The Creators Corner

Some thoughts from "The Master-Key To Riches"

2008-07-19T08:40:00.000-07:00

There are some things that I learn and I wonder, "how I've gone for 26 years without knowing this?" I feel this way each time I pick up The Master-Key to Riches by Napoleon Hill. Sometimes I have to take breaks from the book to just let things sink in for a minute. He says at the beginning of the book to read every line and read the book twice. I'm sure he does this because the information is so powerful and you really have to focus on it in order for it to change your life.

Yesterday I was reading a really neat part of the book and thought it would be interesting to you. Hill says, "Men consist of two forces, one tangible, in the form of his physical body, with its myriad individual cells numbering billions, each of which is endowed with intelligence and energy; and the other intangible, in the form of an ego -- the organized dictator of the body which may control man's thoughts and deeds.
Science teaches us the tangible portion of a man weighing 160 lbs. is composed of about 17 chemical elements, all of which are known. They are:
95 lbs. of oxygen
38 lbs. of carbon
15 lbs. of hydrogen
4 lbs. of nitrogen
4.5 pounds of calcium
6 oz. of chlorine
4 oz. of sulphur
3.5 oz. of potassium
3 oz. of sodium
.25 oz. of iron
2.5 oz. of fluorine
2 oz. of magnesium
1.5 oz. of silicon
and small traces of arsenic, iodine and aluminum
"these tangible parts of man are worth only a few cents commercially and may be purchased in any modern chemical plant."

Isn't this amazing... that our bodies alone are only worth a few cents? How much is our mind worth? If our mind is the most valuable thing, are we constantly nourishing it with valuable information? I don't want to take credit away from our Father in Heaven who made us by a combination of these simple chemical elements. Our bodies are amazing and I'm thankful for my body. I'm also thankful for my mind and spirit which really holds all the value!

Jill

Primer

2008-06-17T15:41:00.000-07:00

Get it here.

http://primer.freecapitalist.com/

Sunday School Answers

2008-06-13T06:36:00.000-07:00

Typically when we ask the question, why did we come to earth, we receive the same 1 or 2 answers, to gain a body and to prove ourselves worthy. Both are accurate, but what if this was taught consistently in our homes. And how would we approach that question differently as we teach it?

It is one of Satan's foremost ambitions to get us to waste the days of our probation here on earth. He is using the same tactics of diversion and confusion to get people to waste their lives today as those which he used so successfully in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah. One "wastes" his probation the moment he becomes pre-occupied with things other than what we were placed in the second estate to obtain. We came to this life to do a number of things. Here are some of them:

1. To get a mortal body and make it subject to our intelligence, mind or spirit.

2. To get an eternal companion.

3. To produce a large posterity in whom we might have joy.

4. To learn as much as possible about temporal laws.

5. To learn how to become economically self-sufficient.

6. To learn how to live and serve one another as a family of our Heavenly Father.

7. To comply with all the ordinances and formalities related to the orderly kingdom of God.

8. To fulfill all the covenants made in connection with those ordinances.

9. To learn how to give enthusiastic obedience to the eternal principles of progress laid down by our Heavenly Father.

10. To bring our lives under the cleansing power of the atonement of Jesus Christ by repenting of our sins and having them forever blotted out.

11. To learn why God's pattern of attaining the "fulness of joy" is the ultimate and only perfect way to achieve complete self-realization.

If anyone would like the source for this info, it is Treasures from the Book of Mormon by W. Cleon Skousen.

Ayn Rand

2008-06-09T19:28:00.001-07:00

I think I figured out where Ayn Rand had it wrong. You cannot be saved on Principle alone. That is why the Gospel is so great! After listening to conference talks with a new "abundant" ear, I can hear the principles taught over and over. The Church is not just a club, it is the true principles with the saving ordinances which help us become who we were meant to become!

At some point, principled people will realize that they do not have what it takes alone to return to the God who created them and who is the Author of their Prosperity. This, to me, seems like a logical reason for why Ayn Rand was agnostic. If she admitted that saving ordinances existed, then she would know that she didn't have them and she would thus live an unfulfilled life. Because she tried to remove principle 1, she deceived herself into thinking she had reached true happiness. Although I believe that she did receive a huge amount of happiness maybe even more happiness than many members of the True Church. If this is the case, which I believe it is, it proves that the Saving ordinances without the principles are not enough either. You must follow both to receive the full measure of happiness.

Giving

2008-06-04T11:11:00.000-07:00

I really liked this quote by Rick Koerber about giving in a lecture he gave:

"The best way to help the poor and needy is to begin by giving of your substance which is not that which rusts and moth corrupts, it’s something you take with you when you leave this earth. It’s something you’ve experienced and learned, it’s something that’s much harder to give than a twenty dollar bill. It’s time and talent, it’s knowledge and training. You will feed more hungry and clothe more naked by imparting what you really have than by trying to feel good giving something that’s probably not yours to begin with."

AR

Power of ONE

2008-06-03T15:01:00.000-07:00

Last night we had a great experience which showed me the power of ONE and followed the principle that people are assets as well as the principle that agency implies stewardship.

Some friends in the neighborhood invited us over to their house for family night and my wife Michelle (being the good steward that she is) mentioned that we should take out the weeds in a common area that is owned by the Home Owner's Association. We talked to our friends who had invited us if they would like to help and within about 20 minutes both of our families were making good progress. Another family in the neighborhood was out for a walk and saw us and they asked if they could join in. Within 30 minutes of beginning a task (that would have taken Michelle and I about 4 hours to complete) we had 10 people working together for a definite purpose and we accomplished our task in a little over an hour and had great conversation while doing so. Michelle proved that ideas have consequences and that great ideas when put into action have the ability to inspire others along the way.

Think of something right now that you are a steward over- What can you do right now to improve the situation? Go and do it and get one other person to help you!!!

Ideas have consequences, How are your ideas working for you?

2008-05-31T12:14:00.001-07:00

Knowing what you know right now....

Could you answer any of the following questions, knowing what you know right now?

1. According to the Lutz-Hyneman study approximately what percentage of the Founders' "great ideas" came from the Bible? In the days of the Founders what kind of organizations sponsored every major college and university in America? Was a study of the Bible required?

2. Which of the Founders became president of the American Bible Association? What book did he consider to be the most reliable world history? What prevented him from signing the Declaration of Independence?

3. Who was the Founder who described what a nation would be like if it adopted the Bible as its only law book? Why did he think the Founders were a body of divinely appointed political scientists for the modern age? Did he believe there was an ideal system of government based on the "divine science" of God's law?

4. Name three great European scholars of political science who believed that the most reliable text for the study of good government was the Bible.

5. In the Northwest Ordinance adopted in 1787 -- the same year the Constitution was written -- what were the three things the schools were to teach? What was the biggest problem connected with the first item? Can you identify the five basic beliefs on which all "sound religions" agree?

6. Who said these five basic beliefs that constitute the "religion of America" actually constitute the "religion of all mankind?" Do these basic beliefs fit all the major denominations and religions with which you are acquainted?

7. What did George Washington say were "indispensable supports" to "political prosperity"? What did Washington consider a person to be who would undermine these important elements in our society?

8. When Thomas Jefferson was asked to contribute money for a wider distribution of the Bible, why was he surprised? As he travelled around the country what had he observed? Did he contribute anyway?

9. Which of the Founders is best remembered for his campaign to insure freedom of religion in all of the states? Why is he called the "Father of the Constitution?"

10. Can you think of at least two advantages a Bible-reading Founding Father would have over the vast majority of the politicians in our own day?

If you would like to have the text to go along with these questions, just email me and I'll send it to you. Awesome info-

mwren@yesco.com

Principles as I see them

2008-05-30T09:49:00.000-07:00

I wanted to do a new post about all the principles that I see taught during my regular study. The first one that popped up in my reading was "Exchange Creates Wealth." I just had two good conversation where this principle was relevant. First, at a family reunion over the weekend, I spoke with a family member who had recently returned from Iraq. I asked him how things were going and he said, "If you want my honest opinion, not a whole lot is happening and it's pretty disappointing over there." As I asked him to clarify he said,"Five years ago when we entered the country, we started out handing out things to the people such as food, supplies, clothing etc. and nothing was asked for in return. Now after five years of these "feeding a man a fish" actions, the Iraqi people have become dependent on the "hand-outs" of the Americans rather than learning how to create value on their own. Fighting unprincipled behavior with more unprincipled behavior only compounds the problem.
Another conversation that I just had with a fellow employee also illustrated this point. She has a family member who has had health problems over the past few years and the family has kindly chipped in to help out. Her family member is now to the point that he can physically help himself, but because he is so dependent on family help, he is unwilling to help himself and is still looking for the "hand outs" that the family can offer.
In both cases, we see that the principle of Exchange Creates Wealth has been violated, in that one party was not gaining more than they were trading. Any time this happens on of the parties comes into bondage to the other and this is where tyranny and oppression occur.
I saw this quote about Joseph Smith that seems to fit in perfectly. It comes from a trial where Martin Harris was testifying in the behalf of Joseph Smith who had been accused of swindling money from his followers.

"I can swear that Joseph Smith never got one dollar from me by persuasion, since God made me. I did once, of my own free will and accord, put fifty dollars into his hands in the presence of many witnesses, for the purpose of doing the work of the Lord. This I can pointedly prove; and I can tell you, furthermore, that I have never seen in Joseph Smith a disposition to take any man's money without giving him a reasonable compensation for the same in return. And as to the plates that he professes to have, gentlemen, if you do not believe it, but continue to resist the truth, it will one day be the means of damning your souls."

MW

Robert Kiyosaki 2008 Predictions

2008-05-28T08:48:00.000-07:00

Awake and Arise.org

2008-05-28T08:37:00.000-07:00

Here is a great collection of great speeches from great men.

http://www.awakeandarise.org/Benson.htm

AR

The Constitution - A Heavenly Banner - Ezra Taft Benson

2008-05-28T08:30:00.000-07:00

The Constitution--A Heavenly Banner
EZRA TAFT BENSON

On the seventeenth day of September 1987, we commemorate the two-hundredth birthday of the Constitutional Convention, which gave birth to the document that Gladstone said is "the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man" (William Ewart Gladstone: Life and Public Services, ed. Thomas W. Handford [Chicago: The Dominion Co., 1899], p. 323).

I heartily endorse this assessment, and today I would like to pay honor--honor to the document itself, honor to the men who framed it, and honor to the God who inspired it and made possible its coming forth.

Some Basic Principles

To understand the significance of the Constitution, we must first understand some basic, eternal principles. These principles have their beginning in the premortal councils of heaven.

The Principle of Agency

The first basic principle is agency. The central issue in the premortal council was: Shall the children of God have untrammeled agency to choose the course they should follow, whether good or evil, or shall they be coerced and forced to be obedient? Christ and all who followed him stood for the former proposition--freedom of choice; Satan stood for the latter--coercion and force. The war that began in heaven over this issue is not yet over. The conflict continues on the battlefield of mortality. And one of Lucifer's primary strategies has been to restrict our agency through the power of earthly governments.

Look back in retrospect on almost six thousand years of human history! Freedom's moments have been infrequent and exceptional. We must appreciate that we live in one of history's most exceptional moments--in a nation and a time of unprecedented freedom. Freedom as we know it has been experienced by perhaps less than one percent of the human family.

The Proper Role of Government

The second basic principle concerns the function and proper role of government. These are the principles that, in my opinion, proclaim the proper role of government in the domestic affairs of the nation.

[I] believe that governments were instituted of God for the benefit of man; and that he holds men accountable for their acts in relation to them. . . .

[I] believe that no government can exist in peace, except such laws are framed and held inviolate as will secure to each individual the free exercise of conscience, the right and control of property, and the protection of life. . . .

[I] believe that all men are bound to sustain and uphold the respective governments in which they reside, while protected in their inherent and inalienable rights by the laws of such governments. [D&C 134:12, 5]

In other words, the most important single function of government is to secure the rights and freedoms of individual citizens.

The Source of Human Rights

The third important principle pertains to the source of basic human rights. Rights are either God-given as part of the divine plan, or they are granted by government as part of the political plan. If we accept the premise that human rights are granted by government, then we must be willing to accept the corollary that they can be denied by government. I, for one, shall never accept that premise. We must ever keep in mind the inspired words of Thomas Jefferson, as found in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

People Are Superior to Governments

The fourth basic principle we must understand is that people are superior to the governments they form. Since God created people with certain inalienable rights, and they, in turn, created government to help secure and safeguard those rights, it follows that the people are superior to the creature they created.

Governments Should Have Limited Powers

The fifth and final principle that is basic to our understanding of the Constitution is that governments should have only limited powers. The important thing to keep in mind is that the people who have created their government can give to that government only such powers as they, themselves, have in the first place. Obviously, they cannot give that which they do not possess.

By deriving its just powers from the governed, government becomes primarily a mechanism for defense against bodily harm, theft, and involuntary servitude. It cannot claim the power to redistribute money or property nor to force reluctant citizens to perform acts of charity against their will. Government is created by the people. No individual possesses the power to take another's wealth or to force others to do good, so no government has the right to do such things either. The creature cannot exceed the creator.

The Constitution and its Coming Forth

With these basic principles firmly in mind, let us now turn to a discussion of the inspired document we call the Constitution. My purpose is not to recite the events that led to the American Revolution--we are all familiar with these. But I would say this: History is not an accident. Events are foreknown to God. His superintending influence is behind the actions of his righteous children. Long before America was even discovered, the Lord was moving and shaping events that would lead to the coming forth of the remarkable form of government established by the Constitution. America had to be free and independent to fulfill this destiny. I commend to you as excellent reading on this subject Elder Mark E. Petersen's book The Great Prologue (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1975). As expressed so eloquently by John Adams before the signing of the Declaration, "There's a Divinity which shapes our ends" (quoted in The Works of Daniel Webster, vol. 1 (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851), p. 133). Though mortal eyes and minds cannot fathom the end from the beginning, God does.

God Raised Up Wise Men to Create the Constitution

In a revelation to the Prophet Joseph Smith, the Savior declared, "I established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose" (D&C 101:80). These were not ordinary men, but men chosen and held in reserve by the Lord for this very purpose.

Shortly after President Kimball became President of the Church, he assigned me to go into the vault of the St. George Temple and check the early records. As I did so, I realized the fulfillment of a dream I had had ever since learning of the visit of the Founding Fathers to the St. George Temple. I saw with my own eyes the records of the work that was done for the Founding Fathers of this great nation, beginning with George Washington. Think of it, the Founding Fathers of this nation, those great men, appeared within those sacred walls and had their vicarious work done for them. President Wilford Woodruff spoke of it in these words:

Before I left St. George, the spirits of the dead gathered around me, wanting to know why we did not redeem them. Said they, "You have had the use of the Endowment House for a number of years, and yet nothing has ever been done for us. We laid the foundation of the government you now enjoy, and we never apostatized from it, but we remained true to it and were faithful to God."

These were the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and they waited on me for two days and two nights. . . .

I straightway went into the baptismal font and called upon Brother McCallister to baptize me for the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and fifty other eminent men. [Discourses of Wilford Woodruff, sel. G. Homer Durham (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1946), pp. 16061]

These noble spirits came there with divine permission--evidence that this work of salvation goes forward on both sides of the veil.

At a later conference, in April 1898, after he became President of the Church, President Woodruff declared that "those men who laid the foundation of this American government and signed the Declaration of Independence were the best spirits the God of heaven could find on the face of the earth. They were choice spirits . . . [and] were inspired of the Lord" (CR, April 1898, p. 89). We honor those men today. We are the grateful beneficiaries of their noble work.

The Lord Approved the Constitution

But we honor more than those who brought forth the Constitution. We honor the Lord who revealed it. God himself has borne witness to the fact that he is pleased with the final product of the work of these great patriots.

In a revelation to the Prophet Joseph Smith on August 6, 1833, the Savior admonished: "I, the Lord, justify you, and your brethren of my church, in befriending that law which is the constitutional law of the land" (D&C 98:6).

In the Kirtland Temple dedicatory prayer, given on March 27, 1836, the Lord directed the Prophet Joseph to say: "May those principles, which were so honorably and nobly defended, namely, the Constitution of our land, by our fathers, be established forever" (D&C 109:54).

A few years later, Joseph Smith, while unjustly incarcerated in a cold and depressing cell of Liberty Jail at Clay County, Missouri, frequently bore his testimony of the document's divinity: "The Constitution of the United States is a glorious standard; it is founded in the wisdom of God. It is a heavenly banner" (HC 3:304).

How this document accomplished all of this merits our further consideration.

The Document Itself

The Constitution consists of seven separate articles. The first three establish the three branches of our government--the legislative, the executive, and the judicial. The fourth article describes matters pertaining to states, most significantly the guarantee of a republican form of government to every state of the Union. Article 5 defines the amendment procedure of the document, a deliberately difficult process that should be clearly understood by every citizen. Article 6 covers several miscellaneous items, including a definition of the supreme law of the land, namely, the Constitution itself. Article 7, the last, explains how the Constitution is to be ratified. After ratification of the document, ten amendments were added and designated as our Bill of Rights.

Now to look at some of the major provisions of the document itself. Many principles could be examined, but I mention five as being crucial to the preservation of our freedom. If we understand the workability of these, we have taken the first step in defending our freedoms.

Major Provisions of the Document

The major provisions of the Constitution are as follows.

Sovereignty of the People

First: Sovereignty lies in the people themselves. Every governmental system has a sovereign, one or several who possess all the executive, legislative, and judicial powers. That sovereign may be an individual, a group, or the people themselves. The Founding Fathers believed in common law, which holds that true sovereignty rests with the people. Believing this to be in accord with truth, they inserted this imperative in the Declaration of Independence: "To secure these rights [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness], Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Separation of Powers

Second: To safeguard these rights, the Founding Fathers provided for the separation of powers among the three branches of government--the legislative, the executive, and the judicial. Each was to be independent of the other, yet each was to work in a unified relationship. As the great constitutionalist President J. Reuben Clark noted:

It is [the] union of independence and dependence of these branches--legislative, executive and judicial--and of the governmental functions possessed by each of them, that constitutes the marvelous genius of this unrivalled document. . . . It was here that the divine inspiration came. It was truly a miracle. [Church News, November 29, 1952, p. 12]

The use of checks and balances was deliberately designed, first, to make it difficult for a minority of the people to control the government, and, second, to place restraint on the government itself.

Limited Powers of Government

Third: The powers the people granted to the three branches of government were specifically limited. The Founding Fathers well understood human nature and its tendency to exercise unrighteous dominion when given authority. A constitution was therefore designed to limit government to certain enumerated functions, beyond which was tyranny.

The Principle of Representation

Fourth: Our constitutional government is based on the principle of representation. The principle of representation means that we have delegated to an elected official the power to represent us. The Constitution provides for both direct representation and indirect representation. Both forms of representation provide a tempering influence on pure democracy. The intent was to protect the individual's and the minority's rights to life, liberty, and the fruits of their labors--property. These rights were not to be subject to majority vote.

A Moral and Righteous People
Fifth: The Constitution was designed to work with only a moral and righteous people. "Our constitution," said John Adams (first vice-president and second president of the United States), "was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other" (John R. Howe, Jr., The Changing Political Thought of John Adams, Princeton University Press, 1966, p. 185).

The Crisis of our Constitution

This, then, is the ingenious and inspired document created by these good and wise men for the benefit and blessing of future generations. It is now two hundred years since the Constitution was written. Have we been wise beneficiaries of the gift entrusted to us? Have we valued and protected the principles laid down by this great document?

At this bicentennial celebration we must, with sadness, say that we have not been wise in keeping the trust of our Founding Fathers. For the past two centuries, those who do not prize freedom have chipped away at every major clause of our Constitution until today we face a crisis of great dimensions.

The Prophecy of Joseph Smith

We are fast approaching that moment prophesied by Joseph Smith when he said:

Even this Nation will be on the very verge of crumbling to pieces and tumbling to the ground and when the constitution is upon the brink of ruin this people will be the Staff up[on] which the Nation shall lean and they shall bear the constitution away from the very verge of destruction. [In Howard and Martha Coray Notebook, July 19, 1840, quoted by Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, comps. and eds., The Words of Joseph Smith (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1980), p. 416]

The Need to Prepare

Will we be prepared? Will we be among those who will "bear the Constitution away from the very verge of destruction"? If we desire to be numbered among those who will, here are some things we must do:

1. We must be righteous and moral. We must live the gospel principles--all of them. We have no right to expect a higher degree of morality from those who represent us than what we ourselves are. To live a higher law means we will not seek to receive what we have not earned by our own labor. It means we will remember that government owes us nothing. It means we will keep the laws of the land. It means we will look to God as our Lawgiver and the source of our liberty.

2. We must learn the principles of the

Constitution and then abide by its precepts. Have we read the Constitution and pondered it? Are we aware of its principles? Could we defend it? Can we recognize when a law is constitutionally unsound? The Church will not tell us how to do this, but we are admonished to do it. I quote Abraham Lincoln:

Let [the Constitution] be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in primers, spelling-books, and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation. [Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. John G. Nicolay and John Hay, vol. 1 (New York: Francis D. Tandy Co., 1905), p.43]

3. We must become involved in civic affairs. As citizens of this republic, we cannot do our duty and be idle spectators. It is vital that we follow this counsel from the Lord: "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). Note the qualities that the Lord demands in those who are to represent us. They must be good, wise, and honest. We must be concerted in our desires and efforts to see men and women represent us who possess all three of these qualities.

4. We must make our influence felt by our vote, our letters, and our advice. We must be wisely informed and let others know how we feel. We must take part in local precinct meetings and select delegates who will truly represent our feelings.

I have faith that the Constitution will be saved as prophesied by Joseph Smith. But it will not be saved in Washington. It will be saved by the citizens of this nation who love and cherish freedom. It will be saved by enlightened members of this Church--men and women who will subscribe to and abide by the principles of the Constitution.

The Constitution Requires our Loyalty and Support

I reverence the Constitution of the United States as a sacred document. To me its words are akin to the revelations of God, for God has placed his stamp of approval on the Constitution of this land. I testify that the God of heaven sent some of his choicest spirits to lay the foundation of this government, and he has sent other choice spirits--even you who hear my words this day--to preserve it.

We, the blessed beneficiaries, face difficult days in this beloved land, "a land which is choice above all other lands" (Ether 2:10). It may also cost us blood before we are through. It is my conviction, however, that when the Lord comes, the Stars and Stripes will be floating on the breeze over this people. May it be so, and may God give us the faith and the courage exhibited by those patriots who pledged their lives and fortunes that we might be free, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

AR

Ezra Taft Benson - The Proper Role Of Government Video

2008-05-28T08:22:00.001-07:00

Walter Williams

2008-05-27T10:11:00.000-07:00

Just found these awsome articles by the great Walter Williams, here's a few that stood out:

Caring vs Uncaring : Selflessness vs Selfishness

Click it or Ticket : My life, my choice and the proper role of government.

