mark of how much the religions of tyranny have found a place in popular media and even in the education supplied in many government schools.

By contrast the spirit of America silhouetted the other event to which I referred. This was the speech of President Barack Obama before a joint session of Congress, outlining his latest plan to restore job creation that has been so effectively undermined by his economic policies. If you reach through the cloud of rhetoric, President Obama’s proposal does not rise above expanding the size of government and raising taxes on successful people and entrepreneurs. That is not the spirit of America.

That is the spirit of the old nations of Europe and Asia from which our forefathers fled to found something entirely different in the New World. That is the spirit where people get ahead by the favor of those in power, and the people in power take what does not belong to them to reward their supporters and hangers on. A leading news story of this week is the scandal of a bankrupt “green” factory that was awarded nearly half a billion dollars by the Obama Administration and used as a television backdrop to announce how government subsidies to “green” industry would pave the road to national prosperity. That idea is today just as bankrupt as the business. It seems that what made this business green was the color of the money that Washington elites poured into it from the U.S. Treasury.

Together the two events demonstrate what the spirit of America is and what it is not. The first is a legacy of personal sacrifice by free soldiers for the freedom of others. The second, the spirit of tyranny, would sacrifice other people for the expansion of government and the power of Washington elites.

Of Political Combat and Governing the Nation

2011-08-28T21:19:00.001-04:00

There is an idea, common in public discourse, that is at best naïve and at all events silly. It is the mistaken idea that the chief problem of American government today is the unwillingness of Republicans and Democrats to set aside their differences and get on with the business of government. It apparently is based upon the assumption that there is very little in the way of principle, belief, or right and wrong in the proposals and policies of the two. In this notion, the two sides are just jockeying to see who will “win.” Perhaps that comes from the view that all too many politicians throughout time have not had much in the way of principles and beliefs, mingled with the approach to politics that sees it as some sort of sports event rather than a combat over how the nation is to be governed. These are certainly the attitudes of the shallow reporting that guides most of the newspapers and major media organizations today.

This view is demonstrably wrong. While strong differences of opinion have always been part of American government since its earliest days, the issues at stake have seldom been trivial. “Winning” in American politics has been and continues to be about how the nation is to be governed, not about who “ended” with the higher score. It takes a very superficial understanding to think that American politics is all some game. At its core, political combat in America has always been about freedom, those who wish to promote and protect freedom and those who seek to limit and control freedom, those who genuinely trust people and those who do not. There is no compromise in this combat that does not either promote or reduce freedom.

The most enduring political battle of the nineteenth century was over trade, whether to have free trade or to place restrictions on the ability of people to buy and sell with whomever from wherever they wished. Every compromise either expanded economic freedoms or reduced them. Average people were made wealthier or poorer by the results of the political fights over trade.

The hottest political battles of the nineteenth century were over slavery, whether to extend it or limit it, whether to preserve or to abolish it. All of the temporary compromises that were reached either expanded freedom or reduced it. In the end over half a million people in the United States died over this issue when the battle left the ground of politics and took to the field.

This exception to political battle in the United States, when we let guns rather than politicians do the talking, was when the political question cut to the core of what we were as a nation, a nation of “We the People.” As Abraham Lincoln correctly saw, America could not forever remain part free and part slave; it would eventually become all one or the other. The nation was becoming steadily freer, slavery being killed by economic reality. When the southern slaveholders could no longer use politics to keep slavery alive within the United States, they sought a solution in disunion and eventually war. They succeeded in ending slavery more quickly than anyone imagined.

Political conflict did not let up in the twentieth century any more than it has in the twenty-first. The important thing is not that we have political battle but that, with the exception of the Civil War, we have been willing to let our battles be fought out in legislatures and elections. The sad truth is, that to the extent we infantilize political conflict into a sporting contest it will cease to be a means by which we fight out the battles of how we govern. Rule of law will break down, and conflict will find its way out of the halls of government and into the arena of the streets.

Of Inflation and Words of Offence

2011-08-16T21:23:00.005-04:00

The professional political commentators were all atwitter today about a word. It was one word from a comment that new presidential candidate, Texas Governor Rick Perry, said yesterday in discussion with some likely Republican voters in Iowa. The subject was Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve Board. These are the monetary policies that affect the price of everything in the United States and the value of the dollar abroad.

This is what Governor Perry said. Read it carefully, and see if you have any difficulty figuring out what Perry’s message was:

If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I don’t know what y’all will do to them in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas . . . I mean printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treasonous in my opinion. Because all it’s going to be doing—we’ve already tried this—all it’s going to be doing is devaluing the dollar in your pocket. And we cannot afford that. We have to learn the lessons of the past three years.

Have you figured out what he was talking about, what his message was? This is not a trick question. His message seemed clear and obvious to me. That message was not what the professional commentators were largely talking about. I guess they missed it. As they interviewed each other, pretending that they were somehow reporting news, they zeroed in on Governor Perry’s use of the word “treasonous”. Was Governor Perry accusing the Federal Reserve Board Chairman of “treason” they all asked?

Having been interviewed by the TV talking heads on numerous occasions, I could not help imagining myself responding to their question. Of course they did not ask me, or anyone like me. They were busy interviewing each other.

But if I had been asked what seems to be the important question of the day—or, like Sesame Street puppets, the word of the day—I suspect I might have answered something like this:

“Are you asking me about a word or about the principle that Governor Perry was emphasizing? My religion teaches me not to make a man a transgressor for a word (see Isaiah 29:20, 21), but it is the principle, his message that we should consider if we want to evaluate his candidacy for President. What principles would likely guide him while in office? That is what we need to know if we want to have an intelligent conversation about who should be president.”

I would then add that it seemed to me that Governor Perry’s message was very clear:

Inflation is a bad policy, an especially bad policy at this time of a weak economy. We have tried it before, and it hurts the nation and the people. It would be particularly wrong for the independent Federal Reserve to choose inflation for political purposes.

That would be my recitation of Governor Perry’s message. I think I got it right. And I think that Governor Perry got it right.

Inflation is terrible. It breaks the promise embedded in money and makes it a lie. Remember that money is just a certificate of a promise between two people: I will give you my labor or goods or service in exchange for a promise that I can obtain something of equal value later. That becomes a lie if inflation means that when I redeem that promise I get something that government has reduced in value by depreciating the money that carries that promise. I provide $20 of labor and only get $18 of value in return. That is what inflation means. It corrupts that value of our goods and services. Even worse it corrupts the value of the promises we make and receive.

Inflation is particularly hard on retired people. These are people who set their money aside for 20, 30, 40, 50 years or more so that they could live off of it in their old age. Inflation cheats them, giving them only a fraction—sometimes only a small fraction—of the value that they set aside and hoped and relied upon for the rest of their lives. They lived a lower standard of living so that they could save for the future, only to find inflation make that future poorer for them. That is a life-time theft, when it is all too late to be reclaimed.

So if you want, go ahead and choose whatever word you want to describe inflation and its effects, especially if that inflation were inflicted on the nation for short-term political gain. Choose your word if that political inflation were to be inflicted by those public servants—the Federal Reserve Board—who took on the legal duty and responsibility to maintain stable prices, to fight inflation.

Whichever word you may choose, the policy of national inflation is wrong. Even if governments throughout history and into the modern era frequently resort to inflation when their national debt becomes too heavy to carry, it is still wrong. It is destructive and undermines the economy and robs the people who rely upon honest money.

Governor Perry was right to say, in very clear language, that it would be a major mistake for the Federal Reserve to choose that road, that the Federal Reserve must guard its independence from political pressure and hold to its legal mandate to fight inflation, not promote it.

If you must choose a word to describe it, go ahead. To quote Gilbert and Sullivan,

I conceive you may use
Any language you choose
To indulge in without impropriety.
(Iolanthe)

Of Government Debt and Historic Ratings

2011-08-07T21:18:00.001-04:00

Apologists for the Obama administration desperately wish to make light of the unprecedented downgrading of the credit rating of U.S. Government debt from the virtually riskless category of AAA to the slightly riskier rank of AA. The apologists, when they cannot divert attention from the issue altogether, rely upon one or both of two arguments: 1) it was all a big mistake, an irrational and inappropriate decision; or 2) the downgrading does not really matter, it does not mean much.

Apology 1) merits this observation. Maybe it was a mistake. The other two major rating agencies so far have not taken a similar step, even while making noise about the possibility. That kind of public and open debate and disagreement is important for this land of free speech, most particularly with regard to opinions on government policies and their consequences.

The question of the ability of the U.S. to continue to service its debt is certainly open for debate. What is not debatable is that we are now in a condition where it is debatable. We have not been in a situation—since the emergence of the United States onto the world stage of major nations—where our ability to service our debt was at all in question. That we are is new, historic, and not disputed. Under the Obama Administration a lot of unthinkable things have suddenly become all too thinkable, from socializing medicine, or backing away from our support for Israel, to the government taking over the banking system. Add to that list of unthinkables the riskiness of U.S. Government debt.

Apology 2) is without merit. The noise from the Obama Administration suggests that it really does matter, a lot. It is important to note that the S&P decision came after the Congress and the Administration very predictably reached agreement on raising the debt ceiling. The issue is not about the debt ceiling. The issue would still exist if there were no debt ceiling. The issue is the natural debt ceiling, the one that comes when the debtor is no longer able to make good on his promises of repayment. The downgrade is advice to all investors anywhere in the world that the safety of U.S. Government debt can no longer be taken for granted. It has moved from being riskless to an investment that carries some risk—you may debate how much, but you can no longer deny that there is some.

Maybe there is great wisdom in that. Maybe all government debt, from any source, should be recognized as carrying risk. There is always political risk. History is replete with evidence that governments lie to their own people and to their investors, so perhaps a Triple-A “riskless” rating should never be given to any government promises. But apart from willingness to pay, to honor debt agreements, the recognition today is that the U.S. government debt is on a trajectory to where the government cannot—to where it will be unable to—honor its debt commitments.

That is not unprecedented. There are several historical examples where governments amassed debts that were too heavy to repay. It has usually led to the downfall of the governments. The Roman emperors tried to manage their uncontrolled spending on cheap popularity by debasing the coinage (a form of inflation) that wrecked the economy and eventually the empire itself. The debts of the English King Charles I led to rebellion that cost him his head in 1649. A similar chain of events brought on the French Revolution. More recently, the Soviet debt crisis of the 1980s set in motion the final events that broke up the USSR. Other sovereign debt crises are unfolding today before our eyes. All that S&P said was that the U.S. Government cannot act like it is immune from joining the sad list without making major changes in spending and borrowing programs.

Which is to say that the S&P decision matters greatly. There will be much debate about how much it matters, but only charlatans or simpletons will maintain that it does not matter at all. Once you have lost your virginity, there is no reclaiming it. It is a watershed to move from perceived risklessness of debt to the recognition of some risk. Risk costs money, as investors have to hedge against the possibility of some degree of non-payment, whether through changes in terms or through repayment in debased (inflated) currency.

Already investors are starting to move some of their money out of government debt—now exposed to greater market risk—into bank deposits where even with interest rates artificially depressed by the Federal Reserve the principal is not exposed to changes in market values. More significantly, an important anchor of certainty in our economy—the assumption of absolute security of U.S. Government debt—has been pulled up, rougher going for any ships that have to navigate an economy already turbulent with uncertainties.

In the early days of the Obama presidency the media and the President himself were eager to point out how this or that development was history-making, that this or that initiative was historic. Downgrading the credit rating of the debt of the U.S. Government is certainly historic. Let us hope that President Obama does not make any more history.

Of the Love of Christ and the Law of Restoration

2011-07-24T20:59:00.005-04:00

When Jesus Christ visited His people in the ancient Americas after His resurrection in Jerusalem He taught them lessons that He had preached to the Jews in ancient Judea. The pre-Columbian American record of Christ’s teachings proves that the Sermon on the Mount and other words of Christ in the Bible are not mere inventions of the Savior’s followers. Separate witnesses to the same message, with an ocean in between them, demonstrate the consistency of Christ’s words and the veracity of the record.

One of those important teachings involves our attitude toward others. In the Americas He taught, as He did to the Jews,

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother: Let me pull the mote out of thine eye—and behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast the mote out of thy brother’s eye. (3 Nephi 14:1-5)

In short, fallible as we are, we are little qualified to judge the faults of others, and doing so puts us in danger of being similarly subjected to imperfect standards. If we prefer patience and tolerance applied to us, then we should practice them when considering others.

Now, let us add to this discussion another important virtue. In modern times, when Jesus Christ restored His Church on the earth He listed the virtues needed to do His work:

Remember faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, brotherly kindness, godliness, charity, humility, diligence. (Doctrine and Covenants 4:6)

I would particularly draw attention to the virtue of “brotherly kindness”. I would ask, what is the difference between being nice and being kind? I would suggest that being nice is related to manners and politeness, an important but perhaps shallow virtue. I have experienced people who are very nice and polite but who are rather unkind. I have, similarly, known people who were rather rough in their manners and outspoken and direct in their language but who were deeply kind and caring. In this context, I consider kindness related to charity and love. I think that is what is meant by “brotherly kindness” in the scripture. I prefer kind people to nice people, if I had to choose.

Next we turn to a greater and more important virtue, the most important of all. Here is how the ancient American prophet Mormon described charity (again, similar to the definition revealed an ocean away by the Apostle Paul):

And charity suffereth long, and is kind [notice again the connection between kindness and charity], and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, if ye have not charity, ye are nothing, for charity never faileth. Wherefore, cleave unto charity, which is the greatest of all, for all things must fail—But charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him. (Moroni 7:45-47)

While this is an ideal, it is clear that God does not intend it to be an unreachable ideal. Through the atonement of Jesus Christ charity has been placed within the reach of all of us, and God intends all of us to obtain that supreme virtue.

When the Prophet Joseph Smith was being treated with anything but kindness, in the depth of a dank prison pit in a Missouri winter, the Lord revealed to him how to treat others. The Lord instructed the Prophet, and us, to engage with others “by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned; by kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile. . .” The Lord further instructed us to “be full of charity towards all men,” and as we did so, the Lord promised, “The Holy Ghost shall be thy constant companion” (Doctrine and Covenants 121:41, 42, 45, 46).

Thus we see that it is through the atonement of Jesus Christ that we have access to the presence and influence of the Holy Ghost, which influence changes our hearts and fills us with charity, the greatest of all. It is with that changed attitude that God wants us to interact with our fellowmen here and in the eternities.

This may all still seem a bit theoretical. The ancient American prophet Alma explained a very simple and practical approach, one that I have found confirmed over and over again.

For that which ye do send out shall return unto you again, and be restored. . . (Alma 41:15)

Alma called this the law of restoration and explained that, as we show mercy, justice, and goodness toward others, the same will return unto us. The more we try to give away love, the more that love grows within us. As we practice the love of Christ, we will develop the love of Christ as a personal virtue, a practical approach to something that means everything.

Of Families and Everlasting Reunions

2011-06-26T22:02:00.001-04:00

Some family traditions are seemingly untraceable; we do not know where or how they got started. We just do them as part of the warp and woof that weave the family together. But there are some of which we know where and when they began, because we began them. In a few days we will start a new tradition in our family that promises to help unite our family forever, because it is intended to remind us that families go on and on through the generations and that the members of the family are connected to the family eternally.

We will gather all members of the family in what is projected to be a biennial reunion. We envision a combination of daily living and recreation, punctuated by family devotionals. The devotionals are intended as a unified worship of the Father of us all upon whose power we rely to make these family relations everlasting.

Inconstancy is one of the constants of mortality. Plans are made and changed or forgotten. Pledges are given and revoked. Promises are made and broken. People are born, mature, grow old, die, and fade from the memory of the living. All earthly things seem to fail and fade.

Yet many wish and hope for the sweetest experiences and relations of life to continue unceasingly. God, the Father of us all, has promised that they can. They are found most bountifully within the family. How in this world of all things temporary and changing do we find the power to make things everlasting and unchanging?

We can only find it by drawing the power and influence of the eternal world into this one. God Himself has to do it. Because our Father in Heaven wants us to bring our families into heaven, He has established heavenly places on earth where heavenly promises can be made by mortals, made eternal by the participation of God in the promise-making and His help in the promise-keeping.

These holy places are the holy Temples of God, built under God’s direction, dedicated by His authority, sanctified by His presence. Inside these holy Temples heaven takes up residence on earth.

Imperfect man and woman can enter into these Temples, there join hands under the authority of God, and make solemn promises that can unite them as a family that may last forever. The promises may last forever, because God is a party to the promises. By those who hold heavenly power and authority to act in His name our Heavenly Father wraps binding cords of eternity around the hearts of the participants. As the mortal husband and wife remain true to God He keeps them united and through the atonement of Jesus Christ overcomes their mortal imperfections. This blessed association is available today to all who will.

Heavenly connections thus made and honored reach through the generations, tying grandparents, parents, and children together, on and on throughout the past and future. As each new child is born, he or she is connected to the family, and as each family member passes beyond this life the connections remain unbroken.

And we do not have to wait to celebrate this family union. We will remember and celebrate it this week, and for every day to come. Our Father intended it that way.

Of People and Government

2011-06-12T18:25:00.003-04:00

One hundred-fifty years ago William Tecumseh Sherman was engaged in the early efforts to put down the rebellion in the southern slave states. He had the idea that it would require several hundred thousand troops. The savvy people of the day seriously thought that Sherman was crazy. After the war and more than a million soldiers later Sherman had another insightful comment:

My opinion is, the country is doctored to death, and if President and Congress would go to sleep like Rip Van Winkle, the country would go on under natural influences, and recover far faster than under their joint and several treatment.
(William T. Sherman, letter to General Ulysses S. Grant, February 14, 1868, in William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs of William T. Sherman, p.922)

We need more Shermans today. No one knew better than Sherman what government could do militarily. He also knew its limitations and understood that military competence does not transfer to economic competence.

The federal government, having caused the recent economic turmoil and the resultant recession by an elaborate and pervasive system of guaranties and subsidies, then precipitating a financial panic with massive intervention programs that drove investors out of the markets, quickly followed up with new laws to take over the healthcare and financial systems, simultaneous with uncontrolled spending. The government has tried all that it can do—and far more than it should do. The government’s quack medicine recurrently and unpredictably applied, like in the 1930s, is making sure that private initiative has little chance for recovery.

This highlights the fundamental question: do you or do you not trust people. This is not a new question. It is as old as government, which is practically as old as time. The evidence of the ages is clear: trusting people is the only economic system that works.

The reason is not complicated. Government economic programs are run by men and women making decisions about things that they do not fully understand, applying their own incentives to other people’s money, property, and talents. As smart as these men and women might be—and they are neither smarter nor dumber than the rest of the population—they are not smart enough to know enough to run an economy of over 300 million individuals making billions of economic decisions every day. No mortal is, and until the Second Coming of Christ government remains in the hands of the mortals.

Fortunately, if you trust the people you do not need to make their choices for them. Leave them alone, and they will know best how to invest their money, how to create new jobs, how to invent new products, how to be more efficient, and they will do it in the best ways that they know how, because their own money, resources, and reputations are on the line. Those who are best at these many tasks will succeed the most.

Because government has different incentives and does not work that way, the founders of the United States adopted a government whose founding document begins with the words, “We the People”. Today we have a changing system of government, increasingly based upon the idea of, “You the People”, and it is not working very well. That formula never has.

Of Depressions and Government Rescues

2011-06-05T11:49:00.001-04:00

The government is running out of things to do. I am referring to the economy and with reference to improving the economy. A successful government program to recover from the financial crisis and recession that the government caused is turning out to be much harder than presidential candidate Barack Obama promised.

All prolonged recessions and depressions are caused by governments. The recent financial crisis occurred, first, because the elaborate house of cards of government promises and guarantees that dominated the mortgage and housing markets was flattened by a puff of the wind of reality. With government reinforcement and in fact much prodding, builders were encouraged to build more houses bigger and faster than people could use them, realtors were rewarded for selling them, mortgage brokers were drawn to get mortgages for people who could not afford them, and investors were lured into thinking that there was no risk in pumping their money into funding these mortgages. Reality eventually took over, as it always does.

