On Being Stirred Up to Anger

Over the past few years, and even more frequently in the past few months, I have had multiple conversations with people about the amount of anger that exists in our times. Certainly, the 21st century doesn't have a corner on the hatred market, but its presence seems to be trending upward almost everywhere you go. As a person who believes in God and in the existence of a world beyond the merely physical, a world in which the forces of Evil are pitted against the forces of Good in a great battle for the souls of men and women everywhere, I believe that one of the primary weapons employed by Evil is to "[stir] up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one with another"(3 Nephi 11:29). The Book of Mormon prophesies that in the last days Satan will "rage in the hearts of the children of men, and stir them up to anger against that which is good" (2 Nephi 28:20). Anger is one of the children of Pride and is thus almost as universal as its parent. Some people seem to have a natural disposition of coolness of mind, but the majority of us battle regularly with feelings of anger, resentment, and hatred. Some choose to give in to the temptation to be angry. They let it simply wash over them any time the inclination presents itself, with neither a thought to resist it nor remorse when it passes. Others fight tremendously against its influence, with tireless vigilance and bitter sorrow when a single enemy soldier breaks through the lines.

It seems that the opposition is succeeding with increasing frequency in the use of anger to bring about sorrow and misery in the lives individuals, families, communities, and nations across the earth. What are the causes of this increase in the world today? In offering at least a partial answer to this question, I will look to the Book of Mormon, it being written for the express purpose of guiding the people of our day through the challenges of modernity foreseen by ancient prophets and "land their souls" (Hel. 3:29-30) in a "far better land of promise" (Alma 37:44-45).

Throughout the Book of Mormon we follow the history of two peoples that were brought by God to the New World at different times in the history of the Old. Both found their destruction after several centuries of living on the American continents, and anger proved to play an important role in that destruction. The people whose history occupies the greatest volume of pages in the Book of Mormon is the one derived from the family of a man named Lehi, whom God brought out of Jerusalem around 600 years before Christ. Lehi had four sons when he left Jerusalem; Laman and Lemuel, the older, and Sam and Nephi, the younger. Through a series of events during their journey to the New World, a schism cleaved their family in two, leaving two distinct groups, one formed by the families of Laman and Lemuel, and one by the families of Nephi and Sam. Nephi and Sam's families took on the name Nephites, while the families of Laman and Lemuel were referred to as Lamanites.

Nephi, being the one chosen by God to follow his father as the leader and prophet to God's people in the New World, was told that the descendants of his older brothers would vex Nephi's own posterity and serve as a means of "[stirring] them up in the ways of remembrance" (1 Nephi 2:24) when they would forget God. Over and over and over again throughout the entirety of the Book of Mormon, the Lamanites would come against the Nephites in war, thus "stirring" them up to remember their God. Repeatedly the Lamanite leaders were able to convince their people to go to war against the Nephites, even though they could never seem to beat them in battle. I have often wondered how the leaders of the Lamanites were able to successfully enrage their people enough to get them to attack the Nephites after being beaten back multiple times. The answer is interesting and bears significantly on our day.

In the tenth chapter of the Book of Mosiah, one of several books in the Book of Mormon, we learn that it was the "tradition of their fathers" that continually stoked the burning hatred in the hearts of the Lamanites, leading them to war and to the persecution of the Nephites. It then explains the nature of that tradition in these words describing the Lamanites:

12 They were a wild, and ferocious, and a blood-thirsty people, believing in the tradition of their fathers, which is this--Believing that they were driven out of the land of Jerusalem because of the iniquities of their fathers, and that they were wronged in the wilderness by their brethren, and they were also wronged while crossing the sea;
13 And again, that they were wronged while in the land of their first inheritance, after they had crossed the sea, and all this because that Nephi was more faithful in keeping the commandments of the Lord--therefore he was favored of the Lord, for the Lord heard his prayers and answered them, and he took the lead of their journey in the wilderness.
14 And his brethren were wroth with him because they understood not the dealings of the Lord; they were also wroth with him upon the waters because they hardened their hearts against the Lord.
15 And again, they were wroth with him when they had arrived in the promised land, because they said that he had taken the ruling of the people out of their hands; and they sought to kill him.
16 And again, they were wroth with him because he departed into the wilderness as the Lord had commanded him, and took the records which were engraven on the plates of brass, for they said that he robbed them.
17 And thus they have taught their children that they should hate them, and that they should murder them, and that they should rob and plunder them, and do all they could to destroy them; therefore they have an eternal hatred towards the children of Nephi.