In Government We Trust : The Power of the private enterprise.

There are tons more to read on http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/williams1.asp

Enjoy.

AR

Freedom Channel

2008-05-05T16:09:00.000-07:00

I found this blog full of good vids about freedom and all that jazz....check it out.

http://freedomchannel.blogspot.com/

Milton Friedman Interview

2008-05-02T09:05:00.001-07:00

The Meaning of Prosperity

2008-04-07T20:26:00.000-07:00

The scriptures teach that if we keep the commandments we will prosper. Yet many faithful members of the Church face hardships. Why aren’t we always blessed with prosperity when we are living worthily?

Alan Webster, “I Have a Question,” Ensign, Apr. 1990, 52–53

Alan Webster, an institute instructor and teacher for the Temple Preparation Seminar in the Reading England Stake. Perhaps the problem lies in our tendency to think of prosperity only as it is represented by material wealth or lack of serious problems. The word prosperity itself comes from the Latin pro + spes, which means “hope.” Though the word soon came to mean “succeed” and is often used in the sense of material success, it does not necessarily mean an abundance of temporal possessions—or even a relatively comfortable, problem-free life.

If we remember the scriptures’ admonition that “men are, that they might have joy” (2 Ne. 2:25), we can see that, for those who live the gospel, prosperity can mean joy, peace, harmony, unity, love, and sufficient faith and means to meet our needs without fear. Such prosperity comes because one possesses faith and peace of mind.

The scriptures record many promises of prosperity to those who are faithful to the Lord. For example, in 1 Nephi 2:20, [1 Ne. 2:20] we read the Lord’s promise to Nephi, “Inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall prosper, and shall be led to … a land which is choice above all other lands.” In 2 Nephi 1:9, we read a similar promise to “those whom the Lord God shall bring out of the land of Jerusalem”—Lehi and his family. [2 Ne. 1:9]

Note, however, that these verses do not promise prosperity unconditionally to everyone. Indeed, not even all the members of Lehi’s group prospered. Among the group were Laman and Lemuel, both of whom murmured against the Lord, their father, and their brother Nephi. Laman and Lemuel eventually separated from Nephi, and those who followed them eventually became wicked and anything but prosperous.

The Nephites, on the other hand, did prosper in the land to which the Lord had led them when they kept the commandments. As a group, they were close to the Lord, and the Lord blessed them in their “land of promise.” This does not necessarily mean, however, that others who are righteous will always receive similar rewards.

Righteousness involves a cleansing of the spirit—a putting aside of worldly attitudes and values and a dedicating of one’s self to furthering the Lord’s work. If we are righteous, we will be able to put the world’s values and attitudes in proper context and follow the Spirit’s promptings in our everyday lives and endeavors.

Consequently, if our desires are righteous, our decisions will lead to success—though not necessarily in terms of worldly wealth or absence of problems. The Lord promises, “Pray always, and I will pour out my Spirit upon you, and great shall be your blessing—yea, even more than if you should obtain treasures of earth and corruptibleness to the extent thereof.” (D&C 19:38.)

To the Saints of this dispensation, he promised, “If ye seek the riches which it is the will of the Father to give unto you, ye shall be the richest of all people, for ye shall have the riches of eternity; and it must needs be that the riches of the earth are mine to give.” (D&C 38:39.)

Let us note that, although the Lord can bestow on us “the riches of the earth,” the riches he most wants to bless us with are “the riches of eternity.” As he counsels elsewhere, “Seek not for riches, but for wisdom, and behold, the mysteries of God shall be unfolded unto you, and then shall you be made rich. Behold, he that hath eternal life is rich.” (D&C 6:7.)

One of the problems with material wealth is that it sometimes corrupts those who have it. It is for this reason that the Lord’s promise of riches in section 38 cited above ends with the warning: “But beware of pride, lest ye become as the Nephites of old.” (D&C 6:39.)

If we set our minds on the “treasures of earth” rather than on the things of eternity, we will lose our spirituality and begin to rely on our own wisdom. Indeed, it was the Nephites’ pride and lust for riches and their failure to dedicate their blessings to the Lord’s work that stirred Jacob to condemn them for failing to “think of [their] brethren like unto [them]selves” and for not being “familiar with all and free with [their] substance.” (Jacob 2:17.)

In saying that prosperity can be gauged in other than material ways, I do not imply that we must simply accept our circumstances in life as God-given and do nothing to change them. We should develop our talents and abilities and make the most of our situations. But we must not ascribe worldly success to righteousness, or lack of success to a lack of righteousness. It is true that the Lord does sometimes directly bless someone materially, but more often he expects us to learn particular principles—both temporal and spiritual—and apply them to our lives. In this way, we learn to handle difficulties and problems and to advance in knowledge and understanding.

The truly righteous are prosperous, in the sense that they have confidence, which triggers faith into activity and creates beneficial circumstances from less-favorable ones. They do not wait for the Lord to give or withhold rewards, but instead call on him for guidance about what will be most beneficial for them, both temporally and spiritually. Such guidance may lead to changing occupations, moving to another district, acquiring training or new skills, or accepting things as they are but working within one’s own limitations and following the Spirit’s direction in other ways.

Some problems may appear to be beyond our control, and our faith may be put to the test, but we need not find any situation hopeless. As the Lord tells us in Moroni 7:33, with faith and hope we can “have power to do whatsoever thing is expedient.” [Moro. 7:33] Just as the early Saints crossed the plains with little more than a driving faith that all would be well, we, too, need to forge ahead with faith. In doing so, we can support each other and learn to find joy, not in material possessions or comfortable situations, but in our relationship with the Lord, in service to others, and in developing our capacity to overcome obstacles with God’s help.

reference sited above

Creators Corner YouTube Channel

2008-04-02T10:20:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone, I just created a YouTube channel for Creators Corner. I have saved a bunch of my favorite videos and want to see how much we can grow this list and create a strong database of "brain on" videos.
http://www.youtube.com/CreatorsCorner

Your Child Is Not State Property By Thomas A. Bowden

2008-04-02T07:38:00.000-07:00

Your Child Is Not State Property

By Thomas A. Bowden

Rocked by a nationwide storm of criticism, the Los Angeles County court that declared homeschooling illegal in California has agreed to rehear the case in June. At issue is Justice H. Walter Croskey's Feb. 28 decree, which ordered the parents of "Rachel L." to send her away to a public or private school, where she can get a "legal education."

Justice Croskey's edict interpreted state education laws that govern all children, whatever their home situation and "whatever the quality" of their home education. Except for the rare case when parents already hold state teaching credentials, parents who find public schools intolerable and cannot locate or afford a suitable private school were branded by the decree as outlaws if they choose to instruct their child at home.

California legislators were entitled to enact this blanket prohibition, according to the judge, because they feared the supposed social disorder that would result from "allowing every person to make his own standards on matters of conduct in which society as a whole has important interests."

"Allowing"? By what right does government presume to "allow" (or, in this case, forbid) you to make your own standards concerning your child's education?

Government has no such right. Neither the state nor "society as a whole" has any interests of its own in your child's education. A society is only a group of individuals, and the government's only legitimate function is to protect the individual rights of its citizens, including yours and your children's, against physical force and fraud. The state is your agent, not a separate entity with interests that can override your rights.

If Justice Croskey's description of California law is correct, then the state's educational policy is at odds with America's founding principles. Parents are sovereign individuals whose right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness includes the right to control their child's upbringing. Other citizens, however numerous or politically powerful, have no moral right to substitute their views on child-raising for those of the father and mother who created that child.

Instead, a proper legal system recognizes and protects parents' moral right to pursue the personal rewards and joys of child-raising. At every stage, you have a right to set your own standards and act on them without government permission. This parental right to control your child's upbringing includes the right to manage his education, by choosing an appropriate school or personally educating him at home.

Of course, there are certain situations in which government must step in to protect the rights of a child, as in cases of physical abuse or neglect. But no such concern for individual rights can account for California's arrogant assertion of state control over the minds of all school-age children residing within its borders.

Education, like nutrition, should be recognized as the exclusive domain of a child's parents, within legal limits objectively defining child abuse and neglect. Parents who starve their children may properly be ordered to fulfill their parental obligations, on pain of losing legal custody. But the fact that some parents may serve better food than others does not permit government to seize control of nutrition, outlaw home-cooked meals, and order all children to report for daily force-feeding at government-licensed cafeterias.

The shockwaves from Justice Croskey's decision will likely impact not just homeschoolers but also the apologists for government education--teachers' unions, educational bureaucrats, and politicians. Their political and financial survival depends on a policy that treats children as, in effect, state property--but only rarely is the undiluted collectivism of that policy trumpeted so publicly.

What if, in the harsh glare of the "Rachel L." case, parents start asking whether the state has any right at all to be running schools and dictating educational standards for children, in order to advance society's "interests"? This calls into question the moral foundation of public education as such. In this light, one wonders if the court's decision to rehear the case could be a first step toward muting, and muddying, the controversy.

For their part, the defenders of public schooling can be expected to stay busy papering over their system's own failures--the very failures that helped fuel the homeschooling movement, by driving desperate parents to seek refuge at home from the irrationality, violence, and mediocrity that have come to characterize government education, in California and elsewhere.

For now, at least, the battle lines are clearly drawn. Are parents mere drudges whose social duty is to feed and house their spawn between mandatory indoctrination sessions at government-approved schools? Or are they sovereign individuals whose right to guide their children's development the state may not infringe?

The answer could determine not only the future of homeschooling but the future of education in America.

Thomas A. Bowden is an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute, focusing on legal issues. A former lawyer and law school instructor who practiced for twenty years in Baltimore, Maryland, his Op-Eds have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald, Los Angeles Daily News, and many other newspapers. Mr. Bowden has given dozens of radio interviews and has appeared on the Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes.

Parents Ordered: Vaccinate Kids or Go to Jail (A violation of principles)

2008-03-24T10:56:00.000-07:00

"It is becoming more and more common to see stories where parents are being attacked by government agencies for choosing not to vaccinate their children. Independent of the merits of their choice, contrary to the conversations that usually ensue when this subject is discussed, to the “Brain-On” Free Capitalist the real issue is the proper role of government and the use of force in civil society.This story is about parents in Belgium refusing the polio vaccine. On one side is the government and medical establishment, “The Belgians have a right to take some action against the parents, given the seriousness of polio, but the question is, is a prison sentence disproportionate?” The other side: the hard line ‘thought leaders’ arguing, “Nobody has the right to unfettered liberty, and people do not have a right to endanger their kids (FC Aside: unless you work for the government). What’s missing? The parents, any comments representing their choice, anyone being asked about the larger issues of health, parental choice, child welfare from a parent’s perspective, etc.

There are bigger issues at stake in this story, they too are omitted.

Key Points:

Only 1,000 cases of polio are reported world wide. (Source: CDC/WHO)

In Belgium, Dr. Victor Lusayu (head of Belgium’s international vaccine centre) claims that polio has been entirely eliminated from Europe. (Source: Cheng Article)

In the US, all cases of paralytic polio since 1979 have been caused by the oral polio vaccine. (Source: DHPE)

In the last 10 years, “vaccine caused” outbreaks have occurred in Nigeria, Dominican Reublic, Haiti, Phillippines, Madagascar, China and Indonesia. (Source: AP)

It appears that the only substantial cause of polio in the civilized world is now - the vaccination.

Dr. David Heymann, the World Health Organization’s top polio official admits, “It would be nice if we had a more stable oral polio vaccine, but that’s not the way it is today.

Despite the emotional content this issue is not about whether or not its a good idea to have children vaccinated. that is a separate discussion. The issue is whether or not the government ought to be authorized to use force to override a parents choice for their children.

Parents have self-interest in their children’s well being. Certainly no government bureaucracy is going to have more self-interest in children than parents. Government workers don’t get some magic new formula for wisdom and sound decision making just because they get a paycheck from the government.

The marketplace of ideas cannot be controlled by force. Freedom and liberty made it possible for the discovery, development and implementation of the vaccine 50 years ago - there was no “law” required.

Health professionals admit they “want” a better vaccine, but if you are in the business of producing the current vaccine, what is your motivation to innovate, take risks, etc., when its a criminal offense not to buy your product?

Commentary:

It may be a good idea or a bad idea to have your child vaccinated, but it is certainly an unprincipled and therefore bad idea to empower the government (any government) to use force to compel parents to inject a dangerous disease into the body of their child. The only defense of the ‘tribalist’ mentality (which always argues that individual choice is dangerous to the public - as if the public is something besides the aggregate of individuals) is that the government “knows better” how to care for children. While this may be the case in a few isolated circumstances, it is certainly not the case in general and the law does not and cannot exercise rational judgment - only people can, and the people most interested in the health and well-being of children are their parents.

Conclusion:

Should the government encourage awareness? Sure. Promote education, yes. Provide protection of individual civil rights? That is the less obvious implication of the issue - but the answer is obviously, “of course.” Oh, by the way, if you were in charge of selling the polio vaccine - do you think you could sell a lot or a little in the “free” market? It seems to me it would be like selling shoes, pencils, shirts, towels, hammers, nails, or even cell phones - not exactly a hard sell. To a well trained participant in the BOC - thoughts like these never come to mind. To the BOC, no law requiring vaccine’s means instant mass stupidity, rapid disease spread, and the abandonment of reason and self-interest.

The Point:

It’s not about polio. It’s not about vaccines. It’s not even about parental choice (though that’s close). This issue is about liberty and the proper role of government. Government is force, and force is only rightly used to protect rights, not to advance social change.

The tools of a Free Capitalist are persuasion, long suffering, ingenuity, innovation, vision and often patients. The socialists draw the gun, point it at your head and give ultimatums where their view is challenged. In which camp are you?

Action Steps:

Research the legal requirements for vaccinations in your community / state. Identify your options.

Identify individuals or groups in your community concerned about the issue. Learn their positions.

Discuss the issue with interested community members, your State Representative and/or State Senator.

Post your opinion online or write a letter to the editor of your statewide newspaper.

Discuss the issue and your legal options with your spouse and mature children. Decide in advance how you will respond if this becomes an issue that ever directly affects you and your family.

Suggest a Community Action Item to your local Free Capitalist Community Council.
If appropriate, suggest an amendment (in writing in detail) to the existing law to your state legislature.

Calendar a time to review / revisit the news on this issue in 90-days.

Keep your brain on, ideas flowing, and remain engaged in your community.

Email your friends and associates about your thoughts and planned action items."

Reference(s):

Date: Wed March 12, 2008
Source: Yahoo News - Parents may be jailed over vaccinations
Author: Maria Cheng, AP Medical Writer
MRFC Principles: (3, 4, 11, 12)

Direct Source: http://fcd.freecapitalist.com/?p=6

{On a personal note, here's an article I found interesting...http://www.ivu.org/congress/euro97/vegetarians.html}

AR

Ayn Rand Mike Wallace Interview

2008-03-24T10:27:00.001-07:00

2008-03-24T10:16:00.000-07:00

Ayn Rand Interview

2008-03-24T09:44:00.000-07:00

Milton Friedman

2008-03-24T08:49:00.000-07:00

Greed

Self-Interest and the Profit Motive 1 & 2

Definition of Capitalism

2008-03-21T21:29:00.000-07:00

The Definition of Capitalism

When people ask about the definition of capitalism, they are often looking for an answer that explains the "capitalist system." The definition they expect to receive is one which explains Adam Smith's "trickle down theory of economics" and promotes the "unequal distribution of wealth." These preconceptions represent some of the most common myths and misconceptions about capitalism which must first be dispelled before any definition of capitalism can be properly understood.

There is, for example, no such thing as the "capitalist system," in the sense that it is commonly referred to in the media. Interestingly, when capitalism is discussed, it is frequently discussed in the language of Marx. Thus, we hear much of systems, surpluses, distributions, means and modes of production, and all manner of precise, scientific-sounding classifications, but we hear precious little about what the definition of capitalism actually is. In fact, the term capitalism was never used by Adam Smith and its first recorded usage was not until 1854,¹ although Marx would frequently dance around the term in references to "capitalistic production" or the "capitalist system."² Smith, on the other hand, referred to what is now called capitalism as a "system of natural liberty."³

If we are to insist upon precision in our language of economy, as the social scientists no doubt do, we have to distinguish between systems that occur naturally and systems that are created by human beings. This distinction is not trivial, because those who refer to the "capitalist system" do so in order to portray the free market as little more than a man-made parasite, while elevating their own preposterous political projects to an equal level of economic science.

As with all systems, an economic system may be either natural or artificial, the former being defined by freedom and the latter defined by coercion. The natural system, capitalism, I will refer to as an informal system; the artificial systems, I will call formal systems.

Why is capitalism an informal system? A crucial part of the definition of capitalism is the idea of laissez-faire, a French term which roughly translates into "allow to do" or "leave alone." Capitalism is an informal system in the sense that it does not seek to impose answers upon society to the three fundamental questions facing all economies: What should we produce? How should we produce? And, for whom should we produce?⁴

Capitalism suggests that rather than these questions being answered by kings, governments, or even well-intentioned central planners on society's behalf, these questions should be answered by you and I and every other individual in a free market. In other words, capitalism is simply what occurs when we are all left to our own economic devices; as a system, capitalism is characterized by the absence of formal systems. As Adam Smith explained, "All systems either of preference or of restraint, therefore, being thus completely taken away, the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord."⁵

Milton Friedman put it another way: "Fundamentally, there are only two ways of co-ordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion ... The other is voluntary co-operation of individuals."⁶ Formal economic systems (communism, feudalism, etc.) are defined by some form of coercion in order to direct production and to impose answers upon society; the definition of capitalism, the informal system, is the absence of coercion.

A more encyclopedic definition of capitalism would be of an informal economic system in which property is largely privately owned, and in which profit provides incentive for capital investment and the employment of labor. Capitalism is also the philosophy that the government's role in the economy should be strictly limited and that the forces of supply and demand in a free market, while imperfect, are the most efficient means of providing for the general well-being of humankind.

It is commonly thought that average citizens in a market economy benefit only when profits "trickle down" to them, like pennies spilling from the overstuffed pockets of the rich. The economist Thomas Sowell calls this bizarre definition of capitalism the most politically prominent economic theory to never exist.⁷ He explains,

When an investment is made, whether to build a railroad or to open a new restaurant, the first money is spent hiring the people to do the work. Without that, nothing happens. Even when one person decides to operate a store or hamburger stand without employees, that person must first pay somebody to deliver the goods that are going to be sold. Money goes out first to pay expenses and then comes back as profits later—if at all. The high rate of failure of new businesses makes painfully clear that there is nothing inevitable about the money coming back. ... In short, the sequence of payments is directly the opposite of what is assumed by those who talk about a 'trickle-down' theory.⁸

While profit is a word routinely pronounced with the negative emotion of a swear word in the modern political discourse, it is profit alone that provides incentive to undertake financial risk, such as the risk involved in starting a business.

Incentive is the key word. Incentives matter so much that economists James Gwartney, Richard L. Stroup, and Dwight R. Lee begin a marvelous little book with the declaration, "All of economics rests on one simple principle: that incentives matter. Altering incentives, the costs and benefits of making specific decisions, alters people's behaviour."⁹ Where profits are denied, entrepreneurship and innovation are stifled and all our lives are the worse for it. Beneath the definition of capitalism is the realization that we are never so efficient and effective as when we pursue our own reward.

And yet, profit is often portrayed in the media as the "unequal distribution of wealth" as though the invisible hand of Adam Smith were reaching down from the clouds to drop billions of dollars on the evil and the undeserving, while robbing the righteous poor of what is owed to them. As Dr. Sowell notes,

Most income is of course not distributed at all, in the sense in which newspapers or Social Security checks are distributed from some central place. Most income is distributed only in the figurative statistical sense in which there is a distribution of heights in a population ... but none of these heights was sent out from some central location. Yet it is all too common to read journalists and others discussing how 'society' distributes its income, rather than saying in plain English that some people make more money than others.¹⁰

Why do some people make more than others under capitalism? There can be any number of reasons from the differing skills of workers to their differing age and experience to the supply and demand relationship between employers and employees. Moreover, those who assume more risk inevitably earn dramatically more or dramatically less than those who assume less risk. Whatever the case may be, however, income in a capitalist economy is earned not through "selfishness" but by helping others. Gwartney, Stroup, and Lee explain,

People who earn large incomes do so because they provide others with lots of things that they value. If these individuals did not provide valuable goods or services, consumers would not pay them so generously. There is a moral here: if you want to earn a large income, you had better figure out how to help others a great deal.¹¹

Economist Walter Williams offers similar insight into the definition of capitalism: "Capitalism is relatively new in human history. Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving your fellow man."¹²

While those who equate the definition of capitalism with the unequal distribution of wealth revile the inequalities that inevitably result in market economies, Milton Friedman puts these inequalities in their proper perspective as compared with the formal economic systems:

Consider two societies that have the same distribution of annual income. In one there is great mobility and change so that the position of particular families in the income hierarchy varies widely from year to year. In the other, there is great rigidity so that each family stays in the same position year after year. Clearly, in any meaningful sense, the second would be the more unequal society. ... Non-capitalist societies tend to have wider inequality than capitalist, even as measured by annual income; in addition, inequality in them tends to be permanent, whereas capitalism undermines status and introduces social mobility.¹³

This concept of social mobility is a routinely overlooked aspect of the definition of capitalism. In a capitalist society, individuals are not condemned to their lot in life. Capitalism not only encourages individuals to better themselves, but provides market incentives for them to do so.

All The World's A Market

What is a market? It is not the mystical, impersonal force that is so deeply reviled on the left and so strangely worshiped as an omniscient deity on the right. A market is simply an environment of exchange that brings buyers and sellers of products, services, labor, and ideas together and facilitates trade between them. Far from being impersonal, a market, just like a society, is the sum of the individuals involved in it and therefore contains all the information presently known. In a broader sense, a market is merely a mirror of ourselves.

As part of the definition of capitalism, it was noted that capitalism is an informal system in so far as it does not require implementation by some higher authority. The reason for this is that capitalism is fueled by the power of markets, which are as natural and as necessary to human beings as water to a fish. As long as there are human beings, there will always be markets.

While this aspect of the definition of capitalism is commonly denied, we see evidence of the inevitability of markets wherever trade is forbidden or restricted. In modern capitalist societies, black markets flourish for vices the government has attempted to outlaw, such as drugs, weapons, and prostitution. In communist societies, black markets thrive in response to frequent consumer shortages. In developing nations where laws and bureaucracy impede rather than facilitate legal exchange, and where the goods of developed nations are often inappropriately priced, black markets are the primary source of economic growth, often replacing legal markets entirely.

In short, if one doubts the definition of capitalism as a natural system and markets as essential to human life, one needs look no further than the indestructibility of markets throughout human history as evidence to the contrary.