All of this would have caused a major recession, but former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson ensured that the recession would turn into a full blown financial panic. Nearly every Sunday in the fall of 2008 Paulson was on national camera, little hiding his deer-in-the-headlights expression, announcing the latest desperate and ill-conceived Federal financial rescue program. Remember that the disastrous $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (that was not used to purchase assets after all) was Paulson’s idea. The markets were spooked by it. Markets tanked when Congress defeated it and tanked again when Congress passed it about a week later (sweetened with enough pork to buy needed votes). Investors went on strike.

President Obama has been unsuccessful, coming up on three years, in ending the strike. In fact, each time investors have shown some interest in coming back some new government plan or program has renewed enough uncertainty to drive investors back to the sidelines. For example, in early 2009 bank stocks were starting to recover until the Administration decided to impose stress tests to see how banks would fair if the Obama recovery plan failed. Investors returned to their seats to watch, and even the regulators’ findings that the banks could weather continued recession did not bring more than a tepid response from bank investors. The Obama Administration’s plan to restructure the entire banking and financial system—realized in the Dodd-Frank Act—has served to warn investors against taking new investment risks until they could see how it would all play out. It now seems clear that the financial crisis has been replaced by a regulatory crisis, with the regulators already falling way behind the mandates of the last Congress to write hundreds of new rules and no bank able to make any business plans extending much beyond a few months.

The housing markets remain at depression levels. New Dodd-Frank rules are making it much harder for families to get, lenders to offer, and investors to fund new mortgages for new houses. Is an economic recovery even conceivable with housing and mortgage markets mired in depression?

Our government has tried pulling its other levers. The United States has never, ever, witnessed the amount of government spending intended to stimulate the economy artificially. The Federal Reserve has expanded the money supply by trillions of dollars. Most of that Federal Reserve money has gone into funding government deficits, driving down the value of the dollar, and stimulating the prices of gold, silver, oil, and other commodities. The government takeover of the healthcare system, it was argued, was the only way to control medical costs that were said to be harming the economy.

Of course, there are more government actions waiting in the wings. The Administration wants to raise taxes dramatically, especially on investors and businesses—the energy business, the banking industry, investment firms, anyone who uses carbon (one of the elements necessary to life and essential to breathing), “rich” people, and small businesses that would be caught in the definition of “rich people.”

And yet the economy remains in the doldrums. Nothing seems to work. It conjures up memories of the Great Depression, that economic recession that Franklin Roosevelt was eager to take over. Through the whole decade of the 1930s FDR tried one thing after another to restore economic recovery, but nothing worked. Instead, FDR helped weaken world faith in representative government, greatly encouraging the willingness of desperate people to embrace the desperate measures of the dictators in Italy, Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union who gave us World War II.

The Obama Administration has tried everything that government can do. Why not now try getting government out of the way and letting the people solve this one as they always have? Investors still have plenty of money ready to invest, if they were only confident that the rules would not change and that their investments would not be taxed away. Businessmen would be eager to hire new employees if they only knew how much the employees would cost and that some new government program would not impose new costs and burdens on their business. Banks would love to lend to businesses and provide mortgages if the regulators would stop changing the rules and discouraging banks from making loans to anyone other than to the government.

Maybe there is the worry that government will not get credit for the recovery if there is no new government program to point to, no government guarantee to praise, no stimulus spending to trumpet. Maybe that would be O.K. But I would be ready to vote for the government leaders who removed the obstructions to investment, lowered tax rates, lifted regulatory burdens, and dispelled the clouds of regulations and barriers to growth that are gathering on the horizon.

Of Mountebanks and the Second Coming of Christ

2011-05-20T22:48:00.003-04:00

I have been wanting to write this for months, but I have been reluctant. I have been wanting to write this ever since I heard the bizarre claim on the radio by false prophets that they knew the exact date of the second coming of Christ. I have been reluctant, because I did not want to help draw attention to these con artists and inadvertently stimulate the curiosity of an unwary reader that could bring him within their grasp. We are close enough, now, to the day when their deception will be revealed, so the chance of there being further victims is small.

Today is May 20, 2011, and I am still here. I will still be here tomorrow, the date that the diabolical deceivers have given out as the day that Jesus Christ would return to the earth in glory. These mockers of the Savior are correct that tomorrow will fulfill prophecy, for as it comes and goes they will have demonstrated the fulfillment of Christ’s warning given to His disciples shortly before His crucifixion. As the Savior sat on the Mount of Olives, overlooking the Temple, Christ prophesied of His return to the earth in the latter days. Jesus warned,

Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. . . . if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not. (Matthew 24:23, 26)

The Savior then explained, that when He returns to the earth, no one will need to tell you, for all will see and know. It will be just as obvious and apparent as the sunrise:

For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. . . .
And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. (Matthew 24:27, 30)

Tomorrow will be the end of just one more in a long line of frauds. Unholy mountebanks, avaricious men and women in pursuit of power, wealth, sport, or personal aggrandizement, have played and will continue to play upon the emotions and fancies of those who mix their longing—and lack of patience—for the return of the Savior with a spiritual gullibility, unilluminated by an allegiance to the guidance of Christ and His prophets. These sheep, unwilling to rely upon the Savior’s promises on His own timetable and in His own ways, line up to be unmercifully shorn.

For us and for them it could be otherwise. Jesus Christ Himself gave an ironclad safeguard against these deceivers, a foolproof test that has protected believers for almost 2,000 years. If anyone tells you the day or time when the Savior will return, do not believe him:

But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. (Matthew 24:36)

I consider it unwise to lay claims to more knowledge than the angels or to follow any mortal who makes such claims.

So tomorrow will come, and tomorrow will go. I will be here, and you will be here, but the leaders of the latest unholy fraud will likely be gone, long gone, probably along with much of the funds of their followers. But do not look for them in heaven; I recommend seeking them in some more earthly paradise, with swaying palm trees and drinks served with little umbrellas.

Of the Dodd-Frank Act and Preparing for the Next Crisis

2011-05-17T22:15:00.007-04:00

Last year Congress passed and President Obama signed into law the Dodd-Frank Act. As advertised, the Dodd-Frank Act was to restructure the entire financial system of the nation to ensure that we do not have another melt down of the economy, at least not one related to the financial system. With that promise, the Dodd-Frank Act set in motion an extensive program of federal government control of the banking and investment industries. Ever after, financial firms would be more responsible to bureaucracies in Washington than they would be to their own customers, but everything financial would be “safer.”

The Dodd-Frank Act is failing. In fact, judged by the most demanding measures possible, those set out by its framers in the Administration, it is an abject failure. And it is getting worse, not better, and it is making financial things worse, not better. A repeat of the troubles of 2007 through 2009 is becoming more likely rather than more remote.

A few days following enactment of Dodd-Frank, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner gave a speech at New York University’s Stern School of business in which he outlined six principles that would guide implementation of the new law. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should judge the success of the implementation by those six principles. Secretary Geithner challenged us to do so. He said, “You should hold us accountable for honoring them.” In a few days it will be ten months since President Obama signed the law in a formal White House ceremony. Let us examine progress of the last ten months by the standard of the six principles.

Principle One: Speed, moving as quickly as possible to bring clarity to the new rules of finance. The Dodd-Frank Act mandated an unprecedented program of new regulations that are so numerous and complex that describing them defies hyperbole. Estimates range between 250 and 500 new regulations to be promulgated. One of Washington’s prestigious financial law firms, Davis-Polk, noted by way of illustration that one of the agencies tasked with writing new regulations, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), normally has at most four regulations that it is working on at a time. At the end of December the CFTC had 31 regulations under work.

But starting regulations is not completing them. The Davis-Polk study noted that the law required 26 regulations to be completed in April 2011, but not a single deadline was met. Some 40 Dodd-Frank regulations are now behind schedule. That is not to criticize the regulators, who are cutting as many corners as possible to meet the deadlines. It illustrates how impossible it is to implement Dodd-Frank as mandated.

Principle Two: Full transparency and disclosure, with the regulatory agencies consulting broadly as they write new rules. Compliance with this principle is even worse than the speed test. In fact, in a vain effort to meet the unrealistic deadlines of the Dodd-Frank Act, regulators are shortening comment periods, consulting with each other as little as possible, and in general trusting to their own hasty judgment far too much. One agency head remarked to a banker group that the agency leadership did not need to have long discussions with the public; they have been thinking about the issues and already know what they want to do.

Principle Three: Avoid layering of new rules on top of old, outdated ones, eliminating rules that do not work, and wherever possible streamlining and simplifying. Barbara Rehm, a financial reporter with the independent trade newspaper American Banker, recently observed, “None of the numerous people interviewed could name a single rule that has been repealed or simplified.”

Principle Four: Avoid risking killing freedom of innovation, striving to achieve a careful balance, safeguarding freedom and competition. Since enactment of the Dodd-Frank Act there has been no innovation in the financial services industry, as businessmen do not know what they will be allowed to do and what will be banned once the Act is implemented. Actually, it is worse. The best minds in financial firms have been focused on how to meet the needs of the regulators rather than on how to meet the needs of their customers, and the only competition is among the regulators over who can be “tougher” on the financial industry.

Principle Five: Make sure that we have a more level playing field, both between banks and non-banks as well as with regard to America’s foreign competitors. In this category the talk and promises are extensive and good. So far there are no results. In fact, foreign regulators are quietly backing away from copying the regulatory excesses of the Dodd-Frank Act, positioning American firms to surrender the global financial leadership that they have built up over the last 100 years.

Principle Six: Actually, Secretary Geithner provided a bonus, squeezing two parts into this last standard. Part One: Have more order and coordination in the regulatory process so that regulatory agencies are working together, not against each other. Coordination among the regulators is haphazard at best, with plenty of agency competition in evidence. The new Orwellian Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection has not even been set up, and the other regulators are already competing with it to show who can be more punitive on financial firms in the name of helping their customers. Even the States are joining in, with various state attorneys general pressuring banks to cough up $20 billion to some kind of fund to be used by officers of the Obama Administration to help the fortunate troubled homeowners of their choice.

Principle Six, Part Two: Conduct a careful assessment of costs and benefits of the burdens involved with the regulations. Cost/benefit analyses have been cursory at best but more often non-existent. The inspector general of the CFTC recently chastised his agency for ignoring meaningful inquiry into the cost of its proposed regulations. Ten Republican legislators, troubled by this neglect, sent a letter to all the financial regulators asking for their cost/benefit analyses. There has been no reply.

Ten months into the implementation process, how must we judge the Dodd-Frank Act? Holding Secretary Geithner and the Obama Administration to their own standards, it is hard to avoid a conclusion of complete failure. This is no surprise to those of us who criticized the whole premise of the Dodd-Frank Act, that the government failures that brought on the financial crisis could be resolved by increasing the role of government. So far government is failing in the regulatory implementation crisis created by the Dodd-Frank Act. Do not look to government to be ready to respond to the next financial crisis when that arrives, especially if the confusion of the Dodd-Frank Act helps to hasten that day.

Of Dishonest Money and a Poorer Future

2011-05-01T11:59:00.001-04:00

Interest rates in the United States are low, far lower than they would normally be. The Federal Reserve has been pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy to keep them low. Is that a good thing? For the federal government it might be—in the short run—but for savers it is bad. One percent back on your savings is pretty low. The persistent, artificially low interest rate policy of the Federal Reserve Board has become a major transfer of wealth from private savers to the federal government. Low interest paid by the Treasury means low interest earned by savers. Measured against inflation, you may be letting the federal government use your money for less than nothing.

Perhaps even worse, the low interest rate policy of the Federal Reserve is supporting the colossal spending binge of the federal government. The federal government can spend trillions of dollars it does not have, because the cost of government borrowing is so cheap.

It is not naturally cheap. Normal markets would not support the continued massive deficits from Washington. When the government spends more than it takes in it has to borrow from you and me, or more particularly from our pension plans and insurance programs, as well as from banks (and foreigners, a subject for another day). Savers and banks do not, however, have an unlimited appetite for lending to the government, especially at the low rates that the government offers. In past decades, persistent federal deficits would result in rising interest rates, as investors would demand a higher return to keep them willing to buy more government bonds.

Some months ago, when the ballooning federal deficit showed no signs of easing, the Federal Reserve stepped in and started buying up hundreds of billions of dollars of government debt just as investors were backing away. Interest rates on government borrowing would have gone up, but the Federal Reserve bought up the oversupply of debt and pushed interest rates down. Interest rates on government borrowing today remain at historically low levels, six-month Treasury securities going for about one-tenth of one percent. That is way below the rising rate of inflation, which lately is at about 2.5% and going north. That means that many investors in government debt are actually losing money, the return on their government debt falling behind the rate of inflation, the government paying back the money it borrowed with dollars that buy less than the ones that they took in. Federal Reserve policies are helping this go on.

Speaking of inflation, the Federal Reserve announced this past week that it is O.K. with inflation of 2.5%, that in fact the Federal Reserve sees inflation trending toward 3% for the coming years. Some of us who remember back to the Jimmy Carter days when inflation approached closer to 20% than 10% might be tempted to think that 3% inflation sounds pretty good. Keep in mind, though, what inflation means.

Remember what money is. Money is an exchange of promises. I promise that I will give you, say, $100 worth of value, whether my goods, my time, or my services, in exchange for which you give me a certificate—money—that can be exchanged for $100 worth of goods, time, or services with someone else. Money lets me take that promise and put it in my pocket and carry it around to where I think that it will be of most use to me. Money is enormously efficient. I do not work for the grocery store. I work at my job and get paid and then take my money to the grocery store and exchange it for groceries. The store exchanges that money, in turn, for more goods, as well as to pay the salaries of the people who work there. They in turn take that money and use it for what they want.

Inflation makes all of that dishonest. I get paid the $100. If I wait a year to spend it, and there is a 3% inflation rate, that $100 dollars will then only by me what about $97 would have bought when I got paid. Of course, that is an even bigger deal if the inflation rate is 10%, my $100 only being worth some $90 of goods and services in my example. But even 3% can be a very big deal, a far bigger deal than the Federal Reserve seemed to acknowledge this past week.

Consider retirement. Not enough people do, but you should. Perhaps you are an average couple saving and investing and hoping to have a retirement income of say $80,000 per year. You have figured that you can live on that. With an inflation rate of 3%, you had better think again. Your $80,000 retirement income will only be able to buy what $40,000 or less buys today. Setting aside adequate money to save and invest for retirement is hard enough. Inflation makes it all much harder.

Massive government deficits are already driving the Federal Reserve to cheapen the return on your investments (in order to keep the federal deficit from snuffing out the weak recovery). The inflationary pressures that they are building up inside the federal volcano will undermine your retirement even further. The longer we wait to solve the deficit problem, and the interest rate and inflation dangers it spawns, the worse it all gets. Government may not be able to create wealth, but it can surely take it away.

Of the Authority of God and the Witness of Christ’s Resurrection

2011-04-24T00:44:00.005-04:00

In May 1829, Jesus Christ sent John the Baptist—slain by command of Herod but resurrected by the will and power of Christ—to bestow on a new prophet, Joseph Smith, the same authority to baptize in the name of God that John the Baptist held during his own mortal ministry. Shortly afterward Christ similarly sent Peter, James, and John to confer on Joseph Smith the same authority from God that had been bestowed upon them under the Savior’s hands. When the Apostles of Christ were gone, their authority also was lost. In 1829 they returned that authority to the earth.

Every week, in congregations all around the world, that authority is exercised to channel the blessings of God to the modern day disciples of Jesus Christ. One of these priesthood blessings is the privilege of renewing promises made at baptism by remembering the suffering and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Acting under the direction and authority of Christ His authorized servants bless and administer the emblems of the body of Christ—broken and then resurrected—and of the blood of Christ shed for the sins of many. All who receive these emblems with sincerity of heart in remembrance of Jesus Christ receive forgiveness of sins and direct spiritual communion with God, and they exercise the same spiritual gifts that the faithful followers of Christ exercised in ancient days.

The thousands of men who administer those emblems to thousands of congregations did not take it upon themselves to act in the holy place of Jesus Christ, made sacred when He offered the bread and cup to His Apostles the night before His death. They had hands placed upon their heads and received authority from others, who in their turn had hands placed upon their heads by those who in turn in the same way received the authority of God, all the way back to those who received that authority under the hands of the Savior Himself. For us in these latter days, one pair of those hands belonged to Joseph Smith, who received the authority of Christ from the hands of those upon whose heads hands were placed shortly before they were nailed to the cross on Calvary.

Just as anciently, eye witnesses today are proclaiming once again to the world the living Christ who was slain and who was resurrected and lives to guide and bless all who will be guided by Him. These are not learned men preaching from their study of the scriptures—though they have made in depth study of the scriptures a daily practice of a lifetime. These are men who know the Christ, who speak from personal knowledge and association with the Savior, Jesus Christ, and who proclaim what they know as well as what they believe.

I will give two examples of many. Keep in mind that these examples are not theories or learned dissertations by the doctors of religion. These are direct, personal, and tangible revelations of God, the way that God has throughout the ages revealed Himself.

The first is from The Book of Mormon, a record written in an ancient era but revealed anew in modern times. Some time after the resurrection of Jesus Christ and His ascension into heaven, a large group of ancient Americans were gathered near their Temple in a place that in their language they called Bountiful.

. . . and behold, they saw a Man descending out of heaven; . . . and he came down and stood in the midst of them. . . .
And . . . he stretched forth his hand and spake unto the people, saying:
Behold, I am Jesus Christ, whom the prophets testified shall come into the world.
. . . I am the light and the life of the world; and I have drunk out of that bitter cup which the Father hath given me, and have glorified the Father in taking upon me the sins of the world . . . .
Arise and come forth unto me, that you may thrust your hands into my side, and also that ye may feel the prints of the nails in my hands and in my feet, that ye may know that I am the God of Israel, and the God of the whole earth, and have been slain for the sins of the world.
And . . . the multitude went forth, and thrust their hands into his side, and did feel the prints of the nails . . .; going forth one by one . . . , and did see with their eyes and did feel with their hands, and did know of a surety . . . , that it was he, of whom it was written by the prophets, that should come.
. . . And they were in number about two thousand and five hundred souls; and they did consist of men, women, and children. (3 Nephi 11:8-11, 14, 15; 17:25)

The second example of many was a modern event, in fulfillment of ancient prophecy. Near the very end of the Old Testament, this prophecy is recorded, from the Prophet Malachi:

Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple. . . (Malachi 3:1)

Who would build this latter-day Temple, and when would the Savior come to it? In their deepest poverty the modern-day followers of Christ, who had received baptism by those authorized by Christ Himself, were commanded by the Lord through the Prophet Joseph Smith to build a Temple in Kirtland, Ohio. One week after the Kirtland Temple was dedicated, Joseph Smith and his colleague, Oliver Cowdery, were praying in the Temple, on April 3, 1836. This is the second example I offer you of the Savior, Jesus Christ, revealing Himself to us in these latter days that we might know Him. This is from the personal testimony of Joseph and Oliver:

The veil was taken from our minds, and the eyes of our understanding were opened.
We saw the Lord standing upon the breastwork of the pulpit, before us; . . .
His eyes were as a flame of fire; the hair of his head was white like the pure snow; his countenance shown above the brightness of the sun; and his voice was as the sound of the rushing of great waters, even the voice of Jehovah, saying:
I am the first and the last; I am he who liveth, I am he who was slain; I am your advocate with the Father. (Doctrine & Covenants 110:1-4)

I have been to the Garden Tomb, in Jerusalem. I have looked in. It is empty. Jesus is not there. He is risen, as He said.

I have not seen Jesus Christ. Joseph Smith did, and he proclaimed the living Christ to the world. I have heard and received the testimony of Joseph Smith. By the gift of the Holy Ghost, bestowed upon me by the priesthood authority of Christ, I know that his testimony is true, by the same way that people anciently knew that the testimony of Paul, or Peter, or John was true. I too know, for myself, that Jesus Christ lives, that He suffered for me in my place, as He did for all who will receive Him. I know that Jesus Christ was resurrected.

Because of the resurrection of Christ, I will be resurrected, too, and so will you.

Of the Passover and the Knowledge of God

2011-04-17T19:11:00.007-04:00

On the night before He was crucified, Jesus gathered His Apostles together to celebrate the Passover, that most sacred of Hebrew festivals, rich in symbolism of Christ and His atonement. The firstborn of every family would die, except for the sacrifice of a lamb, whose blood brought life and safety to Israel.

What were Jesus’ thoughts as He celebrated that Passover with those He loved best, on the very doorstep of when He was to fulfill the Passover ordinance and the prophecy embedded in its symbolism. What were Jesus’ thoughts when He Himself was about to be the Passover Lamb?

