By President Ezra Taft Benson
Address given to the “California Constitutional Crusade” (a gathering of Latter-day Saints) at the Anaheim Convention Center (Anaheim, California) on Tuesday, October 9, 1979
Contributor’s note: very minor changes to spelling and grammar have been made from the original document to this one.
My fellow Americans. You accord to me a great honor by inviting me to be with you on this occasion. You have aptly named this convention a Constitutional Crusade. Now, as never before in our nation’s 200-year history, the times demand a crusade to return to the Constitution in the tradition of our founding fathers. I commend Cleon Skousen, the Freeman Institute and supporters for their great efforts toward this purpose – a goal which must be achieved if America is to be saved.
It is not easy for me to stand before you and deliver a message which I have been pondering for some time. But I do so out of love for America and allegiance to the God of heaven who made us all. Because of the nature of the message I bring, I have committed most of it to writing. I am not here to tickle your ears – to entertain you. I shall speak to you frankly and honestly. The message I bring is not a particularly happy one, but it is the truth and time is on the side of truth.
I have concerns about the future of our nation. All is not well in this land. I am concerned about its declining spirituality. I am concerned about the apathy which allows political parties and government officials to take more and more control over the lives of our people. I am concerned about the concessions made by government leaders to foreign powers whose objective it is to destroy all that we hold dear. In all candor, I am concerned about the survival of this great nation as we, as fortunate citizens, have known and enjoyed it.
As Americans, we share a serious citizenship responsibility. The Prophet Joseph Smith declared, “It is our duty to concentrate all our influence to make popular that which is sound and good and unpopular that which is unsound.” (HC 5:286)
God has told us that the United States Constitution was divinely inspired for the specific purposes of eliminating bondage and protecting the rights which belong to “all flesh.” (D&C 101:77-80)
If we believe in God and His works, it is up to each one of us to uphold and defend our Constitution which guarantees our precious freedom. For God states unequivocally:
“Let not that which I have appointed be polluted by mine enemies, by the consent of those who call themselves after my name.
“For this is a very sore and grievous sin against me, and against my people in consequence of those things which I have decreed and which are soon to befall the nations.” (D&C 101:97-98)
Hear again the words of the late President David O. McKay, who declared:
“No greater immediate responsibility rests upon members of the Church, upon all citizens of this Republic and of neighboring Republics than to protect the freedom vouchsafed by the Constitution of the United States.” (CR, April 1950, p. 37)
Today, we are witnesses to a world struggle that is but an extension of the war in heaven. We have seen a system of slavery, Communism, imprison the minds and bodies of over one billion of our Father’s children. Today, 45 percent of the people of the world, in 65 nations, live under totalitarian dictatorships, or forms of government which deny people most, or all, of their political and religious freedoms.
We are witnesses to deception in high places. We are witnesses to an erosion within our own country of the ideals of our Founding Fathers which are embodied in the Constitution. We are seeing more and more power being concentrated in the federal government, all to the deprivation of the liberties of individuals. Yearly we observe our government going further in debt, debauching our currency and thereby fueling inflation.
We are witnesses to pronouncements of atheism, agnosticism, and immorality in our midst. Sadly, we are witnesses to the truth that as a nation, we have forgotten God. I ask myself, how long can we remain under heaven’s benign protection?
We tend to forget how America became the greatest, most prosperous and powerful nation in the world, blessed with an abundance of everything needed for the good life.
It didn’t just happen. It wasn’t an accident. It was all an integral part of the divine plan for America. In the early frontier days of this country a special breed of men and women came here from all over the world seeking not only opportunity, but freedom. They were strong, proud, and fiercely independent. They believed that the surest helping hand was at the end of their own sleeves. They shared one thing in common – an unshakable faith in God, and in themselves. And that, without doubt, is the secret of success which is as applicable today as it was then.
With little but raw courage and indomitable purpose, those intrepid pioneers set forth into the unknown by covered wagon, on horseback, and sometimes on foot. The land demanded iron men with steel in their backbones. Nature did the weeding out. But they didn’t whine or bleat because things were tough. They asked no favors from any man. They knew what they were up against and they accepted the challenge. All they wanted was to be left alone to do what had to be done. They were wrenching a civilization out of the wilderness.