The most common critique of market-driven economies is that they are "unfair." The market, we are told, "exploits people." The fallacy here is two-fold. First, the market in and of itself is neither fair nor unfair; it is merely a reflection of ourselves. If we perceive the market to be unfair, such as in the difference in wages between teachers and professional athletes, then that injustice is a reflection on who we are as a people not on the market system in the abstract.

"Fairness," like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Beneath the definition of capitalism is a belief in the supremacy of economic freedom, and freedom entails protecting individuals from outside interference, even in the name of "fairness." Dr. Friedman wisely observes that one of the biggest objections to a market economy is that "it gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself."¹⁴

Second, a free market cannot, by definition, exploit anyone, given the elementary economic principle that a voluntary and informed trade always benefits both parties; why would either party make the trade otherwise?

Ultimately, what a market accomplishes is to collect all the information presently available between buyers and sellers, and then to determine the relative value of what is being exchanged. We live in a world of scarce resources, and those resources must somehow be divided; the market accomplishes this through fluctuating prices. High prices ration goods and signal producers to produce more where possible and for consumers to conserve; low prices encourage consumption and signal producers to allocate scarce resources elsewhere.

As Friedrich von Hayek explains, in this kind of price system "only the most essential information is passed on and passed on only to those concerned. It is more than a metaphor to describe the price system as a kind of machinery for registering change, or a system of telecommunications which enables individual producers to watch merely the movement of a few pointers, as an engineer might watch the hands of a few dials, in order to adjust their activities to changes of which they may never know more than is reflected in the price movement."¹⁵

In other words, there is a little bit of magic in every price tag, as every price contains an astonishing amount of information about the choices made by consumers and producers condensed into a few numbers.

Criticism of Capitalism

If there is a valid criticism of capitalism to be made, it is essentially the same argument against anarchism of the right, which is that freedom feeds upon itself.

Thomas Sowell writes that when he taught economics, he used to offer an A to any student who could find a kind word that Adam Smith had to say about businessmen in The Wealth of Nations. No one ever did.¹⁶ Perhaps the skepticism of Smith and many other free market economists over the benevolence of business people stems from the melancholy truth that those whom the market most rewards seldom have any qualm with subverting it; all too often, those who should be the capitalism's most ardent defenders are quick to bite the hand that feeds them.

Monopolies are by no means precluded by the definition of capitalism, and with such power comes the power to stifle innovation, crush competition, and harm the average consumer with higher prices. Moreover, where individuals or corporations violate the principles of fair trade, such as by concealing or falsifying information, their own personal freedom and wealth may be enhanced at the expense of both society and the free market they betray.

Ironically, the same concept of laissez-faire that is so essential to the definition of capitalism, can devolve into tyranny if interpreted too literally. The incentive for profit is unfortunately also incentive to cheat. It is easy to see how a pure market economy in absence of all rules and regulation is little more than a contest for the survival of the fittest.

Very few people, much less conservatives, desire a society built on economic Darwinism where gross inequalities of opportunity are the norm and where only the affluent have access to basic social services. Moreover, few would want to conduct business in an environment where no set of standards was enforced in the market and where no rules governed the behavior of businesses and individuals.

It is for this reason that modern capitalist economies are often called "mixed economies" in that they combine free markets with the oversight of government. Though they adhere to the definition of capitalism, they are not enslaved to it. For capitalism to avoid self-destruction, even the most pro-business conservatives usually agree that government is crucial as a regulator and a referee.

Why Are Most Conservatives Capitalists?

While Adam Smith is usually credited as the father of the free market, the basic idea beneath the definition of capitalism was aptly expressed thousands of years before his birth by the Chinese sage, Lao Tzu, who advocated the almost paradoxical concept of wei wu wei, or action without action, an idea which speaks to the essence of laissez-faire.

While conservatives differ with one another on many individual economic issues, most modern conservatives agree that a free market is the sole path to prosperity for humankind. The idea of action without action appeals to the average conservative who deeply believes that government should not meddle in the fiscal affairs of the individual beyond its function as regulator and referee. But conservatives are not utopians, and they hold little hope for a world in which everyone is perfectly happy and everyone's wants are perfectly met; rather, conservatives view our economic options as a set of imperfect choices and regard capitalism as the least evil among them.

Conservatives are routinely accused of being obsessed with money and of reducing human beings to economic creatures. The definition of capitalism established here clearly refutes that claim. If conservatives are passionate about capitalism, it is not because they are passionate about money; rather, it is because they are passionate about freedom.

In an age where the definition of capitalism is routinely distorted to bolster the arguments of left wing critics, it is rarely mentioned that capitalism is a liberal economic idea; if its defense has fallen to conservatives, that is evidence only that classical liberalism bears no resemblance to the liberalism of today. Indeed, if anyone on the political spectrum is to be accused of reducing human beings to economic creatures surely it must be modern liberals who are lauded in the press for running entire election campaigns on the premise that all people care about is "the economy, stupid!"

This is not the philosophy of the conservative. As Barry Goldwater wrote,

The root difference between the Conservatives and the Liberals of today is that Conservatives take account of the whole man, while the Liberals tend to look only at the material side of man's nature. The Conservative believes that man is, in part, an economic, an animal creature; but that he is also a spiritual creature with spiritual needs and spiritual desires. What is more, these needs and desires reflect the superior side of man's nature, and thus take precedence over his economic wants. Conservatism therefore looks upon the enhancement of man's spiritual nature as the primary concern of political philosophy. Liberals, on the other hand—in the name of a concern for 'human beings'—regard the satisfaction of economic wants as the dominant mission of society.¹⁷

The definition of capitalism for the conservative is based on a belief in individual freedom and on a faith in the individual to choose well. The conservative knows, after all, that the restriction of freedom anywhere is a restriction of freedom everywhere, and that if the individual is not even guaranteed the freedom to make trivial economic choices, he certainly will not have the freedom to make all-important spiritual choices.

Source: http://www.conservative-resources.com/definition-of-capitalism.html

AR

Relativism

2008-03-21T20:40:00.001-07:00

Introduction

A society that celebrates virtually anything would have to make tolerance a virtue.

Tolerance for the right things and in the right amounts is a virtue. No decent or democratic society can exist without it. To respect individuals you disagree with is Christian; however, to tolerate evil as a Christian drains society of virtue. C. S. Lewis made clear the nature of evil- it is predatory; it will devour virtue. And when there is nothing of virtue remaining, it will devour itself. To allow evil where it could otherwise be eliminated is to consent to the death of virtue. Given the insatiable appetite of evil, and its propensity to feed on the young and old alike, you and I simply cannot tolerate the intolerable in society. We cannot hope to remain a decent society if we adopt a relativist, truth-is-what-you-want-it-to-be- attitude toward sin and evil in society. To stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places requires more from us (Mosiah 18: 9). Our voices and sensibilities must inform public policy. In this segment, I will discuss how relativist meanings of tolerance are being used to attack our faith, destroy the virtue in our nation, and silence our dissent.

The New Tolerance

Relativism is the belief that man is the author of truth; one man cannot tell another man what is true for him. Truth is individually defined not externally imposed- as if truth could ever be imposed on anyone possessing agency. To the relativist, one man’s truth is just that- one man’s truth; it can be nothing more, unless agreed upon by society or enforced by law. These relativistic values have advanced in society because the majority of Christian America has silently assented to the death of ethical theism. In the book The New Tolerance by Josh McDowell and Bob Hostetler (1998), ethical theism is defined as the belief that right and wrong are absolute, unchanging, and that they are decided (and communicated to men and women) by God (p. 33). This view of truth and morality formed the basis for much of Western civilization; it stems from the belief that certain truths are self-evident, among them, is the uniquely American tradition that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among them are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

These beliefs are grounded in biblical understandings that shaped Western civilization and the formation of our nation. The Founders knew what Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles knew about truth. They had, according to David F. Wells (1993):

A certainty about the existence, character and purposes of God- a certainty about his truth- that seems to have faded in the bright light of the modern world. They were convinced that God’s revelation, of which they were the vehicles and custodians, was true. True in an absolute sense. It was not merely true to them; it was not merely true in their time; it was not true approximately. What God has given was true universally, absolutely and enduringly (pp. 259-260).

These notions were essential to the Founders in 1776, and still are- or at least should be to us in 2003.

Ethical theism died a quiet death in America. It died, according to Pat Buchanan (2002), author of The Death of the West, because Christians fell asleep and the nation changed; President Benson also said this. Relativism replaced ethical theism as the explanation of morality and reality. Along with new explanations came new definitions of relativist truth in America. Those who resisted these definitions were thought to be intolerant, judgmental or hateful. Those who embraced the new ideals of the shift towards relativism were called tolerant. The new definition of tolerance, then, is agreement. The more tolerant among us express that agreement through participation; this shows support for the beliefs of others. For example, attendance at Gay Pride parades by non-homosexuals is evidence of the new meaning of tolerance; it is an affirmation that some straights recognize the rights of gays to coexist in relativistic and legalistic (marriage) equality. In fighting for the rights of diverse others to be as they self-determine, so-called tolerant Americans also defend their own right to autonomous self-definition. It is as if they are saying:

Tolerance is the crowning virtue among those who honor difference as the desired norm. To tolerate is to affirm. I don’t judge you, you don’t judge me; neither of us has to feel bad. Neither of us has to change. We’re both just fine. In relativist America, diversity is the freest expression and tolerance is the finest attribute.

This postmodern or relativist view of truth gradually eclipsed ethical theism in America. Today, postmodernism or relativism is seen in such comments as: what I do or believe cannot be separated from who I am- thus, if you reject what I do or think, you reject me. How absurd and cowardly are such claims, for they excuse improvement and absolve us of the need for important introspection and useful change. The new tolerance is also reflected in the following statements that I often hear even among some LDS faithful (see McDowell and Hostetler, 1998):

· No one can tell you what is right or wrong.

· I can’t tell you what is right or wrong; you must decide for yourself.

· It’s wrong to try and impose (as thought one really could) my morals on someone.

· I have the right to do whatever I want so long as I am not hurting anyone.

· You have to do what you think is right.

· Those may be the values your parents taught you, but my parents taught me differently.

· Look…that’s your opinion.

These kinds of so-called tolerant comments argue against truth as an absolute, and- given their source, intentionally deny our Christian obligation to warn and be witnesses. Christians who use these arguments affirm relativist truth- that there really is no truth; and they avoid offending the devil in the process of showing relativists that they are equally tolerant in response to endless and fierce accusations of Christian intolerance. I am not saying that we should be obnoxious about our beliefs, but neither should we be ashamed of them- or of being different, even peculiar. For the sake of our faith, families, and freedom, we simply cannot afford to be too tolerant of sin or error- or of relativist attempts to make us irrelevant. Besides, we are commanded to open our mouths, with a promise that God will fill them (D&C 100: 5-8). We may not think that we have much to say about what is going on in the world today, but God may have much to say through us.

The Limitations of Tolerance

Since tolerance now means agreement, prepare to be called intolerant if you disagree with someone’s “sinful” of “errant” choices or relativist arguments- or if you seek to intervene in the choices they make or changes they advocate. Today, name-calling, as a tool for silencing criticism, is as common as it is silly. It stifles the beneficial dialogue that stems from disagreement, and silences those with better argument and truth on their side. Simply put, it empowers stupidity; besides, calling someone intolerant because they disagree with you is intellectually dishonest illogic. Imagine someone is watching you walk near a cliff. You are getting dangerously close- you may not appreciate how at risk you are. They do, but may be reluctant to say so because they do not wish to appear judgmental or overly aware of your business. They may reason that you know what you are doing. They may conclude that you want to fall from the cliff. Then they remember what their teachers taught them in school, that no one has the right to tell another person what to do or think. So they watch with ambivalence as you fall from the cliff.

This is the danger of demanding agreement or consent in tolerance, especially when the consequences of our personal choices can be so personally and socially damaging. Without a value system, I can watch the lives of others collapse around me with no more concern than the outcome of a golf tournament; personally, I am indifferent to golf. Tolerance, then, robbed of the virtue and benefit of absolute truth, becomes indifference. Why should I care what someone does? What is that to me? I absolve myself of your stupidity, but I support your right to be stupid. I might even jump with you to show my agreement as tolerance- and my equal stupidity.

I am being absurd to illustrate the absurdity of the new tolerance.

Love and Tolerance

Somewhere in the chaos of the 1960’s and 1970’s we lost the concept of the golden rule- do unto others as you would have them do unto you. This concept demands more of us than mere tolerance. It has at its core the commission to love one another; love requires effort and involvement on our part. It requires us to invest in one another. It requires of us to change and grow, for love may be unconditional, but relationships are not. To relate to others, we have to be willing to be changed by one another in right ways. Love, then, is the greatest of all virtues- including tolerance.

True love will not allow you to watch someone step off from a cliff. It will motivate you to at least try and intervene in their behalf. If that intervention is done in love, it sometimes saves us from ourselves. In my life, I am more indebted to those who have reached out to me in love than tolerated me in agreement or disinterest. I am a better person today because love won out over tolerance at critical times in my life when those motivated by higher virtues spoke the truth to me. These individuals demonstrated the truth of unconditional love. Unconditional love is not to love someone the way they are, but to love them despite the way they are. It is to see something better in them, and to encourage it when moved upon by love and spirit. Those who merely tolerate absolve themselves of the thorns, but they never help to grow the rose.

I will conclude with this comment on the power of true love. In the book of St. John (21: 15-18), Jesus thrice asked Peter, “Do you love me?” Each time Peter would respond in the affirmative, and Christ would say, “Feed my sheep/lambs.” Not once did he ask Peter if he loved the sheep or lambs. Christ never said, “If you love them, feed them.” We do for one another because we love Christ. And as we do, our love for one another increases. Whom we love, we serve; whom we serve, we love. Love, then, is service. Service and love are greater than tolerance.

Our investment in reaching out to those who would otherwise be our political or ideological opposites is the fulfillment of a commandment to love all others- even our (ideological) enemies- in a manner of speaking. It is to do good to those that would spitefully use or ridicule us. And it would silence our critics. How, for example, could homosexuals accuse us of being hateful if we provided weekly comfort to sorrowing souls at an AIDS clinic? How could we be viewed as superior if we worked along side other faiths in promoting good causes in the world, as our Prophet has asked of us? The love that would develop between the giver and the receiver would change us both, recapture the vision of the Founders, and honor the principles of Christ.

We could melt much of the wax that encrusts love in these days by turning up the warmth of our love. We have no choice if we are serious about our covenants. We have no choice if we are serious about saving America. Tolerance will not save this nation. Love can- and if necessary, tough love; loving more also includes loving God more. Besides, we can ill afford to be the most tolerant of people in a nation ripening in iniquity- don’t confuse my argument of love with tolerance. We must become more loving of people, but less tolerant of sin. Sin depletes the nation of virtue. A nation that lacks virtue will not have much tolerance for Christians.

In my next article, I will discuss how relativism has turned to government and law for validation and protection. This has changed legislation and litigation in the past 40 years. Accordingly, we must be more vigilant about the direction our government and courts are taking, which is, toward the relativist’s utopia often referred to today as democratic socialism. I will argue that our leaders must do more to ensure virtue in American culture; this will not be easy. Too many of them are behaving in ways that Alexis de Tocqueville warned us against in his profound and careful writings entitled Democracy in America. By extending the Entitlements of Liberty to some in the name of equality, our leaders are further dividing the nation and increasingly driving us down the socialist path. This is intolerable.

References

Buchanan, Pat (2002). The Death of the West. New York: St. Martins Press.

Lewis, C. S. (1970). God in the Dock. Grand Rapids, MI: Erdmans Publishing.

McDowell, Josh, & Hostetler, (1998). The New Tolerance. Wheaton, ILL: Tyndale House Publishing.

Wells, David F. (1993). No place for truth. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing.

Values (going back to the basics)

2008-03-11T07:45:00.000-07:00

VALUES

1. SIMPLE PATHS ARE NOT ALWAYS EASY TO FOLLOW “Investing is simple, but not easy.”—Warren Buffet, interview on CNBC W/Maria

2. KNOWLEDGE, EXPERIENCE, AND ABILITY—NOT MONEY—BRINGS INDEPENDENCE “If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.” - Henry Ford (1863-1947), An American Industrialist

3. FINANCIAL FREEDOM WILL NOT “JUST HAPPEN” “Find the bull’s-eye. Chances are you’ll never achieve financial freedom unless you first define it and then become tunnel-visioned pursuing it.” - Jeanne Sahadi, CNN/Money Senior Staff Writer

4. SLAVERY IS THE CONSEQUENCE OF ECONOMIC DEPENDENCE “The essence of all slavery consists in taking the product of another’s labor by force. It is immaterial whether this force be founded upon ownership of the slave or ownership of the money that he must get to live.” - Leo Tolstoy

5. PROSPERITY IS ABOUT A PARADIGM—IT’S NOT ABOUT MONEY “Prosperity is a way of living and thinking, and not just money or things. Poverty is a way of living and thinking, and not just a lack of money or things.” -Eric Butterworth

6. MEN ARE EITHER MASTERS OR SERVANTS OF MONEY, WHICH WILL YOU BE? “If money be not thy servant, it will be thy master. The covetous man cannot so properly be said to possess wealth, as that may be said to possess him.” -Francis Bacon

7. INTEREST NEVER SLEEPS “Interest never sleeps nor sickens nor dies; Once in debt, interest is your companion every minute of the day and night; you cannot shun it or slip away from it; you cannot dismiss it; it yields neither to entreaties, demands, or orders; and whenever you get in its way or cross its course or fail to meet its demands, it crushes you.” - J. Rueben Clark, 1938

8. DEBT GIVES OTHERS POWER OVER YOUR LIBERTY “Think what you do when you run in debt; you give to another power over your liberty.” - Benjamin Franklin

9. LACK OF MONEY IS A “SYMPTOM,” NOT A CAUSE “No complaint, however, is more common than that of a scarcity of money. Money, like wine, must always be scarce with those who have neither wherewithal to buy it nor credit to borrow it. Those who have either will seldom be in want either of the money or of the wine which they have occasion for.” -Adam Smith

10. PEOPLE ARE OFTEN OBLIVIOUS TO FINANCIAL CONSEQUENCES “It is amazing to me that so many people work all of their lives for the grocer, the landlord, the power company, the automobile salesman, and the bank, and yet think so little of their own efforts that they pay themselves nothing.” - L. Tom Perry

11. 1/4 OF THE TIME MOST MEN’S WORK IS SUFFICIENT “One-third or one-fourth of the time that is spent to procure a living would be sufficient, if your labor were rightly directed. People think they are going to get rich by hard workÂ—by working sixteen hours out of the twenty-four; but it is not so. A great many of our brethren can hardly spend time to go to meeting. Six days is more time than we need to labor.” - Brigham Young

12. LACK OF SELF-RELIANCE DESTROYS INDIVIDUALITY “Nothing destroys the individuality of a man, a woman, or a child as much as the failure to be self-reliant.” - Relief Society Magazine, Oct. 1937, p. 627

13. LACK OF SELF RELIANCE DESTROYS PERSONAL AGENCY “Man cannot be an agent unto himself if he is not self-reliant [...] independence and self-reliance are critical keys to our spiritual growth. Whenever we get into a situation which threatens our self-reliance, we will find our freedom threatened as well. If we increase our dependence, we will find an immediate decrease in our freedom to act.” - Marion G. Romney, “The Celestial Nature of Self-Reliance” Tambuli, Oct. 1984, p. 1

14. SELF-RELIANCE BRINGS PEACE AND CONTENTMENT “If there is any one thing that will bring peace and contentment into the human heart and into the family, it is to live within our means [sic]. And if there is any one thing that is grinding and discouraging and disheartening, it is to have debts and obligations [...] one cannot meet.” - Heber J. Grant

15. FINANCIAL FREEDOM IS THE CORRECT ORDER OF LIFE “[...] pay thy debt and live [...]” - 2 KINGS 4:7

– FRANKLINSQUIRES (from http://www.franklinsquires.com/overview.htm )

Francisco's 'Money' Speech from Atlas Shrugged

2008-03-10T15:36:00.000-07:00

Rearden heard Bertram Scudder, outside the group, say to a girl who made some sound of indignation, "Don't let him disturb you. You know, money is the root of all evil – and he's the typical product of money."

Rearden did not think that Francisco could have heard it, but he saw Francisco turning to them with a gravely courteous smile.

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Aconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor – your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?

"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions – and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made – before it can be looted or mooched – made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.

"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except by the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss – the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery – that you must offer them values, not wounds – that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best your money can find. And when men live by trade – with reason, not force, as their final arbiter – it is the best product that wins, the best performance, then man of best judgment and highest ability – and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?

"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality – the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants; money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth – the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve that mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Money is your means of survival. The verdict which you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?

"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?

"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is the loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money – and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.

"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another – their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.

"But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride, or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich – will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt – and of his life, as he deserves.

"Then you will see the rise of the double standard – the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money – the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law – men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims – then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.

"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it becomes, marked: 'Account overdrawn.'

"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?' You are.

"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood – money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves – slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers – as industrialists.

"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money – and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being – the self-made man – the American industrialist.

"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose – because it contains all the others – the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money'. No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity – to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.

"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide – as, I think, he will.

"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns – or dollars. Take your choice – there is no other – and your time is running out."

original source: Part II, Section 2, pages 387-391 of the paperback

AR

The Second Coming (Poem) by William Butler Yeats

2008-03-05T14:15:00.001-08:00

The Second Coming by WB Yeats.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

(Why do the best of us lack conviction!?!)

The Principles of Communism by Frederick Engels 1847

2008-03-05T14:07:00.000-08:00

(Does this sound familiar?)

— 1 — What is Communism?
Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.

— 2 — What is the proletariat?
The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labor and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death, whose sole existence depends on the demand for labor – hence, on the changing state of business, on the vagaries of unbridled competition. The proletariat, or the class of proletarians, is, in a word, the working class of the 19th century.[1]

— 3 — Proletarians, then, have not always existed?
No. There have always been poor and working classes; and the working class have mostly been poor. But there have not always been workers and poor people living under conditions as they are today; in other words, there have not always been proletarians, any more than there has always been free unbridled competitions.