One comes to find out, as you read the story of Lehi and his family leaving Jerusalem and traveling to the New World, that all of the accusations of Nephi's brothers, which were transmitted from generation to generation, were untrue, changing the facts of the story to favor Laman and Lemuel and make Nephi out to be a villain. The shaping of the facts of history and of news to form a story that justifies your anger is an important element of Satan's efforts to "rage in our hearts," but setting aside the the truth of the accusations, another principle emerges. Lamanite parents and leaders were constantly telling their children and the public that they had been "wronged" in the past, that they are being "wronged" now, and that the Nephites will continue to "wrong" them forever if given the chance. Teaching their children that they are continual victims of the Nephites, obsessing about their victimhood, and demonizing the Nephites formed the substance of what motivated the Lamanites to the reckless hate that drove them to violence and other crimes against the Nephites, latching on to the minds of each generation like a cancerous gene embedded in their cultural DNA.

Later on in the history of the Nephites and Lamanites, at a time when at least some of them had managed to get past the generational hatred of their forebears, another group came to wage war against both peoples. This group was made up, for the most part, by people that had dissented away from among the Nephites and the reconciled Lamanites. They were known as "the Gadianton robbers", and their existence, as the Lamanites before them, consisted of hating, robbing, plundering, murdering, and seeking to destroy the Nephites. And what do you suppose fueled their hatred? Let's read from the book of Third Nephi chapter three. In this passage the leader of the robbers, Giddianhi, had written a letter to the leader of the Nephites, demanding that they surrender up all of their lands and possessions to the robbers or they would take them by bloodshed. In his letter Giddianhi says this:

2 Lachoneus, most noble and chief governor of the land, behold, I write this epistle unto you, and do give unto you exceedingly great praise because of your firmness, and also the firmness of your people, in maintaining that which ye suppose to be your right and liberty; yea, ye do stand well, as if ye were supported by the hand of a god, in the defence of your liberty, and your property, and your country, or that which ye do call so.
3 And it seemeth a pity unto me, most noble Lachoneus, that ye should be so foolish and vain as to suppose that ye can stand against so many brave men who are at my command, who do now at this time stand in their arms, and do await with great anxiety for the word--Go down upon the Nephites and destroy them.
4 And I, knowing of their unconquerable spirit, having proved them in the field of battle, and knowing of their everlasting hatred towards you because of the many wrongs which ye have done unto them, therefore if they should come down against you they would visit you with utter destruction.
5 Therefore I have written this epistle, sealing it with mine own hand, feeling for your welfare, because of your firmness in that which ye believe to be right, and your noble spirit in the field of battle.
6 Therefore I write unto you, desiring that ye would yield up unto this my people, your cities, your lands, and your possessions, rather than that they should visit you with the sword and that destruction should come upon you.
7 Or in other words, yield yourselves up unto us, and unite with us and become acquainted with our secret works, and become our brethren that ye may be like unto us--not our slaves, but our brethren and partners of all our substance.
8 And behold, I swear unto you, if ye will do this, with an oath, ye shall not be destroyed; but if ye will not do this, I swear unto you with an oath, that on the morrow month I will command that my armies shall come down against you, and they shall not stay their hand and shall spare not, but shall slay you, and shall let fall the sword upon you even until ye shall become extinct.
9 And behold, I am Giddianhi; and I am the governor of this the secret society of Gadianton; which society and the works thereof I know to be good; and they are of ancient date and they have been handed down unto us.
10 And I write this epistle unto you, Lachoneus, and I hope that ye will deliver up your lands and your possessions, without the shedding of blood, that this my people may recover their rights and government, who have dissented away from you because of your wickedness in retaining from them their rights of government, and except ye do this, I will avenge their wrongs. I am Giddianhi.

Again we find a continual fixation on the "wrongs" that had been committed against them, the truth of which, again, does not bear out in the record. But the truth of the accusations aside, it's the victim culture and the broad villainization of others that I would like to focus on and their connection to hatred strong enough to destroy societies and persistent enough to be passed on like an heirloom to the next generation. It was, in part, "the many wrongs which ye have done unto them" that helped to transform the atrocities that they committed into the perceived "good works" of their secret society. Murder, deception, theft, oppression, and destruction all become noble when seen in the light of "avenging" the endless wrongs committed against the perpetual victims in such a culture.

I believe the Book of Mormon to be written not only to "the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ" (Title Page to the Book of Mormon), but to the illuminating of patterns of culture, government, belief, philosophy, and personal behavior that lead a society to destruction. Such a warning comes to us in hopes that we may avoid the same fate and to recognize the signs of the times. With this in mind, I observe the world today, looking for signs of victim cultures, demonization, and the wake of hatred left by their passage, and I seem to see them everywhere. Often, as with the brothers of Nephi, I find the accusations to be largely untrue. They seem to be warped versions of the truth, made by those with an interest in "stirring up the people to anger." But even when the wrongs of the past are legitimate, the inability to let them go will always impede the efforts to establish peace today.