Many sacred things happened at that Passover. The Savior introduced the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, the broken bread symbolic of His body, soon to be broken and soon thereafter to be resurrected; the wine symbolic of his blood, in a few hours to be shed at Gethsemane and the next day under the whip and on the cross.

Jesus washed the feet of the Apostles, teaching them that priesthood is entirely about loving service to one another.

And Jesus prayed. What would it mean to you to hear the Savior pray to the Father for you?

Some of the words of that prayer are preserved in John 17, one of the most sacred chapters of all the scriptures. This is how it begins:

These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come;

Indeed it had, the hour pointed to by all eternity, the very meridian of time.

glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee:

It is curious to me that there are still some, who must not have read this and other passages of scripture, who say that Jesus Christ never claimed that He was the Son of God, the Messiah. Here is Jesus very plainly declaring His Sonship in prayer to the Father in the presence of His disciples.

And then bearing His solemn witness to the Father and to the Apostles around Him, the Savior declared in His holy prayer, announcing Himself, again, to be the Christ, the Messiah—

And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. (John 17:1, 3)

Before 1820, where was that knowledge of Jesus Christ to be found? How were people to know the Savior, the knowing by which they could obtain eternal life? The Prophet Amos foretold—

Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord: And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it. (Amos 8:11, 12)

For centuries the famine had prevailed. What the churches of the day taught about Jesus Christ was all confusion and contradiction.

Some said He was the Son of a God who had no body, parts or passions;

or that He was the physical manifestation of a God who could never be seen;

or that He was a Savior who only saved some and damned others, all regardless of what they did or believed;

or that He saved everyone who believed no matter what they did;

or that He saved some because of what they did no matter what they believed;

or that He had done His work, gone to Heaven, and left men afterward to fend for themselves.

Yet there were many who sought to know the Christ, generations of people seeking the Lord and His saving power, and who could not find Him. Some of their names were Augustine, Thomas, Tyndale, Luther, Casiodoro de Reina, Charles Wesley, and others. Surely there were many more whose names we do not know. There were old and young, neither age nor youth an obstacle to wanting to know the Father and Jesus Christ, and gain the eternal life that They promised. One of these in 1820 was a young teenage boy with an ordinary name, Joseph Smith.

In 1820, the hour had come. In answer to one prayer, added to millions of prayers offered by other seekers over thousands of years, our Heavenly Father appeared to the young Joseph Smith, spoke his name and revealed to him Jesus Christ, His Son. To Joseph Smith the Father said, “This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!” (JS-H 1:17) With those words, the first drops fell ending the spiritual drought of 1700 years.

What did the Savior say to Joseph? Jesus quoted scripture, a prophecy that He had given to the Prophet Isaiah:

they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men (JS-H 1:19).

We call that the First Vision, because many others followed, in which Jesus Christ revealed Himself to the Prophet Joseph Smith, and then to others, and by which others who knew Jesus in their mortal lives passed on to Joseph what the Savior had given to them. Joseph Smith passed on that knowledge and power to us, to all who will today receive Jesus Christ, and come to know Him and the Father, and obtain eternal life, in the way that those did, who observed the Passover with Jesus, in the way that many others have throughout history. The Savior’s Church was on the earth once again to bring hearts near to the Savior through the power of the doctrines of God.

Of Blood Sacrifice and the Sacrifice of the Savior

2011-04-03T20:45:00.004-04:00

For some 4,000 years the ritual sacrifice of a first-born, unblemished lamb played an essential part in the worship of the God of Heaven. This was an ordinance that dates from Adam, was practiced by Abraham, and was given renewed emphasis through the prophet Moses to the children of Israel, only recently released from slavery and oppression.

Also since the days of Adam, blood sacrifice as prescribed by revelation has been copied and horribly distorted by followers of many other religions not authorized by God. The disciples of these other religions, and also many less understanding subscribers to the religion of Jehovah, have acted as if they believed that the blood sacrifice itself did something, accomplished something, in some way mattered.

In truth, in the whole history of the earth there has been and will be only one blood sacrifice that matters at all, from an eternal perspective. That was the blood sacrifice of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, the sacrificial Lamb of the Father. His sacrifice was the only one that in and of itself possessed any virtue, for that sacrifice made possible the forgiveness of the sins of men and women throughout time. All other sacrifices conducted under divine authority derived all of their virtue from that one sacrifice of the Savior.

That was why the Lord was so strict about how those sacrifices were to be conducted, so that each one referred directly to the Savior’s sacrifice. All sacrifices not conducted in the manner prescribed by revelation from God and under His authority were solemn hoaxes, pointing away from the Savior, diverting attention away from the one sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and were diabolical at their root.

Consider the sacrifice offered by Cain. Rather than offer the blood sacrifice prescribed by God by revelation, tied to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that would heal sins from Adam down to the last child born on earth, Cain offered a sacrifice of fruit. Cain acted as if there were some virtue in the sacrifice itself, rather than recognizing that a sacrifice could only derive virtue from the only sacrifice that could generate virtue, the sinless sacrifice of Christ. The Lord rejected the sacrifice and reminded Cain that he could not please the Lord without obeying the Lord (Genesis 4:3-7). Obedience to God was not part of the plan of Cain, who thereafter descended from his mocking sacrifice to the bloody murder of his own brother.

The sacrifice prescribed by revelation from God was rich in symbolism, the death of the unspotted firstborn lamb directly representative of the death of the firstborn and sinless Son of God. The actual death of the sacrifice was a powerful, real, tangible reminder for the disciples of Jehovah of the reality, the literalness, of the sacrificial death of the Messiah. The ordinance was intended to be impressive to the minds of the worshipers—the physical death not only representing the physical death to come of the Messiah but also driving home the point that matters of spiritual life and death were at stake.

These blood sacrifices were only temporary, however. For the people who lived before the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, they were intended to bring more reality to the promise of an event that had not yet happened. After His sacrifice and resurrection the Savior proclaimed an end to the ordinances.

And ye shall offer up unto me no more the shedding of blood; yea, your sacrifices and your burnt offerings shall be done away, for I will accept none of your sacrifices and your burnt offerings. (3 Nephi 9:19)

Modeled after the image of the Savior’s sacrifice, they were fulfilled when His atonement was accomplished. To continue the blood sacrifices after that would suggest that the Savior’s sacrifice was not sufficient, that somehow the Savior’s suffering for our sins was incomplete, that the sacrifice of an animal in and of itself could provide forgiveness. Remember, there never was any virtue in the sacrifices other than as they pointed to the future sacrifice of the Christ. Continuing the ordinances after Christ’s death and resurrection would actually be a denial of faith in Christ and His atonement rather than the expression of faith in Him that they were prior to His redemption.

Do we living after the resurrection of Jesus Christ have no need to be reminded of His atonement? Of course we do. In place of the blood sacrifice of old, the resurrected Savior called for a new sacrifice:

And ye shall offer for a sacrifice unto me a broken heart and a contrite spirit. And whoso cometh unto me with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, him will I baptize with fire and with the Holy Ghost . . . (3 Nephi 9:20)

This sacrifice is also connected to the Savior’s sacrifice, for that is how we receive the forgiveness of sins that His redemption made possible. That is how we are brought within the circle of the atonement whereby Christ’s suffering takes the place of our suffering. Our sacrifice is to receive Him and qualify for His sacrifice in our place.

But the Lord still draws upon physical ordinances to remind us of spiritual realities. The night before the crucifixion Jesus instituted the ordinance of partaking of ceremonial bread and wine to remind us of the union of His sacrifice and ours. The bread points to the body of Christ, that He gave up in death and reclaimed in resurrection. The wine points to the blood that He shed in Gethsemane and on the cross.

The promise is pronounced in the words of the prayer that the Savior prescribed to be offered. As His disciples partake of tangible symbols of even more powerful spiritual intangibles, they do so in witness “that they do always remember him, that they may have his Spirit to be with them.” (Moroni 5:2) The saints of ancient days and modern times are united by powerful and appropriate ordinances in their focus on the central event of history, the sacrifice and atonement of Jesus Christ.

Of Controlling Events and the Wrath of the Crowd

2011-03-20T20:51:00.004-04:00

When Jesus Christ rode into Jerusalem on the Sunday before He was crucified, few in the crowd really knew who He was or what He was doing. Even his closest disciples little understood what was happening and unfolding. All knew it was momentous, but all but the Savior Himself misunderstood why.

To the cheering crowd Jesus was an unstoppable miracle worker come to change their political—and surely many even believed their religious—world. The Savior understood how fleeting this popular acclaim would be. His understanding was akin to that voiced by Oliver Cromwell some 1500 years later, when similarly the focus of the hurrahs of the streets Cromwell said, “Do not trust to the cheering, for those persons would shout as much if you and I were going to be hanged.” Jesus knew that the crowd would be shouting again on Friday.

None of this was accidental. It was all prophesied hundreds and even thousands of years before, and Jesus was in control of all of the events and the fulfillment of all of the prophecies. For an omniscient and omnipotent God, nothing happens by chance.

Jesus had long been warned not to go to Jerusalem, that the local leaders would seek His life. In apparent avoidance of the reach of the authorities in Jerusalem, Jesus had largely confined His ministry to Galilee, beyond their jurisdiction. In a surprise move one time before (and in demonstration that He was always in control of events), the Savior had quietly gone to Jerusalem for the Passover, but once there He made His presence public. On that occasion the authorities were too awed by Jesus’ popularity to move against Him. He came and left His city without harm.

For this final visit of mortality, the Savior made His approach well known. His fame, especially of His miracles, had been building. It was brought to a crescendo shortly before and only a short walk away from Jerusalem when the Savior, before a large crowd, called forth Lazarus from the dead. That Lazarus had been dead, just as Jacob Marley, “dead as a doornail,” there was no doubt; he had been in the tomb four days. That Lazarus was alive again was apparent to all. What kind of a Man was this?

As Jesus entered Jerusalem, in clear token of the Messiah, “the Son of David,” the people filled the streets. But their cheering had little to do with yielding their hearts to God and doing the works of righteousness. It was the expectation of having a Messiah who would do their will, One who could and would feed the thousands, heal the sick, and even raise their dead, and maybe restore the greatness of the kingdom of David. Christ would do all of these things, but only on His terms, and those terms the people were not ready to accept. When that became clear, they would call upon the hated Roman rulers to crucify the last real King of the Jews.

Jesus knew and expected this reaction. With the power of God to make all things work for good, through that unfair sacrifice Christ made His “soul an offering for sin, . . . bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors” (Isaiah 53:11, 12), as He and the Father had planned from before the creation of the world. On the third day, Jesus the Messiah Himself rose from the tomb. The Christ had gained the victory over all, including death and hell, and extended that victory freely to all—before and since His sacrifice—who will receive it and Him, on the terms of Him who paid the whole price alone.

Of the Mortal Ministry of Christ and the Return of the King

2011-03-06T17:55:00.003-05:00

No two events in the history of mankind have been the subject of more divine prophecy than the earthly ministry and atonement of the Savior, Jesus Christ, and the return of Jesus Christ and His subsequent millennial reign. Both were so frequently major themes of so many of the Old Testament prophets that their messages were confused and confounded in the teachings of the scholars at Jerusalem in the time of the Savior’s mortal ministry.

For that reason—or at least in part for that reason—most of these scholars and many of the people in Judea and Galilee were blind to the Savior and the fulfillment of prophecy before their very eyes. That did not make the fulfillment any less real, it just meant that those people found themselves to the side or even hostile to its fulfillment.

All of us can be blind to the unfolding of great occurrences that happen in our own time and location, appreciating their significance, if at all, only from the distance and perspective of time. Then, our longing to have been a part cannot make up for the lost opportunity, often caused by our lack of sensitivity or distraction by things that mattered much less.

Some of these lost opportunities are painful to have missed, like the comet not seen, the speech by the great leader not heard, the perfect performance not witnessed. Others are more than painful, they are life changing: the love lost, the job that went to another, the child not born. These last may not meet mankind’s list of great moments, but they would rank high on a list of personal great events, events that poignantly matter.

The events involved with the ministry of Jesus Christ are a combination of both. They affect all of mankind as much as they powerfully change individual lives. The greatest episode of history—the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ—is also the most important for each of us personally. Surely for that reason, among others, the mortal ministry of the Christ and His return again to the earth have been foretold by prophets from the beginning of time. It was important to God and to us that we not miss them.

Consider first the many prophecies about the birth of the Savior, so that His advent to the earth should not be doubted beforehand and the fulfillment of those prophecies would help build faith in Him during His brief mortal ministry. As surely and completely as the prophecies of the birth were fulfilled so would be the prophecies of the Savior’s sacrifice and resurrection.

Next consider—just one rich example among many—the words of Isaiah found in Isaiah chapter 53. Here the prophet foretold, seven centuries before the happening, that the Messiah would be despised and rejected, acquainted with grief, that He would bear our griefs and sorrows—wounded and whipped for our transgressions, providing healing to us—that he would be led as a lamb to the slaughter, that He would speak not a word in reply to the mocking of the tormentors, that He would be judged and condemned without proper trial, executed among the wicked and buried in the tomb of the wealthy, that He would bear the iniquities and provide forgiveness to many.

As richly detailed as are Isaiah’s prophecies of the mortal and atoning ministry of Jesus Christ, they are matched by his predictions of the latter days and second coming of the Savior. Just as sure as the first happened—as completely as foretold—we can be confident that all prophesied about the second coming will evolve as foretold. If we heed the words of the prophets of God and prepare we will not miss them. Rather, we will rejoice in the richness of the unfolding and be waiting and glad when Christ returns, when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess Jesus as Savior and King.

Break forth into singing, and cry aloud. . . . In righteousness shalt thou be established: thou shalt be far from oppression; for thou shalt not fear: and from terror; for it shall not come near thee. (Isaiah 54:1, 14)

He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. (Revelation 22:20)

Of Ronald Reagan and Freedom in the Middle East

2011-02-06T22:28:00.003-05:00

The 100th anniversary of the birth of Ronald Reagan, the greatest President of the Twentieth Century and one of the three or four greatest Presidents in American history, is a fit time to consider what makes for social freedom and civil liberty. We need to have a clear understanding of such freedom if we are to make heads or tails of the current civil turmoil in the Middle East. American foreign policy since the days of Woodrow Wilson has all too often gotten this wrong.

First of all, we need to understand that the right to vote is an important but far from the most important of civil rights. Demagogues and dictators have long demonstrated their ability to survive and even control elections. Never underestimate the willingness of desperate electorates to vote away their freedoms. From Germans in the 1930s to Venezuelans in the Twenty-first Century we have seen voters elect leaders who promised to exchange liberty for stability. Soviet citizens and the citizens of the old corrupt European communist countries all had the right to vote. In fact, they could be punished for failing to vote. Free suffrage may be an essential part of liberty, but it can also coexist with tyranny.

Consider that our Declaration of Independence pointed to far more important purposes of free government: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What makes these more important is that these are all individual freedoms, founded on the recognition of the worth of the individual. While votes are counted and effective only in mass numbers, life is an individual matter, as is the liberty to use that life to pursue happiness as the individual sees fit.

Of equal importance is how the Founding Fathers sought to secure liberty. They trusted the safety of liberty to the rule of law. The signers of the Declaration of Independence believed that “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men”. The purpose of government is to establish and enforce the rule of law on which freedom rests, freedom that is lost when anarchy and mob rule prevail just as surely as when kings and dictators impose their will on their subjects. The American Founders recognized and proclaimed a new idea, the idea that when government strays from the rule of law, or, in their words, “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

Bearing these principles in mind, we can be prepared to evaluate what is going on in the Middle East. Without argument, nearly all of the governments of the Middle East—with the important exceptions of the governments of Israel and of Turkey and perhaps the new government of Iraq—are tyrannies, where powerful dictators or oligarchies impose their will on their populations who are unable to trust in the law to protect them in the enjoyment of individual liberties. The cronies of these rulers, whether family or friends, are given special privileges to take property, impose prices, control businesses, and engage in wide varieties of corruption, impoverishing their nations in the process.

It is no accident that standards of living in countries like Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere continue to be depressed, while nearby Israel, with virtually no natural resources and almost no land—but a constitution that protects individual rights under the rule of law—is a comparative economic and social paradise. In fact, Israel’s prosperity based on individual freedom seems to be a fundamental source of the hatred of neighboring despotic regimes, not unlike the reason why despots have persistently fomented hatred of the United States.

The question is, will the rioters in the streets seek to replace despotism and crony capitalism with individual rights and liberties, founded upon the rule of law, or will they merely replace one despotism with another and more pervasive one? Iran gives us one chilling example. Can we really say that the totalitarianism of the Iranian mullahs is better than the dictatorship of the Shah?

Watch which liberties the emerging leaders of the rioters advocate. Surely they will call for elections. So did the Red Army in the wake of World War II, as did the ayatollahs in Tehran. But what about the rights to private property, what about freedom of worship, what about security from arbitrary arrest, the ability to start up and own a business and enjoy the fruits of individual labor. Most importantly, look for independent courts with authority and power to protect the rights of minorities and individuals. These are the rights that America should advocate and the promotion and protection of these rights that we should foster. When we have, in places like Poland, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and West Germany, the results have been sustainable freedom and dramatic prosperity.

Not quite 30 years ago, on March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan spoke to a big labor union meeting of the AFL-CIO. He explained why the U.S. economy was on the rocks and how to get it going again, stronger than ever. The problem, he said, was that America was not acting like America:

We’ve gone astray from first principles. We’ve lost sight of the rule that individual freedom and ingenuity are at the very core of everything that we’ve accomplished. Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.

A few minutes after that speech, President Reagan was shot. He recovered, and because he recovered and persisted with his policies of returning power to the individuals, America recovered. His policies led to America winning the Cold War and succeeded in a dramatic economic boom that lasted for almost 20 years. His advice, pointing to the fundamental principles for the success of America, are just as important now as they were then, just as important for us in the United States as they are for the people of the Middle East.

Of Holy Writings and Universal Messages

2011-02-01T22:24:00.003-05:00

Throughout the ages a prominent expression of the living church of Christ has been the emergence of new revelation and new scripture. The Bible, progressively produced over the ancient centuries, is a powerful testimony to the pattern of continuous and new revelation from God. Each era in the history of the Bible witnessed new and living prophets pronouncing the word of God, and their words were written down for the people in their day as well as for those who would come afterward.

Not only have we been blessed through successive generations of prophecy and revelation preserved in holy scripture, but we have been blessed by the harmony of the message of God, the testimonies of holy witnesses building upon and reinforcing each other. Through a variety of mouths and in a great variety of conditions, the message of God—particularly the message of redemption through Jesus the Messiah—as recorded in the scriptures has been consistent and congruous.

There have been times when the authority of God had departed from among men, and in each case revelation ceased and the accretion of new scripture paused. Indeed, not only did new scripture cease but too often some of the past scripture was lost. Thus the Bible makes reference to such sacred writings as the Book of the Wars of the Lord, the Book of Jasher, the Book of Nathan the Prophet, the Visions of Iddo the Seer, the Sayings of the Seers, and several others. All of these books are mentioned but none of them are contained in the Bible of today nor currently found anywhere else. At least for now, they are missing, but they were once well known.

A careful reading of the Books of Moses, especially the Book of Genesis, can lead to the conclusion that much of what Moses wrote by inspiration was restoring what had been known of God and His doings in previous times but which had been lost during the captivity in Egypt. Moses restored much of what was then gone and provided new revelation, which was written down and passed down.

Joshua took up where Moses left off, Elisha followed Elijah, Jeremiah prophesied not long after Isaiah, and Daniel and the prophets of the Babylonian captivity came after Jeremiah. All pointed to the Savior, Jesus Christ, in their testimonies. Their words were written and later quoted by the Savior Himself during His mortal ministry. The Savior’s words were preserved by His apostles, who in turn received revelation from God and added to the canon of scriptures—until there were no more apostles and no more revelation and no new scripture as the church founded by Christ fell into decay.

Today, with the church of Jesus Christ once again established on the earth, with all of the authority of God once given to apostles and prophets of antiquity again bestowed by God on living apostles and prophets, new scripture again is flourishing. As was done for thousands of years in the past, in our day the inspired words of modern prophets are written down for our benefit and the benefit of our posterity. Moreover, ancient scriptural testimony of the visit of Jesus Christ to yet another continent has been recovered and published as The Book of Mormon.