— 4 — How did the proletariat originate?
The Proletariat originated in the industrial revolution, which took place in England in the last half of the last (18th) century, and which has since then been repeated in all the civilized countries of the world.
This industrial revolution was precipitated by the discovery of the steam engine, various spinning machines, the mechanical loom, and a whole series of other mechanical devices. These machines, which were very expensive and hence could be bought only by big capitalists, altered the whole mode of production and displaced the former workers, because the machines turned out cheaper and better commodities than the workers could produce with their inefficient spinning wheels and handlooms. The machines delivered industry wholly into the hands of the big capitalists and rendered entirely worthless the meagre property of the workers (tools, looms, etc.). The result was that the capitalists soon had everything in their hands and nothing remained to the workers. This marked the introduction of the factory system into the textile industry.
Once the impulse to the introduction of machinery and the factory system had been given, this system spread quickly to all other branches of industry, especially cloth- and book-printing, pottery, and the metal industries.
Labor was more and more divided among the individual workers so that the worker who previously had done a complete piece of work now did only a part of that piece. This division of labor made it possible to produce things faster and cheaper. It reduced the activity of the individual worker to simple, endlessly repeated mechanical motions which could be performed not only as well but much better by a machine. In this way, all these industries fell, one after another, under the dominance of steam, machinery, and the factory system, just as spinning and weaving had already done.
But at the same time, they also fell into the hands of big capitalists, and their workers were deprived of whatever independence remained to them. Gradually, not only genuine manufacture but also handicrafts came within the province of the factory system as big capitalists increasingly displaced the small master craftsmen by setting up huge workshops, which saved many expenses and permitted an elaborate division of labor.
This is how it has come about that in civilized countries at the present time nearly all kinds of labor are performed in factories – and, in nearly all branches of work, handicrafts and manufacture have been superseded. This process has, to an ever greater degree, ruined the old middle class, especially the small handicraftsmen; it has entirely transformed the condition of the workers; and two new classes have been created which are gradually swallowing up all the others. These are:

(i) The class of big capitalists, who, in all civilized countries, are already in almost exclusive possession of all the means of subsistance and of the instruments (machines, factories) and materials necessary for the production of the means of subsistence. This is the bourgeois class, or the bourgeoisie.

(ii) The class of the wholly propertyless, who are obliged to sell their labor to the bourgeoisie in order to get, in exchange, the means of subsistence for their support. This is called the class of proletarians, or the proletariat.

— 5 — Under what conditions does this sale of thelabor of the proletarians to the bourgeoisie take place?
Labor is a commodity, like any other, and its price is therefore determined by exactly the same laws that apply to other commodities. In a regime of big industry or of free competition – as we shall see, the two come to the same thing – the price of a commodity is, on the average, always equal to its cost of production. Hence, the price of labor is also equal to the cost of production of labor.
But, the costs of production of labor consist of precisely the quantity of means of subsistence necessary to enable the worker to continue working, and to prevent the working class from dying out. The worker will therefore get no more for his labor than is necessary for this purpose; the price of labor, or the wage, will, in other words, be the lowest, the minimum, required for the maintenance of life.
However, since business is sometimes better and sometimes worse, it follows that the worker sometimes gets more and sometimes gets less for his commodities. But, again, just as the industrialist, on the average of good times and bad, gets no more and no less for his commodities than what they cost, similarly on the average the worker gets no more and no less than his minimum.
This economic law of wages operates the more strictly the greater the degree to which big industry has taken possession of all branches of production.

— 6 — What working classes were there before the industrial revolution?
The working classes have always, according to the different stages of development of society, lived in different circumstances and had different relations to the owning and ruling classes.
In antiquity, the workers were the slaves of the owners, just as they still are in many backward countries and even in the southern part of the United States.
In the Middle Ages, they were the serfs of the land-owning nobility, as they still are in Hungary, Poland, and Russia. In the Middle Ages, and indeed right up to the industrial revolution, there were also journeymen in the cities who worked in the service of petty bourgeois masters. Gradually, as manufacture developed, these journeymen became manufacturing workers who were even then employed by larger capitalists.

— 7 — In what way do proletarians differ from slaves?
The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly.
The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master’s interest. The individual proletarian, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. This existence is assured only to the class as a whole.
The slave is outside competition; the proletarian is in it and experiences all its vagaries.
The slave counts as a thing, not as a member of society. Thus, the slave can have a better existence than the proletarian, while the proletarian belongs to a higher stage of social development and, himself, stands on a higher social level than the slave.
The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general.

— 8 — In what way do proletarians differ from serfs?
The serf possesses and uses an instrument of production, a piece of land, in exchange for which he gives up a part of his product or part of the services of his labor.
The proletarian works with the instruments of production of another, for the account of this other, in exchange for a part of the product.
The serf gives up, the proletarian receives. The serf has an assured existence, the proletarian has not. The serf is outside competition, the proletarian is in it.
The serf liberates himself in one of three ways: either he runs away to the city and there becomes a handicraftsman; or, instead of products and and services, he gives money to his lord and thereby becomes a free tenant; or he overthrows his feudal lord and himself becomes a property owner. In short, by one route or another, he gets into the owning class and enters into competition. The proletarian liberates himself by abolishing competition, private property, and all class differences.

— 9 — In what way do proletarians differ from handicraftsmen?
In contrast to the proletarian, the so-called handicraftsman, as he still existed almost everywhere in the past (eightennth) century and still exists here and there at present, is a proletarian at most temporarily. His goal is to acquire capital himself wherewith to exploit other workers. He can often achieve this goal where guilds still exist or where freedon from guild restrictions has not yet led to the introduction of factory-style methods into the crafts nor yet to fierce competition But as soon as the factory system has been introduced into the crafts and competition flourishes fully, this perspective dwindles away and the handicraftsman becomes more and more a proletarian. The handicraftsman therefore frees himself by becoming either bourgeois or entering the middle class in general, or becoming a proletarian because of competition (as is now more often the case). In which case he can free himself by joining the proletarian movement, i.e., the more or less communist movement. [2]

— 10 — In what way do proletarians differ from manufacturing workers?
The manufacturing worker of the 16th to the 18th centuries still had, with but few exception, an instrument of production in his own possession – his loom, the family spinning wheel, a little plot of land which he cultivated in his spare time. The proletarian has none of these things.
The manufacturing worker almost always lives in the countryside and in a more or less patriarchal relation to his landlord or employer; the proletarian lives, for the most part, in the city and his relation to his employer is purely a cash relation.
The manufacturing worker is torn out of his patriarchal relation by big industry, loses whatever property he still has, and in this way becomes a proletarian.

— 11 — What were the immediate consequences of the industrial revolution and of the division of society into bourgeoisie and proletariat?
First, the lower and lower prices of industrial products brought about by machine labor totally destroyed, in all countries of the world, the old system of manufacture or industry based upon hand labor.
In this way, all semi-barbarian countries, which had hitherto been more or less strangers to historical development, and whose industry had been based on manufacture, were violently forced out of their isolation. They bought the cheaper commodities of the English and allowed their own manufacturing workers to be ruined. Countries which had known no progress for thousands of years – for example, India – were thoroughly revolutionized, and even China is now on the way to a revolution.
We have come to the point where a new machine invented in England deprives millions of Chinese workers of their livelihood within a year’s time.
In this way, big industry has brought all the people of the Earth into contact with each other, has merged all local markets into one world market, has spread civilization and progress everywhere and has thus ensured that whatever happens in civilized countries will have repercussions in all other countries.
It follows that if the workers in England or France now liberate themselves, this must set off revolution in all other countries – revolutions which, sooner or later, must accomplish the liberation of their respective working class.
Second, wherever big industries displaced manufacture, the bourgeoisie developed in wealth and power to the utmost and made itself the first class of the country. The result was that wherever this happened, the bourgeoisie took political power into its own hands and displaced the hitherto ruling classes, the aristocracy, the guildmasters, and their representative, the absolute monarchy.
The bourgeoisie annihilated the power of the aristocracy, the nobility, by abolishing the entailment of estates – in other words, by making landed property subject to purchase and sale, and by doing away with the special privileges of the nobility. It destroyed the power of the guildmasters by abolishing guilds and handicraft privileges. In their place, it put competition – that is, a state of society in which everyone has the right to enter into any branch of industry, the only obstacle being a lack of the necessary capital.
The introduction of free competition is thus public declaration that from now on the members of society are unequal only to the extent that their capitals are unequal, that capital is the decisive power, and that therefore the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, have become the first class in society.
Free competition is necessary for the establishment of big industry, because it is the only condition of society in which big industry can make its way.
Having destroyed the social power of the nobility and the guildmasters, the bourgeois also destroyed their political power. Having raised itself to the actual position of first class in society, it proclaims itself to be also the dominant political class. This it does through the introduction of the representative system which rests on bourgeois equality before the law and the recognition of free competition, and in European countries takes the form of constitutional monarchy. In these constitutional monarchies, only those who possess a certain capital are voters – that is to say, only members of the bourgeoisie. These bourgeois voters choose the deputies, and these bourgeois deputies, by using their right to refuse to vote taxes, choose a bourgeois government.
Third, everywhere the proletariat develops in step with the bourgeoisie. In proportion, as the bourgeoisie grows in wealth, the proletariat grows in numbers. For, since the proletarians can be employed only by capital, and since capital extends only through employing labor, it follows that the growth of the proletariat proceeds at precisely the same pace as the growth of capital.
Simultaneously, this process draws members of the bourgeoisie and proletarians together into the great cities where industry can be carried on most profitably, and by thus throwing great masses in one spot it gives to the proletarians a consciousness of their own strength.
Moreover, the further this process advances, the more new labor-saving machines are invented, the greater is the pressure exercised by big industry on wages, which, as we have seen, sink to their minimum and therewith render the condition of the proletariat increasingly unbearable. The growing dissatisfaction of the proletariat thus joins with its rising power to prepare a proletarian social revolution.

— 12 — What were the further consequences of the industrial revolution?
Big industry created in the steam engine, and other machines, the means of endlessly expanding industrial production, speeding it up, and cutting its costs. With production thus facilitated, the free competition, which is necessarily bound up with big industry, assumed the most extreme forms; a multitude of capitalists invaded industry, and, in a short while, more was produced than was needed.
As a consequence, finished commodities could not be sold, and a so-called commercial crisis broke out. Factories had to be closed, their owners went bankrupt, and the workers were without bread. Deepest misery reigned everywhere.
After a time, the superfluous products were sold, the factories began to operate again, wages rose, and gradually business got better than ever.
But it was not long before too many commodities were again produced and a new crisis broke out, only to follow the same course as its predecessor.
Ever since the beginning of this (19th) century, the condition of industry has constantly fluctuated between periods of prosperity and periods of crisis; nearly every five to seven years, a fresh crisis has intervened, always with the greatest hardship for workers, and always accompanied by general revolutionary stirrings and the direct peril to the whole existing order of things.

— 13 — What follows from these periodic commercial crises?
First:
That, though big industry in its earliest stage created free competition, it has now outgrown free competition;
that, for big industry, competition and generally the individualistic organization of production have become a fetter which it must and will shatter;
that, so long as big industry remains on its present footing, it can be maintained only at the cost of general chaos every seven years, each time threatening the whole of civilization and not only plunging the proletarians into misery but also ruining large sections of the bourgeoisie;
hence, either that big industry must itself be given up, which is an absolute impossibility, or that it makes unavoidably necessary an entirely new organization of society in which production is no longer directed by mutually competing individual industrialists but rather by the whole society operating according to a definite plan and taking account of the needs of all.
Second: That big industry, and the limitless expansion of production which it makes possible, bring within the range of feasibility a social order in which so much is produced that every member of society will be in a position to exercise and develop all his powers and faculties in complete freedom.
It thus appears that the very qualities of big industry which, in our present-day society, produce misery and crises are those which, in a different form of society, will abolish this misery and these catastrophic depressions.
We see with the greatest clarity:

(i) That all these evils are from now on to be ascribed solely to a social order which no longer corresponds to the requirements of the real situation; and

(ii) That it is possible, through a new social order, to do away with these evils altogether.

— 14 — What will this new social order have to be like?
Above all, it will have to take the control of industry and of all branches of production out of the hands of mutually competing individuals, and instead institute a system in which all these branches of production are operated by society as a whole – that is, for the common account, according to a common plan, and with the participation of all members of society.
It will, in other words, abolish competition and replace it with association.
Moreover, since the management of industry by individuals necessarily implies private property, and since competition is in reality merely the manner and form in which the control of industry by private property owners expresses itself, it follows that private property cannot be separated from competition and the individual management of industry. Private property must, therefore, be abolished and in its place must come the common utilization of all instruments of production and the distribution of all products according to common agreement – in a word, what is called the communal ownership of goods.
In fact, the abolition of private property is, doubtless, the shortest and most significant way to characterize the revolution in the whole social order which has been made necessary by the development of industry – and for this reason it is rightly advanced by communists as their main demand.

— 15 — Was not the abolition of private property possible at an earlier time?
No. Every change in the social order, every revolution in property relations, is the necessary consequence of the creation of new forces of production which no longer fit into the old property relations.
Private property has not always existed.
When, towards the end of the Middle Ages, there arose a new mode of production which could not be carried on under the then existing feudal and guild forms of property, this manufacture, which had outgrown the old property relations, created a new property form, private property. And for manufacture and the earliest stage of development of big industry, private property was the only possible property form; the social order based on it was the only possible social order.
So long as it is not possible to produce so much that there is enough for all, with more left over for expanding the social capital and extending the forces of production – so long as this is not possible, there must always be a ruling class directing the use of society’s productive forces, and a poor, oppressed class. How these classes are constituted depends on the stage of development.
The agrarian Middle Ages give us the baron and the serf; the cities of the later Middle Ages show us the guildmaster and the journeyman and the day laborer; the 17th century has its manufacturing workers; the 19th has big factory owners and proletarians.
It is clear that, up to now, the forces of production have never been developed to the point where enough could be developed for all, and that private property has become a fetter and a barrier in relation to the further development of the forces of production.
Now, however, the development of big industry has ushered in a new period. Capital and the forces of production have been expanded to an unprecedented extent, and the means are at hand to multiply them without limit in the near future. Moreover, the forces of production have been concentrated in the hands of a few bourgeois, while the great mass of the people are more and more falling into the proletariat, their situation becoming more wretched and intolerable in proportion to the increase of wealth of the bourgeoisie. And finally, these mighty and easily extended forces of production have so far outgrown private property and the bourgeoisie, that they threaten at any moment to unleash the most violent disturbances of the social order. Now, under these conditions, the abolition of private property has become not only possible but absolutely necessary.

— 16 — Will the peaceful abolition of private property be possible?
It would be desirable if this could happen, and the communists would certainly be the last to oppose it. Communists know only too well that all conspiracies are not only useless, but even harmful. They know all too well that revolutions are not made intentionally and arbitrarily, but that, everywhere and always, they have been the necessary consequence of conditions which were wholly independent of the will and direction of individual parties and entire classes.
But they also see that the development of the proletariat in nearly all civilized countries has been violently suppressed, and that in this way the opponents of communism have been working toward a revolution with all their strength. If the oppressed proletariat is finally driven to revolution, then we communists will defend the interests of the proletarians with deeds as we now defend them with words.

— 17 — Will it be possible for private property to be abolished at one stroke?
No, no more than existing forces of production can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society.
In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity.

— 18 — What will be the course of this revolution?
Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat. Direct in England, where the proletarians are already a majority of the people. Indirect in France and Germany, where the majority of the people consists not only of proletarians, but also of small peasants and petty bourgeois who are in the process of falling into the proletariat, who are more and more dependent in all their political interests on the proletariat, and who must, therefore, soon adapt to the demands of the proletariat. Perhaps this will cost a second struggle, but the outcome can only be the victory of the proletariat.
Democracy would be wholly valueless to the proletariat if it were not immediately used as a means for putting through measures directed against private property and ensuring the livelihood of the proletariat. The main measures, emerging as the necessary result of existing relations, are the following:

(i) Limitation of private property through progressive taxation, heavy inheritance taxes, abolition of inheritance through collateral lines (brothers, nephews, etc.) forced loans, etc.

(ii) Gradual expropriation of landowners, industrialists, railroad magnates and shipowners, partly through competition by state industry, partly directly through compensation in the form of bonds.

(iii) Confiscation of the possessions of all emigrants and rebels against the majority of the people.

(iv) Organization of labor or employment of proletarians on publicly owned land, in factories and workshops, with competition among the workers being abolished and with the factory owners, in so far as they still exist, being obliged to pay the same high wages as those paid by the state.

(v) An equal obligation on all members of society to work until such time as private property has been completely abolished. Formation of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

(vi) Centralization of money and credit in the hands of the state through a national bank with state capital, and the suppression of all private banks and bankers.

(vii) Increase in the number of national factories, workshops, railroads, ships; bringing new lands into cultivation and improvement of land already under cultivation – all in proportion to the growth of the capital and labor force at the disposal of the nation.

(viii) Education of all children, from the moment they can leave their mother’s care, in national establishments at national cost. Education and production together.

(ix) Construction, on public lands, of great palaces as communal dwellings for associated groups of citizens engaged in both industry and agriculture and combining in their way of life the advantages of urban and rural conditions while avoiding the one-sidedness and drawbacks of each.

(x) Destruction of all unhealthy and jerry-built dwellings in urban districts.

(xi) Equal inheritance rights for children born in and out of wedlock.

(xii) Concentration of all means of transportation in the hands of the nation.

It is impossible, of course, to carry out all these measures at once. But one will always bring others in its wake. Once the first radical attack on private property has been launched, the proletariat will find itself forced to go ever further, to concentrate increasingly in the hands of the state all capital, all agriculture, all transport, all trade. All the foregoing measures are directed to this end; and they will become practicable and feasible, capable of producing their centralizing effects to precisely the degree that the proletariat, through its labor, multiplies the country’s productive forces.

Finally, when all capital, all production, all exchange have been brought together in the hands of the nation, private property will disappear of its own accord, money will become superfluous, and production will so expand and man so change that society will be able to slough off whatever of its old economic habits may remain.

— 19 — Will it be possible for this revolution to take place in one country alone?
No. By creating the world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the Earth, and especially the civilized peoples, into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others.
Further, it has co-ordinated the social development of the civilized countries to such an extent that, in all of them, bourgeoisie and proletariat have become the decisive classes, and the struggle between them the great struggle of the day. It follows that the communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized countries – that is to say, at least in England, America, France, and Germany.
It will develop in each of the these countries more or less rapidly, according as one country or the other has a more developed industry, greater wealth, a more significant mass of productive forces. Hence, it will go slowest and will meet most obstacles in Germany, most rapidly and with the fewest difficulties in England. It will have a powerful impact on the other countries of the world, and will radically alter the course of development which they have followed up to now, while greatly stepping up its pace.
It is a universal revolution and will, accordingly, have a universal range.

— 20 — What will be the consequences of theultimate disappearance of private property?
Society will take all forces of production and means of commerce, as well as the exchange and distribution of products, out of the hands of private capitalists and will manage them in accordance with a plan based on the availability of resources and the needs of the whole society. In this way, most important of all, the evil consequences which are now associated with the conduct of big industry will be abolished.
There will be no more crises; the expanded production, which for the present order of society is overproduction and hence a prevailing cause of misery, will then be insufficient and in need of being expanded much further. Instead of generating misery, overproduction will reach beyond the elementary requirements of society to assure the satisfaction of the needs of all; it will create new needs and, at the same time, the means of satisfying them. It will become the condition of, and the stimulus to, new progress, which will no longer throw the whole social order into confusion, as progress has always done in the past. Big industry, freed from the pressure of private property, will undergo such an expansion that what we now see will seem as petty in comparison as manufacture seems when put beside the big industry of our own day. This development of industry will make available to society a sufficient mass of products to satisfy the needs of everyone.
The same will be true of agriculture, which also suffers from the pressure of private property and is held back by the division of privately owned land into small parcels. Here, existing improvements and scientific procedures will be put into practice, with a resulting leap forward which will assure to society all the products it needs.
In this way, such an abundance of goods will be able to satisfy the needs of all its members.
The division of society into different, mutually hostile classes will then become unnecessary. Indeed, it will be not only unnecessary but intolerable in the new social order. The existence of classes originated in the division of labor, and the division of labor, as it has been known up to the present, will completely disappear. For mechanical and chemical processes are not enough to bring industrial and agricultural production up to the level we have described; the capacities of the men who make use of these processes must undergo a corresponding development.
Just as the peasants and manufacturing workers of the last century changed their whole way of life and became quite different people when they were drawn into big industry, in the same way, communal control over production by society as a whole, and the resulting new development, will both require an entirely different kind of human material.
People will no longer be, as they are today, subordinated to a single branch of production, bound to it, exploited by it; they will no longer develop one of their faculties at the expense of all others; they will no longer know only one branch, or one branch of a single branch, of production as a whole. Even industry as it is today is finding such people less and less useful.
Industry controlled by society as a whole, and operated according to a plan, presupposes well-rounded human beings, their faculties developed in balanced fashion, able to see the system of production in its entirety.
The form of the division of labor which makes one a peasant, another a cobbler, a third a factory worker, a fourth a stock-market operator, has already been underminded by machinery and will completely disappear. Education will enable young people quickly to familiarize themselves with the whole system of production and to pass from one branch of production to another in response to the needs of society or their own inclinations. It will, therefore, free them from the one-sided character which the present-day division of labor impresses upon every individual. Communist society will, in this way, make it possible for its members to put their comprehensively developed faculties to full use. But, when this happens, classes will necessarily disappear. It follows that society organized on a communist basis is incompatible with the existence of classes on the one hand, and that the very building of such a society provides the means of abolishing class differences on the other.
A corollary of this is that the difference between city and country is destined to disappear. The management of agriculture and industry by the same people rather than by two different classes of people is, if only for purely material reasons, a necessary condition of communist association. The dispersal of the agricultural population on the land, alongside the crowding of the industrial population into the great cities, is a condition which corresponds to an undeveloped state of both agriculture and industry and can already be felt as an obstacle to further development.
The general co-operation of all members of society for the purpose of planned exploitation of the forces of production, the expansion of production to the point where it will satisfy the needs of all, the abolition of a situation in which the needs of some are satisfied at the expense of the needs of others, the complete liquidation of classes and their conflicts, the rounded development of the capacities of all members of society through the elimination of the present division of labor, through industrial education, through engaging in varying activities, through the participation by all in the enjoyments produced by all, through the combination of city and country – these are the main consequences of the abolition of private property.

— 21 — What will be the influence of communist society on the family?
It will transform the relations between the sexes into a purely private matter which concerns only the persons involved and into which society has no occasion to intervene. It can do this since it does away with private property and educates children on a communal basis, and in this way removes the two bases of traditional marriage – the dependence rooted in private property, of the women on the man, and of the children on the parents.
And here is the answer to the outcry of the highly moral philistines against the “community of women”. Community of women is a condition which belongs entirely to bourgeois society and which today finds its complete expression in prostitution. But prostitution is based on private property and falls with it. Thus, communist society, instead of introducing community of women, in fact abolishes it.

— 22 — What will be the attitude of communism to existing nationalities?
The nationalities of the peoples associating themselves in accordance with the principle of community will be compelled to mingle with each other as a result of this association and thereby to dissolve themselves, just as the various estate and class distinctions must disappear through the abolition of their basis, private property.[3]

— 23 — What will be its attitude to existing religions?
All religions so far have been the expression of historical stages of development of individual peoples or groups of peoples. But communism is the stage of historical development which makes all existing religions superfluous and brings about their disappearance[4]

— 24 — How do communists differ from socialists?
The so-called socialists are divided into three categories.