You can to decide for yourself if victim cultures exist in modern society, but certainly they proved to be a major force in the centuries of war and the ultimate destruction of the Nephite civilization. If we are concerned about the hatred and anger in our society and in the world at large, we would do well to ask ourselves to what extent have we have personally embraced any version of a culture of victimhood and demonization and how we perpetuate that to our children and to others around us.

Do I mean that we should never stand up for someone in need? Or that there are not people who are truly oppressed and who need our help? Certainly not! We just need to exercise wisdom and good judgement. If we are constantly fixating on the idea that our ancestors, or those of any other group, were heinously wronged in the past and that the blood or perceived ideological descendants of the perpetrators are still seeking to oppress and abuse us to the current day, we could soon find our hate running wildly into the ever deepening thickets of unjust behavior. We might easily find ourselves transforming our excursions through wickedness and aggression into acts of honor by viewing the supposed evil of those we trespass against. We could, in the end, find ourselves soiled by the "good works" of avenging the wrongs of society.

For those who believe that the Book of Mormon is true, it is hard to overstate the importance of this principle, it being the driving force behind most of the violence recorded in that book. For those who do not believe that the Book of Mormon is true, it is hard to explain how Joseph Smith could be so insightful as to be able to predict the future with such amazing accuracy.

A Crutch Without an Owner

In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, we believe in revelation. We believe that the kind of direct communication between God and man that is described in the Bible and the Book of Mormon to direct his work on the earth, both for individuals and for His Church, continues as powerfully as it has ever done in times past. It is what makes the Church “living” (D&C 1:30).

In light of recent events, I am very grateful for the revelation given to Joseph Smith that the Church should function on the principle of having lay clergy to carry out church operations. There are many reasons that I am grateful for this seemingly small bit of revelation, but one in particular stood out plainly to me this week. Not one week after the Supreme Court decision to establish same-sex marriage as a civil right, an article was published in TIME which calls for the revocation of the tax exempt status for all entities, religious or otherwise, that refuse to perform or participate in same-sex marriages. This is the continuation of a disturbing trend to use both the full weight of social pressure as well as the power of civil action to force people and institutions to abandon their religious moral convictions to adopt the religion of the State. However, this trend will continue with much larger teeth in post same-sex marriage ruling America.

As former Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in an opinion for the McCulloch v. Maryland case almost 200 years ago, “The power to tax is the power to destroy.” Those seeking the destruction of traditional morals will not hesitate to use this power to create the leverage they need to accomplish their objective. It will become very difficult for churches whose clergy rely on church income for their personal living to stand up to the force that will soon be laid against them. I suspect that we will see some churches that will change their position on same-sex marriage, viewing it as necessary for their survival. I am very grateful for the wisdom in the revelation to have a lay clergy, securing their ability to go on in the work of the church, despite the threat of fiscal pressure that will surely come to all religious entities who wish to retain their right of conscience in today’s Progressive America.

Undoubtedly, the coming civil actions will fiscally impact the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, but its long held practices of living within its means and the payment of tithes by its faithful members will equip the Church with the financial bulwark to stand resolutely by its principles, as the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles have unequivocally proclaimed it will do.

In a recent letter to the local leaders and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints regarding the Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage, the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve confidently “restates and reaffirms the doctrinal foundation of Church teachings on morality, marriage, and the family...Changes in the civil law do not, indeed cannot, change the moral law that God has established. God expects us to uphold and keep his commandments regardless of divergent opinions or trends in society.” Why is the issue of marriage of such importance that we are expected by God uphold and keep his commandments regarding marriage? There are many reasons, both theological and societal. I may address some of these reasons in a future post, but I feel to just mention one at this time.

There has not been a single civilization in the history of the world that has survived the decision to abandon the natural family as the fundamental unit of society. Many today cry out for scientific data (much of which exists and is ignored by those promoting the redefinition of marriage and family) to show that the natural family has any advantages over other forms of social organization. My response to them is, what is history but thousands of years of clinical trials on how to organize a society that will flourish? Civilizations across the world, developing independently from others around them, have continually put forward the natural family as the fundamental basis of society, while every society that has chosen to disregard the family has perished. As in all scientific study, a disregard of the results of previous trials, especially when they are overwhelmingly one-sided, speaks more to a lack of wisdom than it does to innovation. The idea that we are so advanced that we will be the one society that will be able to abandon the family safely, seems to me to be the product of utter blindness and the voracious pride that Bible and Book of Mormon prophets correctly ascribed to the people of our day.

With many countries around the world moving in the direction of abandonment of the natural family, and with political forces such as Russia, Iran/ISIS, and China showing signs of confidence, coalition, and aggression, I can’t help but wonder if the consequences of the widespread societal decision to move away from the family will quickly gain momentum until two prophets lie dead in the streets of Jerusalem (Rev. 11:1-10) and the Mount of Olives is cleaved in two (Zech 14:1-4). As I reflect about my country and the world which my little children will have to face, I feel like I am standing beside Scrooge looking in upon a small crippled boy and hearing him ask the Spirit with trepidation if the boy will live. I feel some measure of fear and a deep resolve be a force for good, as I hear the Ghost reply, “I see a vacant seat...in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die.” May God lead us to such a renewal as is found in the end of that beautiful story, I pray.