America soon blossomed into a rich, fertile, productive nation. Individual initiative – free enterprise – paid off, and American ingenuity flourished in a climate of freedom. Very soon our technology, our inventiveness, and our business know-how became the envy of the world. America had reached maturity, a giant among nations, a glowing example of free enterprise in action, and a perfect demonstration of what free men can do when they are left alone to do it.
But, as those affluent years slipped by, voices were heard in the land singing the siren songs of socialism. And many Americans tapped their feet to the beat of the music. Politicians were already promising something for nothing – that elusive free lunch. Thus, gradually, the people let the government infringe upon their precious freedoms and the preliminary signs of decay began to appear in our young Republic.
Our economic situation today, I believe, is precarious. Reality has descended on us. Inflation, like an insidious disease, is weakening us.
We reached this position because we lost our national pride, our sense of independence. When we wanted something, we went crawling to the government instead of doing it ourselves. We, like Esau of old, exchanged God-inspired principles, for a mess of shoddy values. No wonder our structures of freedom are cracking.
It is my sober warning to you this day that if the trends of the past 40 years continue, especially the last 15 years, we will lose that which is as precious as life itself – our freedom, our liberty, our right to act as free men. And if we lose our God-given freedom, only blood – human blood – will bring it back.
It can happen here. It is happening here.
It is time we recognized, as a people, that this country rests on divinely inspired and uniquely formulated principles. Until 1789, no nation had all basic rights guaranteed and recognized by written contract. That is what the Constitution is – a contract between a sovereign people and their elected officials. It’s high time these principles were not just acknowledged, but carried out. Indeed this is the only real hope for our survival as a free nation.
What was the philosophy behind this document that made it divinely inspired?
It embodied the collective attitude and spirit of the founders of this Republic. Keep in mind that they recognized that all men’s rights for life, liberty and property were unalienable. In other words, they came from God. This is the underlying principle that distinguishes our form of government from all others. This was in opposition and contrast to the European philosophy which for centuries had declared that man’s rights could be given or withheld by a king, dictator or ruler.
The founders had healthy mistrust of government. They accepted the maxim that “government is like a fire: a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” They emphasized that government had to be controlled in the interest of man’s liberty. Because of a fear of the omnipotent power of the State, they provided for a separation of powers which limited the various branches of the government. They declared that the powers of government should be decentralized, that the power not delegated to the federal government belonged to the states, and that the power not delegated to either the states or the federal government inherently belonged to the people. They also provided checks and balances in our constitutional system that are, or should be, well-known to every school child.
They warned that government could become legalized plunder. They emphasized that government should be frugal, that debt would bring a nation to its knees just as much as an invading foreign power. They provided for the protection of private property rights and acknowledged that government exists to provide such protection. The founders advanced a system of unique representation so that the will of the people would be manifest through representatives, but that the rights of minorities would be protected from a more powerful majority which was regarded as just another form of tyranny. Now, that is what the founders believed. That’s the spirit and tradition which they gave to us.
How far are we removed from that philosophy? Should Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin, Madison, and others visit us today, would they recognize by the practices of our government those ideals which were so nobly enshrined under their auspices? Let’s consider a comparison of what they taught to what we practice today.
John Adams, our first vice-president and second president, said: “Our Constitution was made for only a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” God is the source of man’s rights and the ultimate authority for society’s basis of law. Thus the Constitution, was not conceived as an expression of man-made law, but was a recognition of a higher law from God. That is why Madison wrote on completion of the Constitution, “It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it a finger of that Almighty Hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical state of the revolution.” (The Federalist, No. 37)
How is it today? Too many Americans have lost sight of the truth that God is our source of freedom, the Law Giver, and that personal righteousness is the most important essential to preserving our freedom.
What does morality have to do with maintaining good constitutional government? Here is the Lord’s commandment to us today: “Wherefore, honest men and wise men should be sought for diligently, and good men and wise men ye should observe to uphold; otherwise whatsoever is less than these cometh of evil.” (D&C 98:10)
Only a virtuous citizenry can elect good, honest, and wise representatives. A virtuous citizenry demands moral government. They will not give their consent to spending programs which enlarge the function of the federal government. They will not vote money to agencies which have no legitimacy under the Constitution. They will not vote to permit government to take the wealth of the laborer and transfer the fruits of his labors to another.