A key difference of these latter days—as prophesied by many ancients—is that these fountains of divine revelation will never cease until the Savior Himself returns to the earth. The disciples of Christ today declare—

We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.
(The Articles of Faith 9)

Very importantly, as with all scripture, the words of the modern prophets harmoniously blend with those of the ancient prophets. They give united and universal witness of the central mission of Jesus Christ as the Savior of all men, in all places, and in all ages.

Of Crony Capitalism and Free Enterprise

2011-01-23T22:49:00.007-05:00

In 1991, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and as the Soviet Union was disintegrating, the current editor of The Wall Street Journal editorial page, Paul Gigot, warned,

Freedom’s main enemy now is the corporate state, private business harnessed to the coercive power of government.
(Paul A. Gigot, “Trade’s Hamlet: Will Gephardt Do The Right Thing?” The Wall Street Journal, March 8, 1991)

If that was true in1991, it is far more of a danger twenty years later. As a result of recent legislation, including the Dodd-Frank Act, the massive stimulus program, and the huge healthcare overhaul, involvement of government bureaucrats in private enterprise has never been greater in the United States, not even close. Federal officials are being endowed with enormous power in ways large and small to reward favored businesses and punish those that are not so favored, all hidden under the camouflage of acting for the “public good.”

Under Dodd-Frank, for example, federal regulatory czars are given authority to decide what lines of business financial firms can or cannot engage in, what services they can offer to customers, how much they can pay their employees, which firms will be bailed out if they get into trouble, what information private firms must provide to federal operatives, and who gets to foot the bill for all of this federal intrusion. Similarly, under the stimulus plan, hundreds of billions of dollars in federal contracts are up for award under the skimpiest of criteria, while under the new healthcare system myriads of government boards will decide who can receive what medical services at what cost and under which conditions.

It gets worse. Because these government benefits or penalties can be exercised with broad discretion by government officials, staying on the good side of the federal task masters becomes very important. Paying attention to the views and interests of government officials in other matters, even those not directly related to the legislation, can become the key to success or failure for a firm. Certainly complaints about the exercise of government discretion will not be well received. This is not hypothetical. Already it is the rare bank that will publicly complain about a decision by the FDIC, and securities firms are noticeably shy about taking issue with decisions of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

This ability of government authorities to employ the force of government to help friends and penalize perceived enemies, and to use economic levers to do so, is called crony capitalism. Crony capitalism unfairly gives capitalism a bad name. It is Third World-like. It is also old fashioned; it is pretty much the way that kings and czars ran their economies. Free enterprise and free markets will always be at war with crony capitalism.

Under crony capitalism, ownership of business may remain in private hands, but private owners share control with influential public officials. It can pay off big time for a business to get and stay on the good side of these people—whose permission and authority are keys to the success of the business. With government favor, a firm not only can win government business, but rules and regulations can be written in ways that favor the firm and disadvantage competition in the private sector. A new upstart in an industry can find trouble getting licenses, experience delays in regulatory approvals, be subject to heavy paperwork demands, face onerous financial fees and requirements, and through a myriad of techniques find his business handicapped in ways not experienced by firms in favor with federal officials.

Crony capitalism not only corrupts the relationship between businesses and the government; it corrupts the relationship between businesses and their customers. Under free capitalism and free enterprise the marketplace is the arbiter of which products and businesses succeed or fail. The multitude of individual people in the marketplace, through their multitude of individual purchases and other economic decisions, are the ultimate judges of economic success. That is to say, that customers have the ultimate say over which firms are the winners and losers, which in turn makes them, the customers, the winners from a vigorous competition among businesses to please them. It takes protection provided by the government to shield an inefficient business from the discipline of customers and markets, and that is what crony capitalism provides.

Under crony capitalism, judging winning and losing is taken away from the market place. With success derived from the ability of businesses to curry favor with government leaders whose hands are on the economic controls, it is no surprise, then, that the growth of government interference has stimulated a dramatic growth in the need for businesses to have representatives in Washington to plead their cause. Fortunately, that right of representation is enshrined in the Constitution. But it would be a good idea to reduce its necessity by re-enthroning markets and the consumers behind them as the final judges in the economy and return our government to preserving life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Of Churchianity and Priestcraft

2011-01-17T11:47:00.006-05:00

While driving to church meetings this past Sunday I was surfing through the radio stations to find something wholesome and uplifting, in keeping with the spirit of the Sabbath day. That is not so easy to do. At least, I seem to remember that when I was a child Sunday morning radio and even television were almost reserved for worship programs. It is easier today to find politicians and sports figures—and their commentators—on Sunday morning radio and television; I will leave it to you to conclude whether those are the new predominant objects of worship.

With a little persistence I did find a couple of programs on the AM dial, and their messages were memorable. The first featured a religious figure with a call-in talk show in which he gives religious-psychological counseling to troubled callers. The one example I heard was from some woman who was living with a man, the father of at least a couple of her children, who was now involved in a sexual affair with some other woman. The caller wanted out of the relationship, but she was dependent on financial support from the non-husband father. She felt trapped, and indeed she was. The host of the program gave what seemed to me some sensible advice, which he admitted was common sense counsel that just about anyone could have given to the woman.

After that point I guess that the caller line must have thinned out, because the host proceeded into a prolonged criticism of organized religion, what he called “churchianity.” He took pride in the fact—pride is the right word—that he was not associated with any particular religious denomination. His argument, to sum it up, was that Jesus did not belong to any church and did not form any church, that He just went around counseling and helping people and then moved on. As the host explained, some people “fell away” but others “made it.” The host complained that organized religions are just businesses, and people do not need them. He took a while to say all of this, but that is the gist of it.

It is a wise practice to consider that in every criticism there is at least an element of some truth, and it would be wise to look for it and profit from it. The kernel of truth, however, does not justify accepting all the rest, any more than the bait justifies swallowing the fisherman’s hook. The churchianity critic is correct that too much of religion today, as was also found anciently, is a business. Paul and his missionary companions were menaced by mobs in Ephesus when his preaching of the resurrected Jesus Christ threatened to upset the business of the idol makers for the cult of the Greco-Roman goddess Diana. Martin Luther was driven to his break with the Roman Catholic Church in great part due to the church’s apparent selling of forgiveness. The Prophet Joseph Smith was martyred in Illinois by a mob inspired by local clergymen worried that restoring the ancient church of Jesus Christ was threatening their trade in manmade religion. And there is no lack of examples today of preachers seeking popularity for praise and profit.

It is true that Jesus Christ never intended His religion to become a business. He railed against professional preachers who made a business out of salvation. That is called priestcraft, and it was the leadership of the corrupt priestcraft of His day who conspired to have Jesus crucified. It is wrong, however, to conclude that Jesus Christ did not establish a Church. As Jehovah of the Old Testament, Jesus Christ called prophets and priests, had them ordained under divine commission, and by revelation instructed them on their duties. You have to overlook much of the books of Moses and reject Moses himself not to acknowledge that.

Similarly, during His mortal ministry on the earth, when the priesthood among the ancient Jews had become corrupted and turned into a business, Jesus Christ withdrew his authority from the old priests and established a new Church, with apostles and prophets. Observe how the Apostle Paul described it to the members of the Church of Christ in Ephesus:

Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: In whom ye are also builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19-22)

I am not sure how more clearly Paul could describe an organized religion, “the building fitly framed together”. If Jesus Christ did not build a church, then what do we do with the apostles whom He ordained, and the Seventy whom He called to assist the apostles? In fact, without the Church of Jesus Christ, we would not have the scriptures that tell of His ministry nor the spreading of the gospel of Christ throughout the Roman world and beyond.

It would perhaps not be inappropriate to mention at this point that the churchianity critic concluded this portion of his commentary by mentioning that regular payments from his listeners of $5 and $10 would allow him to continue his campaign against the business of religion. In another post I may discuss the other program I heard yesterday, where the announcer offered the exact date of the Judgment Day.

Of Service to God and Service to Ourselves

2011-01-09T21:03:00.009-05:00

In a particularly entertaining passage in The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien, Gandalf the wizard employs a clever and amusing tactic to introduce his destitute group of fifteen wanderers to the powerful and reclusive character, Beorn. As the story goes, each wanderer upon introduction and according to his custom offers to Beorn his name along with a pledge of being “at your service!” The rather impatient but also self-sufficient Beorn replies, “I don’t need your service, . . . but I expect you need mine.”

That is not unlike our relationship to God, even as we offer Him our service. God the Omnipotent has no need of our service, but we are very much in need of His, all day and every day. A difference, and important difference, is that while God does not need our service, we need to give it.

We need to give our service because of what giving does to us, especially what it does to us inside. It is the inner man that concerns God and is the reason for which He created this brief mortality that we sometimes narrowly call “life.” Our mortal life was designed by God as an opportunity to shape and develop our character for our permanent life of immortality, after our death and later resurrection. That concern for the inner man was behind God’s teaching to Samuel the prophet when Samuel was looking for a new king to govern Israel.

But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart. (1 Samuel 16:7)

Our inner life changes for the better each time we do good, with each worthy service that we provide. It constricts with each mean and sinful act. In the words of the modern prophet, Spencer W. Kimball,

the more we serve our fellowmen in appropriate ways, the more substance there is to our souls. We become more significant individuals as we serve others. We become more substantive as we serve others—indeed, it is easier to “find” ourselves because there is so much more of us to find!
(Spencer W. Kimball, “The Abundant Life”, Ensign, July 1978, p.3)

A couple of simple examples may illustrate how actions can change us. In these examples we consider apparently identical actions that differ only in terms of the intent behind the actions. That intent, expressed through action, rebounds on the soul and changes the character of the soul further, for better or worse.

Consider, for example, a man who accidentally walks off with someone else’s umbrella. Compare that with a case where another man knowingly takes someone else’s umbrella. In both cases the actions in all material details are the same. The umbrella leaves in the hands of someone who has no right to it. There is a profound difference, however, in what each case does to the character—the internal moral condition—of the actor. The first may cause some embarrassment but is scarcely a cause of shame. The second has at a minimum increased the willingness of the man to cause yet another injury to the property or person of someone else and has shrunken him in spirit and in love for his fellowman.

As a second example, let us look at a seemingly good act, the giving of a gift. With a gift freely offered, with thoughtfulness and generosity, the giver grows in characteristics of kindness and liberality. The same gift, however, given grudgingly, with hopes of currying favor or with a sense of obligation rather than goodwill, with residual covetousness for the possession surrendered, will stir resentment, envy, and perhaps even elements of hatred in the heart of the giver (see Moroni 7:6-11). Again, an action apparently the same in all material aspects becomes a blessing or a cursing to the actor depending on whether it was offered with a blessing or cursing in the actor’s heart.

All of that is to say, that we need to provide our service to find out who we are or, better said, in order to become who we will become. Genuine service, given from love for our fellowman and an even deeper love for our God, born out of our heartfelt esteem for the worth and value of God and for the potential of His children, unfailingly builds our own value, our own worth, and our own potential as the children of God. God our Father does not need our service, but we need to give it as an essential way of becoming like Him, the sons becoming like the Father by imitating His example.

Of Wise Men of the East and Wise Men of the West

2010-12-19T22:35:00.007-05:00

Who were the wise men of the east? Where did they come from, what did they know, and how did they know it?

The scriptural account of the visit of the wise men to the young child Jesus is a reminder that Christianity is not a regional religion derived from the cultural heritage of a small group of people in a small corner of the world. The sociologists and others who see religion as nothing more than a human creation would have trouble explaining how people in widely scattered parts of the world, with little or no communication with each other, have come to bear the same witness of the Savior of the world, born near Jerusalem.

This was no mystery to the prophets of the ancient Americas. One of these, named Alma, wrote, “For behold, the Lord doth grant unto all nations, of their own nation and tongue, to teach his word, yea, in wisdom, all that he seeth fit that they should have” (Alma 29:8). That is to say, that the gospel of Jesus Christ has been spread by God throughout time throughout all the earth in the proportions and forms that the various people of the earth were able to receive it. This accounts for the broad similarities in moral standards found around the world.

The vision of some was particularly clear and strong. The wise men are one example. Traveling from somewhere in the “east” where their knowledge of the Jews and of the Kingdom of Judea was limited, they knew enough to go to Jerusalem to find where the “King of the Jews” was born. It was evident that they did not have in mind a mere earthly king, for they came “to worship him.” (Matthew 2:2) The people of Judea did not worship their king, so why would anyone else? The scripture makes it clear that the wise men were seeking the Christ (see verse 4), the King of the Jews of prophecies such as Isaiah’s:

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom. (Isaiah 9:6,7)

Where did the wise men obtain this knowledge of the Christ, this knowledge that He would be born in the land of Jerusalem,that He would be the King of the Jews (in a more than worldly sense)? Most of all, where did they obtain the knowledge that He would be the Christ, the Savior of the world, and a fit object of worship? Clearly they did not obtain this knowledge from the Jews of Judea. Perhaps they gained knowledge from elements of the House of Israel, already by then scattered throughout much of the world. But even if they received from scattered Israel the knowledge of the Messiah, from where did they gain the knowledge that He would be born in that day, knowledge that even Herod and his chief priests and scribes did not have? These wise men from a foreign land had sources of revealed knowledge from heaven, independent of the knowledge possessed by the people of Judea, yet confirming the testimonies of the Christ.

The wise men of the east were not alone. Their testimony was echoed by wise men from even farther away, by wise men of the west. The ancient American prophet Nephi received revelation from an angel about 600 B.C., ratifying the words of other prophets, that in six hundred years the Messiah would come to earth and would be called “Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” (2 Nephi 25:19) The descendants of those prophets, six centuries later, also witnessed unmistakable signs in the heavens, signs of the Savior’s birth, “and they knew that it was the day that the Lord should be born,” even though they knew it would happen in a land across the ocean from them. “And it came to pass also that a new star did appear, according to the word” of the prophets (3 Nephi 1:19, 21).

The Lord explained to that western prophet, Nephi, the universal reach of the knowledge of the mission of Christ, “Know ye not that there are more nations than one? Know ye not that I, the Lord your God, have created all men, and that I remember those who are upon the isles of the sea . . . ?” (2 Nephi 29:7). The testimonies of these wise men, east and west, have come together in harmonious witness.

As we sing songs about the wise men this Christmas season, remember the wise men of the east and of the west, and consider their independent testimony from far flung parts of the earth that Jesus Christ is the Savior of all mankind everywhere. They received their own revelations from the same God of heaven of the birth and mission of His only begotten Son, born in Bethlehem, near Jerusalem, but witnessed across the globe.

Of Carols and Carnage

2010-12-05T17:51:00.005-05:00

Among the beautiful carols of Christmas there is one that surely seems odd and out of place. At least that is how I, as a young child, thought of it. The haunting melody is in significant measure responsible for its lasting popularity, but the words are anything but joyful for a joyful celebration. Rather than recount the birth of the Savior, Jesus Christ, the song expresses the inconsolable sorrow of a mother of Bethlehem mourning the cruel murder of her little child. Popularly known as “The Coventry Carol,” it includes these words:

O sisters, too, how may we do,
For to preserve this day;
This poor Youngling for whom we sing,
By, by, lully, lullay.

Herod the King, in his raging,
Charged he hath this day;
His men of might, in his own sight,
All children young, to slay.

Then woe is me, poor Child, for Thee,
And ever mourn and say;
For thy parting nor say nor sing,
By, by, lully, lullay.

The song helps retell the sad chapter in the story of the early days of the Savior's mortal life when jealous King Herod, fearful of even rumors of potential rivals for his throne, ordered the slaughter of all of the children in Bethlehem of two years old and younger. Sometime before, Herod had been advised by the wise men of the birth of the future King of the Jews. The wise men mistakenly thought that Herod would rejoice with them at the news of the birth of the Messiah and freely told him what they knew. Under cloak of feigned rejoicing, Herod sent the wise men to Bethlehem, the place prophesied in the scriptures as the city where Christ would be born. He urged them to report back when they found the child, that he might come “and worship him also.” (Matthew 2:8)

But worship was far from what Herod had in mind. Herod’s reaction was typical of many throughout history when confronted by the work of God. He saw only danger to his own power and sought to destroy God’s work if he could. The Lord warned the wise men, who avoided Jerusalem on their way back home. Herod struck out in anger and ordered the death of all of the young babies in Bethlehem. Again as throughout history, Herod missed his mark, for Jesus was no longer there. Joseph, warned by an angel, had taken his little family away to Egypt.

Among those who take it upon themselves to second guess God there are those who would question why God would save His Son, while allowing all those other children in Bethlehem to be slain. Again, these critics miss the mark. They get it wrong by failing to consider the whole picture.

God the Father did not spare His Son from the slaying of the children at Bethlehem. The unfair and cruel carnage begun in David’s city was finished on Calvary. Jesus’ life was spared only momentarily so that it could be offered as the last sacrifice for all. That seemingly doleful song merits an essential place in our Christmas celebration. It points us to the full meaning of Christmas as part of a story that winds through Bethlehem and leads through sorrow in Gethsemane to death on Calvary.

Importantly, the story continues on from there to a glorious resurrection morning on the third day. This saddest of carols reminds us that Christ was born to save us, in spite of the evils of the world that He most of all could not escape, a salvation that extends especially to the children of Bethlehem and to all of the little children of the world.

Of Thanksgiving and Light

2010-11-21T22:26:00.004-05:00

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays of the year. It is a warm, pleasant, kind, family day. Not surprisingly, it is a day of reflection for me, despite of—or because of—all the family and busy activities involved with the day. As busy as the day may be, it is for my mind and spirit a day of rest, a very family day, a day when all is right because the family is right. It is a day during which I reflect with gratitude upon how, through the blessings of God, I have been able to provide for my family and that we have been able to enjoy so many good things. We gather rich in the mutual affection we have for one another, comfortable in how pleasant it is to be in each other’s presence. It is very appropriate that we celebrate with a bounteous meal shared by as much of the family as we can gather and often with fond friends, representing the bounties that God has bestowed upon us in the previous months.

Thus in our home, Thanksgiving Day is a time of reflecting on the abundant blessings of the past. It also serves as a gateway to our Christmas celebration, in which we celebrate all of the good things of life made possible through Jesus Christ. On Thanksgiving night, as soon as darkness has descended, we turn on the outdoor Christmas lights for the first time of the season. There is the apple tree, shining in brilliant white lights in memory of the Tree of Life, which Tree is a representation of “the Love of God, . . . the most desirable above all things . . . and the most joyous to the soul” (1 Nephi 11:22, 23).

Beside that tree, red lights flame the upward and outward branches of a maple tree, symbolic of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, in opposition to the tree of life. This illumined tree represents how by the exercise of our power of choice we also unleash our energy to become good or evil—and that we do not always exercise that power for good (see 2 Nephi 2:15, 16).

In the middle of the yard, our flagpole is transformed into a tall, narrow multilight cone topped by a bright white star of light, again representing a tree, our Christmas tree. This and the tree we decorate inside the house are bright reminders that through Christ we can obtain “every good thing” (Moroni 7:25), whether spiritual or material.

The doorway to our house is outlined with a garland of evergreen also illumined with light to proclaim to family or friends that they will find welcome inside. Similarly, our lamppost is trimmed with red and green lights as if to say, “Here we are, don’t lose your way. Come and celebrate with us.”

In many ways it is very appropriate that we initiate this holiday season with a celebration of gratitude. The spirit of gratitude is the foundation of humility, and humility is the first step to opening our hearts to receive the Christ. So bring on Thanksgiving, welcome the family and friends, and open our hearts and homes to Christ, who brings us every good thing.

Of Financial Panic and Lessons Learned

2010-11-07T22:43:00.004-05:00

Late last month I met with a group of German businessmen. They were on a visit to improve international understanding through cross-Atlantic dialog. As you can imagine, they were most interested in how the economy was doing. The German economy is off to a quicker recovery than is the U.S. economy, but in all fairness the Germans have not had to overcome as much government help as we have (during and following the financial panic of 2008)—although they are very worried about having to swim while being chained to drowning economies like Greece and perhaps others of the European community.