[ Reactionary Socialists: ]
The first category consists of adherents of a feudal and patriarchal society which has already been destroyed, and is still daily being destroyed, by big industry and world trade and their creation, bourgeois society. This category concludes, from the evils of existing society, that feudal and patriarchal society must be restored because it was free of such evils. In one way or another, all their proposals are directed to this end.
This category of reactionary socialists, for all their seeming partisanship and their scalding tears for the misery of the proletariat, is nevertheless energetically opposed by the communists for the following reasons:

(i) It strives for something which is entirely impossible.

(ii) It seeks to establish the rule of the aristocracy, the guildmasters, the small producers, and their retinue of absolute or feudal monarchs, officials, soldiers, and priests – a society which was, to be sure, free of the evils of present-day society but which brought it at least as many evils without even offering to the oppressed workers the prospect of liberation through a communist revolution.

(iii) As soon as the proletariat becomes revolutionary and communist, these reactionary socialists show their true colors by immediately making common cause with the bourgeoisie against the proletarians.

[ Bourgeois Socialists: ]
The second category consists of adherents of present-day society who have been frightened for its future by the evils to which it necessarily gives rise. What they want, therefore, is to maintain this society while getting rid of the evils which are an inherent part of it.
To this end, some propose mere welfare measures – while others come forward with grandiose systems of reform which, under the pretense of re-organizing society, are in fact intended to preserve the foundations, and hence the life, of existing society.
Communists must unremittingly struggle against these bourgeois socialists because they work for the enemies of communists and protect the society which communists aim to overthrow.

[ Democractic Socialists: ]
Finally, the third category consists of democratic socialists who favor some of the same measures the communists advocate, as described in Question 18, not as part of the transition to communism, however, but as measures which they believe will be sufficient to abolish the misery and evils of present-day society.
These democratic socialists are either proletarians who are not yet sufficiently clear about the conditions of the liberation of their class, or they are representatives of the petty bourgeoisie, a class which, prior to the achievement of democracy and the socialist measures to which it gives rise, has many interests in common with the proletariat.
It follows that, in moments of action, the communists will have to come to an understanding with these democratic socialists, and in general to follow as far as possible a common policy with them – provided that these socialists do not enter into the service of the ruling bourgeoisie and attack the communists.
It is clear that this form of co-operation in action does not exclude the discussion of differences.

— 25 — What is the attitude of the communists to theother political parties of our time?
This attitude is different in the different countries.
In England, France, and Belgium, where the bourgeoisie rules, the communists still have a common interest with the various democratic parties, an interest which is all the greater the more closely the socialistic measures they champion approach the aims of the communists – that is, the more clearly and definitely they represent the interests of the proletariat and the more they depend on the proletariat for support. In England, for example, the working-class Chartists are infinitely closer to the communists than the democratic petty bourgeoisie or the so-called Radicals.

In America, where a democratic constitution has already been established, the communists must make the common cause with the party which will turn this constitution against the bourgeoisie and use it in the interests of the proletariat – that is, with the agrarian National Reformers.
In Switzerland, the Radicals, though a very mixed party, are the only group with which the communists can co-operate, and, among these Radicals, the Vaudois and Genevese are the most advanced.

In Germany, finally, the decisive struggle now on the order of the day is that between the bourgeoisie and the absolute monarchy. Since the communists cannot enter upon the decisive struggle between themselves and the bourgeoisie until the bourgeoisie is in power, it follows that it is in the interest of the communists to help the bourgeoisie to power as soon as possible in order the sooner to be able to overthrow it. Against the governments, therefore, the communists must continually support the radical liberal party, taking care to avoid the self-deceptions of the bourgeoisie and not fall for the enticing promises of benefits which a victory for the bourgeoisie would allegedly bring to the proletariat. The sole advantages which the proletariat would derive from a bourgeois victory would consist

(i) in various concessions which would facilitate the unification of the proletariat into a closely knit, battle-worthy, and organized class; and

(ii) in the certainly that, on the very day the absolute monarchies fall, the struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat will start. From that day on, the policy of the communists will be the same as it now is in the countries where the bourgeoisie is already in power.

AR

Stupid in America by John Stossel

2008-03-05T13:42:00.000-08:00

"Stupid in America" is a nasty title for a program about public education, but some nasty things are going on in America's public schools and it's about time we face up to it.

Kids at New York's Abraham Lincoln High School told me their teachers are so dull students fall asleep in class. One student said, "You see kids all the time walking in the school smoking weed, you know. It's a normal thing here."

We tried to bring "20/20" cameras into New York City schools to see for ourselves and show you what's going on in the schools, but officials wouldn't allow it.

Washington, D.C., officials steered us to the best classrooms in their district.
We wanted to tape typical classrooms but were turned down in state after state.

Finally, school officials in Washington, D.C., allowed "20/20" to give cameras to a few students who were handpicked at two schools they'd handpicked. One was Woodrow Wilson High. Newsweek says it's one of the best schools in America. Yet what the students taped didn't inspire confidence.

One teacher didn't have control over the kids. Another "20/20" student cameraman videotaped a boy dancing wildly with his shirt off, in front of his teacher.
If you're like most American parents, you might think "These things don't happen at my kid's school." A Gallup Poll survey showed 76 percent of Americans were completely or somewhat satisfied with their kids' public school.

Education reformers like Kevin Chavous have a message for these parents: If you only knew.
Even though people in the suburbs might think their schools are great, Chavous says, "They're not. That's the thing and the test scores show that."
Chavous and many other education professionals say Americans don't know that their public schools, on the whole, just aren't that good. Because without competition, parents don't know what their kids might have had.

And while many people say, "We need to spend more money on our schools," there actually isn't a link between spending and student achievement.
Jay Greene, author of "Education Myths," points out that "If money were the solution, the problem would already be solved ... We've doubled per pupil spending, adjusting for inflation, over the last 30 years, and yet schools aren't better."
He's absolutely right. National graduation rates and achievement scores are flat, while spending on education has increased more than 100 percent since 1971. More money hasn't helped American kids.

Ben Chavis is a former public school principal who now runs an alternative charter school in Oakland, Calif., that spends thousands of dollars less per student than the surrounding public schools. He laughs at the public schools' complaints about money.
"That is the biggest lie in America. They waste money," he said.

To save money, Chavis asks the students to do things like keep the grounds picked up and set up for their own lunch. For gym class, his students often just run laps around the block. All of this means there's more money left over for teaching.

Even though he spends less money per student than the public schools do, Chavis pays his teachers more than what public school teachers earn. His school also thrives because the principal gets involved. Chavis shows up at every classroom and uses gimmicks like small cash payments for perfect attendance.

Since he took over four years ago, his school has gone from being among the worst in Oakland to being the best. His middle school has the highest test scores in the city.
"It's not about the money," he said.

He's confident that even kids who come from broken families and poor families will do well in his school. "Give me the poor kids, and I will outperform the wealthy kids who live in the hills. And we do it," he said.

Monopoly Kills Innovation and Cheats Kids

Chavis's charter school is an example of how a little innovation can create a school that can change kids' lives. You don't get innovation without competition.

To give you an idea of how competitive American schools are and how U.S. students performed compared with their European counterparts, we gave parts of an international test to some high school students in Belgium and in New Jersey.

Belgian kids cleaned the American kids' clocks, and called them "stupid."
We didn't pick smart kids to test in Europe and dumb kids in the United States. The American students attend an above-average school in New Jersey, and New Jersey's kids have test scores that are above average for America.

Lov Patel, the boy who got the highest score among the American students, told me, "I'm shocked, because it just shows how advanced they are compared to us."

The Belgian students didn't perform better because they're smarter than American students. They performed better because their schools are better. At age 10, American students take an international test and score well above the international average. But by age 15, when students from 40 countries are tested, the Americans place 25th.

American schools don't teach as well as schools in other countries because they are government monopolies, and monopolies don't have much incentive to compete. In Belgium, by contrast, the money is attached to the kids -- it's a kind of voucher system. Government funds education -- at many different kinds of schools -- but if a school can't attract students, it goes out of business.
Belgian school principal Kaat Vandensavel told us she works hard to impress parents.
She told us, "If we don't offer them what they want for their child, they won't come to our school." She constantly improves the teaching, saying, "You can't afford 10 teachers out of 160 that don't do their work, because the clients will know, and won't come to you again."
"That's normal in Western Europe," Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby told me. "If schools don't perform well, a parent would never be trapped in that school in the same way you could be trapped in the U.S."

Last week Florida's Supreme Court shut down "opportunity scholarships," Florida's small attempt at competition. Public money can't be spent on private schools, said the court, because the state constitution commands the funding only of "uniform . . . high-quality" schools. Government schools are neither uniform nor high-quality, and without competition, no new teaching plan or No Child Left Behind law will get the monopoly to serve its customers well.
The longer kids stay in American schools, the worse they do in international competition. They do worse than kids from poorer countries that spend much less money on education, ranking behind not only Belgium but also Poland, the Czech Republic and South Korea.
This should come as no surprise if you remember that public education in the United States is a government monopoly. Don't like your public school? Tough. The school is terrible? Tough. Your taxes fund that school regardless of whether it's good or bad. That's why government monopolies routinely fail their customers. Union-dominated monopolies are even worse.
In New York City, it's "just about impossible" to fire a bad teacher, says Schools Chancellor Joel Klein. The new union contract offers some relief, but it's still about 200 pages of bureaucracy. "We tolerate mediocrity," said Klein, because "people get paid the same, whether they're outstanding, average or way below average."

Here's just one example from New York City: It took years to fire a teacher who sent sexually oriented e-mails to "Cutie 101," a 16-year-old student. Klein said, "He hasn't taught, but we have had to pay him, because that's what's required under the contract."
Only after six years of litigation were they able to fire him. In the meantime, they paid the teacher more than $300,000. Klein said he employs dozens of teachers who he's afraid to let near the kids, so he has them sit in what are called rubber rooms. This year he will spend $20 million dollars to warehouse teachers in five rubber rooms. It's an alternative to firing them. In the last four years, only two teachers out of 80,000 were fired for incompetence. Klein's office says the new contract will make it easier to get rid of sex offenders, but it will still be difficult to fire incompetent teachers.

When I confronted Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, she said, "They [the NYC school board] just don't want to do the work that's entailed." But the "work that's entailed" is so onerous that most principals just have just given up, or gotten bad teachers to transfer to another school. They even have a name for it: "the dance of the lemons."
Zoned Out of a Good Education

I talked with 18-year-old Dorian Cain in South Carolina, who was still struggling to read a single sentence in a first-grade level book when I met him. Although his public schools had spent nearly $100,000 on him over 12 years, he still couldn't read.

So "20/20" sent Dorian to a private learning center, Sylvan, to see if teachers there could teach Dorian to read when the South Carolina public schools failed to.

Using computers and workbooks, Dorian's reading went up two grade levels -- after just 72 hours of instruction.

His mother, Gena Cain, is thrilled with Dorian's progress but disappointed with his public schools. "With Sylvan, it's a huge improvement. And they're doing what they're supposed to do. They're on point. But I can't say the same for the public schools," she said.
Lying to Beat the System
Gena Cain, like most parents, doesn't have a choice which public school her kids attend. She followed the rules, and her son paid the price.
In San Jose, Calif., some parents break the rules to get their kids into Fremont Union schools. They're so much better than neighboring schools that parents sometimes cheat to get their kids in by pretending to live in the school district.

"We have maybe hundreds of kids who are here illegally, under false pretenses," said District Superintendent Steve Rowley.

Inspector John Lozano works for the district going door-to-door to check if kids really live where they say they live. And even seeing that a child is present at a particular address isn't enough. Lozano says he needs to look inside the house to make sure the student really lives there.
Think about what he's doing. The school district police send him into your daughter's bedroom. He even goes through drawers and closets if he has to.
At one house he found a computer and some teen magazines and pictures of a student with her friends. He decided that student passed the residency test.
But a grandmother who listed an address in his district is caught. The people who answered the door when Lozano visited told him she didn't live there.
Two days later, I talked with the grandmother who tried to get her grandson into the Fremont schools.

"I was actually crying. I was crying in front of this 14-year-old. Why can't they just let parents to get in the school of their choice?" she asked.
Why can't she make a choice? It's sad that school officials force her to go to the black market to get her grandson a better education. After we started calling the school, the school did decide to let him stay in the district.
School-Choice Proponents Meet Resistance
When the Sanford family moved from Charleston to Columbia, S.C., the family had a big concern: Where would the kids go to school? In most places, you must attend the public school in the zone where you live, but the middle school near the Sanford's new home was rated below average.
It turned out, however, that this didn't pose a problem for this family, because the reason the Sanfords moved to Columbia was that Mark Sanford had been elected governor. He and his wife were invited to send their kids to schools in better districts.
Sanford realized how unfair the system was. "If you can buy a $250,000 or $300,000 house, you're gonna get some great public education," Gov. Sanford said. Or if you have political connections.
The Sanfords decided it was unfair to take advantage of their position as "first family" and ended up sending their kids to private school. "It's too important to me to sacrifice their education. I get one shot at it. If I don't pay very close attention to how my boys get educated then I've lost an opportunity to make them the best they can be in this world," Jenny Sanford said.
The governor then proposed giving every parent in South Carolina that kind of choice, regardless of where they lived or whether they made a lot of money. He said state tax credits should help parents pay for private schools. Then they would have a choice.
"The public has to know that there's an alternative there. It's just like, do you get a Sprint phone or an AT&T phone," Chavous said.
He's right. When monopolies rule, there is little choice, and little gets done. In America the phone company was once a government-supported monopoly. All the phones were black, and all the calls expensive. With competition, things have changed -- for the better. We pay less for phone calls. If we're unhappy with our phone service, we switch companies.
Why can't kids benefit from similar competition in education?
"People expect and demand choice in every other area of their life," Sanford said.
The governor announced his plan last year and many parents cheered the idea, but school boards, teachers unions and politicians objected. PTAs even sent kids home with a letter saying, "Contact your legislator. How can we spend state money on something that hasn't been proven?"
A lot of people say education tax credits and vouchers are a terrible idea, that they'll drain money from public schools and give it to private ones.
Last week's Florida court ruling against vouchers came after teacher Ruth Holmes Cameron and advocacy groups brought a suit to block the program.
"To say that competition is going to improve education? It's just not gonna work. You know competition is not for children. It's not for human beings. It's not for public education. It never has been, it never will be," Holmes said.
Why not? Would you keep going back to a restaurant that served you a bad meal? Or a barber that gave you a bad haircut? What if the government assigned you to "your" grocery store. The store wouldn't have to compete for your business, and it would soon sell spoiled milk or stock only high profit items. Real estate agencies would sell houses advertising "neighborhood with a good grocery store." That's insane, and yet that's what America does with public schools.
Chavous, who has worked to get more school choice in Washington, D.C., said, "Choice to me is the only way. I believe that we can force the system from an external vantage point to change itself. It will never change itself from within. ... Unless there is some competition infused in the equation, unless that occurs, then they know they have a captive monopoly that they can continue to dominate."

Competition inspires people to do what we didn't think we could do. If people got to choose their kids' school, education options would be endless. There could soon be technology schools, science schools, virtual schools where you learn at home on your computer, sports schools, music schools, schools that go all year, schools with uniforms, schools that open early and keep kids later, and, who knows what else. If there were competition, all kinds of new ideas would bloom.

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1500338

The 16th Amendment by Cleon Skousen

2008-03-04T10:29:00.000-08:00

W. Cleon Skousen
Strange as it may seem, the Sixteenth Amendment (which gave the American people the affliction of confiscatory income taxes) was never supposed to have passed. It was introduced by the Republicans as part of a political scheme to trick the Democrats, but it backfired.

Background

The Founding Fathers had rejected income taxes (or any other direct taxes) unless they were apportioned to each state according to population. Nevertheless, an income tax was levied during the Civil War and upheld by the Supreme Court on somewhat tenuous reasoning. When another income tax was enacted in 1893, the Supreme Court found it unconstitutional. In connection with the two Pollock cases reviewed in 1895, the Court declared that the act violated Article I, section 9 of the Constitution.

During the following decade, however, the complexion of the Court changed somewhat, and so did public sentiment. There was great social unrest and the idea of a tax to "soak the rich" began to take root among liberals in both major parties. Several times the Democrats introduced bills to provide a tax on higher incomes but each time the conservative branch of the Republican party killed it in the Senate. The Democrats used this as evidence that the Republicans were the "party of the rich" and should be thrown out of power, forcing President William Howard Taft to acknowledge in political speeches that income taxes might be all right "in principle", but it was well known among close associates that he was strongly opposed to such a tax.

The Bailey Bill

In April 1909, Senator Joseph W. Bailey, a conservative Democrat from Texas who was also opposed to income taxes, decided to further embarrass the Republicans by forcing them to openly oppose an income tax bill similar to those which had been introduced in the past. He introduced his bill expecting it to get the usual opposition. However, to his amazement, Teddy Roosevelt and a growing element of liberals in the Republican party came out in favor of the bill and it looked as though it was going to pass.

Not only was Bailey surprised, but Senator Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island, the Republican floor leader, frantically met with Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts and President Taft to work out a strategy to demolish the Bailey tax bill. Their own party was split too widely to permit a direct confrontation, so the strategy was to pull a political end run. They announced that they favored an income tax but only if it were an amendment to the Constitution. Within their own circle, they discussed how it might get approval of the House and the Senate, but they were quite certain that it could be defeated in the more conservative states-three-fourths of which were required in order to ratify the amendment.

Thus, the Democrats were off guard when President Taft unexpectedly sent a message to Congress on June 16th, 1909, recommending the passage of a constitutional amendment to legalize federal income tax legislation.

The strategy threw the liberals into an uproar. At the very moment when their Bailey bill was about to pass, the Republicans were coming out for an amendment to the Constitution which

would probably be defeated by the states.

Reaction to the Amendment

Congressman Cordell Hull (D-Tenn., and later Secretary of State under FDR) saw exactly what was happening. He took the floor to excoriate the Republican leaders. Said he:
"No person at all familiar with the present trend of national legislation will seriously insist that these same Republican leaders are over-anxious to see the country adopt an income tax...What powerful influence, what new light and deepseated motive suddenly moves these political veterans to 'about face' and pretend to warmly embrace this doctrine which they have heretofore uniformly denounced?" {1}

He went on to expose what he considered to be a political trick. He needn't have been so concerned. The slogan of "soak the rich" automatically aroused Pavlovian salivation among politicians both in Washington and the states. The Senate approved the Sixteenth Amendment with an astonishing unanimity of 77-0! The House approved it by a vote of 318-14.
When Republican Congressman Sereno E. Payne of New York, who had introduced the amendment in the House, saw that this end run was turning into a winning touchdown for the opposition, he was horrified. He went to the floor and openly denounced the bill he had sponsored. Said he:

"As to the general policy of an income tax, I am utterly opposed to it. I believe with Gladstone that it tends to make a nation of liars. I believe it is the most easily concealed of any tax that can be laid, the most difficult of enforcement, and the hardest to collect; that it is, in a word, a tax upon the income of honest men and an exemption, to a greater or lesser extent, of the income of rascals; and so I am opposed to any income tax in time of peace...I hope that if the Constitution is amended in this way the time will not come when the American people will ever want to enact an income tax except in time of war." {2}

The end run of the Republican leadership did indeed backfire. State after state ratified this "soak the rich" amendment until it went into full force and effect on February 12, 1913.

Did it Soak the Rich?

Certain writers such as Alfred Hinsey Kelly and Winfred Audif Harbison (authors of "The American Constitution: Origins" [New York: Norton, 1970]) rejoiced that this amendment "shifted the growing burden of federal finance to the wealthy."{3} Nothing could be further from the truth!

The wealthy, especially the super-wealthy, had anticipated this development and had created a clever device to protect their riches. It was called a "charitable foundation". The idea was to co-sign the ownership of wealth, including stocks and securities, to a foundation and then get Congress and the state legislatures to declare all such charitable institutions exempt from taxes. By setting up boards which were under the control of these wealthy benefactors they could escape the tax and still maintain control over the disposition of these fabulous fortunes.
Long before the federal income tax was in place, multimillionaires such as John D. Rockefeller (who once said "I want to own nothing and control everything"), J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie had their foundations set up and operating. The next step was to make certain that the new tax bill passed by Congress contained a provision specifically exempting their treasure houses from taxation.

The tax bill which the Sixteenth Amendment authorized was introduced as House Resolution 3321 on October 3, 1913. It turned out to be somewhat of a legislative potpourri for tax attorneys, accountants and the federal courts. In the ensuing years, untold millions of dollars have been spent trying to figure out exactly what this tax law, and those which followed it, were intended to provide. However, tucked away in its inward parts was that precious key which safely locked up the riches of the super wealthy. Here are the magic words under Section 2, paragraph G:

"Provided, however, that nothing in this section shall apply...to any corporation or association organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific or educational purposes."
All of the foundations of the super-rich were designed to qualify under one or more of these categories.

How the Cute Little Monkey Grew into a Gorilla

When the first income tax was sent out to the people, the Congress chortled confidently that "all good citizen will willingly and cheerfully support and sustain this, the fairest and cheapest of all taxes." That was the cute little monkey part. After all, the first tax ranged from merely 1% on the first $20,000 of taxable income and was only 7% on incomes above $500,000. Who could complain? (Ed. note: Expressed in 1994 dollars this sentence would read, "the first tax ranged from merely 1% on the first $298,000 of taxable income and was only 7% on incomes above $7,460,000.")

At first, scarcely anyone did. Little did they know that before the tinkering was done in Washington, this system would be described by many Americans as the most unfair and expensive tax in the history of the nation. Within a few years, it had become the principal source of income for the federal government.

In the beginning, hardly anyone had to file a tax return because the tax did not apply to the vast majority of America's work-a-day citizens. For example, in 1939, 26 years after the Sixteenth Amendment was adopted, only 5% of the population, counting both taxpayers and their dependents, was required to file returns. Today, more than 80% of the population is under the

income tax.

Withholding Taxes

The collection process was greatly facilitated in 1943 by a device created by FDR to pay the costs of WWII. It was called "withholding from wages and salaries". In other words, the tax was collected at the payroll window before it was even due to be paid by the taxpayer. Economists point out that this device, more than any other single factor, shifted the tax from its original design as a tax on the wealthy to a tax on the masses--mostly the middle class.

Investigations disclosed that the truly wealthy pay relatively little or no income tax at all.
Some idea of how the cute little monkey grew into a gorilla is perceived from the fact that nearly half of all federal revenue is now raised by income taxes. Furthermore, the higher brackets are literally confiscatory--but by "due process", of course, under the Sixteenth Amendment. Rates have been as high as 94% in the upper brackets during wartime, and even in peacetime they are presently 50%. Medium income people up through the upper middle class pay between 12 & 35%. Nevertheless, at all levels it has become sufficiently burdensome to discourage the attainment of basic economic advantage which most Americans seek.