Honest legislators will not spend money they do not have, thereby mortgaging future generations to debt. Honest legislators will remember the words of Jefferson, “We shall all consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts.”
Honorable legislators will not permit government to multiply unbacked printing press money, creating the cruelest tax of all, inflation. They will not vote themselves pay increases without consent of the governed. They will refrain from demagoguery, (promising what they can’t deliver or pandering to the covetousness of those who demand what they have not earned.) In short, elected officials will not assume prerogatives they do not have nor which you, the citizens, have not expressly granted to them.
When you have wise, good, honorable representatives, you have effective constitutional government. When you don’t have this kind of representation, constitutional government will fail. It is as Edmund Burke said, “Men of intemperate habits cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”
These early Founders had a genuine mistrust for entanglements, alliances, and treaties with foreign nations. Said George Washington, first President and Father of our country, “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.” Jefferson echoed that sentiment when he advised, “Honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.”
It is apparent to all that their advice has been ignored. Today the United States is bound by multifarious treaties with Europe, Asia, South America, the Mid-East and the Soviet Union.
Why did our forefathers advise against entangling alliances? They recognized that every entanglement with a foreign country would deprive the United States of the power to determine its own course at the moment of implementation of a treaty and, therefore, it would impair the sovereignty of our country. Every treaty, every alliance requires a surrender of rights since mutual aid and strictly nonsovereign interest are the purpose of the alliances.
President J. Reuben Clark warned us about the danger of entangling alliances when we became a member of the United Nations. He predicted that a portion of our sovereignty would be lost. He correctly forecast that the United States would lose the right to unilaterally make treaties with other nations that are out of harmony with the United Nations charter, that we would have no right to adjust our own international difficulties without being in disagreement with the U.N. charter. He told me personally that we would rue the day we became a member of the U.N. I have lived to see his prediction fulfilled.
Summit conferences, not authorized by our Constitution, are a recent 20th Century innovation of treaty-making by the President. Our President has recently signed the SALT II pact with the Soviet Union. It is both unwise and immoral to sign a treaty with a country that has no respect for treaties and is dedicated to our destruction. We must not be in a position of military inferiority to a nation determined to enslave the world. Recall that Washington said, “to be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving the peace.” The Prophet Joseph Smith said that those words of Washington were good advice. (HC 6:199)
Now the Soviet Ambassador held an unprecedented news conference and declared that if we changed a sentence or paragraph in that treaty, the whole process of “detente” would fall apart. What an affront to our democratic process!
On more than one occasion I have said that detente was a fraud. The philosophy behind detente is a relaxation of tension, hopefully a reduction of conflict in the world. Detente assumes good faith on the part of each nation, an assumption of trust so that mutual negotiation, trade, and diplomatic exchanges may occur between the two countries.
If the Soviet Union were sincerely interested in the freedom and the human rights of all nations, would we not see on their part a relaxing of tension worldwide, and the release of their captive nations? Would there not be less conflict as an indication of the success of detente? Does the mention of these countries inspire confidence in the word of the Soviets: Mozambique, Ethiopia, South Yemen, Rhodesia, Afghanistan, Cambodia ? Everyone of these countries is a symbol of Communist aggression and the contempt by the Soviet Union for the free world and the rights of men everywhere. No one with common sense and integrity can really say that the “detente” process has brought about a relaxation of tension, or has contributed toward the betterment of the world in general.
Now I sincerely believe that the United States has an interest in and an obligation to make friends of leaders of all nations. I do not believe, however, that we are obligated in the interest of peace to barter away our sovereignty, nor to export our technology to a nation that has as its declared purpose the subjugation of free men of all nations. It is a matter of record that the Soviet Union has violated almost every treaty that she has made with the United States. You recall the commitments of the Helsinki Conference in 1975 which pledged the signatory countries to uphold human rights and fundamental freedoms? What has happened to such commitments by the Soviet Union?