Pillars of Human Happiness

We live in a strange time. A time when wrongs are defended as rights, when bondage passes as freedom, and when experience is outmoded. A time when history drives evolution with omnipotence, but no one seems to know any. A time when people board the good ship Progress, unaware that she is headed upriver and sure to run aground in the shallow streams of lessons already learned; streams that long ago poured their wisdom and safety into the river that cut the course of constitutional law through the rocks of ages past. All the while the passengers marvel to each other at the new and revolutionary scenery and the banks of the river grow ever closer to the hull.

Self-Governance

Many in America wake up each morning, wash, dress, eat, and pass the schedule of the day's events through a consciousness so accustomed to freedom that it scarcely notices the warm water, the fact that there is a choice of what to wear, what to eat, and in what to spend time. Such a consciousness most often allocates little thought to exactly what produces and maintains the freedom that shapes nearly every aspect of its environment. Freedom is not the kind of thing that springs up out of the ground like the flora of Eden, spilling forth fruit in abundance and exacting no sweaty price from its beneficiaries. Rather freedom can only exist under certain conditions, it requires constant care, and it has many times been choked out by the thorns and noxious weeds of despotism and unbridled human passions.

For any society to exist, there must be order. Without it, poverty, death, starvation, and misery would rage in every corner of the earth and the possibility of any measure of lasting prosperity would be snuffed out. If there is to be order, it must come from one of two loci of power. It must either be intrinsic or extrinsic; either the people must order themselves individually or else be ordered by an outside force. For the vast majority of the history of mankind, the latter has dominated the landscape of political communities and nations. In such instances, the political sovereign enforces order through arbitrary rules based on his, her, or their will, establishing a condition in which sovereignty is continually transferred to whoever has the strongest will and the most power. And so history is filled with Chiefs, Kings, Queens, Emperors, Czars, Priests, Furhers, Dictators, Generals, and sovereigns of any number of other names acquiring power and imposing order on the society over which they rule. On occasion a benevolent ruler would grace the scene, blessing the lives of his or her subjects. But on the whole, complete power would corrupt completely, as rulers let their passions take the reins.

However, from time to time a people would arise that sought to establish a society based on the intrinsic induction of order. In these communities, the rules would be agreed upon by society as a whole, and the large majority of the enforcement of the rules would take place freely within each heart and mind. Individual volition, not fear of force, would drive compliance to the law for most people. Each person could live their life in Liberty, comporting himself or herself according to what promotes both their own happiness and the common good, learning along the way that those two interests are linked together. Thus, freedom would burst into the world amidst abundant oppression and scanty progress, briefly illuminating the horizon like a flash of lightning and revealing to humanity the outlines of what is possible. Though each flash got seemingly brighter, each would eventually be overcome again by the inertial darkness of human nature unchecked by reason and conscience.

By the late 1700's, the previous failures of free societies had cast long shadows of doubt as to whether or not a lasting regime based on self-government was possible at all. In America, the men and women of the founding generation felt that conditions existed in the New World unlike any other time in history, giving them a chance, that may never happen again, to establish an enduring free nation. Alexander Hamilton stated:

"It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force." (Federalist No. 1)

And so, knowing that the whole world was watching, the great task the Founders faced was to understand how to get lasting political order to arise consistently from the individual intrinsic activities of reflection and choice.

Fundamental Principles

The first step needed to establish their new land of Liberty was to establish government's proper and true relationship to man. The Declaration of Independence accomplished this in 1776, proclaiming boldly that government sits in a lower sphere than mankind, intended to be a servant, not a master. It states that governments are instituted among men to secure for them unalienable rights which God gives them, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This means that the rights of Man exist outside and above government, and that both Man and government are accountable to God through the natural and supernatural laws He has put in place. 

This understanding of government's relationship to Man and God is crucial to human happiness. Without it, government reigns supreme and can do whatever it likes to men, women, and children everywhere, without committing any wrong. We are all intuitively aware of this relationship. This is evidenced by the fact that whenever a regime somewhere in the world oppresses its people or infringes upon their rights, we all instinctively hold that regime up to a standard inside ourselves and we know it to be a bad and unjust regime.  

The second step in the creation of a nation of self-governance was to establish a framework that would keep government in its bounds and ensure that it carries out the purposes stated in the Declaration. The Articles of Confederation were a good, but ultimately unsuccessful first attempt at establishing that framework. And so the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was called to amend the Articles. However, they found that amending them was not possible, and they came to see that an entirely new constitution would be required to achieve a lasting free society.