Weaknesses of the System

The most damaging aspect of the Sixteenth Amendment is the fact that it vitiated the unalienable rights provided in the 4th Amendment. This is the amendment which protects privacy--privacy of the home, business, personal papers and personal affairs of the private citizen. None of these are disturbed by a poll (head or capitation) tax because it is so much per person regardless of the circumstances, but when the tax is based on income, the IRS is assigned the most unpleasant task of making certain that everyone pays his fair share. This task is physically impossible without prying into the private papers, private business and personal affairs of the individual citizens. By any standard, it is a miserable assignment. Furthermore, it is impossible to run audits and surveys of all taxpayers and so the audits seldom check more than 2% of them.

There are many things wrong with this approach. Worst of all, it puts the government tax collectors in the gorilla role and intimidates citizens who are unlucky enough to be audited with the feeling that they are "victims" of an unfair system.

The IRS also finds it difficult to avoid the attitude that each taxpayer is a cheat, even a criminal, who must somehow be cornered and caught. This has brought the structure of the entire income tax collection process into question.

For example, the underground economy of monetary transactions (which is conducted without records) is well known. It is estimated that losses in federal revenues from this underground economy are at least $100 billion per year. Obviously, this is not fair to those who are paying their share. Then there is an estimated $65 billion per year which is lost because it is not reported. This is considered unfair. There is a lot of padding on expense accounts, which is estimated to reduce the tax total by another $18 billion. Other operations, both legal and illegal, jumps the total up a few billion more.

There has also been extensive criticism of the prosecution of tax cases. The appeal is through a system of tax courts which are without juries. In order to get a tax case into a regular court where there is a jury, the citizen must pay the tax and then sue the government.
Thousands of complaints have also poured into the IRS concerning the tactics used by some of its agents. Citizens feel they are treated as criminals rather than suspects who are innocent until proven guilty.

Is there a better way? Here is one answer by a former head of the IRS.

A Former IRS Commissioner's Statement
T. Coleman Andrews served as commissioner of IRS for nearly 3 years during the early 1950s. Following his resignation, he made the following statement:

"Congress [in implementing the Sixteenth Amendment] went beyond merely enacting an income tax law and repealed Article IV of the Bill of Rights, by empowering the tax collector to do the very things from which that article says we were to be secure. It opened up our homes, our papers and our effects to the prying eyes of government agents and set the stage for searches of our books and vaults and for inquiries into our private affairs whenever the tax men might decide, even though there might not be any justification beyond mere cynical suspicion."
"The income tax is bad because it has robbed you and me of the guarantee of privacy and the respect for our property that were given to us in Article IV of the Bill of Rights. This invasion is absolute and complete as far as the amount of tax that can be assessed is concerned. Please remember that under the Sixteenth Amendment, Congress can take 100% of our income anytime it wants to. As a matter of fact, right now it is imposing a tax as high as 91%. This is downright confiscation and cannot be defended on any other grounds."

"The income tax is bad because it was conceived in class hatred, is an instrument of vengeance and plays right into the hands of the communists. It employs the vicious communist principle of taking from each according to his accumulation of the fruits of his labor and giving to others according to their needs, regardless of whether those needs are the result of indolence or lack of pride, self-respect, personal dignity or other attributes of men."

"The income tax is fulfilling the Marxist prophecy that the surest way to destroy a capitalist society is by steeply graduated taxes on income and heavy levies upon the estates of people when they die."

[As matters now stand, if our children make the most of their capabilities and training, they will have to give most of it to the tax collector and so become slaves of the government. People cannot pull themselves up by the bootstraps anymore because the tax collector gets the boots and the straps as well.]

"The income tax is bad because it is oppressive to all and discriminates particularly against those people who prove themselves most adept at keeping the wheels of business turning and creating maximum employment and a high standard of living for their fellow men."

"I believe that a better way to raise revenue not only can be found but must be found because I am convinced that the present system is leading us right back to the very tyranny from which those, who established this land of freedom, risked their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to forever free themselves..."{4}

REFERENCES:
Congressional Record-House, July 12, 1909, p.4404
Congressional Record-House, July 12, 1909, p.4390
Original edition, p.626
The Utah Independent, March 29, 1973

Source: http://www.salestax.org/library/skousen_16history.html

The Declaration of Independence

2008-03-02T15:32:00.000-08:00

The Declaration of Independence

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to 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. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

The Proper Role Of Government by Ezra Taft Benson

2008-02-28T19:25:00.000-08:00

http://www.zionsbest.com/proper_role.html

The Proper Role of Government

by The Honorable Ezra Taft Benson

Former Secretary of Agriculture [The Eisenhower Administration - ed.] Published in 1968

Men in the public spotlight constantly are asked to express an opinion on a myriad of government proposals and projects. "What do you think of TVA?" "What is your opinion of Medicare?" How do you feel about Urban Renewal?" The list is endless. All too often, answers to these questions seem to be based, not upon any solid principle, but upon the popularity of the specific government program in question. Seldom are men willing to oppose a popular program if they, themselves, wish to be popular - especially if they seek public office.

Government Should Be Based Upon Sound Principles

Such an approach to vital political questions of the day can only lead to publistions of the day can only lead to public confusion and legislative chaos. Decisions of this nature should be based upon and measured against certain basic principles regarding the proper role of government. If principles are correct, then they can be applied to any specific proposal with confidence.

"Are there not, in reality, underlying, universal principles with reference to which all issues must be resolved whether the society be simple or complex in its mechanical organization? It seems to me we could relieve ourselves of most of the bewilderment which so unsettles and distracts us by subjecting each situation to the simple test of right and wrong. Right and wrong as moral principles do not change. They are applicable and reliable determinants whether the situations with which we deal are simple or complicated. There is always a right and wrong to every question which requires our solution." (Albert E. Bowen, Prophets, Principles and National Survival, P. 21-22)

Unlike the political opportunist, the true statesman values principle above popularity, and works to create popularity for those political principles which are wise and just.

The Correct Role Of Government

I should like to outline in clear, concise, and straight-forward terms the political principles to which I subscribe. These are the guidelines which determine, now and in the future, my attitudes and actions toward all domestic proposals and projectsals and projects of government. These are the principles which, in my opinion, proclaim the proper role of government in the domestic affairs of the nation.

"(I) believe that governments were instituted of God for the benefit of man; and that he holds men accountable for their acts in relation to them, both in making laws and administering them, for the good and safety of society."

"(I) believe that no government can exist in peace, except such laws are framed and held inviolate as will secure to each individual the free exercise of conscience, the right and control of property, and the protection of life..."

"(I) believe that all men are bound to sustain and uphold the respective governments in which they reside, which protected in their inherent and inalienable rights by the laws of such governments; and that sedition and rebellion are unbecoming every citizen thus protected, and should be punished accordingly; and that all governments have a right to enact such laws as in their own judgments are best calculated to secure the public interest; at the same time, however, holding sacred the freedom of conscience." (D&C 134: 1-2,5)

The Most Important Function Of Government

It is generally agreed that the most important single function of government is to secure the rights and freedoms of individual citizens. But, what are those right? And what is their source? Until these questions are answered there is little likelihood that we can correctly determine how government can best secure them. Thomas Paine, back in the days of the American Revolution, explained that:

"Rights are not gifts from one man to another, nor from one class of men to another... It is impossible t discover any origin of rights otherwise than in the origin of man; it consequently follows that rights appertain to man in right of his existence, and must therefore be equal to every man." (P.P.N.S., p. 134)

The great Thomas Jefferson asked:

"Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath?" (Works 8:404; P.P.N.S., p.141)

Starting at the foundation of the pyramid, let us first consider the origin of those freedoms we have come to know are human rights. There are only two possible sources. Rights are either God-given as part of the Divine Plan, or they are granted by government as part of the political plan. Reason, necessity, tradition and religious convictions all lead me to accept the divine origin of these rights. If we accept the premise that human rights are granted by government, then we must be willing to accept the corolla must be willing to accept the corollary that they can be denied by government. I, for one, shall never accept that premise. As the French political economist, Frederick Bastiat, phrased it so succinctly, "Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place." (The Law, p.6)

The Real Meaning Of The Separation Of Church And State

I support the doctrine of separation of church and state as traditionally interpreted to prohibit the establishment of an official national religion. But I am opposed to the doctrine of separation of church and state as currently interpreted to divorce government from any formal recognition of God. The current trend strikes a potentially fatal blow at the concept of the divine origin of our rights, and unlocks the door for an easy entry of future tyranny. If Americans should ever come to believe that their rights and freedoms are instituted among men by politicians and bureaucrats, then they will no longer carry the proud inheritance of their forefathers, but will grovel before their masters seeking favors and dispensations - a throwback to the Feudal System of the Dark Ages. We must ever keep in mind the inspired words of Thomas Jefferson, as found in the Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." (P.P.N. S., p.519)

Since God created man with certain unalienable rights, and man, in turn, created government to help secure and safeguard those rights, it follows that man is superior to the creature which he created. Man is superior to government and should remain master over it, not the other way around. Even the non-believer can appreciate the logic of this relationship.

The Source Of Governmental Power

Leaving aside, for a moment, the question of the divine origin of rights, it is obvious that a government is nothing more or less than a relatively small group of citizens who have been hired, in a sense, by the rest of us to perform certain functions and discharge certain responsibilities which have been authorized. It stands to reason that the government itself has no innate power or privilege to do anything. Its only source of authority and power is from the people who have created it. This is made clear in the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States, which reads: "WE THE PEOPLE... do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

The important thing to keep in mind is that the people in mind is that the people who have created their government can give to that government only such powers as they, themselves, have in the first place. Obviously, they cannot give that which they do not possess. So, the question boils down to this. What powers properly belong to each and every person in the absence of and prior to the establishment of any organized governmental form? A hypothetical question? Yes, indeed! But, it is a question which is vital to an understanding of the principles which underlie the proper function of government.

Of course, as James Madison, sometimes called the Father of the Constitution, said, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." (The Federalist, No. 51)

Natural Rights

In a primitive state, there is no doubt that each man would be justified in using force, if necessary, to defend himself against physical harm, against theft of the fruits of his labor, and against enslavement of another. This principle was clearly explained by Bastiat:

"Each of us has a natural right - from God - to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is propAnd what is property but and extension of our faculties?" (The Law, p.6)

Indeed, the early pioneers found that a great deal of their time and energy was being spent doing all three - defending themselves, their property and their liberty - in what properly was called the "Lawless West." In order for man to prosper, he cannot afford to spend his time constantly guarding his family, his fields, and his property against attach and theft, so he joins together with his neighbors and hires a sheriff. At this precise moment, government is born. The individual citizens delegate to the sheriff their unquestionable right to protect themselves. The sheriff now does for them only what they had a right to do for themselves - nothing more. Quoting again from Bastiat:

"If every person has the right to defend - even by force - his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right --its reason for existing, its lawfulness -- is based on individual right." (The Law, p. 6)

So far so good. But now we come to the moment of truth. Suppose pioneer "A" wants another horse for his wagon, He doesn't have the money to buy one, but since pioneer "B" has an extra horse, he decides that he is entitled to share in his neighbor's good fortune, Is he entitled to take his neitake his neighbor's horse? Obviously not! If his neighbor wishes to give it or lend it, that is another question. But so long as pioneer "B" wishes to keep his property, pioneer "A" has no just claim to it.

If "A" has no proper power to take "B's" property, can he delegate any such power to the sheriff? No. Even if everyone in the community desires that "B" give his extra horse to "A", they have no right individually or collectively to force him to do it. They cannot delegate a power they themselves do not have. This important principle was clearly understood and explained by John Locke nearly 300 years ago:

"For nobody can transfer to another more power than he has in himself, and nobody has an absolute arbitrary power over himself, or over any other, to destroy his own life, or take away the life of property of another." (Two Treatises of Civil Government, II, 135; P.P.N.S. p. 93)

The Proper Function Of Government

This means, then, that the proper function of government is limited only to those spheres of activity within which the individual citizen has the right to act. By deriving its just powers from the governed, government becomes primarily a mechanism for defense against bodily harm, theft and involuntary servitude. It cannot claim the power to redistribute the wealth or force reluctant citizens to perform acts of charity against their will. Government is created by man. No mted by man. No man possesses such power to delegate. The creature cannot exceed the creator.

In general terms, therefore, the proper role of government includes such defensive activities, as maintaining national military and local police forces for protection against loss of life, loss of property, and loss of liberty at the hands of either foreign despots or domestic criminals.

The Powers Of A Proper Government

It also includes those powers necessarily incidental to the protective functions such as:

(1) The maintenance of courts where those charged with crimes may be tried and where disputes between citizens may be impartially settled.

(2) The establishment of a monetary system and a standard of weights and measures so that courts may render money judgments, taxing authorities may levy taxes, and citizens may have a uniform standard to use in their business dealings.

My attitude toward government is succinctly expressed by the following provision taken from the Alabama Constitution:

"That the sole object and only legitimate end of government is to protect the citizen in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property, and when the government assumes other functions it is usurpation and oppression." (Art. 1, Sec. 35)

An important test I use in passing judgment upon an act of government is this: If it were up to me as an individual to punish my neighbor for violl to punish my neighbor for violating a given law, would it offend my conscience to do so? Since my conscience will never permit me to physically punish my fellow man unless he has done something evil, or unless he has failed to do something which

I have a moral right to require of him to do, I will never knowingly authorize my agent, the government to do this on my behalf. I realize that when I give my consent to the adoption of a law, I specifically instruct the police - the government - to take either the life, liberty, or property of anyone who disobeys that law. Furthermore, I tell them that if anyone resists the enforcement of the law, they are to use any means necessary - yes, even putting the lawbreaker to death or putting him in jail - to overcome such resistance. These are extreme measures but unless laws are enforced, anarchy results. As John Locke explained many years ago:

"The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings, capable of laws, where there is no law there is no freedom. For liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others, which cannot be where there is no law; and is not, as we are told, 'a liberty for every man to do what he lists.' For who could be free, when every other man's humour might domineer over him? But a liberty to dispose and order freely as he lists his person, actions, possessions, and his whole property within erty within the allowance of those laws under which he is, and therein not to be subject to the arbitrary will of another, but freely follow his own." (Two Treatises of Civil Government, II, 57: P>P>N>S., p.101)

I believe we Americans should use extreme care before lending our support to any proposed government program. We should fully recognize that government is no plaything. As George Washington warned, "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence - it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master!" (The Red Carpet, p.142) It is an instrument of force and unless our conscience is clear that we would not hesitate to put a man to death, put him in jail or forcibly deprive him of his property for failing to obey a given law, we should oppose it.

The Constitution Of The United States

Another standard I use in deterring what law is good and what is bad is the Constitution of the United States. I regard this inspired document as a solemn agreement between the citizens of this nation which every officer of government is under a sacred duty to obey. As Washington stated so clearly in his immortal Farewell Address:

"The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. - But the constitution which at any time exists, until changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people is sacredly obligatory udly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government." (P.P.N.S., p. 542)

I am especially mindful that the Constitution provides that the great bulk of the legitimate activities of government are to be carried out at the state or local level. This is the only way in which the principle of "self-government" can be made effective. As James Madison said before the adoption of the Constitution, " (We) rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government." (Federalist, No.39; P.P.N.S., p. 128) Thomas Jefferson made this interesting observation: "Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question." (Works 8:3; P.P.N.S., p. 128)

The Value Of Local Government

It is a firm principle that the smallest or lowest level that can possibly undertake the task is the one that should do so. First, the community or city. If the city cannot handle it, then the county. Next, the state; and only if no smaller unit can possible do the job should the federal government be considered. This is merely the application to the field of politics of that wise and time-tested principle of never asking a larger gr a larger group to do that which can be done by a smaller group. And so far as government is concerned the smaller the unit and the closer it is to the people, the easier it is to guide it, to keep it solvent and to keep our freedom. Thomas Jefferson understood this principle very well and explained it this way:

"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 every one exactly the functions he is competent to. Let the national government be entrusted with the defense of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations; the State governments with the civil rights, law, police, and administration of what concerns the State generally; the counties with the local concerns of the counties, and each ward direct the interests within itself. It is by dividing and subdividing these republics from the great national one down through all its subordinations, until it ends in the administration of every man's farm by himself; by placing under every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best. 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." (Works 6:543; P.P.N.S., p. 125)

It is well to remember that the states of this republic created the Federal Government. The Federal Government did not create the states.

Things The Government Should Not Do

A category of government activity which, today, not only requires the closest scrutiny, but which also poses a grave danger to our continued freedom, is the activity NOT within the proper sphere of government. No one has the authority to grant such powers, as welfare programs, schemes for re-distributing the wealth, and activities which coerce people into acting in accordance with a prescribed code of social planning. There is one simple test. Do I as an individual have a right to use force upon my neighbor to accomplish this goal? If I do have such a right, then I may delegate that power to my government to exercise on my behalf. If I do not have that right as an individual, then I cannot delegate it to government, and I cannot ask my government to perform the act for me.

To be sure, there are times when this principle of the proper role of government is most annoying and inconvenient. If I could only FORCE the ignorant to provided for themselves, or the selfish to be generous with their wealth! But if we permit government to manufacture its own authority out of thin air, and to create self-proclaimed powers not delegated to it by the people, then the creature exceeds the creator and becomes master. Beyond that point, where shall the line be drawn? Who is to say "this far, but no farther?" What clear PRINCIPLE will stay the hand of government from reaching farther and yet farther into our daily lives? We shouldn't forget the wise words of President Grover Cleveland that "... though the people support the Government the Government should not support the people." (P.P.N.S., p.345) We should also remember, as Frederic Bastiat reminded us, that "Nothing can enter the public treasury for the benefit of one citizen or one class unless other citizens and other classes have been forced to send it in." (THE LAW, p. 30; P.P.N.S., p. 350)

The Dividing Line Between Proper And Improper Government

As Bastiat pointed out over a hundred years ago, once government steps over this clear line between the protective or negative role into the aggressive role of redistributing the wealth and providing so-called "benefits" for some of its citizens, it then becomes a means for what he accurately described as legalized plunder. It becomes a lever of unlimited power which is the sought-after prize of unscrupulous individuals and pressure groups, each seeking to control the machine to fatten his own pockets or to benefit its favorite charities - all with the other fellow's money, of course. (THE LAW, 1850, reprinted by the Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington-On-Hudson, N.Y.)

The Nature Of Legal Plunder

Listen to Bastiat's explanation of this "legal plunder." "When a portion of wealth is tranferred from the person who owns it - without his consent and without compensation, and whether by force or by fraud - to anyone who does not own it, then I say that property is violated; that an act of plunder is committed!

"How is the legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime..." (THE LAW, p. 21, 26; P.P.N.S., p. 377)

As Bastiat observed, and as history has proven, each class or special interest group competes with the others to throw the lever of governmental power in their favor, or at least to immunize itself against the effects of a previous thrust. Labor gets a minimum wage, so agriculture seeks a price support. Consumers demand price controls, and industry gets protective tariffs. In the end, no one is much further ahead, and everyone sufffers the burdens of a gigantic bureaucracy and a loss of personal freedom. With each group out to get its share of the spoils, such governments historically have mushroomed into total welfare states. Once the process begins, once the principle of the protective function of government gives way to the aggressive or redistribute function, then forces are set in motion that drive the nation toward totalitarianism. "It is impossible," Bastiat correctly observed, "to introduce into society... a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder." (THE LAW, p. 12)

Governement Cannot Create Wealth

Students of history know that no governement in the history of mankind has ever created any wealth. People who work create wealth. James R. Evans, in his inspiring book, "The Glorious Quest" gives this simple illustration of legalized plunder:

"Assume, for example, that we were farmers, and that we received a letter from the government telling us that we were going to get a thousand dollars this year for plowed up acreage. But rather than the normal method of collection, we were to take this letter and collect $69.71 from Bill Brown, at such and such an address, and $82.47 from Henry Jones, $59.80 from a Bill Smith, and so on down the line; that these men would make up our farm subsidy. "Neither you nor I, nor would 99 percent of the farmers, walk up and ring a man's doorbell, hold out a hand and say, 'Give me what you've earned even though I have not.' We simply wouldn't do it because we would be facing directly the violation of a moral law, 'Thou shalt not steal.' In short, we would be held accountable for our actions."

The free creative energy of this choice nation "created more than 50% of all the world's products and possessions in the short span of 160 years. The only imperfection in the system is the imperfection in man himself." The last paragraph in this remarkable Evans book - which I commend to all - reads:

"No historian of the future will ever be able to prove that the ideas of individual liberty practiced in the United States of America were a failure. He may be able to prove that we were not yet worthy of them. The choice is ours." (Charles Hallberg and Co., 116 West Grand Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, 60610)

The Basic Error Of Marxism

According to Marxist doctrine, a human being is primarily an economic creature. In other words, his material well-being is all important; his privacy and his freedom are strictly secondary. The Soviet constitution reflects this philosophy in its emphasis on security: food, clothing, housing, medical care - the same things that might be considered in a jail. The basic concept is that the government has full responsibinsidered in a jail. The basic concept is that the government has full responsibility for the welfare of the people and , in order to discharge that responsibility, must assume control of all their activities. It is significant that in actuality the Russian people have few of the rights supposedly "guaranteed" to them in their constitution, while the American people have them in abundance even though they are not guaranteed. The reason, of course, is that material gain and economic security simply cannot be guaranteed by any government. They are the result and reward of hard work and industrious production. Unless the people bake one loaf of bread for each citizen, the government cannot guarantee that each will have one loaf to eat. Constitutions can be written, laws can be passed and imperial decrees can be issued, but unless the bread is produced, it can never be distributed.

The Real Cause Of American Prosperity

Why, then, do Americans bake more bread, manufacture more shoes and assemble more TV sets than Russians do? They do so precisely because our government does NOT guarantee these things. If it did, there would be so many accompanying taxes, controls, regulations and political manipulations that the productive genius that is America's would soon be reduced to the floundering level of waste and inefficiency now found behind the Iron Curtain. As Henry David Thoreau explained:

"This government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. IT does not educate. THE CHARACTER INHERENT IN THE AMERICAN PEOPLE HAS DONE ALL THAT HAS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED; AND IT WOULD HAVE DONE SOMEWHAT MORE, IF THE GOVERNMMENT HAD NOT SOMETIMES GO IN ITS WAY. For government is an expedient by which men would fain succeed in letting one another alone; and, as has been said, when it is most expedient, the governed are most let alone by it." (Quoted by Clarence B. Carson, THE AMERICAN TRADITION, p. 100; P.P.S.N., p.171)

In 1801 Thomas Jefferson, in his First Inaugural Address, said:

"With all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow citizens - a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it had earned." (Works 8:3)

A Formula For Prosperity

The principle behind this American philosophy can be reduced to a rather simple formula:

Economic security for all is impossible without widespread abundance. Abundance is impossible without industrious and efficient production. Such production is impossible without energetic, willing and eager labor. This is not possible without incentive.