Further, our own government officials have acknowledged serious violations on the part of the Soviet Union to the SALT I pact. Is it not time for Americans to ask, “Is it really in our national self-interest to place confidence in the word of a nation determined to destroy us?” So I conclude, detente is a fraud! It is simply not in the interest of the sovereignty of this nation.
But there are two sides to mutual trust. The record of the United States has not been good. There have been moments, I must confess, when I have been ashamed of the actions of the leaders in this nation. If the United States makes treaties, they must honor their word. I tell you that our record in recent years has been one of betrayal to our friends and allies. It’s a shame what we have done to Taiwan and Rhodesia, South Korea, and South Africa. Our so-called “human rights” policy is folly because of its discrimination. Under this policy we come down hard on our friends, but remain conspicuously silent on the ruthless mass-murders that have occurred under Communist regimes. We grant to the latter “most favored nation” trade agreements. We honor them as guests of State, while former friends are ignored. Now that kind of foreign policy doesn’t make sense. I want to tell you, from my visits with heads of State in other countries, it doesn’t inspire confidence toward the United States.
How much can the word of the United States really be counted on? Do you think other nations have taken notice of the way we have treated Taiwan and conveniently scrapped the Mutual Defense Treaty? There is a lesson to be learned from this – a reminder that a nation’s character is summed up by the old fashioned word called “honor.” When nations dishonor their commitments, obligations, and treaties to their friends, incalculable consequences occur.
Winston Churchill has reminded us of what too often is forgotten today:
“The Sermon on the Mount is the last word in Christian ethics… there is… one helpful guide (for future action), namely, for a nation to keep its word and act in accordance with its treaty obligation to allies. This guide is called ‘honor.’” (Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm, pp. 320-21)
Yes, we have made concession after concession to the Soviet Union. One of their own people, an exile from the Soviet Union, the Nobel Prize Winner, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, confirms how the Soviet Union has gained a stranglehold on one-third of the world’s population. He said, “It was because of a process on the part of Americans which has been in progress for more than 30 years of short-sighted concessions, a process of giving up and giving up, in hope that at some point the wolf will have eaten enough.” His appeal to American leaders and politicians is to “stop the senseless process of endless concessions to aggressors, these clever legal arguments for why we should make one concession after another, give up more and more and more.” (U. S. News and World Report, July 14, 1975)
Then in one of the most humiliating requests ever made to American leaders Solzhenitsyn plead: “When they bury us… please do not send them the shovels… or the latest earthmoving equipment.” (Warning to the West, p. 84)
How many warnings do we need to have? How much more humiliation must we suffer?
Let’s return to our domestic situation. In his Farewell Address, President George Washington said: “The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus create whatever the form of government, a real despotism.”
An inherent principle to constitutional government, the American tradition, is that governments are to derive their “just powers from the consent of the governed.” Checks and balances were wisely devised to make it difficult for the majority of people to control government. The purpose was, as Adams expressed, “To create, develop, and multiply diversities of interest, by which the tendency on a sudden to violate them may be counteracted.”
In the past 40 years, we, the people, have permitted the principle of separation of powers to become almost negligible. We have permitted Congress to fund numbers of federal agencies under the executive branch. An issue in the last federal election campaign was over “big government.” We became more aware that a giant, invisible bureaucracy had arisen with broad discretionary powers. Since that time, we’ve added one more department and two Cabinet positions to the federal government.
Many citizens do not realize that many, if not most, of the federal agencies are unconstitutional. Why? Because they concentrate the functions of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches under one head. These agencies have power to make rulings, enforce rulings, and adjudicate penalties when rulings are violated. They are unconstitutional because they violate the doctrine of the separation of power. They are unconstitutional because the people have no power to recall administrative personnel by their vote. And we, the people, have permitted it.
Commenting on this usurpation of power by the administrative agencies, President J. Reuben Clark once said:
“We the people have accepted all this. The courts have not condemned it. As to matters affected, we are now a despotism. If it is established and extended in one field, it is easily extended over others. It is only a matter of time and our complacency. It is not possible to condemn too strongly this growing perversion of our constitutional principles.”
President Clark said that in 1952. What would he say today? I think he would echo James Madison’s words:
“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands… may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
It is past time we recognize that we now have government by regulation rather than by representation!