In accordance with the Declaration, the new government had to be a representative one, ensuring that it derived "its just powers from the consent of the governed." It had to separate the powers of government into distinct branches, as the Declaration affirmed God alone to be capable of being entrusted with their consolidation. It had to be limited only to the enumerated powers that would allow it to secure natural rights, making sure that government would always remain a servant of the people under whose delegated authority it acts. And so, after much deliberation and the synergy of some of the greatest political minds in the history of the world, the Constitution of 1787 coalesced, outlining the framework that would amass enough power in government to protect rights, while limiting that power enough to protect rights.

Reflection and Choice

Though having the right matrix of government was crucial for the perpetuation of freedom, a matrix designed to both foster and to protect the exercise of human agency, our forefathers had the even greater task of actually achieving the kind of "reflection and choice" that would produce "good government" continually over time. Drafted by Thomas Jefferson in 1777 and adopted into law in 1786, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom states that "Almighty God hath created the mind free; and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint." Understanding thus that the mind was free, the founding generation knew that creating within people the right disposition for good reflection and choice was something that could not be legislated, engineered, or coerced in any way. It could only be achieved if the vast majority of citizens came to a knowledge for themselves of what is good, right, and true and if they valued that truth enough to follow it. That process had to occur within each individual heart and mind.

The challenge to create a freedom that would endure, therefore, depended on the early American's ability to establish a culture and a tradition outside the government, in the body of the people, that would facilitate the pursuit of truth and goodness. They knew that only a virtuous people could abide freedom and "that all attempts to influence [the mind] by temporal punishments, or burdens, or by civil incapacitations tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of [God], who being lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate [religion or virtue] by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do but to extend it by its influence on reason alone" (Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom). Thus building a culture conducive to freedom had to include the means of conveying the influence of virtue to the reason of each individual mind.

By what means, then, is the evidence of the goodness of virtue best brought to the human mind? What vessels carry her there? There are a few, but only two will be our focus today. They are speech and religion. Both are very powerful and the Founders thought that both warranted special protection.

Speech

Many people today contest the idea that we live in a moral world, where the moral opposites of good and bad, of right and wrong, are fixed and constant for everyone. Instead they either teach that morality is relative to individual experience, allowing each person to define it for themselves, or they do away with the concept altogether, contending that there is no truth that transcends beyond individuals and moments in history. To understand the reality of the moral world you have to understand key elements of the role of speech in human nature.

In his book Politics, Aristotle discusses how our ability to speak makes us more fit for gregarious life than any other creature on earth and how it, coupled with reason, gives rise to the moral world. We are able name things, to categorize them and give them a name. Inseparably connected to that name is the nature of that object, and as it loses aspects of that nature, it loses its capacity to be that thing. Take a car, for example. When we hear that word, we all instantaneously have in our minds the essential elements of a car; four wheels, a motor, etc. But if you take a car and start taking wheels away from it, it becomes less like a car and more like a motorcycle. If you take its motor, it stops being a car and starts being a cart. We can have preferences in the color of the car or in the material covering the seats, but there are certain elements of a car that are non-negotiable, elements tied to its nature, that all cars must have in order to be considered good. And so, once we categorize an object, we can start talking about whether it is a good one of those objects or a bad one. A safe without a lock is not a good safe, but it might be an okay box. Thus, the good of something and it's being that thing are convertible terms, and the moral world is made visible.

What we can do with objects, we can do with less tangible things. For instance, we can categorize behaviors. We can observe a behavior that falls in the category of "ways to treat a friend", and then we can discuss whether it was a good way or a bad way. The less that behavior looks like how to treat a friend, the more it looks like how to treat an acquaintance, stranger, or perhaps, enemy. Again, we can make a category of "how to uphold an agreement." Then, through talking with each other, through conscience, reason, and experience, we can discover what is the right way to uphold an agreement. Just like in the example of the car, there are elements of rightly upholding an agreement that are not for us to change, elements tied to the good in its nature. Those things are for us to discover, not to shape to our own preferences. With this capacity to recognize things and categorize them, the rich moral world opens at once to our view; and with that moral world comes a great need to be free to talk with others in order to discuss, debate, and identify together what makes something good. Once we identify the good in something, we can conform our lives to it, and thereby be blessed and grow more virtuous, both in the individual soul and in society.