Among the specific issues that they asked to discuss was the question, “Have we learned lessons from the recent world economic crisis?” As I pondered that question, I came up with a list of eight lessons that we perhaps have learned. There are certainly others you or I might add, but here are the eight lessons learned that I came up with at the time, in no particular order of priority:

1. Economic and financial models are not as good as advertised. Much of the financial regulatory program of recent years was based upon the notion that regulators and the firms that they regulated had come up with powerful models to identify how well financial firms and the economy were doing, models that could be relied upon to control the economy. In fact, confidence in models was so high, that policymakers were starting to rely upon them to help predict the future. It turns out that economic reality is far more complex than any models, regardless of how powerful the computers are that run them. Once again we have seen that no group of policymakers, regardless of how smart they are or how much information they have, can control the economy any more than they can control the weather, and we should not fault them for failing to do so. We can only fault them for trying.

2. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not the best run companies in the world. This lesson seems so painfully obvious that it is hard to believe that there was a time when people held them out as examples for emulation of corporate and financial management. But that was their reputation. We now know that the government privileges that they enjoyed allowed them to become sloppy in many crucial ways, especially in the management of their financial risk.

3. The biggest risk to the financial system is regulatory risk. Nearly every one of the financial firms that were strongly “persuaded” by policymakers to take government TARP money suffered market and reputational damage from those investments far worse than any financial challenges that they had. Nearly all of the largest recipients of TARP money paid it back as fast as the Congress and the regulators would let them, at a very expensive rate of interest. While a few have complained of these and other regulatory costs, more would if they were not afraid of the danger of being sent to the cornfield if they did, so they just say that it is “all very good” as their highest new costs today come from government regulations.

4. Economic reality always catches up with you, eventually. By the laws of economics, housing prices cannot long continue to exceed the rate of economic and population growth, but during the housing bubble the myth was that housing prices do not go down, at least not by much and not for long. The same was said about oil prices, by the way, as they grew even faster than housing prices. All came down, and all who believed and acted as if they would forever go up paid for expensive lessons. The same lesson is true today about government deficit spending. In spite of economic reality, too many policymakers act as if there is no limit to how much debt the government can put into the market. That false notion will crash on the rocks of economic reality, eventually.

5. Accounting rules, especially mark-to-market rules, are highly pro-cyclical. Accounting rule makers are on a multi-year crusade to force all companies to value practically everything by what you can sell it for in the market place right now. That means that in times of exuberant markets everything will look great and better than it really is, transferring market manias onto the financial books of companies. It also means that in times of panic, all things will look worse than they really are, accounting rules making sure that panic prices are written onto companies’ financial books. Mark-to-market financial rules were the amplifiers that helped puff up the housing balloon, just as they helped feed the subsequent financial panic.

6. You can hide risk, mask risk, but you cannot avoid risk. All economic growth comes from someone taking a risk. There is risk in whether a new invention will be well received in the market place, or whether a new store will succeed in its new location, or whether the new employees will do a good job, and on and on. There is a natural human tendency to want to harvest the rewards of investment without being exposed to its risks. So people try to get others to take that risk, or try to pretend it is not there, but the risk will be there, and the less obvious it is the less likely that people will take precautions to manage it. The biggest problem from the housing boom was that people thought that building houses and lending people mortgages to buy them were riskless, when in fact they are loaded with risk. A variety of things masked that risk. When it finally asserted itself, people who thought that they had made no-risk investments panicked. The same is happening today with people who invest in “no-risk” government securities. You might be able for a time to hide the risk; you cannot avoid it.

7. Bad underwriting is bad. When a lender decides to lend money he first evaluates the ability of the borrower to repay the loan. That evaluation is called underwriting, it is the lender making the determination that the loan is a good investment. Lenders and others will make mistakes: borrowers will get into unforeseen troubles, their new invention might not work as well as thought, their business might face a new and better competitor, some tax or new regulation might eat away anticipated profits. The lender expects that some small portion of loans will run into repayment problems, and the lender plans for that by setting aside reserves for loan losses. But when the lender does not pay attention to the risks that he can see, then he engages in bad underwriting, and no amount of reserves can absorb those losses. Would we have had a housing bubble and then a housing crash if so many mortgages were not provided to people who could not afford the houses that they were buying? Not enough lenders looked carefully enough into that question.

8. Financial firms cannot long offer products that policymakers and the public do not understand. Recent legislation and regulations are aimed at curbing some of the most successful financial products and practices, largely because policymakers and the public do not understand them. In times of financial turmoil, policymakers look for something to do, and one of the first things that they try to do is stop what they cannot understand. The public is vulnerable to the rants of people seeking to deflect criticism from their failings to products or practices that the public does not understand. The credit default swaps market was one of the few financial markets that worked extremely well throughout the recent financial turmoil, never freezing up while other markets pretty much stopped. As another example, bank investments in the securities markets—other than loans—were an important source of diversified income for banks, helping keep banks afloat when bank loans were suffering heavily from people and businesses that defaulted. Recent legislation and regulations are placing heavy new burdens on these profitable activities, and in some cases banning them entirely, because policymakers do not understand them. Financial firms have to be more active in explaining everything that they do, or they will continue to find many of their newest and best financial activities curbed in times of regulatory fear.

As I say, you can probably add to this list, as could I. As I ponder now the question that the German businessmen put to me, the actual lessons that we have learned seem to me less important than whether we will remember the lessons.

Of Huckleberry Finn and Heavenly Rest

2010-10-31T22:29:00.005-04:00

You might recall that despite her best efforts, the Widow Douglas’ sister, Miss Watson, was unable to interest Huckleberry Finn in heaven. In fact, you might say that because of her best efforts she inoculated Huck against any interest in heaven. To Miss Watson, and surely the Widow Douglas, too—who doubtless were old enough to have experienced their share of the troubles and turmoil of life—their image of heaven seemed very attractive. “She said all a body would have to do there was to go around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever.” Huckleberry Finn’s judgment on this depiction of heaven was, “So I didn’t think much of it. . . . I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would go there, and she said not by a considerable sight. I was glad about that, because I wanted him and me to be together.” (Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, chapter 1)

For Miss Watson, heaven was a haven of rest, while for Huck it offered far too much rest. Both were right and wrong together. For the real heaven offers “every good thing” (Moroni 7:20), full of rest and activity, and you do not have to die first to find them.

The Apostle Paul, writing to the Philippians, spoke of “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding” as a promise to be awarded in this life (Philippians 4:7). Shipwrecked, beaten, persecuted, and jailed, ever traveling about in his missionary service, where was the peace, where was the rest in Paul’s life?

The prophets have ever promised rest and peace to the faithful disciples of Jesus Christ. What are those gifts, though, and when are they given? Rest assured that the peace and rest of Christ do not approach what Huckleberry feared and reach far beyond what Miss Watson could imagine.

The peace and rest of heaven are not some kind of holy lethargy. The modern prophet, Brigham Young, said this about our eternal existence, what he considered life in its fullest meaning:

Life is an accumulation of every property and principle that is calculated to enrich, to ennoble, to enlarge, and to increase, in every particular, the dominion of individual man. . . . It is to pursue that course wherein we shall never, never lose what we shall obtain, but continue to collect, to gather together, to increase, to spread abroad, and extend to an endless duration. Those persons who strive to gain eternal life, gain that which will produce the increase their hearts will be satisfied with. Nothing less than the privilege of increasing eternally, in every sense of the word, can satisfy the immortal spirit. (Journal of Discourses, Vol. 1, p.349. 350)

There is no peace and rest in that if you mean a peace and rest that are akin to sleep. But if you are looking for a peace and rest that are full of life and that fill and satisfy the soul, then you are looking for the peace and rest promised by the prophets of Christ in all ages.

This enduring peace and genuine rest come from living a life of integrity, in which all of the parts of one’s life are working together, where there is no war going on in the mind and spirit. The man whose life is an unending series of moral dilemmas, or whose daily walk seems continually out of step, who frequently is torn between one path or another, knows agony and frustration and is familiar with nagging anxiety, living his own personal and daily portion of hell. The ancient Christian disciple, James, declared, “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.” (James 1:8) Coming to Christ puts all of that internal warfare to rest. Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount, “if therefore thine eye be single to the glory of God, thy whole body shall be full of light.” (Matthew 6:22 [JST]) Then the Savior warned, “No man can serve two masters” (Matthew 6:24).

We have to make our decision, to follow Christ or not. Until we do—with full purpose of heart— we will know no meaningful peace and find no lasting rest. Indeed, a man will remain an enemy to God until he turns his heart singly to the Lord, “and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love” (Mosiah 3:19).

When we do that and only when we do that do we begin to live, to be fully alive, to enjoy all that life has for us. As Christ declared, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10) Those who have obtained that abundant life were referred to by the ancient American prophet, Mormon, as “the peaceable followers of Christ . . . that have obtained a sufficient hope by which they can enter into the rest of the Lord, from this time henceforth until ye shall rest with him in heaven.” (Moroni 7:3) That is a promise to surpass the joys of any Miss Watson and satisfy the aspirations of the Huck Finn in us all.

Of the Power of Change and the Power of Christ

2010-10-11T22:20:00.006-04:00

Change is in the air. It is autumn, the leaves have begun their brief flash of color before gliding to the ground to be swept away.

Fall is also the season when politicians promise change. The mood predominating among the electorate this year seems to be disillusionment with Change. They want change from Change—that is, from Change that makes things worse and reinforces what is bad in Washington. At least for now, voters are showing a strong preference for candidates who do not fit the usual political mold, who reject solutions imposed from Washington. Such moments do not come very often, and like the autumn they seem to pass too quickly.

Yet with all of this discussion of the change apparent in nature and the political world, it seems strange to find those who doubt the ability of people to change. Properly understood, the plan of God for His children is all about change.

The central message of Jesus Christ and of all of His prophets has been the need and possibility for people to change, to change their world by changing themselves, from the world of unhappiness and distraction, to a life of purpose, growth, and deep joy. All who have drawn close to the Savior have experienced change, have drawn upon His power to change, and the closer they drew to Him the more that they changed and became more like Him.

Consider the early Apostles who lived while the Savior walked the earth. Mere fishermen (Peter and John) were turned into inspired leaders whose testimonies have endured for two millennia. A tax collector (Matthew) was converted into a human benefactor. A persecuting zealot (Paul) turned into a powerful missionary. In earlier days, a slave (Joseph) became viceroy of Egypt, a fugitive from Pharaoh’s court (Moses) became the mighty lawgiver who led Israel from bondage, a shepherd (David) became King of Israel. The change in these whom history calls great was repeated among millions of their less well-known compatriots.

In our own times, an untaught boy (Joseph Smith) became a wise prophet and religious founder, a craftsman (Brigham Young) became the greatest colonizer of the West. Again, these are more prominent examples among millions of others similarly changed through the power of Christ, the more effectively changed the closer that they approached Him.

When I was in college a friend explained to me her disillusionment with her church, which in her view told its members to be good but somehow lacked the power to transform them. It lacked the power of Christ, who made change of life possible. As the ancient American prophet Mormon explained in a letter to his son, Moroni, through Jesus Christ our sins can be forgiven, our past can be overcome.

And the remission of sins bringeth meekness, and lowliness of heart; and because of meekness and lowliness of heart cometh the visitation of the Holy Ghost, which Comforter filleth with hope and perfect love, which love endureth by diligence unto prayer, until the end shall come, when all the saints shall dwell with God. (Moroni 8:26)

There is power, the greatest power on earth, the power to change the greatest creations on earth, the children of God. There is the power to transform men and women and make them fit to live with the Father in His presence forever, “that ye may at last be brought to sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the holy prophets who have been ever since the world began, having your garments spotless even as their garments are spotless, in the kingdom of heaven to go no more out.” (Alma 7:25) Thank God that power is on the earth.

Of Organized Religion and Living Apostles of Christ

2010-10-03T22:28:00.004-04:00

Sign me up for organized religion, if God is the organizer. I have little interest in being part of the religions of men or observing the commandments of men, and I understand why others are put off by manmade religions. Equally, I find it hard to see why someone would not want to be part of a church that is run and organized by the Savior Jesus Christ, the Author of all good, the Source of all knowledge, the fountain of all love. What is there not to like? All that can be desired, all that really matters, all that is really joyful, is there.

The Apostle Paul described Christ’s church—its organization and purpose— in a letter to the saints in Ephesus:

And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive . . . (Ephesians 4:11-14)

It is clear that Christ intended His church and all of its parts to continue until all of God’s children became like Christ. And it also seems clear that without this church and its various parts, the children of God would become vulnerable to the doctrines and teachings of men.

Fortunately, Christ’s church is on the earth again, with all of the component parts that made up His church anciently, built on the foundation of apostles and prophets, together with the other important offices, “Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone” (Ephesians 2:20).

This past weekend, as they do twice each year, the apostles and prophets of the Church of Jesus Christ gathered in conference and spoke to all the world. Their words were a combination of the timeless and the timely, just as they were anciently. Test them and try them. They can be found at this website:

http://new.lds.org/general-conference?lang=eng

While the messages are spoken for all, as you listen carefully you will invariably hear messages spoken directly to you. For me, one of those messages was delivered by the Apostle Dieter F. Uchtdorf. He spoke of the sin of pride, reprising the words delivered more than a decade ago by the Lord’s prophet at that time, Ezra Taft Benson. He described the difference between two ways in which we use the word "pride." First, there is what we call pride, which is really rejoicing in the accomplishments and achievements of others, the pride we feel in our children, in our spouse, in our fellows, a pride that unites us. That is far different from the pride denounced by God throughout the ages, the pride that separates us from our fellowmen, the pride of comparison and hostility that has, in the words of Ezra Taft Benson, enmity at its roots.

The cure is humility. But the apostle did not mean the self-demeaning attitude that some mistake for humility. In his inspired words, “Humility is not thinking less of ourselves; it is thinking less about ourselves.” Working with, and among, and together with others, reaching out beyond ourselves, this true humility is a great antidote to the pride that would separate us, because it is built upon charity, the pure love of Christ.

This was a simple but powerful message, as were the many others presented. Whether on family and marriage, faith, deliverance from addictions, financial security, the power of gratitude, or the worth of the individual, the cures for the problems of society were offered through words inspired from heaven.

I could have received or enjoyed little of this left to my own devices. It was made available in an eternal abundance through the religion organized by Christ and offered to all of God’s children. And for that I am grateful.

Of Living on Earth and Preparing for the Heavens

2010-09-19T20:51:00.003-04:00

The Prophet Joseph Smith, writing from the dirty damp pit of a crude jail on the frontier lands of western Missouri, where he and other Church leaders had been imprisoned beyond the effective reach of Constitutional protections of freedom of religion, admonished the Latter-day Saints not to set their hearts too much on the things of the world. At that point in time they had left nearly all of their things of the world behind them. They were being driven at sword and gunpoint across the cold November plains, the Governor having declared that all Mormons were to be “exterminated.” They received kindness and shelter from the people of Illinois and soon built what for a time became the largest city in the state, a city they called Nauvoo, the Beautiful.

Yet the Prophet’s admonition continued to ring true, as it does today. Under divine inspiration Joseph Smith wrote that, “there are many called, but few are chosen” to have the close association with God that the Father desires for all of His children. “And why are they not chosen?” His answer is important for any who would seek to rise above the vicissitudes and decay of this world and find happiness here and eternal joy in the world to come. In short, they are not chosen to receive the blessing and powers of God, “Because their hearts are set so much upon the things of this world” that they fail to learn and understand that the things of God “are inseparably connected with the powers of heaven” and can only be exercised by those whose eyes are fixed on heaven (Doctrine and Covenants 121:34-36). In other words, it takes a focus on God and heaven to receive the things of God and heaven.

As one draws closer to God through the companionship of the Holy Spirit, the less important the things of this life and this world become. The brevity of mortality becomes ever clearer as does the recognition that the conditions of immortality that prevail after the resurrection are the more normal and real human condition. Mortal man lives some seven or eight decades, while immortality never ends. Where does it make sense to place our focus? College degrees, political advancement, business position, and public recognition shrink in comparison with eternal values of family, friends, kindness, and personal integrity. As a modern-day Apostle declared, the omniscient God is not going to be impressed by your Ph.D. Neither will the Ruler of the universe be awed by your title of CEO.

This is not to say that achievement and accomplishment in this world are not important. They are very important, but only from the perspective of what they mean for you with regard to your life in heaven. An ancient American missionary explained that mortal life “is given us to prepare for eternity”. It is our responsibility to “improve our time while in this life” (Alma 34:33). Education, political achievement, business accomplishments, and the many other ways that we can improve upon our time are important because of how they prepare us.

It is the why that makes them important, not the what. Why did we learn, why did we seek to work in politics, why did we devote so much effort for our business accomplishments? If the answer is, to achieve public recognition, gain the praise of our fellows, increase our personal comforts—even to be admired by others as a good person—all of those may seem fine while mortality lasts, but for us they die with us. Fortunately, the hollowness of those purposes is felt in this life as a warning to us.

On the other hand, if the purposes of our achievements in life are in line with the values of heaven, then the real achievements, of which the worldly indicators are at best imperfect measures, will be with us now and remain with us forever and be amplified in the eternities. If our education has enabled us to live more wisely and to lift up our fellowmen, if our political efforts have been intended to promote human freedom and to give recognition to the worth of the individual, if our business accomplishments have been intended to unlock the creativity and achievement of ourselves and our fellows (which as a side effect contribute to the welfare of all) then in short as we have lived with an eye single to the glory of God we will have developed characteristics and built relationships with family and friends that will serve us well in the eternities. Then and only then can we envision with faith the Lord saying to us at the door of the eternal worlds, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.” (Matthew 25:21)

Of What Government Knows and What It Will Do

2010-09-06T20:27:00.007-04:00

The biggest cause of the lingering financial trouble and the 2008 financial panic has been bad government policy. The markets did not fail. The markets did just what government policies encouraged them to do, namely over-invest in housing while paying little attention to the risks. That created twin bubbles in house prices and in the ways that building houses and buying houses were financed.

When the bubbles burst, the government leadership panicked, and the markets followed their leadership. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson predicted imminent disaster, and the Federal Reserve rather than playing an independent steadying and calming hand reinforced those predictions (although without the public “fire in the theater” shouting of the Treasury Secretary).

Perhaps the best that can be said about the federal financial leaders during the financial crisis is that they did the best that they knew how to do. The problem was, that they did not know what to do. Each new memoir or retrospective published by one of these financial leaders reveals that they were acting on insufficient knowledge, insufficient information, and most of all insufficient understanding of what was going on. In other words, none of them knew enough to know what to do, and none of them knows enough now.

No one can ever know enough. The economy is just too big; there is too much for anyone but God to know. In an economy as large and diverse as ours, with billions of economic decisions being made all in the same day, it is impossible for anyone to know enough at any one time—of all that is involved—to be able to make the right decisions to control the economy, even if there were someone wise enough to do it.

That problem is not solved by creating a committee to control the economy. While any one person who serves as decision maker will suffer from lack of knowledge and will wear blinders towards the parts of the economy he either does not understand or is not watching at the moment, a committee of people has its own major shortcomings. Not the least of these is the proclivity of any group to be captured by group think, by the members of the group reinforcing each other to form a consensus and not venturing to upset things by questioning or looking beyond the consensus.

That is usually what happens with economic and financial bubbles. A key idea, usually a wrong idea, captures the group imagination. So many people come to believe this idea—like the odd notion that housing prices rarely if ever decline—that they all act on it, building up artificial values that increasingly depart from reality. When there is no government involvement, these bubbles burst soon enough and are resolved pretty quickly. Government leadership can hasten the formation of group think when an idea is part of official policy, and government policies can help to keep it going. Then, because government officials are slow to admit their own mistakes, government policies slow down the quick and natural adjustments that the market provides when the bubbles burst.

Unfortunately for all of us, the new Dodd-Frank financial regulatory legislation increases the power of new government financial czars to try to control virtually any aspect of the financial system that they choose. That error is not diminished by requiring these financial czars to meet together in committee from time to time, in a new Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC).

This last week two of the financial czars testified before a commission created to discover what caused the recent financial trouble and to recommend what to do about it (seems that if people were serious about this commission it would have made sense to pass new legislation only after the commission finished its work). One of the commission’s members, John Thompson, asked this question: “Why should we believe that this Council (the FSOC) is going to be uniquely different and keep us out of trouble?” (Donna Borak, “FCIC Presses Bernanke, Bair: Will Dodd-Frank End Bailouts?”, American Banker, September 3, 2010) Good question, but it got a poor answer, basically the observation that government regulators have more authority now. That is akin to saying that I will improve my aim because now I have more ammunition and a bigger gun.

Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke admitted that even with all the new power given to the federal financial czars it will take political will to use it. “If there’s a lack of political will, there’s probably no solution that is sustainable.” Even were we to believe beyond all experience that any federal regulators or group of federal regulators could possibly know enough, where is the evidence that there would be the political will to break through the regulatory group think? Where would there have been the political will to bring the housing bonanza to a halt, or even to rein in the politically powerful housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (which at least the Federal Reserve was seeking to do, against strong opposition from Congress—the stronger political will opposed needed reform)?

You do not need political will, however, if discipline in the markets is not a political decision. Market solutions do not require any political action or the exercise of political will by some federal financial czar or council of czars. No one needs a federal agency to drive down the stock of a badly managed company. Enron was beaten up by the markets long before Congress got around to it. The financial firms that disregarded risks in the housing bubble were put out of business by the markets—except for the firms that the government decided to prop up.

Which highlights the danger we are now in: today, as a result of the Dodd-Frank Act we have a financial system dependent on the government. Every important financial decision has now become a political question for one or more regulators to chew on and manage. Ready or not, here they come.

Of Visions and Reason

2010-08-29T18:39:00.003-04:00

At age 14, in the year 1820, a young boy, Joseph Smith was visited by God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. It is very reasonable that the Father and the Son appeared to this boy.

First of all, it is very reasonable that God, the Father of our spirits, is interested in communion with His children. It is natural and reasonable to want to communicate with those whom we love. Parents certainly are more eager than most to want to communicate with their children. It is unreasonable to assume that God the Father, the perfect parent and possessor of infinite love, has no desire to communicate with His children.

Certainly it cannot be claimed that God the Omnipotent lacks the ability to communicate with His children. The scriptures provide ample evidence that God communicated directly with His children throughout the thousands of years of antiquity. Is it reasonable to assume that God has somehow lost that ability and no longer has it in modern times? Remember that for those living in antiquity, those were modern times. God has always had and continues to have the ability to communicate with His children.

Nor can it be reasonably asserted that there is less need today than anciently for God’s children to receive the light, wisdom, and instruction that come with divine communication. As recorded in the scriptures God has spoken with His children about the need for honesty, kindness, diligent labor, peace within the society and proper relations among societies. He counseled on respect for life, the worth of the individual, fairness in financial dealings, marriage and childrearing, care for the poor and needy, and healthy foods and hygiene. Which of these issues are unimportant to modern man? Which are free of controversy today? It is reasonable that man today could benefit from Divine guidance on each and all of these issues, and on many new ones besides.

As happens among human families, perhaps some estrangement has occurred in God’s family, between the Father and His children. There is some truth in that. Again, the scriptures provide numerous examples of the estrangement between God and man, as men have rejected God and turned to idols and other alien loves. The Egyptian captivity of Israel and the Babylonian captivity of Judah are two prominent examples. What the scriptures also demonstrate is that, not unlike human parents, God has been persistent in His efforts to overcome that estrangement, to bring His children back into His presence. That was the mission of many of the prophets. Indeed, foremost of all, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is all about the infinite effort by the Father, through his Firstborn Son, to bring His children back into His presence. Being brought back into that presence has always been accompanied by an increase in direct communication between God and man. It is reasonable that God is as persistent in His efforts with modern man as He was with ancient Israel to overcome the estrangement of man from God and strengthen divine communication.

A major consequence of the estrangement of man from the Father is the enormous confusion that prevails today among the children of God about the nature of their Father. Indeed, the simple knowledge so commonly held anciently that God is the actual Father of our spirits and that we are His children and heirs has been replaced by any number of man-made ideas and speculations. It is reasonable that the Father would want His children to know who and what He is, particularly since it is so important to their understanding of who and what they are. God could tell His children, as He has and does, but it is very reasonable that He would want to show them, as He also has done before. What more effective and reasonable way to break through the web of confusion about the nature of God that prevails in the world today?

It is extremely reasonable and sensible that the Father would choose a young boy to be the recipient of this great vision of the Father and the Son. Joseph Smith was old enough to understand, at the age when young boys’ queries of the Divine and the nature of the universe and themselves can become acute. At that age and with his limited exposure to the world and its ways, he was free of crippling vices and possessed a mind largely free of preconceived notions and indoctrination in human theories. The young boy Joseph was a clean vessel into which the Lord could pour divine knowledge with little fear of it being clouded with evil dispositions or mixed with false notions. The fourteen year old boy Joseph Smith was a very reasonable choice for God to reveal the pure and bright truth of His nature.

Why then and there? It is often difficult for modern man to appreciate that he is living in historic times, when great and historic things happen. It is when someone’s “modern times” become history to a new age of moderns that the mind can give more room to acknowledge a great event. That is why some are more willing to accept that God appeared to the ancients than they are the idea that He might do so today. But it did happen, and the time was right for it.

The religious freedom that prevailed in the United States in the early nineteenth century—which is still so foreign to so much of the world today—was a relatively new and fragile achievement in 1820. There was just enough of it enshrined in the Constitution and generally accepted by the people that God the Father could make a new attempt to restore direct and open communication between God and man without governments or mobs seeking to destroy it and its challenge to their ways of thinking and doing things. As it was, it was touch and go. Those who accepted new direct revelation from the Father were driven by mobs and local governments from town to town and state to state.

But it did survive, and since 1820 the estrangement between God and man that restrained communication between the Father and His children has been receding all across the globe. It had to begin with someone. God had to talk to someone first. For these and many other reasons, God the Father, and His Son, Jesus Christ, appeared to the young boy, Joseph Smith, and God has continued to increase His communication with His children ever since. Today the Father is in direct communication with millions of His children across the world, and more every day. It is very reasonable that He do so.

Of Faith and Works

2010-08-11T12:10:00.004-04:00

I wish to share a recent conversation on the subject of faith and works. Some very theoretical theologians seek an artificial—and non-biblical—separation between the two. The presumed differences erected between faith and works by these arguments are seemingly philosophical and semantic, but they lead to very different practices that can mean great differences in real life. I repeat the conversation below, simplified into its chief elements. I will refer to my partner in the conversation as Sam.

Sam: Christianity is divided into faith-based churches and works-based churches.

WAA: I reject that division. I think that it’s artificial, man-made, not God-made. But so that I might understand you better, explain to me what you mean by it.

Sam: Really, there is a difference. There are those who believe that they have to do works to be saved, that by their works they earn salvation and that they need those good works to be saved. We believe that no amount of works can be sufficient to earn salvation, that Christ provides salvation through His grace, and that we receive that grace through faith in Christ, faith alone. Indeed, we think it presumptive of anyone to think that he can somehow earn his way to Christ’s grace. If you could earn it, it wouldn’t be grace—and in any event you would always come up short.

WAA: I would suggest then, that either there is no difference between what you and I believe on this matter, or you yourself do not believe in what you are saying.

Sam: How do mean?

WAA: Just this. You say in effect that we cannot earn Christ’s grace, that if we do, it would not be grace, that believing is the essential thing and that it is enough.

Sam: That is correct.

WAA: What does belief involve? Can I believe and still swindle my neighbor?

Sam: No, if you are swindling your neighbor, then you probably don’t really believe.

WAA: So it seems that you agree with James, the brother of Jesus, that there is a connection between faith and works. He was the one who taught that our faith is shown by our works.

Sam: But it is the faith that saves, not the works.

WAA: I would agree with that, taking faith in its wholeness. For it is clear that the two are connected, that faith and works are not irrelevant to each other. As James says, without the works there is no faith. Faith without works is dead (James 2:20, 26). But I will go even so far as to say that any good works are good, because they are a demonstration of faith, a demonstration of what you believe. I think that you believe that, too. You act like you do.

Sam: How do you mean?

WAA: You go to church regularly?

Sam: Yes.

WAA: You obey laws, you are kind to your neighbors, you are loyal to your wife and family. All of that is true?

Sam: Yes, all true. But I make plenty of mistakes and have my share of unkind thoughts in the course of the day.

WAA: I think that you are making my point. Why do you do the good that you do—acknowledging that you are otherwise prone to live not so good if you just let yourself go—why do you overcome those unkind thoughts and act kindly?

Sam: Because it would be wrong to be unkind.

WAA: Why? Measured by what? Measured by Christ’s commandments, especially Christ’s two great commandments, to love God and to love your neighbor.

Sam: I can’t argue with that. But by my faith in Christ I am saved, no matter how many good works I do.

WAA: Is that so? Do you really believe that? Do you think that you would be saved if you were cruel to your wife and unkind to your children, swindled your neighbor, cheated your employer? If you stopped going to church, neglected your duties?

Sam: As I said, that would show a lack of faith.

WAA: Exactly. We are saved by our faith because our faith is part of our works. You cannot have faith without it revealing itself. You cannot hide your faith. Faith shows itself in good works. God has spent a lot of time and effort giving us commandments to show us the path of goodness. You have to disregard a large part of the Bible if you assume that commandments and keeping them is not important. It seems important to God. Your good actions—measured by their consistency with God’s commandments—demonstrate your faith in the giver of those commandments.

Sam: But it is never enough. We cannot do enough to merit salvation. The apostle John taught that whoever claims to be without sin is deceiving himself (1 John 1:8).

WAA: That is true. That is precisely why we need a Savior. Christ knows that we would never do enough. But that is no reason to stop trying. There are many things that I have not mastered but that I keep trying to master. For a righteous person driven by faith, falling short is incentive to get up and try harder, having faith that Christ will help you to do better, that with His help you can do better. The Master of all takes our very best efforts, however imperfect, and makes them perfect. He makes up the difference, in fact draws us on and helps us to narrow the difference. And He makes our efforts worthwhile with faith that the Savior will add the necessary finishing touches.

Sam: But only for those who believe in Him.

WAA: Again, we agree. Because we believe in Him, we try to be like Him, we do what He asks. Through our works we show Him—and perhaps show to ourselves—our faith. Or, as John taught, through our works of obedience we reveal that we love God and make that love real (1 John 2:3-6; 5:3). It is to those who have faith in Him, who love Him, in real life and living practice, that He extends His grace and salvation. We may not earn salvation, but in this way we qualify for it by meeting the conditions set by the Savior. The ancient American prophet, Nephi, explained it this way: “reconcile yourselves to the will of God, and not to the will of the devil and the flesh; and remember, after ye are reconciled unto God, that it is only in and through the grace of God that ye are saved.” (2 Ne. 10:24)

Sam: I still think that we disagree.

WAA: It is only if you try to separate faith and works that we will disagree. James described it in a powerful metaphor. He said that as the spirit and body united give life to the body and when separated the body is dead, so faith and works, when separated, become dead also (James 2:14-20, 26). So, we are saved by faith if you mean the faith that produces the works of complying with God’s commandments. If you do not, then your faith is dead and cannot save you because it does not help you to become better. What good is that kind of faith? It is of no value at all. It is the faith of the devils, as James explained (James 2:19), who have known the Savior from before the beginning of time. But God is the God of life and the living, and if your faith is alive it will lead you to the Source of all life, even to God the Father. As Jesus taught, “if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.” (Matt. 19:17)

The conversation continues, but I will leave it there, for now.

Of Thousand-Page Laws and Our Republic

2010-07-30T13:42:00.006-04:00

Congress is broken. Few are satisfied that our representative system of government is working. As a very important measure, I would point to massive new 2,319 page laws (which weigh more than 12 pounds, printed on both sides of the page). You have to talk yourself into believing that it is O.K. for a new law to be over 2,300 pages long. After all, the Constitution itself is only a couple of pages long—albeit written with a fine hand on large sheets of paper. Perhaps the most important set of laws in the history of man, the Ten Commandments, is only 297 words long (King James Version). And Jesus Christ reemphasized the teaching of the prophets from the Old Testament that even those words and all other laws are summed up in just two commandments:

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. (Matthew 22:37-39)

I understand and expect the retort that these are two very different kinds of laws. With that I would agree. The difference is not, however, that the Constitution and the Ten Commandments are foundational principles, while the 2,300 page variety of laws referred to at the beginning of this comment (the new Dodd-Frank financial regulatory law, by the way) is in the way of practical implementation. The Ten Commandments are very much in the way of practical implementation. “Thou shalt not steal” is pretty practical. And the first implementation laws passed by the new Congresses under the new Constitution were not thousands or hundreds or even dozens of pages long. The lengthy laws have developed the farther we have come in time and spirit from our Constitution.

The big difference from the laws of the earlier days of the American Republic and the multi-thousand page laws of today’s Obamacare and Dodd-Frank financial regulation is that when government takes upon itself the task of controlling what people should do, of controlling their daily lives through such things as how to manage their health and their wealth, it takes a lot of words. It only takes a few words to say that it is against the law to maim someone or to rob him. That is to say, it only takes a few words to outlaw crime, but it takes a lot of words to “guide” people in the exercise of their freedom and to turn harmless individual choices (such as which medical procedures you want or how to invest for retirement) into crimes.

Our Republic rests upon the notion that we elect and trust a relative handful of people to represent us in the making of laws, at the federal level just slightly more than 500 people out of more than 300 million. They do the legislative work because it would be impractical for all of us to do it together. They stand in our place, voting for us with authority derived from us, the people.

How can we have a representative government, though, where the representatives pass laws that they do not and cannot read? How can they represent us when they do not and cannot know what they are voting on? Do they not, indeed, fall down on their duty to us when they vote for laws that they have not read? Is not their job made impossible when they are asked to consider laws made up of thousands, or even hundreds, of pages?

That is to say, that our Republican form of government is inconsistent with the kinds of laws that Congress has been passing today (a trend which really got going in earnest during the Congresses of the Depression). Only if our representatives get back to passing short laws that outlaw crime, and abandon efforts to direct the lives of the people, can they really do their job and only then will representative government in America work the way it was intended.

Of Individual Worth and the Fatherhood of God

2010-07-11T20:59:00.012-04:00

In recent times Jesus Christ declared, “Remember, the worth of souls is great in the sight of God” (Doctrine and Covenants 18:10), a reminder of the high value that Christianity places on the value of the individual. This is unusual where much of the world focuses on masses and classes and elevates rights of the group over the rights of the individual. In much of the world and throughout history individuals have been considered expendable, particularly if expending them could be feigned as benefiting the group. That is certainly at the core of Marxism and other variants of socialism, that read history as the story of classes. It is at the core of statism, that considers all issues in terms of how they affect the state rather than how they affect the individuals in the state. Of course, just like the oriental despotisms (the ethos of which prevails in many “modern” oriental governments) the focus on the rights of groups and of the state or the society is a mask for reinforcing the power of the rulers of the masses who pretend to speak for the masses and govern for their good while continuing to exploit them.

The worth of the individual in the doctrines of Christianity comes from the fact that each man and woman is literally and not figuratively a child of God. That is fundamentally what makes men and women different from all other animals, a fact that requires little reflection to recognize its truth and lots of sophistry to convince people otherwise. You need a lot of explaining to make people believe that they are no different from the dogs and the snakes and the trees, and even then the idea is so foreign to everyday observable reality that few are convinced, and of those, few stay convinced. The intellectual and moral gap between man and beast is too vast, despite enormous efforts throughout the ages to make it appear not so.

Individual worth based on the literal fatherhood of God is an original doctrine of Christianity, found in the first pages of the Bible. Consider these words from the story of the creation. “And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind” (Genesis 1:21). Notice that the creatures of the sea and air all came forth “after their kind”. Those are not accidental words. Consider the description of the creatures of the land. “And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creapeth upon the earth after his kind” (Genesis 1:25). Again, all of the land creatures were made “after their kind”. Notice how differently the creation of man is described; what was the “kind” after which man was created? “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” (Genesis 1:27)

Of course, this idea of the divine heritage of man is unpopular with despots who choose to use and abuse God's children. In the ancient Americas a prophet of God was killed by his king for preaching “that man was created after the image of God” (Mosiah 7:27).

Again, in the New Testament the Savior and His disciples taught the divine lineage of man. For example, Paul wrote to the saints in Rome, “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:16, 17). That notion probably did not sit well with the Caesars, who were busy eroding the rights of the individual found in much of Roman law.

The worth of the individual is certainly at odds with the modern-day Caesars. Their emphasis on group rights, their programs to divide societies up by classes and ethnic groups, would leave individuals powerless to protect themselves against sacrifice on state altars except by appeal through their membership in some favored group.

The worth of the individual is the foundation for the freedom of the individual. Consider how much of the Constitution—particularly the Bill of Rights—is focused on the preservation of individual freedoms: freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, free speech, right to armed self protection, right to trial by jury, protection of private property, and so on. These constitutional rights are a partial enumeration of what the Declaration of Independence proclaimed to be “unalienable Rights” by which all men have been “endowed by their Creator.” While you may not have to be a Christian to believe in the divine worth of the individual, this very Christian doctrine is embedded in our system of government and at the heart of what has made America different from much of the world and much of history.

That is why those who seek to change America work to undermine all that proclaims the individual worth of each and every man and woman. It is hard to justify treating God’s children like so many cattle; you first have to get people to believe that they are more like cattle than they are like their Father in heaven. So far, most Americans have shown a stubborn adherence to truths that they have held for more than 230 years to be “self-evident” and which God our Father has taught us from the beginning.

Of Liberty and the Caesars

2010-07-02T20:55:00.005-04:00

As we near another annual celebration of our Declaration of Independence and the proclamation of American liberty, it is worthwhile reflecting on what that independence and liberty rest. At its core, the American Revolution revolved around the deep desire to preserve something. That something was the rule of law, an elementary principle of government that the founding fathers had found here and nurtured. The rule of law is the fundamental idea that we should be governed by laws and not by men. It is that principle that throughout our history has set America apart from the rest of the world. Embracing the rule of law the founders built our nation upon a written Constitution.

Our founding fathers frequently used the word “liberty” when referring to the rule of law. When they said “liberty” they did not mean wantonness and libertinism, to be abusive without consequence. Our founding fathers meant by “liberty” the freedom that they had found in America to live beyond the wanton grasp of the arbitrary rule of kings, lords, ladies, and even parliaments. Our founding fathers were comfortable with the idea of government only if what the government did—or more precisely, if what the people in government did—was closely and clearly controlled by laws that everyone understood. To them that meant that they had liberty, and they loved it. The Declaration of Independence is a detailed protest by the Congress of the thirteen new States against the arbitrary violations of the rule of law—of American liberty—by the British crown.

Precisely because the American Revolution was an appeal to the rule of law we succeeded in creating a stable government and society where the French Revolution (and many others since)—appealing to the rule of men, albeit a different crowd of men—fell into chaos and anarchy, merely replacing one despotism with another. The French tore down the monarchy in order to replace it with the Reign of Terror. Americans enshrined liberty in a document that still operates today to resist the arbitrary rule of one group of men over the rest. The Constitution protects the rights of each and all—individuals and minorities—through the rule of law.

The rule of law was not a new idea. Rome’s greatness was built upon it. Its weakness and eventual collapse came as the Romans traded the rule of law for the rule of men under the Caesars. Even then, the Roman tradition of the rule of law was so strong that it took nearly 500 years for the progressive rule of men to lead to the sack of Rome and the ushering in of the Dark Ages, an era dominated by the rule of men.

The idea of the rule of law, however, is much older than Rome. It is found at the heart of Christianity, reaching back to the Garden, from which man was expelled by the breaking of law. Man was redeemed from the broken law by Jesus Christ, whose great sacrifice was made to bind up the broken law and create the path for man to live in harmony with divine law. In modern times Jesus Christ explained the eternal purpose of law in these words: “that which is governed by law is also preserved by law and perfected and sanctified by the same.” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:34)

As our eternal freedom is protected by law, so it is with our civil freedom. Law is our shield against the whim of other men. Without the law, our only defense against someone’s whim is the protection provided to us by the whim of someone stronger. That is the essence of feudalism. That is what our founding fathers were so desperate to leave behind in the Old World, whichever “Old World” they left. That same search for liberty under the law inspires many refugees to America today.

That is perhaps why Americans are made nervous by all of the policy “czars” that have been created by the Obama administration. Czars suggest rule by men rather than by law. “Czars,” the Russian variant of the Latin “Caesar,” are justified by the argument that “they can get things done,” but in the doing they rely upon the arbitrary will of single individuals invested with extraordinary power: rule by men (and women).