Of all forms of incentive - the freedom to attain a reward for one's labors is the most sustaining for most people. Sometimes called THE PROFIT MOTIVE, it is simply the right to plan and to earn and to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

This profit motive DIMINISHES as government controls, regulations and taxes INCREASE to deny the fruits of success to those who produce. Therefore, any attempt THROUGH GOVERNMENTAL INTERVENTION to redistribute the material rewards of labor can only result in the eventual destruction of the productive base of society, without which real abundance and security for more than the ruling elite is quite impossible.

An Example Of The Consequences Of Disregarding These Principles

We have before us currently a sad example of what happens to a nation which ignores these principles. Former FBI agent, Dan Smoot, succinctly pointed this out on his broadcast number 649, dated January 29, 1968, as follows:

"England was killed by an idea: the idea that the weak, indolent and profligate must be supported by the strong, industrious, and frugal - to the degree that tax-consumers will have a living standard comparable to that of taxpayers; the idea that government exists for the purpose of plundering those who work to give the product of their labor to those who do not work. The economic and social cannibalism produced by this communist-socialist idea will destroy any society which adopts it and clings to it as a basic principle - ANY society."

The Power Of True Liberty From Improper Governmental Interference

Nearly two hundred years ago, Adam Smith, the Englishman, who understood these principles very well, published his great book, THE WEALTH OF NATIONS, which contains this statement:

"The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security, is so powerful a principle, that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations; though the effect of these obstructions is always more or less either to encroach upon its freedom, or to diminish its security." (Vol. 2, Book 4, Chapt. 5, p. 126)

But What About The Needy?

On the surface this may sound heartless and insensitive to the needs of those less fortunate individuals who are found in any society, no matter how affluent. "What about the lame, the sick and the destitute? Is an often-voice question. Most other countries in the world have attempted to use the power of government to meet this need. Yet, in every case, the improvement has been marginal at best and has resulted in the long run creating more misery, more poverty, and certainly less freedom than when government first stepped in. As Henry Grady Weaver wrote, in his excellent book, THE MAINSPRING OF HUMAN PROGRESS:

"Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind-in-the-mass through some pet formula of their own....THE HARM DONE BE ORDINARY CRIMINALS, MURDERES, GANGSTERS, AND THIEVES IS NEGLIGIBLE IN COMPARISON WITH THE AGONY INFLICTED UPON HUMAN BEINGS BY THE PROFESSIONAL 'DO-GOODERS', who attempt to set themselves up as gods on earth and who would ruthlessly force their views on all others - with the abiding assurance that the end justifies the means." (p. 40-1; P.P.N.S., p. 313)

The Better Way

By comparison, America traditionally has followed Jefferson's advice of relying on individual action and charity. The result is that the United States has fewer cases of genuine hardship per capita than any other country in the entire world or throughout all history. Even during the depression of the 1930's, Americans ate and lived better than most people in other countries do today.

What Is Wrong With A "Little" Socialism?

In reply to the argument that a little bit of socialism is good so long as it doesn't go too far, it is tempting to say that, in like fashion, just a little bit of theft or a little bit of cancer is all right, too! History proves that the growth of the welfare state is difficult to check before it comes to its full flower of dictatorship. But let us hope that this time around, the trend can be reversed. If not then we will see the inevitability of complete socialism, probably within our lifetime.

Three Reasons American Need Not Fall For Socialist Deceptions

Three factors may make a difference. First, there is sufficient historical knowledge of the failures of socialism and of the past mistakes of previous civilizations. Secondly, there are modern means of rapid communications to transmit these lessons of history to a large literate population. And thirdly, there is a growing number of dedicated men and women who, at great personal sacrifice, are actively working to promote a wider appreciation of these concepted men and women who, at great personal sacrifice, are actively working to promote a wider appreciation of these concepts. The timely joining together of these three factors may make it entirely possible for us to reverse the trend.

How Can Present Socialistic Trends Be Reversed?

This brings up the next question: How is it possible to cut out the various welfare-state features of our government which have already fastened themselves like cancer cells onto the body politic? Isn't drastic surgery already necessary, and can it be performed without endangering the patient? In answer, it is obvious that drastic measures ARE called for. No half-way or compromise actions will suffice. Like all surgery, it will not be without discomfort and perhaps even some scar tissue for a long time to come. But it must be done if the patient is to be saved, and it can be done without undue risk.

Obviously, not all welfare-state programs currently in force can be dropped simultaneously without causing tremendous economic and social upheaval. To try to do so would be like finding oneself at the controls of a hijacked airplane and attempting to return it by simply cutting off the engines in flight. It must be flown back, flown back, lowered in altitude, gradually reduced in speed and brought in for a smooth landing. Translated into practical terms, this means that the first step toward restoring the limited concept of government should be to freeze all welfare-state programs at their present level, making sure that no new ones are added. The next step would be to allow all present programs to run out their term with absolutely no renewal. The third step would involve the gradual phasing-out of those programs which are indefinite in their term. In my opinion, the bulk of the transition could be accomplished within a ten-year period and virtually completed within twenty years. Congress would serve as the initiator of this phase-out program, and the President would act as the executive in accordance with traditional constitutional procedures.

Summary Thus Far

As I summarize what I have attempted to cover, try to visualize the structural relationship between the six vital concepts that have made America the envy of the world. I have reference to the foundation of the Divine Origin of Rights; Limited Government; the pillars of economic Freedom and Personal Freedom, which result in Abundance; followed by Security and the Pursuit of Happiness.

America was built upon a firm foundation and created over many years from the bottom up. Other nations, impatient to acquire equal abundance, security and pursuit of happiness, rush headlong sh headlong into that final phase of construction without building adequate foundations or supporting pillars. Their efforts are futile. And, even in our country, there are those who think that, because we now have the good things in life, we can afford to dispense with the foundations which have made them possible. They want to remove any recognition of God from governmental institutions, They want to expand the scope and reach of government which will undermine and erode our economic and personal freedoms. The abundance which is ours, the carefree existence which we have come to accept as a matter of course, CAN BE TOPPLED BY THESE FOOLISH EXPERIMENTERS AND POWER SEEKERS. By the grace of God, and with His help, we shall fence them off from the foundations of our liberty, and then begin our task of repair and construction.

As a conclusion to this discussion, I present a declaration of principles which have recently been prepared by a few American patriots, and to which I wholeheartedly subscribe.

Fifteen Principles Which Make For Good And Proper Government

As an Independent American for constitutional government I declare that:

(1) I believe that no people can maintain freedom unless their political institutions are founded upon faith in God and belief in the existence of moral law.

(2) I believe that God has endowed men with certain unalienable rights as set forth in the Declaratioth in the Declaration of Independence and that no legislature and no majority, however great, may morally limit or destroy these; that the sole function of government is to protect life, liberty, and property and anything more than this is usurpation and oppression.

(3) I believe that the Constitution of the United States was prepared and adopted by men acting under inspiration from Almighty God; that it is a solemn compact between the peoples of the States of this nation which all officers of government are under duty to obey; that the eternal moral laws expressed therein must be adhered to or individual liberty will perish.

(4) I believe it a violation of the Constitution for government to deprive the individual of either life, liberty, or property except for these purposes:

(a) Punish crime and provide for the administration of justice;

(b) Protect the right and control of private property;

(d) Compel each one who enjoys the protection of government to bear his fair share of the burden of performing the above functions.

(5) I hold that the Constitution denies government the power to take from the individual either his life, liberty, or property except in accordance with moral law; that the same moral law which governs the actions of men when acting alone is also applicable when they act in concert with others; that no citizen or group of citizens has any right to direct their agent, the government to perform any act which would be evil or offensive to the conscience if that citizen were performing the act himself outside the framework of government.

(6) I am hereby resolved that under no circumstances shall the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights be infringed. In particular I am opposed to any attempt on the part of the Federal Government to deny the people their right to bear arms, to worship and pray when and where they choose, or to own and control private property.

(7) I consider ourselves at war with international Communism which is committed to the destruction of our government, our right of property, and our freedom; that it is treason as defined by the Constitution to give aid and comfort to this implacable enemy.

(8) I am unalterable opposed to Socialism, either in whole or in part, and regard it as an unconstitutional usurpation of power and a denial of the right of private property for government to own or operate the means of producing and distributing goods and services in competition with private enterprise, or to regiment owners in the legitimate use of private property.

(9) I maintain that every person who enjoys the protection of his life, liberty, and property should bear his fair share of the cost of government in providing that protection; that the elementary priing that protection; that the elementary principles of justice set forth in the Constitution demand that all taxes imposed be uniform and that each person's property or income be taxed at the same rate.

(10) I believe in honest money, the gold and silver coinage of the Constitution, and a circulation medium convertible into such money without loss. I regard it as a flagrant violation of the explicit provisions of the Constitution for the Federal Government to make it a criminal offense to use gold or silver coin as legal tender or to use irredeemable paper money.

(11) I believe that each State is sovereign in performing those functions reserved to it by the Constitution and it is destructive of our federal system and the right of self-government guaranteed under the Constitution for the Federal Government to regulate or control the States in performing their functions or to engage in performing such functions itself.

(12) I consider it a violation of the Constitution for the Federal Government to levy taxes for the support of state or local government; that no State or local government can accept funds from the Federal and remain independent in performing its functions, nor can the citizens exercise their rights of self-government under such conditions.

(13) I deem it a violation of the right of private property guaranteed under the Constitution for the Federal Government to forcibly deprive the citizens of this nation of their nation of their property through taxation or otherwise, and make a gift thereof to foreign governments or their citizens.

(14) I believe that no treaty or agreement with other countries should deprive our citizens of rights guaranteed them by the Constitution.

(15) I consider it a direct violation of the obligation imposed upon it by the Constitution for the Federal Government to dismantle or weaken our military establishment below that point required for the protection of the States against invasion, or to surrender or commit our men, arms, or money to the control of foreign ore world organizations of governments. These things I believe to be the proper role of government.

We have strayed far afield. We must return to basic concepts and principles - to eternal verities. There is no other way. The storm signals are up. They are clear and ominous.

As Americans - citizens of the greatest nation under Heaven - we face difficult days. Never since the days of the Civil War - 100 years ago - has this choice nation faced such a crisis.

In closing I wish to refer you to the words of the patriot Thomas Paine, whose writings helped so much to stir into a flaming spirit the smoldering embers of patriotism during the days of the American Revolution:

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis, shrink from the servisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; 'tis dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial and article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated." (THE POLITICAL WORKS OF THOMAS PAINE, p.55.)

I intend to keep fighting. My personal attitude is one of resolution - not resignation.

I have faith in the American people. I pray that we will never do anything that will jeopardize in any manner our priceless heritage. If we live and work so as to enjoy the approbation of a Divine Providence, we cannot fail. Without that help we cannot long endure.

All Right-Thinking Americans Should Now Take Their Stand

So I urge all Americans to put their courage to the test. Be firm in our conviction that our cause is just. Reaffirm our faith in all things for which true Americans have always stood.

I urge all Americans to arouse themselves and stay aroused. We must not make any further concessions to communism at home or abroad. We do not need to. We should oppose communism from our position of strength for we are not weak.

There is much work to be done. The time is short. Let us begin - in earnest - now and may God bless our efforts, I humbly pray.

The End

The Unwritten Order of Things by Boyd K Packer

2008-02-26T08:51:00.000-08:00

The Unwritten Order of Things
by Elder Boyd K. Packer
Marriott Center, 15 October 1996

I speak to you today as a teacher. I reflect the influence of a teacher that I knew more than fifty years ago. As is often the case, the influence of that teacher did not center on the subject he taught. Dr. Schaefer was a professor of mathematics at Washington State University at Pullman, Washington. He was quite unimpressive in appearance. I don't remember his first name, but I shall never forget the first thing he said the first day we met.

It was during World War II. We were in pilot training and had been sent to the university for what we were told would be a crash course in meteorology, weather, navigation, physics, aerodynamics, and other technical subjects. We thought the title "Cracts. We thought the title "Crash course" was not very encouraging to student pilots. The word intense would have been better.

The pressure was enormous because those who failed the course would be washed out of the pilot program. I was in competition with cadets, many of whom had been to college; some of them had had some advanced training, while I had barely escaped from high school.
Dr. Schaefer was to take us from basic mathematics through calculus in just a matter of weeks. I thought it was hopeless, until that first few minutes in the first class. He began the class with this announcement: "While many of you have had some college, even advanced courses in what we are to study, it will be my purpose to teach the beginners. I am asking those of you who know the subject to be patient while I teach the basics to those who do not." Encouraged by what he said and more by how he taught, I was able to pass that course with reasonable ease. It might otherwise have been impossible.

When I decided to become a teacher, Dr. Schaefer's example inspired me to try to the best of my ability to teach basic, simple truths in the most understandable way. I have learned how very difficult it is to simplify.

Years after the war, I returned to Washington State University and found Dr. Schaefer. He, of course, did not remember me. I was just one of many hundreds of cadets in his classes. I thanked him for what he had taught me. Thed taught me. The math and calculus had long since faded away, but not his example as a teacher.

So, following that example, today I want to tell you something about the Church. The things that I shall tell you are not explained in the scriptures, although they conform to the principles taught in the scriptures.

A principle is an enduring truth, a law, a rule you can adopt to help you in making decisions. Generally principles are not spelled out in detail. That leaves you free to adapt and to find your way with an enduring truth, a principle, as an anchor. The things I am going to tell you are not explained in our handbooks or manuals either. Even if they were, most of you don't have handbooks--not the Melchizedek Priesthood or Relief Society handbooks and the others--because they are given only to the leaders.

I will be speaking about what I call the "unwritten order of things." My lesson might be entitled "The Ordinary Things about the Church Which Every Member Should Know." Although they are very ordinary things, they are, nevertheless, very important! We somehow assume that everybody knows all the ordinary things already. If you do know them, you must have learned them through observation and experience, for they are not written anywhere and they are not taught in classes. So, as we continue, if you are ones that know it all, be patient while I teach those who do not--and take a nap. The basic foundaThe basic foundation of knowledge and testimony never changes--the testimony that God the Father lives, that Jesus is the Christ, that the Holy Ghost inspires us, that there has been a restoration, that the fullness of the gospel and the same organization that existed in the primitive church have been revealed to us. Those things are taught everywhere and always--in our classes, the scriptures, the handbooks and the manuals--in everything we do.

The fundamental doctrine and instructions on the organization of the Church are likewise found in the scriptures. In addition, there is another source of knowledge relating to what makes the Church work: We learn from experience and observation. If you learn about these things that are not written down, the unwritten order of things, you will be better qualified to be a leader--and you are going to be a leader. The most important positions of leadership are in the home--the father, mother, wife, husband, older brother and sister.

Then, in the Church, positions of leadership and teaching opportunities are available as nowhere else on earth.

While the things I will talk about are not written, they are really quite easily learned. Just be alert to the unwritten order of things and take an interest in them, and you will find that you will increase your ability and your value to the Lord.
Before I give you a few samples of this unwritten order of things, let mef things, let me remind you what the Lord said: "My house is a house of order, saith the Lord God" (D&C 132:18; emphasis added). And he told his prophet: "See that all these things are done in wisdom and order; for it is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength. And again, it is expedient that he should be diligent, that thereby he might win the prize; therefore, all things must be done in order" (Mosiah 4:27; emphasis added).
Paul told the Corinthians that "all things" were to "be done decently and in order" (see 1 Cor. 14:40; emphasis added). We'll return to that in a moment or two. The things I am going to tell you about are not so rigid that the Church will fall apart if they are not strictly observed all the time. But they do set a tone, a standard, of dignity and order and will improve our meetings and classwork; they will improve the activities. If you know them and understand them, they will greatly improve your life.

Our meetings should be conducted in such a way that members may be refreshed spiritually and remain attuned to the Spirit as they meet the challenges of life. We are to establish conditions under which members can, through inspiration, solve their own problems. There are simple things that help in that regard, and things that hinder. Alma taught "that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise" (Almwise" (Alma 37:6).

I give as my first illustration of this unwritten order of things so simple a thing as this: The one who presides in a meeting should sit on the stand and sit close to the one conducting. It is a bit difficult to preside over a meeting from the congregation. The one who presides is responsible for the conduct of the meeting and has the right and the responsibility to receive inspiration and may be prompted to adjust or correct something that goes on in the meeting. That is true whether it be an auxiliary meeting presided over by the sisters or any of our meetings.
A new stake president sometimes will ask, "Must I sit on the stand in every meeting in the stake? May I not sit with my family?" I tell him, "While you preside, you are to sit on the stand." I am tempted to say, but I don't, "I can't have that privilege; why should you?"

Another example: If you watch the First Presidency, you will see that the first counselor always sits on the right of the president; the second counselor on the left. That is a demonstration of doing things "decently and in order," as Paul told us. Ordinarily, but not always, if the presiding officer speaks, it will be at the end of the meeting. Then clarification or correction can be given. I have had that experience many times at the close of meetings, "Well, brother or sister somebody said such and such, and I'm sure they meant such and such."

Another illustration: We do not aspire to calls in the Church, nor do we ask to be released. We are called to positions in the Church by inspiration. Even if the call is presented in a clumsy way, it is not wise for us to refuse the call. We must presuppose that the call comes from the Lord. The fifth article of faith tells us that we "must be called of God, by prophecy, and by the laying on of hands by those who are in authority, to preach the Gospel and administer in the ordinances thereof." If some circumstance makes it difficult for you to continue to serve, you are free to consult with the leader who called you. We do not call ourselves and we do not release ourselves. Sometimes a leader or a teacher enjoys the prominence of a presiding position so much that, even after serving for a long time, they do not want to be released. That is a sign that a release is timely.

We should do as we are called. We should accept the calls and accept a release by the same authority.

When President J. Reuben Clark was called as second counselor in the First Presidency after having served for many years as first counselor, he responded at the Solemn Assembly where the sustaining of the new First Presidency took place: "In the service of the Lord, it is not where you serve but how. In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, one takes the place to which one is duly called, which place one neither seeks nor decks nor declines" (CR, Apr. 1951, p. 154). The Church had been taught a very valuable lesson in the unwritten order of things.
I learned years ago that we do not choose where we serve--we just answer the call. Soon after our marriage, I was called as an assistant stake clerk. My bishop did not want to release me as Gospel Doctrine teacher. He told me that I had much more to offer as a teacher than in the very obscure assignment as assistant stake clerk. But he knew that, under the unwritten order of things, the stake president presided and that his call took precedence.

I cannot tell you all that I learned in that calling. I was able to see how a presidency works. I was the witness to revelation in the calling and the releasing of stake and ward officers. By watching our stake president, I learned by observation and experience many things that are not in the handbook. It was in that calling that I first met members of the Twelve and others of the Brethren as they came to conference. It was a time of training in the unwritten order of things.
I was on a plane once with President Kimball who, I think, served for 19 years as a stake clerk. A member that lived in the stake at that time was on the plane. He said to me, "If I'd known that our stake clerk was going to be President of the Church, I'd have treated him a lot better."
Brother Kimball was actually serving as second counselor in the stakelor in the stake presidency when the stake clerk moved. They called a clerk and that clerk moved. Brother Kimball had taken over the responsibility. Brother Melvin J. Ballard came to conference, and he said, "You shouldn't have to be the second counselor and the stake clerk at the same time. You choose which you would rather be." Brother Kimball was not used to having a choice. He wanted to have Brother Ballard tell him, but Brother Ballard said, "No, you choose." So Brother Kimball said, "I have a typewriter. [Very few people had typewriters then.] I know the system. I think I can make a bigger contribution if I stay as the stake clerk." And so it was. In those days the stake clerk received a small stipend, a little monthly something or other, I suppose to buy supplies. A sister, who knew him well, wrote and said, "Spencer, I'm surprised at you--to take a calling just because there is money involved." Then she said, "If you don't change your attitude, within two months, you'll apostatize from the Church." Well, she was a little off in her timing!

Now an example: On one occasion Elder Harold B. Lee presided over our stake conference. Between sessions we had lunch at the home of President Zundell. Donna and I arrived a little late because we had gone home to check on our young children. Elder Lee had come to the car to retrieve something from his car and was on the walk when we arrived. I am sure we were very visibly moved to be abto be able to talk personally and to shake hands with an Apostle. He gestured toward the house and said, speaking of the stake presidency who were assembled there, "They are great men. Never fail to learn from men such as these." And I had been taught something of the unwritten order of things by an Apostle.

There is so much you can learn by watching experienced leaders in the wards and stakes in which you live. There is so much you can learn by listening to the older brethren and sisters who have had a lifetime of experience in the school of the unwritten.

Another illustration. There is an order of things as to where we go for counsel or blessings. It is simple--we go to our parents. When they are no longer available, if it is a blessing, then we may go to our home teacher. For counsel, you go to your bishop. He may choose to send you to his file leader--the stake president. But we do not go to the General Authorities. We do not write to them for counsel or suppose that someone in a more prominent position will give a more inspired blessing. If we could get this one thing taught in the Church, great power would rest upon us.
President Joseph F. Smith taught that should there be sickness in a home and should there be present "apostles, or even members of the first presidency of the Church, . . . the father is there. It is his right and it is his duty to preside" (Gospel Doctrine, p. 286).
.
There is one authorized "end run" around the bishop, the stake president, the General Authority, and everyone else in our line of authority. That is to our Father in Heaven in prayer. If we do that, we will in most instances solve our own problems.

Another principle: Revelation in the Church is vertical. It generally confines itself to the administrative or geographic boundaries or limitations assigned to the one who is called. For instance, a bishop who is trying to solve a problem will not get revelation by counseling with a bishop from another ward or stake to whom he is related or with whom he might work at the office.

My experience has taught me that revelation comes from above, not from the side. However more experienced or older or however more spiritual someone to the side may appear to be, it is better to go up through proper channels.

Principle: A prime attribute of a good leader is to be a good follower. In a meeting with bishops, a new and struggling bishop once asked me, "How do I get people to follow me? I have called nine sisters to be president of the Primary and none has accepted." There was a good humor and pleasant spirit in the meeting which made it an ideal teaching moment. I answered that I doubted that he had "called" any of the nine sisters. He must only have asked or invited them.
I told him that if he had earnestly prayed and counseled with his counselors his counselors as to who should preside over the Primary, the first sister would have accepted the call. Perhaps he might have discovered in the interview some reason why it was not advisable or timely for that sister to serve and excused her from serving. But surely not more than one or two. If that many sisters turned down the call, something was out of order--the unwritten order.

Because there was such good spirit in the meeting, I said to him, "Bishop, I know something else about you. You're not a good follower, are you? Aren't you the one who is always questioning what the stake president asks of his bishops?" The other bishops in the room started to chuckle and nodded their heads--he was the one. He chuckled and said he supposed that was right. I said, "Perhaps the reason your members don't follow their leader is because you don't follow yours. An essential attribute of a leader in the Church is faithful and loyal followship. That is just the order of things--the unwritten order of things."