Conscience and Religion

Conscience and religion are just as vital to self-perpetuating societal virtue as speech and reason are. If there is to be a large majority of the people that chooses freely to obey the law, without needing outside enforcement, there must be some other source of accountability. Certainly education alone does not ensure virtue, as the educated ruling class has often been oppressive, criminal, and murderous throughout the span of human history, including the past one hundred years. Many people that decry religion defend their position by claiming that a high quality education in these enlightened times is all that is needed for a virtuous people. The individuals that make this claim must have, during that quality education of theirs, missed the days their history teacher discussed the Nazis, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and many other highly educated people and regimes that have all committed unimaginable atrocities in the past century. They must not take the paper, watch the news, or check the Internet, as they seemingly don't catch wind of the almost daily scandals that occur among the educated elite in supposedly enlightened western nations. Though the right kind of education can help lead reason to virtue, the evidence to negate the idea that education alone will foster virtue is incontrovertible.

If we can't count on a person's education only to hold them accountable to Virtue's standards, and if ever present law enforcement would abolish liberty, then in what can Freedom rest its hopes? The answer is found in religion. A belief in an omniscient and loving God, whose teachings are compatible with Justice and Virtue, and who will at some future date hold each person responsible for their choice to follow those teachings is the best way to create internally motivated obedience to the law and the adoption of virtuous principles into the lives of a large majority of the people in society.

Religion, when left free, has been shown throughout history to be the most powerful means of disseminating an understanding of the nature of individual virtues and the most reliable motivator to pursue them. Studies have shown the United States to be the most generous nation in the world, and religion and religious institutions have long been the biggest source of charity behind that generosity. For the majority of our history, religious institutions have been the driving force behind the establishment of schools, both of K-12 education, as well as colleges and universities. These are just two of many possible examples of how people are motivated by their faith to act virtuously.

Religion also powers the prosperity of the Free Market. The following is a quote by Clayton Christensen, a professor at the Harvard Business School and highly sought after consultant. He gives an account of a conversation that he had with an economist from China. He stated:

“I learned the importance of this question in a conversation 12 years ago with a Marxist economist from China who was nearing the end of a fellowship in Boston, where he had come to study two topics that were foreign to him: democracy and capitalism. I asked my friend if he had learned here anything on these topics that was surprising or unexpected. His response was immediate. . . . ‘I had no idea how critical religion is to the functioning of democracy and capitalism.’ . . . He continued, ‘In your past, most Americans attended a church or synagogue every week. These are institutions that people respected. When you were there, from your youngest years, you were taught that you should voluntarily obey the law; that you should respect other people’s property, and not steal it. You were taught never to lie. Americans followed these rules because they had come to believe that even if the police didn’t catch them when they broke a law, God would catch them. Democracy works because most people most of the time voluntarily obey your laws.' ‘You can say the same for capitalism,’ my friend continued. ‘It works because Americans have been taught in their churches that they should keep their promises and not tell lies. An advanced economy cannot function if people cannot expect that when they sign contracts, the other people will voluntarily uphold their obligations. Capitalism works because most people voluntarily keep their promises.’ . . . [Such expressions mirror those of] Lord John Fletcher Moulton, the great English jurist, who wrote that the probability that democracy and free markets will flourish in a nation is proportional to ‘The extent of obedience to the unenforceable.” (Clayton Christensen, “The Importance of Asking the Right Questions,” commencement address, Southern New Hampshire University, Manchester, N.H., May 16, 2009. )

Thus, both political order and advanced free market economies are sustained in large measure by religion. Due to their unique and powerful contribution to the correct “reflection and choice” that is required for free government to endure, religion and religious institutions deserve special legal protection.

Each of us, as human beings, is born with a phenomenon acting within us that is commonly referred to as Conscience. It is tied to our reason, as well as our emotions, linking both together to give us a sense of the accountability that will surely come at some future date. It calls us to seek after the Good in all things and helps to hone our ability to perceive that which is Good through reason and the revelations of God. It stings our souls when we choose not to follow the Good, as a reminder that we are meant to be better and to live better than our errant path directs. It gets more distinct and clear the more we follow its enticings, and it fades into silence the more we ignore it. If we choose to follow its voice consistently over time, it will produce within each of us the character traits of Virtue and make us more capable of freedom and self-government. But, that process has to come from within each of us through individual volition.

If you are trying to produce virtuous people in a society, you must leave them free to choose virtue. If you attempt to legislate or force it, you will destroy the virtue you are trying to produce. You will never produce the moderation of pleasure if you lock someone in a room and eliminate the opportunity for pleasure. You will never produce kindness if you force people to do the acts of kindness. You will never produce generosity if you take someone’s money to give it to the poor. You will never produce piety by forcing people to pray. In free societies, founded on self-government, all of the virtues are necessary; you have to have them. But they can’t be made, because each individual must choose them for themselves. That is why religion and conscience must always remain free.