Originally, the Constitution permitted few powers to the federal government, these chiefly being the powers concerning “war, peace negotiation and foreign commerce.” All other powers were “reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”
In other words, the Founders further provided for the limitation of power by decentralizing government to the state and local levels. This principle of decentralization constitutes one of the fundamental principles of our system of government. The intent of the framers was to preserve maximum “home rule.”
One of the more ominous efforts toward further concentration of power in Washington Is the new Department of Education. Twenty-three thousand employees and approximately an $18 billion dollar budget! The control of education at a national level was abhorrent to the founders. Hear one warning by James Madison:
“If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, they may take the care of religion in their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every state, county and parish, and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the union; they may assume the provision of the poor … Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of limited Government established by the people of America.”
I believe that statement has proved prophetic.
I firmly believe that giving Cabinet and department status to education will further endanger the freedom of our Republic. Is there any doubt that within a few years, we will have more federal control over education – that the curriculum would be controlled to propagandize students ever more toward humanistic viewpoints? We must preserve control of education at the local board level.
For forty years now, we have transferred responsibilities which constitutionally belong to the individual, local and state governments to federal agencies. If this trend continues, the states will become hollow shells, operating primarily as field districts of impersonal government departments, and individuals will have lost their right to self-government. When that happens, freedom is gone.
This process of federal government intervention into local concerns can, of course, be reversed. How? When state and local governments say “no” to federal grants and insist on their right to manage their own affairs. To the extent we permit the government to finance our affairs and municipalities, to that extent we permit government to control our lives.
States and local governments not only have recognized constitutional rights, they have responsibility to assert these rights. This is not a matter of protecting one government entity from another; it is a matter of protecting the individual rights of the people – your rights! If we lose sight of this, we may as well scrap the Constitution.
If we could retain one lesson from history, a most profitable one would be: When local self-government exists, there is liberty; when local self-government vanishes, liberty goes with it.
Thomas Jefferson warned of this danger in these words:
“The way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to everyone exactly the functions he is competent to … What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body.”
Again, a warning that must be heeded today!
These usurpations of power represent only a few of many examples, but they represent trends which are taking this nation down the path toward tyranny and soul-destroying socialism, philosophies alien to our Founding Fathers. We stand as witnesses to this decline.
If you have any question about the trend of our government today, I would urge you to compare the policies and actions of our present government to the philosophy of our founding fathers. Then compare them to the objectives of the American Socialist Party. Then you determine which direction our government is heading. I have done so and have reached my own conclusions.
So, what can we do?
Frequently I am asked, “What can I do? I recognize the trend, but what can I do as an individual?” May I urge the following steps:
- Pray for the blessings of God on our nation and its leaders. Pray that God will guide them to make wise decisions. Pray that His influence will be on our nation’s leaders to preserve the Constitution of the United States. Pray that legislation will be enacted in the tradition of the Founding Fathers. Pray that God will hedge up the way of the adversary that he may have no power to destroy our God-given freedom. These should be the prayers in every Latter-day Saint home and in the home of every citizen of this nation.
- Study the Founding Fathers. Study the principles of the Constitution. Be conversant with those principles so you may recognize whether legislation is in harmony with them. Urge your Congressmen to stop giving others what they have not earned. Urge your Senator to reject any treaty which would impair our sovereignty or weaken us militarily.
- Remind your legislators that they took an oath of office to uphold the Constitution. They did not take that oath with you and me. They took an oath before God. And they will stand liable before Him for transgressions in office.
I fully believe that we can turn things around in this country if we have the determination, the morality, the patriotism, and the spirituality to do so.
I love this nation. To me, it is not just another nation. It is a great and glorious society with a divine mission to perform for liberty-loving people everywhere.
My single-minded concern today is for the freedom and welfare of my countrymen and my posterity, the freedom of all men. God has granted us a great heritage of freedom brought about by sacrifice and blood of our forefathers.
Here in this privileged land we hold in our hands the best hope of mankind; and it will be to our shame and disgrace before God and man if we allow that hope to wither and die.
I testify to you that God’s hand has been in our destiny. He expects us as members of the Church to do all we can to preserve our liberty. I pray His blessings on us toward that end. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.