Congress is on the verge of enacting—unless the Senate votes “No” when it returns to session in mid July—a major restructuring of the American financial system that would replace rule of law with the rule of men. The new structure rests upon enormous power given to new financial czars. There is a new czar for all federally-chartered banks and thrifts, a new financial consumer czar with power to dictate every aspect of any financial product and service that is offered to the public, and a new systemic risk council with authority to reorganize or even break up any company in America if in their opinion its operations are too risky for the financial economy. The authorities that this new legislation would give are broad, the instructions on how to use those authorities vague, and the ability to find appeal from the mandates of the new czars seriously restricted.

Our founding fathers, who escaped from that kind of rule, would have warned us.

Of Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue

2010-06-18T21:55:00.003-04:00

Who wants another financial crisis? To hear the advocates of the Administration’s financial regulation bill, anyone who disagrees with them does.

Let us walk past the discussion of others’ motives, important as they might be. Let us, you and I, agree that we do no want another financial crisis. Or, phrased better, let us agree that we would like to reduce the likelihood of another financial crisis and minimize the extent of crisis when it comes. Anyone believe that there will never be another one? Recognizing that crises will occur and that we will be better prepared to face them by acknowledging and preparing for their possibility, let us consider which approach is likely to work to reduce their frequency and their severity.

Which is more likely to be more effective at reducing the risk of financial crises: government regulators or market discipline? Relying upon experience as a reliable guide, the question is soon answered. Government was all over the most recent crisis. In fact, the most recent financial crisis was fomented by government regulations and stimulated into panic by unwise government actions, all of which worked to shield key players from market discipline. Government housing programs and guaranties led people to ignore the risks of mortgage lending—ignored by borrowers and lenders. Credit rating agencies (CRAs) were able to classify risky mortgage securities as nearly risk-free, shielded by the Securities and Exchange Commission from market pressures to identify risks that the CRAs were paid to find.

The crisis was fanned into a panic after the Paulson Treasury Department (1) orchestrated the bailout of the securities firm Bear Stearns, then (2) subjected investors to a big tease with Lehman Brothers which they at last decided not to bail out, (3) bailed out AIG, (4) bailed out bond investors in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and then (5) demanded from Congress $700 billion for the catastrophic Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). None of the TARP money was used to buy any troubled assets. A third of it went to bail out banks that were not in trouble (until they took the Treasury’s shilling) while other billions went to auto companies that were.

So why are the Administration and leaders in Congress on the verge of enacting legislation that will give Washington bureaucrats virtual control of any and all of the financial system at their whim? Could it be that these friends of regulation, who control the lawmaking powers this year, are unwilling to admit their mistakes? Or is it that the friends of regulation see the financial crisis—whatever its cause—as a wonderful opportunity to expand regulatory controls? Or maybe it is just that once you tell a story—that Wall Street caused the financial crisis—you have to carry the story on to its conclusion, however wrong that might be. In either case, the friends of regulation control the megaphones and the levers of power. If they have their way, though, Time will surely tell whether it was a good idea for Pennsylvania Avenue to replace Wall Street as the financial center of America.

Of Financial Reform Promises and Too-Big-to-Fail Firms

2010-06-05T18:16:00.006-04:00

One of the many astonishing things about the Obama Administration’s financial regulatory legislation is that it promises so much and delivers so little of what it promises. In fact, in most cases it delivers the opposite of what it promises. Seemingly, the Administration knows what the American people want, so it uses promises of delivering what the people want and what the nation needs in order to enact changes that most Americans will neither want nor like.

As Senators and congressmen prepared to return to their states and districts the Administration published a list of “Top Ten Things You Should Know About Financial Reform.” Presumably this would serve as a guide to politicians giving their Memorial Day stump speeches. I heard one Democrat congressman at the Memorial Day ceremonies in Waterloo, New York. Neither the list nor the legislation found its way into his remarks. Good thing for the congressman, because the legislation as currently written fails on all ten of the “Things” that the Administration paperwork boasts that it delivers.

Let us examine Thing 1:

1) End of Too-Big-To-Fail: If a big financial firm is failing, it will have only one fate: liquidation. There will be no taxpayer funded bailout. Instead, regulators will have the ability to shut down and break apart failing financial firms in a safe, orderly way—without putting the rest of the financial system at risk, and without asking the taxpayers to pay a dime.

Part of that Administration statement is true, but only part of it, and not the most important part. The legislation would provide regulators with the ability to shut down and break apart failing financial firms. Regulators already have that authority today and have been exercising it weekly for the past two years to close down failed banks “without putting the rest of the financial system at risk, and without asking the taxpayers to pay a dime.” Failed non-bank firms have been closed down through bankruptcy proceedings—again, “without putting the rest of the financial system at risk, and without asking the taxpayers to pay a dime.”

The risk to the rest of the financial system and the demand for taxpayer bailouts have all come in the past few years as the federal government has gotten involved to prop up firms that the federal government did not want to fail. Prior to the recent financial crisis, too-big-to-fail was a theory. Treasury Secretary Paulson made it official policy and practice, which policies and practices have been officially approved and adopted by the new Administration.

The new financial regulatory legislation—even while making it easier for financial regulators to break up and unwind failing financial firms—would also give to regulators legal authority to bail them out, prop them up, and have them born again as clean firms, free of the financial encumbrances of all of their sins of the past. In very real and important ways the legislation would take the theory of too-big-to-fail, turned into official practice by the Paulson Treasury Department, and make it the law of the land.

There are several ways that the legislation would provide this service. One important tool is the new explicit ability of the FDIC (which would become the agency for handling not just failing banks but any failing firm that government leaders considered important enough for the FDIC’s care) to treat the investors in a failing firm differently. The FDIC would be explicitly authorized to protect some investors and not protect others, giving special attention to the customers of a firm and those who have lent money to the firm. Shareholders are supposed to be wiped out and the leaders of the firm fired, but the bondholders and counterparties doing business could be protected.

If this sounds familiar, this is exactly how the federal government has been treating housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. When the government took them over in late 2008, shareholders were nearly but not entirely wiped out, leaders were let go, but all of the bondholders, counterparties, and investors in debt securities of Fannie and Freddie became 100% protected by the federal government and remain so today. Several other participants in the financial system were “put at risk,” the government’s exercise of discretion to pick winners and losers precipitating the failure of several banks that were holding preferred shares of Fannie and Freddie that the government chose not to protect. The taxpayer has not been protected either, the Treasury deciding last Christmas Eve to allow Fannie and Freddie to receive unlimited federal support, already totaling hundreds of billions of dollars.

Fannie and Freddie are government sponsored enterprises (GSEs). The government subsidy programs for these GSEs would be the new model available for any firm designated as systemically significant by the federal government under this legislation. That is to say, that under this legislation, in place of two GSEs we would have potentially dozens.

There is a price for this attention. Whether a firm wants it or not, under this new legislation, if enacted, any firm could be given the GSE treatment. Once the government considered a firm to be “systemically” important it could be told in as much detail as the government leaders considered necessary exactly how to run its business. No part of the business of the firm would be exempt from the government’s reach. The federal government would become the effective partner of that firm. And as former Congressman Dick Armey once said, when you partner with government, the government is never the junior partner.

Now, ask yourself this real-world question: as senior partner, would the government ever let any of its partner financial firms fail? If, as is the case with Fannie and Freddie, by following government mandates the firm got so deep in the red that action became unavoidable, the federal government would be able to use another powerful tool in the proposed new law: the authority to create a “bridge bank." As the government has been doing with Fannie and Freddie—and as many suspect the government will do to “fix” Fannie and Freddie—government officials could take over the operations of the firm and use this bridge bank authority to protect whichever investors they wished and make others (not leaving out the taxpayer) suffer loss. Through a legal and financial “baptism” administered by the federal high priests of finance all of the sins of the failing firm could be gathered together into one “bad bank” and all of the remaining operations of the firm could emerge as a new firm washed completely clean of bad debts and uncollectible assets. The new firm could then be offered up again—either with the same name or a new one—to investors. Of course, the federal government would likely remain as senior partner, but this would give comfort to investors who, like investors in Fannie and Freddie, were looking for a place to put their money where the government would be expected to protect those investments.

Ending too-big-to-fail? In the Administration proposal too-big-to-fail becomes the law of the land. The Administration’s number one selling point for financial legislation is a very good reason to oppose its bill.

Of Financial Safety and Lost Liberty

2010-05-16T21:31:00.005-04:00

Americans are about to lose more of their liberty, in a very big way. Like the oil leaking away from the deep well in the Gulf of Mexico, American financial liberty will be steadily draining off with few ideas on how to stop the leaking once it has begun.

First the housing markets panicked, then the Paulson Treasury panicked, and then the financial markets panicked. Now panic has hit Congress. Ignoring that the housing-financial crisis was set up and fomented by bad government regulatory programs, Congress is on the verge of enacting legislation that will give to government regulators authority to control any financial activity in the United States.

You may think that I am exaggerating a bit here, getting carried away by rhetoric. I wish that I were. Looking at the provisions of the legislation that the Senate is now debating and is scheduled to pass in the near future, I cannot think of a single financial transaction that government agencies would not be able to control. By control, I mean set rules as to how the transaction would be structured, to whom it could be offered, by whom it could be offered, how it could be advertised, how it would be priced, or even whether it could be offered at all.

Let us consider a simple financial service: a home equity line of credit, or HELOC. With a HELOC a customer can borrow money from the bank up to the amount of equity that the customer has in his house. The attractiveness of the HELOC is that you do not have to sell your house in order to use the equity in it to help pay for college, fund needed remodeling, or even start a small business. With the loan backed by the equity in the house, the borrower gets a far lower interest rate than he would without that collateral.

The legislation would create a new, totally independent federal bureau of consumer regulation. This new bureau—headed by a one person consumer czar endowed with power that would make an old Russian despot jealous—could determine, for example, that it would be “unfair” or “abusive” if the amount of money that a customer could borrow under a HELOC were reduced by the bank when the value of the customer’s house declined. I am not making this up. At a recent Federal Reserve meeting self-appointed consumer advocates, who would dominate the new bureau, complained that banks during the housing bust were lowering HELOC amounts for no good reason other than that home prices declined, neglecting that what makes a HELOC affordable is that it is backed by the value of the house. The value of the house goes down, so must the value of the collateral and the loan amount secured by the collateral. The law would not require, however, that the new consumer bureau be guided by common sense.

Other provisions of the proposed law would allow government agencies to break up any company in America, or make it set aside any reserves, or give up any line of business—and allow the agencies to play favorites by acting one way with one company and very differently with another—as long as the agencies claimed that their actions were appropriate to deal with systemic risks. The agencies would be the sole judges of what makes for a systemic risk. Or, to look at the authority another way, the federal financial agencies would be able to define what they consider to be “safe” financial conduct and effectively ban everything else, and steer individuals and businesses into government-identified safe financial activity.

In case the recent financial panics tempt you to think that all of this is a good idea, remember that we have tried this all before, and very recently. The example—housing—is staring us in the face. Maybe policymakers in Washington are too close to it all to notice.

In the housing fiasco, the government determined that mortgages were very safe (as demonstrated by Federal Housing Administration programs that allow homeowners to have a negative equity position on day one of their new government-guaranteed mortgages), that investing in mortgages was safe (hence the creation of government-sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to encourage investment in mortgage securities), that packaging mortgage securities was safe (as demonstrated by AAA ratings for packages of securities, awarded by credit rating agencies that were franchised by the Securities and Exchange Commission), and that housing assets on bank balance sheets were safe and worthy of incentives by regulatory standards that allowed banks to hold relatively little capital for their mortgage loans.

So, given how well the government identified safe financial activity in the housing markets we can expect the government officials to be equally mistaken in identifying other forms of safe financial activity. Even as I write this, government officials are working on new plans to establish rules to require banks to stock up on various types of government debt. These rules are based upon the near-sighted assumption that government debt is safe—ignoring the rising flood of Greek government debt, held back only temporarily by sandbags filled with fiat money from other European governments.

On the wall in my family room I have a framed $500 government bond. Only one coupon from it has been clipped, a semiannual payment for $15 in interest. The next coupon is payable on July 1, 1865, by the government of the Confederate States of America. That coupon and all the rest of the coupons through 1894 remain unredeemed. The proposal by Congress to exchange American financial freedom for the wisdom of government to identify safe financial activity has the crackle of Confederate money.

Of Politics and Principles

2010-05-01T10:18:00.006-04:00

The debate and development of public policy in the greatest republic in history has been my career. Discerning between good and bad ideas, detecting valid and erroneous arguments, is part of my daily job. The success of a republic, however, requires that all citizens have competence in judging right and wrong in the debate of public issues. All do not have to be experts in all the details of every issue for a republic to work, but they do need to be able to judge enough to know to whom they should entrust the duty to represent them and attend to the details of governance—and to know when to withdraw that trust.

With public debate becoming increasingly confusing but also, apparently, increasingly prone to slogan and devoid of substance, with emotion seeming to take up more space than information, with error and deception playing a progressively more prominent part in discourse, how do citizens whose careers are more focused on producing goods and services and the things that make an economy work figure out who is right and who is wrong? Without leaving their day jobs for politics, how do they choose the right people whose lawmaking can dramatically affect everyone else’s day jobs, as well as their hearth, home, and health?

I believe that the answer is that every citizen of the Great Republic, as Winston Churchill called the United States, needs to be familiar with and dedicated to the founding principles of the Republic. The consideration of every public issue should be based upon an appeal to this foundation. That approach may not resolve every issue, but it will ensure that we do not stray very far into error. In fact, for most of the key issues of today an appeal to the founding principles would quickly disperse the foggy talk that makes up so much of contemporary public debate.

Those founding principles are embedded in our Constitution, but they are perhaps most clearly presented in the Declaration of Independence. I present a few examples of founding principles that would serve as reliable guides in considering such issues as healthcare, financial regulation, and taxation and public spending.

The Declaration begins by invoking “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” Our concept of government rests upon the idea of truth and laws that are as immutable as God Himself. Trust that those who say that truth is relative and law is founded on whatever man or Congress or the Supreme Court want it to be are leading you far astray, regardless of how attractive a ribbon they put around their poisonous policy packages. If law is relative, then government is a mere matter of the will of whoever can sway the crowd today. There is no protection for the minority—and all will find themselves in a minority of some kind whose rights need protecting.

The Declaration, in words that hopefully all Americans still find familiar, proclaims the “self-evident” truths that, “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights . . .” Among those immutable truths on which our system of government was founded is the focus on the individual, that the individual has worth, has importance, has rights that cannot be taken away. These rights can be usurped by tyrants—and at the time when the Declaration was written and approved by the representatives of the new nation nearly all of mankind labored under tyrannies—but that does not eliminate these rights, it only violates them. Our nation was created to protect the rights of the individual. Reject politicians whose formulas are invoked to violate your individual rights, especially when they justify the taking of individual rights by an appeal to benefiting the group. Remember, at the head of every group is a leadership who in fact enjoys and wields the “rights” of the “group” as the spokesmen for the group. They derive their power, vampire like, from the blood of the members of the group, from individuals whose rights are violated to empower the group leadership.

In direct relationship to these individual rights, the Declaration explains, “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .” Withhold your consent from those who would seek to govern with plans that rather than protect your rights would limit your rights. Resist those whose plans assert that government should be given the decision over your daily choices. Resist those who assert that all must be “regulated” and who believe that finding that something “is not regulated” is a justification to regulate it, that is, to impose government decision-making over the power of your individual decisions. Your right to choose is the reason the government was created, to protect your individual rights, not usurp them.

On reflection, it is all too easy to find regulations and programs in our government and laws that are inconsistent with the Declaration and the founding principles of our government. The immutable rights remain, however they may be currently violated. That should alert us to the danger in which we live, but it should not be cause for despair. Rather we should be motivated, as were our nation’s founders, to reassert the principles on which our nation was founded. The tools for doing so, embedded in our Constitution, are still available to us.

Of Geography and the God of All the Earth

2010-04-19T22:07:00.002-04:00

A colleague this past week had a religious conversation in which an old academic chestnut was brought up. This was the one that begins with the undiscerning observation that the different religions are in fact pretty much all the same. Step two in the argument is that all religions basically teach the same thing, such as to be a decent person and kind to your neighbors. Step three in the argument is needed to explain why, then, if they all teach the same thing are there so many different religions. The third step is the assertion that the different religions are manifestations of different cultures or civilizations around the world. Judaism, so the argument goes, is the manifestation of an ancient culture from the area of Palestine, Christianity the religion of Europe and its colonies, Islam the religion of the Middle East, Hinduism the religion of India, and so on. The final step of the argument is that—and therefore—there is precious little in the way of “truth” in religion and certainly not enough to argue about.

No doubt you have heard the argument before, and as you consider it you very likely can see how thin of an argument it is. I have nearly always encountered it as a variety of argument intended to end rather than engage in conversation.

With regard to the first two parts of the argument, there certainly are similarities among religions, but it seems that the more knowledgeable one is about a particular religion the more prone he is to see how different it is from others. Religious converts are particularly good experts on differences in religion, the differences being powerful enough to motivate a change of beliefs and not infrequently a change in their entire way of life. The sameness tends to be seen more by those who are more casual about their religious knowledge.

As to the third and fourth elements of the argument, it is one thing to recognize geographic and cultural influences in religions and quite another to assert that the discovery of these influences means that the quest for religious truth is a waste of time and effort. To begin with, geography fails even as a superficial explanation for religious difference. How does it explain different religions that are embraced by large numbers in the same region. India is one very clear example, where several religions have tens of millions of adherents. It also poorly explains how Christianity, Judaism, and Islam have such close geographical ties that they have had and continue to have bitter disputes over the same sacred sites, most especially Jerusalem.

This is not to say that one cannot find original roots of particular religions in one place or another. After all, the religion had to start somewhere, with someone or some group living in some place on earth. From that place the particular religion spread to other places and people.

But now I present a different case. What of a religion that has its rising in two different locations, on two separate continents oceans apart? That is the case with the doctrine of Jesus Christ. With the testimony of the Holy Bible and The Book of Mormon taken together we have two witnesses—one from the Old World and one from the New World—that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and Savior of the world. No other religion can or does make that claim. Each volume of scripture is an ancient record of God’s dealings with His children, teaching the same plan of salvation through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ and His resurrection from the dead. In the writing of these records there was no comparing of notes between the separate series of authors, no communication other than through God and His Holy Spirit.

Whatever the geographical explanation of religion might claim, its claims fall to the ground in the case of Christianity. There truly is something different about the doctrine of Christ. It comes with the tangible testimony of dual volumes of scripture that proclaim with two voices from two hemispheres the single message that Jesus Christ is the God of the whole world and not just a part of it. As Christ explained to His disciples in ancient America,

Know ye not that there are more nations than one? Know ye not that I, the Lord your God, have created all men . . . ? Know ye not that the testimony of two nations is a witness unto you that I am God, that I remember one nation like unto another? Wherefore, I speak the same words unto one nation like unto another. (2 Nephi 29:7, 8)

Of Government Collusion and Market Discipline

2010-04-11T21:28:00.007-04:00

There is a lot of noise and confusion about what caused the recent financial panic. The Obama Administration believes that the basic problem is that markets do not work right, people are too dumb to choose for themselves, and that regulatory agencies were not able or were unwilling to keep up with bank shenanigans. Their solution: more of the same, that is, create a variety of new government agencies and bureaus that have the authority to dictate and control any part of or player in the financial system, including control of financial customers large and small (look in the mirror for the definition of financial customer). This neglects the fact that government agencies were the most blameworthy in the recent financial panic. In fact, it is impossible to have a long, sustained economic recession or depression without government policies causing it. (I will save for another day how the policies of the Federal Reserve and the Franklin Roosevelt administration made sure that an economic downturn became a depression lasting for a decade.)

Let me address the first of these points in the Obama administration’s justification for taking over the financial system. First of all let us consider the markets. It is true that the markets did not perform right. That was because government rules, structures, and programs did not allow the markets to perform right. The government guarantees bank deposits, so depositors do not care very much how safe or sound a bank is. Government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, bundle up mortgages into securities that investors assume have little or no risk. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approves and controls the small number of credit rating agencies, and investors believe that these agencies are right when they give to a particular company or investment their highest credit rating (such as AAA), a rating that is thought to present little or no risk. The SEC has protected these agencies from competition and from market discipline for their errors while providing little in the way of regulatory discipline.