Conclusion

In the milieu of differing voices and interests contending for influence today, every group evokes the authority of individual rights in defense of their position. Often they do so without an understanding of what rights are. Rights are things that you can justly claim against others without infringing on what is theirs by nature. As the Declaration teaches, we are all endowed by God with certain rights from which we are not able to be alienated. These rights require a universal moral standard that defines right and wrong and makes the violation of those rights wrong. Some things claimed as “rights” today are not rights at all, while other bona fide rights are claimed to be wrongs. All true rights exist in a hierarchy, with those that are fundamental taking precedence over lesser rights. That order is made distinguishable by “the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”

When forming the Bill of Rights to amend the original Constitution, the Founders considered carefully what rights would be included and how those rights would be presented. Knowing that they had already established the right to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” in the Declaration, they felt that the first rights to be elucidated in the Bill of Rights would be rights that pertain to the creation and perpetuation of morality and virtue in the people’s lives. Thus, they first protected freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion. They understood that without moral and virtuous people, their experiment in self-government was over before it started. And so, they carefully placed at the top of the list those rights that protect the elements in our nature that lead us to virtue. These rights are absolutely vital to the survival of any free nation. Without them, the external imposition of order on society is the only other choice, which brings in its wake the tyranny, oppression, and suffering that has dominated the majority of human history.

While teaching a group of soldiers about the importance of religion and morality in our republic’s survival, John Adams stated:

“we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

In his “Farewell Address,” George Washington stated among his last words to the American people that:

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness - these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

Without religion and morality, neither Liberty nor Happiness can long endure. As a Nation, we are at a critical juncture in the perpetuation of these “great pillars of human happiness.” There are many seeking to subvert morality and religion to other ideas and pursuits, doing so in the name of “rights.” As in the time of Lincoln, we live in a house divided, which cannot stand if the trends of recent decades continue. We must decide which direction we will take as a Nation. Either we choose internal order through religion and morality, or we choose external order through the imposition of the State. The former will produce a continuance of Liberty and the general happiness and prosperity for which we have been the envy of all the world in times past; while the latter will lead to sorrow, poverty, and oppression. As we make this decision, we would do well to remember that “He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind” (Proverbs 11:3).

Progressivism and the Separation of Powers

This post is the next in a series of posts about America and freedom and the serious threats to them in the current day. Please share what you learn with others.

The Constitution and The Separation of Powers

Long before the newly proclaimed states of America broke the political bands that bound them to Britain, many of the great governmental lessons encapsulated in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution had been distilled through the experiences of the English people living under kings for hundreds of years. Those lessons were added one by one to the English common law and to their informal, unwritten, constitution. For centuries the English people had fought back and forth with kings that relentlessly sought to get and keep all of the powers of government into their hands alone. From these political battles they learned that if any measure of freedom is to exist, the powers of government must be divided up and kept separate.

James Madison

This great principle of separated powers became so paramount in the minds of the Founders that both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison proclaimed on multiple occasions that the concentration of the several powers of government in to the same hands is the very definition of tyranny. Any person or group of people that get to make the laws, enforce the laws, prosecute offenders, adjudicate cases, and pass sentences can oppress and use people as they please. This has been done across the history of the world under kings, republics, democracies, communist regimes, socialist regemes, and any other form of government not checked by the strict separation of powers.

The reason for the need of separated powers lies deeply rooted in human nature. In the Book of Mosiah, in the Book of Mormon, King Mosiah, one of those rare kings that can rule justly, came to the end of his life, and finding that none of his sons wanted to assume the throne, he proposed a popular government to the people of his kingdom, one in which the powers of government would be separated into the hands of various "judges" that were to be elected "by the voice of the people". He told his people that it was better that they not have kings in order to preserve their liberty, and this because "if it were possible that you could have just men to be your kings...if this could always be the case then it would be expedient that ye should always have kings to rule over you...Now I say unto you, that because all men are not just it is not expedient that ye should have a king or kings to rule over you"(Mosiah 29).

James Madison wrote in the 51st Federalist Paper, a series of essays written by the chief authors of the Constitution to explain why they constructed the Constitution the way they did and to persuade the people to ratify it, that:

It may be a reflection on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

Joseph Smith wrote similarly in a letter while unjustly incarcerated in liberty jail that, "We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion" (D&C 121:39).

The Founders laid the initial ground work for the separation of powers through the Declaration of Independence. They did so by making reference to God as each of the powers of government. He is referred to as the Maker of the "Laws of Nature, and of Nature's God," as the "Supreme Judge" of the world, and as "divine Providence," the clear implication being that it is in the hands of God alone that you would entrust all three of those powers. No human can be trusted with them, as evidenced by the list of grievances with which they charge the King. Then in 1787, the Founders framed each branch of government carefully in its place, equipped with the mean to defend their territory and keep the other branches in check. James Madison felt that the structure of the Constitution was immensely important, because it made "ambition...to counteract ambition" (Federalist 51). Madison and the rest of the founders felt that if we were to ever lose the separation of powers, the republic could not survive.

The Loss of the Separation of Powers

Beginning in the Civil War, the principles of the Declaration and the Constitution began to be challenged by a new way of thinking, based off of same theories that shaped the German/Prussian governments of the 19th and 20th centuries. In the late 1800's they took shape as the Progressive movement, which continued to grow until it reached the highest levels of power and influence in the country. When progressives gained control of the government, they began to implement the changes that would allow them to bring to pass their political agenda.

The progressives were generally impatient with the separation of powers. They wanted the purpose of government to change from protecting the God-given rights of the people, to being the great problem-solver that will finally fix all of the ills of human society. If the government was to fix everything, then it needed to control everything, it needed to be able to act in unison and efficiency. They knew that the separation of powers stood in the way of that, and they wrote and argued that point substantially. Progressives also argued that, because of historical progress, humans had largely evolved out of the flaws in human nature that the Founders addressed with soberness, thus making those in the government less of a danger to the people, and therefore, the need for the separation of powers less important

Woodrow Wilson, and others, knew that they weren't going to be able to enact fundamental changes to the Constitution itself, so they had to find another way to do it. The approach that Wilson took was to separate politics from administration. He felt that politics were low and corrupt, whereas administration was the new frontier of government. Wilson wanted the government to be run by highly trained people, educated in all of the sciences, but especially in administration. He wanted them to be separated from the corrupt influence of politics, acting with tenure, and with salaries big enough to keep them from temptation. All of these things would ensure that this new force of scientific administrators would act only in the public interest. Thus, the modern bureaucracy of Europe was brought to America.

The Bureaucracy

Since Wilson began to establish his separation of politics and administration, the U.S. Government has grown exponentially. Dozens upon dozens of bureaus, regulatory agencies, commissions, and departments have been formed under this same model. To separate them from politics, they are not elected. To prevent new administrations from changing officials out for those more friendly to them, they are given tenure and laws to make it so new presidents couldn't fire them. In one instance, the Financial Consumer Protection Bureau, even their budget was made to come from the Federal Reserve, not Congress, and Congress was forbidden from holding hearings into the dealings of the bureau. All these things were done to separate administration from the consent of the governed and, therefore, from politics.

Gradually the lines between the branches of government began to be blurred. Congress, upon passing new "laws," created these agencies as part of the executive branch and delegated law making authority to them, enabling them (the agency) to make the unending flood of rules that issue from the bureaucracy for years after the "law" is passed. For example, when then Speaker Pelosi said that we would have to pass the new healthcare law to find out what was in it, she was being perfectly serious. The law, despite being extremely long, makes very little actual policy. Instead, the Department of Health and Human Services and the IRS will be making the policies for years to come, all within the safety of the bureaucracy. And so, the ruling class of people in the executive branch, has amassed the majority of real legislative power, in addition to the power to execute the laws.

The judicial powers have also gradually distilled themselves into the hand of the bureaucracy. They have done so in two main ways. First, when each regulatory agency is formed, they are given the power to have semi-autonomous judges, that work for the agency, who adjudicate cases under the rules made by the agency. After the case is settled, the head of the agency often has the power to overrule the judge and nullify his or her decision, at which time defendants can have claim to the regular courts. Second, the regular courts have developed something called "Chevron deference," which is a phenomenon in which the judges defer to decisions made by the bureaucracy, because they are the scientific experts in the fields they oversee. The Judges, not being experts, cannot make decisions that impact those fields due to the fact that they don't understand the fullness of the detailed and complicated situation. This problem of "Chevron deference" has gotten so bad that in a very recent court case in the Supreme Court, King vs. Burwell, one of the lawyers argued that "Chevron applies to the tax code, just like everything else." Justice Kennedy very seriously entertained the idea replying, "If your're right about Chevron, that would mean that subsequent administrations could change the interpretation of the law."

Thus, when an agency, who makes the rules, thinks one of its rules has been violated, the agency prosecutes the infraction and adjudicates the infraction. When the person appeals, he or she does so to the agency, and the final decision may be overruled by the head of the agency as he or she sees fit. If the defendant can afford all of the expense and hassle to make it to the regular courts, the Judges and Justices will often defer to the decisions made by the scientific experts at the agency. Sadly, this is a very accurate description of how many government agencies operate today.


Conclusion

All of these changes have concentrated all of the powers of government largely into the executive branch. Though the full extent of these powers may not be in the President's hands yet, they are not far from his or her grasp. At the very least, they are concentrated into the hands of an elite ruling class of experts that is growing ever larger, and as evidenced by the continuous stream of scandals, including the IRS targeting scandals, they are just as prone to act despotically as any human that is given unchecked power. If we as a nation do not wake up soon, and aggressively fight to return to constitutional principles, we will soon lose the Republic and the unprecedented freedom that it established, We will then, as Ronald Reagan said, "spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in America when men were free."