With those and other government protections in place the appearance of risk just about disappeared from the mortgage markets. Different investors have different appetites for risk. It was not the people hungry for high risk returns that fueled the housing bubble. Many of those with the weakest appetite for risk, seeking the safest investments, were drawn to the mortgage markets. In this government-manufactured atmosphere of little or no risk, many mortgage firms, increasingly non-bank mortgage firms, made it more and more possible for people to buy houses that they could not afford. Once the mortgage firm made the mortgage, regardless of the ability of the borrower to repay, the firm sold the mortgage to the GSEs, who sold it on to investors who poured trillions of dollars into what they thought was a safe haven. Then the mortgage firm went on to make more mortgages. Investors were shielded from asking whether the mortgages were any good, that is, whether the person buying the house could actually afford it.

That mispricing of the risk pulled more and more money into mortgages and real estate, driving prices up and up, pulling in more and more investors as the prices rose, until it was impossible to put one more Jack on the house of cards without it tumbling down. People panicked when “safe” investments turned out to be risky. Then the government started panicking, bailing out some firms and not others, changing the rules almost weekly, demanding hundreds of billions of dollars from taxpayers in order to pick financial winners and losers. Investors, not knowing where the government would turn next, panicked some more.

It was government interference in the market that failed, not the markets. Without all of the government camouflage, investors would have insisted on knowing that the mortgage borrowers could afford their houses before funding loans to buy them. Ask yourself this: would we have had the whole housing blow up if people who could not afford to buy houses were not given mortgages? Yet the Obama Administration, even today, is tripping over itself to find new ways to guarantee new mortgages, in many cases especially for people who cannot afford their houses. Where have all the subprime mortgages gone? They have gone to the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), where they have a government guaranty. (Watch what happens to the FHA house of cards in the coming months.) When will they every learn? Oh, when will they ever learn?

Giving more power to the kind of government agencies that helped create these problems hardly seems like the sensible answer. That is what the Obama Administration proposes, though. Instead of controlling the markets with more government interference and masking of risk, more bailouts for firms that should be allowed to fail, more power for some new government bureau to pick winners and losers and to tell people which financial products they can and cannot have, we should be exposing financial players more to market discipline. We should make it harder to hide risk and easier for investors to recognize the risks and allow the markets to charge higher prices for higher risks and lower prices for lower risks.

Market discipline has always been the quickest and surest regulator. It rewards the efficient provider of what the buyers in the market want, and it punishes the incompetent. Very importantly today, the market is stingy about bailouts.

Of Liberty and Barackracy

2010-03-21T20:01:00.009-04:00

When President Barack Obama leaves office, he will leave Americans with less liberty than they had when he took office. Absorbing many liberties that Americans had, making decisions for Americans that they used to make for themselves, will be a vast array of new government agencies, the new Barackracy.

I chose the term “Barackracy” with care. It ends with a suffix similar to that in “democracy.” Democracy means rule or government by the people. Barackracy is similar to the well-known term, “bureaucracy.” That is not accidental. Bureaucracy was a pejorative term, coined in early modern times to criticize the French government, which had become by and large run buy unelected officials in government agencies, the bureaus. At the time, elective governments—and indeed, constitutions—in France would come and go with amazing frequency, but the bureaucracy and the bureaucrats who ran the operations of government would always be there and would carry on largely undisturbed. For much of what mattered in day-to-day life, France was ruled by the bureaus.

The bureaucracy helped to make France what it is today. More and more decisions over a wide range of matters in the ordinary lives of ordinary people were made by the bureaus. The Soviet Union learned from the French model and could probably not have been created without drawing upon that example. The Soviets expanded upon the French model, but the Soviets did not invent it. Even with the Soviet Union dissolved, the Russians are having a very difficult time establishing the liberties of the people, because the Russian bureaucracy survives at the core of the current Russian government.

When the United States was created we had no bureaucracy. In the early years of the Constitution we had only three departments of government, the State Department, the Treasury Department, and the War Department. These three departments focused on the three acknowledged purposes of the federal government, to conduct our international relations, provide for the common defense, and have a national system of revenues to pay for it all.

Instead of bureaucracy, we had liberty, protected for a time by a federal system of government that dispersed governmental power among the states and within a system of checks and balances. The founding fathers had already seen how government limited freedom and how government tended to grow if left unchecked.

Each order from a bureaucrat limits liberty. The decisions of bureaucrats, operating on behalf of the government, have the authority of law and occupy the field where individual decisions used to operate. And, unlike private decisions, the mandates of the bureaucracy are backed by force. Several decades ago Alan Greenspan described the power of bureaucratic decisions this way:

At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
(Alan Greenspan, “The Assault on Integrity,” in Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, p.119)

At the core of each proposal by Barack Obama to change America lie several new government offices and agencies that arrogate to themselves the power to make decisions that so far have been made by the people themselves. In the Obama “Cap and Trade” plan designed to save us from global warming (or now, “climate change” since it is no longer clear whether the earth is getting warmer or colder) are various agencies that will decide how people can use energy, what they can buy, how their products are made, and what they pay for them. The healthcare legislation will have an unnumbered collection of new government agencies to decide who gets to buy health insurance and from whom, at what price, with what features, covering which illnesses, under which treatments. The proposed new Barackracy will include new agencies to determine what financial services can be offered to you, who can offer them, and on what terms. It will also decide which banks and other financial firms can survive and which ones should be bailed out. There are other plans, too.

In each case, liberty is replaced by government decisions, made by people who are never up for election, accountable to no one. The Senate sponsor of the financial Barackracy bill, Senator Chris Dodd, said that with a new financial consumer regulator it will no longer be necessary to go back to Congress for new consumer legislation—the new Barackracy will have that legislative power. What if you do not like what the new agency does? Or, just what if you would like to decide for yourself? That liberty would be gone.

In the days ahead the power of the Constitution created to preserve the liberties of the people will be tested. The surrendering of our nation—described by Abraham Lincoln as possessing a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people”— over to rule by the new Barackracy certainly seems to be inconsistent with both the spirit and the letter of the Constitution. We will look next to the courts to uphold the Constitution and the liberty it was established to protect.

Of Literary Classics and Scripture

2010-03-07T21:03:00.008-05:00

I was sad when I read the last book by Jane Austen. Her use of the English language delighted me with each and every volume, combined with her subtle wit and charming dialogues. I wanted to read more, but there was no more.

I felt much the same way when I could find no more to read from the pen of J.R.R. Tolkien. His fantasy works are the models of the genre, combining beauty, with plot, with never-ending-inventiveness that is marvelously varied and yet always internally consistent. Moreover, he is a great story teller.

J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series demonstrates that mankind has not exhausted its ability to produce classic literature. The stories combine entertainment with depth of theme and timelessness of message—imbued with a magical charm. I loved the last book of the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, even more than I loved the first, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. My only regret was that the series was over, done. I would be eager for more, if the quality could be maintained.

Aye, and there’s the rub. These authors are all too human. Either they die—as do we all—or the challenge of continually meeting the test of producing a classic becomes too daunting.

Is God subject to these same limitations? Certainly He does not die, but is the Author of the scriptures in danger of falling short of continuing to meet the high standards of light and inspiration that make the scriptures what they are? That is to say, will the Source of inspiration ever be less than eternally abundant? The answer to that is equally, no.

All of that being so, then why would any believer in God give any credence to assertions that the canon of scriptures is closed? Even more, why would any believer in God react with anything other than delight at the news that there is more of the word of God available.

That was certainly how I greeted the news of The Book of Mormon. Raised with a deep reverence for The Holy Bible, I was overjoyed to learn that there was even more scripture, more of the words of Christ and His prophets and apostles.

A belief in God must mean a belief in a living God, and if living, He must continue to do what He has always done, be a Creator, a Father, a Comforter, a Guide, and a Revealer of His will to His children.

Thus the Lord proclaims through His modern prophets and disciples,

We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God. (Articles of Faith 9)

Our Heavenly Father has promised us more of His word. I can hardly wait for the next volume!

Of Fairness and Sacrifice

2010-02-22T21:45:00.004-05:00

From time to time one or the other of my children would complain that this or that was “unfair.” The complaint could range anywhere from one getting more or less of something than another to being required to do some work or suffer some consequence that another avoided. “Suzy got a higher grade than I did for doing a poorer job.”

Those of course were little examples, the kind that all children seem to face growing up. There were more consequential examples of unfairness as my children matured. Such was the case of one of my children who was denied admission to a particular college to make room for a less qualified but racially-favored applicant. That was unfair to my child, and it was unfair for me, who gets to subsidize with my taxes the government-run college that operates admissions along racist lines.

My explanation to my children for these unfairness episodes usually contained elements of the following. My first point might be, who said life has to be fair? Then I might follow that up with the observation that mortality is all about unfairness. The real issue is how we react to the unfairness, what we do to overcome it.

If given enough opportunity, I could explain that things may appear unfair if we think that the score is final while in fact the game is still going on. Mortality is a small and temporary part of life, and many things that look like advantages here become serious liabilities later. Even in mortality we often see that demonstrated, such as the person who struggling against great opposition as a child develops skills and abilities that lead to far greater success than the person who seems to have an easy childhood. Identifying who had unfair advantage might then become more difficult.

In a discussion with my wife the other day, she pointed out how unfairness lies at the core of sacrifice. That is to say, that a sacrifice is the willing acceptance of unfairness. It is unfair that a mother has to go through so much pain at childbirth, but she sacrifices, she accepts that unfairness, in order to bring a child into the world. It is unfair that a father works at his job to earn an income that he shares with all of the members of his family, but he accepts that unfairness as a sacrifice that he makes for the benefit of his family.

Why does the mother do it? Why does the father do it? If they willingly accept that unfairness, they are making a sacrifice. I have often thought and said that it is hard to love someone for whom you have not sacrificed. I believe that is so, because very often the driving force in that sacrifice is love. We act out our love and make it real as we sacrifice for someone. Loving parents willingly and often sacrifice for their children—most of which sacrifices the parents may not even notice—because of their love for their children, begun by their love for each other. That, by the way, is one of the essential reasons for being organized as families and why no social institution has ever been found that develops love in people more than the family does. That, however, is a topic to fill many discussions on other days.

I think that each of these answers to my children is a good answer, and they are all related. Perhaps the best answer to the unfairness question is that no one in this life escapes unfairness. In fact, the greatest of all, Jesus Christ, suffered the greatest unfairness. He paid the price for all the sins of all who would accept Him, having committed no sin and having caused no offense against anyone. He willingly accepted that unfairness, He volunteered for and carried out that sacrifice, because of His love for us.

With the Savior’s sacrifice, with His acceptance of unfairness, all of the apparent unfairness to all of us is made right. In the end, by accepting the Savior and the power of His sacrifice, all of the unfairness that we might seem to experience is overcome. As the Prophet Joseph Smith proclaimed in April 1843,

All your losses will be made up to you in the resurrection, provided you continue faithful. By the vision of the Almighty I have seen it. (Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p.296)

Given that perspective, perhaps the only real and lasting unfairness is the unfairness we may do to ourselves. We cheat ourselves by not accepting the Savior’s sacrifice so freely extended to all of us, by which every unfairness can be overcome.

Of Christ and the Perfection of Men

2010-02-13T14:35:00.002-05:00

A fundamental principle taught by Jesus Christ and His prophets and Apostles is the perfectibility of men. Embedded in the middle of the Savior’s Sermon on the Mount is this commandment: “Ye are therefore commanded to be perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48, JST) The resurrected Savior repeated the same commandment to His disciples in the Americas, with these words: “Therefore I would that ye should be perfect even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is perfect.” (3 Nephi 12:48)

The Apostle Paul developed this theme, explaining the role of apostles and prophets and other workers in the Church in helping men to become perfect:

And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ . . . (Ephesians 4:11-13)

Of course, looking around us it is hard to find examples of men or women who have become perfect. That is surely why Paul pointed to Jesus Christ as our example by which to measure our progress and upon whom to model our development. Having said that, I have not found it hard to discover examples around me of men and women who are becoming more perfect.

The objection to the perfectibility of men is usually raised with little substantive argument but rather with a disdainful huff or with a gesture to the surrounding society as if to suggest that belief in perfectibility of men is naïve at best. There is some merit to this argument if you neither look closely at individuals nor at how the power of God operates upon the Father’s children. Men left to their own devices are hardly improvable let alone perfectible. And yet how do we account for those who are becoming better people, often much better people?

An ancient American prophet king, by the name of Benjamin, described the common condition of men this way:

The natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father. (Mosiah 3:19)

We all know that untaught, unguided children tend to grow up to become barbarians. The biggest problems in public schools come from children who have either little parental guidance or bad parental guidance. On the other hand, time and again we see children who are well cared for and guided by their parents overcome enormous obstacles to become noble men and women.

King Benjamin, as a king and a prophet, was saying that we should learn from God our Father as our children learn from us. It is by allowing the power of the Holy Spirit to change our hearts and attitudes that we become better and better and more like God, more perfect all the time, as Paul also explained to the Ephesians.

Similarly in our day prophets of Jesus Christ have reemphasized the perfectibility of men under the influence of God. The Prophet Joseph Smith taught in an epistle in January 1834,

We consider that God has created man with a mind capable of instruction, and a faculty which may be enlarged in proportion to the heed and diligence given to the light communicated from heaven to the intellect; and that the nearer man approaches perfection, the clearer are his views, and the greater his enjoyments, till he has overcome the evils of this life and lost every desire for sin . . . (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p.51)

It is also proper and important to note that improvement and perfection is an individual accomplishment. While men certainly may help and encourage one another, each man must grow in perfection by himself, and he must do it without coercion, since perfection comes by his own free choices, building his own moral character through the decisions made throughout the course of a lifetime. Because of the individual nature of the perfecting process, efforts by governments to coerce perfection from their people are not only doomed to failure, but they will actually impede the moral growth of the people by limiting their opportunity to choose to do good.

Of Demagogues and Solving Problems

2010-01-23T21:20:00.004-05:00

When demagogues, like Barack Obama, have major political setbacks, like Barack Obama, they usually resort to stirring up anger against a list of enemies. Obama has already begun that effort as his increasingly radical agenda has been difficult for even a growing number of congressional Democrats to bear. Expect him to turn up the volume on the loudspeakers.

For Barack Obama the list has been a catalog of “Big” this and “Big” that, including Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Insurance, Big Banks, Big Business, and so on. The formula involves finding a problem that Obama promised to fix but which remains unfixed, and then blame Big Something. A new set of policies is announced, involving giving the Federal government new authority over the economy, often some fundamental part of it, like healthcare, the financial system, or energy use.

Although his policies will purportedly be targeted on these Bigs, it is actually the general population on whom he paints his targets, the people whom he does not trust with making their own healthcare decisions, the people whom he does not trust with making their own choices of bank accounts and other financial services, the people whose very breath he considers the number one pollutant destroying the earth. It is the liberty of the people that is constricted by Obama’s policy prescriptions, which is undoubtedly why they attract so much objection from so many quarters.

Barack Obama will give a major public speech targeting Big Something for some punishing tax or regulation, and then declare, like some playground bully with a chip on his shoulder, “If they want to fight me on this, then I’m ready for them.” As one businessman reportedly commented late this week, “We are not looking for a fight; we’re looking to solve problems.” If he wants to play the bully, then let's give him the bully treatment, which is just to walk away and get on with our business.

Of Wet Wood and Government Jobs Programs

2010-01-15T13:11:00.003-05:00

At best, it is like putting wet wood on a fire: the wet wood may eventually burn, but it takes as much or more energy from the fire to dry the wood out enough for it to be flammable. In the meantime, it creates a lot of smoke and hissing and fizzing, and you run a real risk of subduing the fire if not stifling it entirely. This is what government job creating programs are like.

Outside of very narrow exceptions government itself does not create jobs. It shifts jobs. That is because outside of its basic purpose of enacting and maintaining laws and providing for the common defense, government does not provide a new good or service that the private sector cannot do better. The chief reason why the private sector does better is that private activity is governed by market mechanisms. People can say no to your good or service if they do not want or like it and go to the business that does a better job. So people who stay in business are under constant pressure to do better in their business, or they eventually see their business decline or even disappear. Government is not subject to such a demanding disciplinarian. If you do not like the process for getting a driver’s license, where else are you going to go?

At least someone wants the driver’s license, and the program of screening out unqualified drivers—however imperfect it may be—is a service that people want. Very often, government job creation programs put people to work doing things that we would be better off not having done.

One of my favorite examples is the Roosevelt Administration’s Depression era jobs program, paying people to plant kudzu all over the South. They did that for years, until they realized that kudzu is an uncontrollable pest plant that grows and spreads and smothers every other plant and tree around it and is very hard to get rid of. It is sort of a metaphor for government jobs programs.

An additional problem with government jobs programs is that the government has to pay for them. Where does the government get its money? It gets it from the people who already have jobs. Those people will no longer have that money to spend at the store or for remodeling the house or going on a vacation or gaining an education or the million other things that people do with their money to put other people to work. You might call all of that private sector spending the people’s jobs programs. To get $50,000 to put people to work on a government jobs program you have to take at least $50,000 away from the people’s jobs programs. In practice, you usually have to take several times more than $50,000 away from the people’s jobs programs, because the government programs are run so inefficiently.

So when the government announces that its new jobs program is “creating” 100,000 new jobs, it does not report the 200,000 jobs that were displaced to pay for those new jobs. When you see those government jobs announcements, remember the wet wood on the fire and ask how much energy is being lost to make that new log burn?

Of Prophets and Modern Times

2010-01-10T21:00:00.005-05:00

One of the most appealing and powerful messages of Christ’s Church in the latter days is the proclamation that prophets are once again on the earth in modern times, men through whom God speaks directly, clearly, and specifically on subjects relevant to man’s current conditions. This message is also one of the objections raised against the Church. It is curiously raised most often by some claiming a belief in God and Christ and in the words of the ancient prophets. Such objectors have to ignore a glaring logical inconsistency, of rejoicing in the word of God spoken long ago while resisting what the Lord might speak in their own day and time and in their own language. What is it about modern times that makes revelation from God less attractive or valuable?

Praise for prophets of the past while denouncing contemporary revelation from God is not new. Jesus faced the same attitude in the A.D. 30s. In the last days before He was crucified the Savior inveighed against such hypocrisy. “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.” That compares very closely with many today who flock to monuments and shrines to ancient prophets (or even pieces of ancient prophets), people who roundly condemn the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Jews, and Romans who persecuted and killed the prophets of old and crucified the Savior, people who picture themselves as being faithful disciples had they just lived in those days. With His perfect insight, Jesus rebuked their bluff. “Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets,” he said, “and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city” (Matthew 23:29, 30, 34). Many defenders of a dead Moses were unwilling to accept a living Christ--or the living prophets He promised to send them.

A common argument of believers in prophets who are conveniently dead is that the purposes of the prophets have ceased. In this view, the role of prophets was to prophesy of Christ and His mission, explain the doctrines of the faith, and pronounce commandments. That sounds nice and plausible only if you are careful not to study what the ancient prophets did and said.

Many of the prophecies of Jeremiah, for example, were focused on giving the Jewish leaders important political advice, such as encouraging the Jews not to double-cross the Babylonians by siding with the decrepit Egyptian empire. Isaiah was probably the most explicit and detailed in prophesying of Christ and His mission. Yet much of Isaiah’s prophesies were also devoted to counseling the leaders of Judah on how to respond to threats from their belligerent neighbors. The Jewish prophets of the Babylonian captivity counseled the people on how to draw close to God and stay out of trouble with their rulers. The prophets in the ancient Americas warned their people of invasion, advised their armies on how to defend against their enemies, and counseled them against the terrorists of their day.

That is to say, that whenever the Lord has had prophets on the earth these prophets have always been a precious resource for the daily lives of the people, their communities, and their nations, helping them to deal with what was then the here and now. Why would the Lord deny such blessings to His children today? Why would people embrace ancient divine revelation but recoil at it when offered in real time?

Revelation from the Lord has always been given in what were modern times, because those are the only times in which God’s children live. Just as it takes real food, not stories of food, to satisfy any current hunger, modern revelation from contemporary prophets is most important to those of us living in modern times. The great joy for us is that our loving Father offers us today a great feast equal to any He has spread in the past.