When I was a young man, Elder Spencer W. Kimball came to our conference and he told this experience. When he was a stake president in Safford, Arizona, there was a vacancy in the office of superintendent of Young Men in the stake, as the office was then called. He left his office one day, went a few steps down the street, and had a conversation with the owner of a business. He said, "Jack, how would you like to be superintendentrintendent of the stake Young Men's organization?"

Jack replied: "Aw, Spencer, you don't mean me."
Spencer replied, "Of course I do. You get along well with the youth." He tried to convince him, but the man turned him down.

Later in the day, after smoldering with his failure and finally remembering what Jacob had said in the Book of Mormon-- "having first obtained mine errand from the Lord" (Jacob 1:17)--he returned to Jack. Calling him "brother" and by his last name, he said, "We have a vacancy in a stake office. My counselors and I have discussed it; we've prayed about it for some time. Sunday we knelt down together and asked the Lord for inspiration about who should be called to that position. We received the inspiration that you should be called. As a servant of the Lord, I am here to deliver that call."

Jack said, "Well, Spencer, if you are going to put it that way . . ."
"Well, I am putting it that way."

You know the result. It helps to follow the proper order of things, even the unwritten order.
I have on my desk a letter from a brother who is greatly bothered because he was not called to office properly. He accepted the call and is willing to serve, but he said his bishop did not consult his wife first and otherwise did not handle it properly. When I respond to him, I will try to teach him something of the unwritten order of things as itnwritten order of things as it relates to being a little patient with how things are done in the Church. In the first section of the Doctrine and Covenants, the Lord admonished every man to "speak in the name of God the Lord, even the Savior of the world" (D&C 1:20). I think I'll point out to him that he may one day be a bishop, overburdened with problems in the ward and with an extra burden of personal cares, and suggest that he give now what he would appreciate receiving then.

Another point of order: Bishops should not yield the arrangement of meetings to members. They should not yield the arrangement for funerals or missionary farewells to families. It is not the proper order of things for members or families to expect to decide who will speak and for how long. Suggestions are in order, of course, but the bishop should not turn the meeting over to them. We are worried about the drift that is occurring in our meetings.

Funerals could and should be the most spiritually impressive. They are becoming informal family reunions in front of ward members. Often the Spirit is repulsed by humorous experiences or jokes when the time could be devoted to teaching the things of the Spirit, even the sacred things.

When the family insists that several family members speak in a funeral, we hear about the deceased instead of about the Atonement, the Resurrection, and the comforting promises revealed in the scriptures. Now it's all right's all right to have a family member speak at a funeral, but if they do, their remarks should be in keeping with the spirit of the meeting.
I have told my Brethren in that day when my funeral is held, if any of them who speak talk about me, I will raise up and correct them. The gospel is to be preached. I know of no meeting where the congregation is in a better state of readiness to receive revelation and inspiration from a speaker than they are at a funeral. This privilege is being taken away from us because we don't understand the order of things--the unwritten order of things--that relates to the administration of the Church and the reception of the Spirit.

Our bishops should not give our meetings away. That is true of our missionary farewells. We're deeply worried that they now have become kind of reunions in front of ward members. The depth of spiritual training and teaching which could go on is being lost. We have failed to remember that it is a sacrament meeting and that the bishop presides.

There are many things I could say about such matters as wearing Sunday best. Do you know what "Sunday best" means? It used to be the case. Now we see ever more informal, even slouchy, clothing in our meetings, even in sacrament meeting, that leads to informal and slouchy conduct.

It bothers me to see on a sacrament meeting program that Liz and Bill and Dave will participate. Ought it not be Elizabet not be Elizabeth and William and David? It bothers me more to be asked to sustain Buck or Butch or Chuck to the high council. I just say, Can't we have the full names on that important record? There is a formality, a dignity, that we are losing--and it is at great cost. There is something to what Paul said about doing things "decently and in order."

Well, there is so much I want to tell you about the unwritten order of things, but then these are things that you must learn for yourself. If we could only put you in the circumstance where you begin to observe, begin to get that training, then you will know how the Church is to operate and why it operates that way. You will find that it conforms to the principles which are outlined in the scriptures. If you will just "treasure up in your minds continually the words of life," the Lord will bless you and give "you in the very hour" what you should say and what you should do (D&C 84:85). Learn about this great pattern--the teachings that come to us from just watching and participating.

Soon after Spain had been opened for the preaching of the gospel, I was in Barcelona. Two of the first missionaries sent to Spain were sent to Barcelona to open the city. They had appealed to President Smith Griffin for forty chairs. He was in Paris at the time, and he didn't know why they wanted forty chairs when they had no members. He hesitated at the expense, but he thought he would encoura encourage the missionaries. So he approved the forty chairs.
When we arrived at the meeting hall, upstairs in a business building, the forty chairs were filled. There were people standing. The elders had arranged for their first convert, a middle-aged man who worked in a fish market, to conduct the meeting. We watched as they taught him what to do, sometimes standing up to whisper to him. Brother Byish nervously got through the meeting with their assistance. And then, as he stood to close, the Spirit of the Lord fell upon him and he preached with great power and at some length. It was an inspired testimony, an unforgettable moment. The two young elders, both converts from South America, had somehow learned something of the unwritten order of things. They were putting the Church in place in proper order in Barcelona. Now there are four stakes in that city.

And so it goes. The Lord uses the ordinary Saints, the rank and file, to move his work along.
Isn't it strange that princes and kings And clowns that caper in sawdust rings And just plain folks like you and me Are builders for eternity? To each is given a bag of tools, A shapeless mass and a book of rules, And each must build ere life has flown, A stumbling-block or a stepping stone. --R. L. Sharpe, "Stumbling-Block or Stepping Stone"

The Church will move on, and it moves on just because the rank and file learn by observation, learn by teaching, learn by experience. Most of all, we learn because we are motivated by the Spirit. One day, of course, you who are young now will lead the Church. If in the intervening time you will learn and study the unwritten order of things, the power of the Lord will be upon you to the end that you might be the useful servant.

I bear witness that this is His Church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and, as the Lord said, that all "might speak in the name of God the Lord, even the Savior of the world" (D&C 1:20).

I invoke his blessings upon you and bear witness to you in the name Jesus Christ. Amen.

AR

Take Responsibility, don't be a victim

2008-02-01T07:41:00.002-08:00

Taking Responsibility

People often wonder how men like Adolf Hitler were (and are) able to get an entire society to commit atrocities, or at least look the other way. It’s simple. They promote mentalities of victimhood and blame. In Hitler’s case, he convinced a lot of people that they were victims. Hitler blamed the Jewish people for his lack of acceptance twice to Vienna's Academy of Fine Arts as well as for many other problems in his life. He needed something to explain away his personal failures and unfavorable circumstances. Later he was able to convince a lot of others to do the same thing. Whatever wasn’t right at the time, was in one way or another blamed on the Jewish people. When people believe they are victims they act out of fear rather than love, and the outcome is always tragic.

However, people who know they are responsible for their lives don’t blame society, ethnic groups, friends and family for their current situations. Taking responsibility means not blaming anyone or anything for your current situations in life. There is no reason to ever assign blame, because the entire concept of blaming comes from a mentality of victimhood. Taking responsibility for our lives, does not mean we “blame” ourselves either. It means we acknowledge that as powerful creators, humans create their own lives.

Yes, bad things happen to all of us, and some suffer much more than others. Those who have suffered much often have huge challenges to overcome, with an equal potential to become that much stronger, that much more compassionate, and that much more empowered. Is it a child’s fault that he or she was abused by his or her parents? Of course not! Is it an entrepreneur’s fault when a business partner turns out to be unethical and steals his or her money? No! Is it a homeowner’s fault when property values drop and their house isn’t worth what it used to be? Nope. But an abusive parent, a stupid boss, a dishonest partner, and changing markets do not have the power to determine what you make with the rest of your life—not unless you allow it to.

As adults living in a free society, we are able to make our own choices. We can leave abusive situations. We can find a new job if we hate the one we have. We can choose to forgive when we have been ill-treated. We can choose to heal (even though it may take time and guidance). But every problem or challenge is an opportunity in disguise. Those who choose to be responsible for their own lives take their moments of struggle and pain, and transform them into a wisdom and understanding. When we cultivate personal responsibility we start to enjoy greater power to shape our own lives into what we want our lives to be.

Capitalizing Potential

For the Social portion of the next Producer Power Hour reflect on this concept, and self evaluate with the following question on how you practice an attitude of responsibility in your life. As usual, write down any insights or inspirations you may have in your PPH journal.

Have I let myself believe that there are certain people or situations that have ruined my life, or a portion of my life?

How can I prove these thoughts wrong, and live a wonderful life in spite of people I perceive as having hurt me, and in spite of situations that were less than ideal?

“We need to teach the next generation of children from Day One that they are responsible for their lives. Mankind's greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear.”
~ Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

“How fortunate for leaders, that men do not think.”
~ Adolf Hitler

This comes from a Producer Power Hour Daily post from Garrett Gunderson

MW

Equity Milling by Rick Koerber

2008-01-28T15:20:00.000-08:00

http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/post/sdcia/show_single_post?pid=18521726&postcount=28

thanks Matt.

Work We Must, But the Lunch is Free by Hugh Nibley

2008-01-26T14:55:00.000-08:00

Work We Must, But the Lunch Is Free

Hugh W. Nibley

Reprinted with permission from Approaching Zion, vol. 9 of The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1989), 203–51.

Bounty from on High–All or Nothing.
The famous geologist Sir Julian Huxley used to go from school to school in the manner of a traveling revivalist, preaching his gospel of evolution: "In the evolutionary pattern of thought there is no longer need or room for the supernatural. The earth was not created; it evolved. So did all the animals and plants that inhabit it including our human selves, mind and soul, as well as brain and body. So did religion." He was fond of reminding his audiences that there is no Santa Claus, and that mature people should give up wishful thinking about such things as gifts and blessings, spiritual or material, bestowed from on high.

The high school youth of my day took great satisfaction in reciting the words of Omar Khayyam: "And that inverted bowl we call the sky, whereunder crawling coop't we live and die, lift not the hands to It for help, for It rolls impotently on as Thou or I." This is, as one eminent commentator on the scientific scene, Hoimar von Ditfurth, puts it, "that 'modern view,' still current today, that the earth with everything in it is dangling in the isolation of a universe whose cold majesty disdains it . . . Deep down we are probably even proud of the detachment with which we accept our 'true' situation. . . . Much of the cynicism and nihilism characteristic of the modern psyche can be traced to this chilling conception."

But within the last decade or so, leaders in scientific research have begun to express the opposite opinion to this, saying that they more than suspect the possibility (1) that the somebody out there cares–i.e., there is direction and purpose to what is going on; and (2) that gifts sent down from above are more than a childish tradition.

The first of these ideas was recently expressed by the biologist Lewis Thomas: "I cannot make peace with the randomness doctrine; I cannot abide the notion of purposelessness and blind chance in nature. And yet I do not know what to put in its place for the quieting of my mind. . . . We talk–some of us, anyway–about the absurdity of the human situation, but we do this because we do not know how we fit in, or what we are for. The stories we used to make up to explain ourselves do not make sense anymore, and we have run out of new stories, for the moment." A grand old–timer in biology, the 1937 Nobel Prize winner, Albert Szent–Györgyi, recently wrote:

According to present ideas, this change in the nucleic acid [which determines the nature of protein molecules formed in a cell] is accomplished through random variation. . . . If I were trying to pass a biology examination, I would vigorously support this theory. Yet in my mind I have never been able to accept fully the idea that the adaption and the harmonious building of those complex biological systems, involving simultaneous changes in thousands of genes, are the results of molecular accidents. . . . The probability that all of these genes should have changed together through random variation is practically zero. . . . I have always been seeking some higher organizing principle that is leading the living system toward improvement and adaptation. I know this is biological heresy, . . . e.g., I do not think that the extremely complex speech center of the human brain ... was created by random mutations that happened to improve the chances of survival of individuals. . . . I cannot accept the notion that this capacity arose through random alterations, relying on the survival of the fittest. I believe that some principle must have guided the development toward the kind of speech center that was needed.

More surprising is the story now unfolding as various fields of research combine to give us a picture of gifts being showered upon us from on high–the literal reading of the Santa Claus or Kachina myth. Thus Buckminster Fuller says: "Energies emanating from celestial regions remote from Planet Earth are indeed converging and accumulating in Planet Earth's biosphere ... both as radiation and as matter. "We aboard Earth are receiving gratis just the amount of prime energy wealth, to regenerate biological life on board.... Van Allen belts, . . . the ionosphere, stratosphere and atmosphere all refractively differentiate the radiation frequencies, . . . . separating [them] into a variety of indirect life–sustaining energy transactions." "Vegetation is the prive energy impounder"; from stellar radiation "the biologicals are continually multiplying, their beautiful cellular, molecular, and atomic structurings" which complete the equation.... "Certainly the earth is not the center of the universe," writes von Ditfurth, ". . . but this crowded earth is a focal point in the universe; one of perhaps innumerable places in the cosmos where life and consciousness could flourish. . . . What a concentration of mighty forces upon one more or less tiny point!" Is it possible that someone does have us in mind?

This is the thesis which the famous astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle is now pursuing. In a talk given at Caltech last November (1981), he begins with the strange fact that there are distributed in all directions throughout the immensity of space particles whose presence is revealed by the way in which they obscure the galaxies everywhere, making them all look hazy? Whence their original designation as "nebulas" or fuzzy clouds. After almost 20 years of investigation the inescapable conclusion has been reached that "the grains had to be made up largely of organic material." Like the biologists quoted above, Hoyle too, as he puts it, "was constantly plagued by the thought that the number of ways in which even a single enzyme could be wrongly constructed was greater than the number of all the atoms in the universe [and yet these were correctly constructed], so try as I would, I couldn't convince myself that even the whole universe would be sufficient to find life by random processes–by what are called the blind forces of nature." That is where he, too, balks. "By far the simplest way to arrive at the correct sequences of amino acids in the enzymes would be by thought, NOT random processes. . . . Rather than accept the fantastically small probability of life having arisen through the blind forces of nature, it seemed better to suppose that the origin of life was a deliberate intellectual act." One of the most exciting things about the process, he finds, is that it is still going on, and always has been, and to all purposes always will be. Instead of beginning with a single cell on this one lone planet billions of years ago, life has been brought down to earth from realms above in massive installments. "It was quickly apparent that the facts pointed overwhelmingly against life being of terrestrial origin ... [here Hoyle pursues a long line of argument and review of research]; e.g., because a few comets are breaking up and scattering their contents all the time, the process was not relegated to the remote past." "Taking the view, palatable to most ordinary folk but exceedingly unpalatable to scientists, that there is an enormous intelligence abroad in the universe, it becomes necessary to write blind forces out of astronomy," as Thomas and Szent–Györgyi do out of biology.

As if to counteract these growing heresies, the old Darwinian view is being puffed today for all it is worth in a half dozen prestigious TV documentaries in which we are treated to endless footage of creatures ranging from amoebas, to giant carnivores, stalking, seizing and with concentrated deliberation soberly crunching, munching, swallowing, and ingesting other insects, fishes, birds, and mammals, etc. This, we are told again and again, is the real process by which all things were created. Everything is lunching on everything else, all the time, and that, children, is what makes us what we are; that is the key to progress. And note it well, all these creatures when they are not lunching are hunting for lunch–they all have to work for it: There is no free lunch in the world of nature, the real world. Lunch is the meaning of life, and everything lunches on something else–"Nature red in tooth and claw." Tennyson's happy phrase suited the Victorian mind to perfection. He got the idea from Darwin, as Spencer did his even happier phrase, "survival of the fittest." Darwin gave the blessing of science to men who had been hoping and praying for holy sanction to an otherwise immoral way of life. Malthus had shown that there will never be enough lunch for everybody, and therefore people would have to fight for it; and Ricardo had shown by his Iron Law of Wages that those left behind and gobbled up in the struggle for lunch had no just cause for complaint. Darwin showed that this was an inexorable law of nature by which the race was actually improved; Miall and Spencer made it the cornerstone of the gospel of Free Enterprise–the weaker must fall by the way if the stock is to be improved. This was movingly expressed in J. D. Rockefeller's discourse on the American Beauty Rose, which, he said, "can be produced ... only by sacrificing the early buds which grow up around it. . . . This is not an evil tendency in business. It is merely the working–out of a law of nature and a law of God."

In this divinely appointed game of grabs, to share the lunch–prize would be futile, counter–productive, nay immoral. Since there is not enough to go around, whoever gets his fill must be taking it from others–that is the way the game is played. "In Liverpool, Manchester, Preston, or anywhere else in England," as Brigham Young reported the scene in 1856, workers knew that "their employers would make them do their work for nothing, and then compel them to live on roots and grass if their physical organization could endure it, therefore, says the mechanic, 'If I can get anything out of you I will call it a godsend," and does what he can to rip off the boss. If he gets caught, he is punished, yet he is only playing the same game as his employer.????

Three years after Brigham made his observation, the Origin of Species appeared, putting the unimpeachable seal of science on the lunch–grab as the Supreme Law of Life and Progress. And it was expressly to refute that philosophy on which Brigham Young founded the BYU in 1875: "We have enough and to spare, at present in these mountains, of schools where ... the teachers ... dare not mention the principles of the gospel to their pupils, but have no hesitancy in introducing into the classroom the theories of Huxley, or Darwin, or of Miall and the false political economy which contends against cooperation and the United Order. This course I am resolutely and uncompromisingly opposed to. . . . As a beginning in this direction I have endowed the Brigham Young Academy at Provo and [am] now seeking to do the same thing in this city [Salt Lake City] ." With his usual unfailing insight, President Young saw it was the economic and political rather than the scientific and biological implications of natural selection that were the real danger and most counter to the gospel.

The Two Employers
But what about those goodies that actually descend from the sky, according to the New Astronomy? They take us back to our Latter-day Saint creation story in which all the earth's food supply is indeed brought from above, as seeds of all kinds are carried down and planted in a special program of preparing the earth for its great calling. "Adam, we have created for you this earth, and have placed in it everything you could possibly need–all finished and ready for use. Help yourself–of every tree thou mayest freely eat." Was Adam idle and bored, his character undermined by such easy living? Hardly! He went happily about his work of taking good care of the place; he enjoyed frequent conversation with angels and in the cool of the evening strolls with the Lord himself–what a vast expansion of mind and spirit that evokes! And to spend one's days with a woman of infinite understanding, whom age could not wither nor custom stale, was enough to fill the days with endless delight. When Adam left the garden, he went right on with his work of cultivating the earth, himself, and his numerous posterity, engaging in the three activities which are recommended as the proper way of life to all who work in the vineyard: "Behold, I say unto you that you shall let your time be devoted to [1] the studying of the scriptures, and [2] to preaching, and to confirming the church, ... and [3] to performing your labors on the land" (D&C 26:1). Study, the work of the kingdom, and the cultivating of the soil were Adam's calling for almost a millennium–and he never got bored. Though no longer in Paradise, he enjoyed the visitation and instruction of heavenly visitors, who undertook to teach him how he was to return again to his preexistent splendor with enhanced qualifications and credentials for what lay ahead. To merit such promotion, he was to be tried and tested while he was here, and for that express purpose Adam had to come to an understanding with another type of visitor, a person of enormous ambition and cunning, who was purposely turned loose in the place to put Adam and Eve to the test. What he tempts them with is lunch. We can put the situation in terms of two employers who are competing for the services of the man Adam and his posterity, who are intentionally placed in the middle between them: on the one hand, "the devil ... inviteth and enticeth ... continually" to work for him, while on the other, "God inviteth and enticeth ... continually" to work for him (Moroni 7:12–13).

The first employer offers us lunch, and since lunch is something everybody must have, he is in a powerful position to bargain. He explains that this glorious earth is his private estate, that it all belongs to him to the ends thereof; in particular he owns the mineral rights and the media of exchange, by controlling which he enjoys the willing cooperation of the military, ecclesiastical, and political establishments, and rules with magnificent uproar. He keeps everything under tight control, though, for all the blood and horror–nobody makes any trouble in his world from the rivers to the ends thereof. Well can he ask Adam, "What is it you want?" for he claims to be the God of this World, and the Lord himself grants him the title of Prince of this World. All who are not working for him on his estate he charges with trespassing, including even heavenly messengers, whom he accuses of spying out his vast property with an eye to taking over the whole of it. But he is willing to make a deal if they have money. To have merely sufficient for your needs, however, is not what he has in mind–that would be the equivalent of the free lunch, lamely ignoring the endless possibilities for acquiring power and gain that the place offers; this developer has a vision of unlimited sweep and power?"You can have anything in this world for money!" Beginning, of course, with lunch. Because money is the only thing that will get you lunch–and since everybody must have lunch, that is the secret of his control.

This almost mystical identity of money with lunch we see in the reports of Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and others of their missions in England, where people were literally starving to death in the streets, while many in the city were living in the greatest opulence. The trouble was that the poor people had to starve because they could get no money, and they could get no money because the factories were closed, and the factories were closed because of an unusually severe winter–an act of God. So there was plainly nothing to be done and no one to blame–one does not oppose the Laws of Nature and of God: There is no free lunch. Brother Kimball tells how his family in this fair land lived for weeks on boiled milkweed; they had worked very hard, but still there was no lunch for them, because the money they had saved up by their diligent toil was suddenly worthless–it is money alone that gets you lunch, mere work is not enough. Your prospective employer explains how that is: The money part is necessary to keep things under control. For the Kimballs, lunch was life itself, the bottom line of any economy. What would happen, then, if lunch was always provided free for them? Would they not lose their most immediate incentive to work–the need for lunch–money? And since money, as they tell you in Economics 101, is "the power to command goods and services," who would ever do any work again? How can you command somebody to work for you if he doesn't need your lunch? That, the shrewd employer explains, is why he must never cease reminding one and all in his domain that there is no free lunch. It is that great teaching which keeps his establishment going. "All I have to do to bring my people into line," he says, "is to ask them: 'If you leave my employ, what will become of you?' That scares the daylights out of them; from the man on the dreary assembly line to the chairman of the board; they are all scared stiff. And so I get things done."

So let us go across the road for an interview with the Other Employer. To our surprise, he answers our first question with an emphatic: "Forget about lunch! Don't even give it a thought!" "Take no thought of what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink or wherewith ye shall be clothed!" "But what will become of me then?" you ask. Not to worry, "We will preach the gospel to you, and then you will find out that lunch should be the least of your concerns." Let Brigham Young explain the situation.

We have been permitted to come here to go to school, to acquire certain knowledge and take a number of tests to prepare us for greater things hereafter. This whole life, in fact, is "a state of probation" (2 Nephi 2:21). While we are at school our generous patron has provided us with all the necessities of living which we will need to carry us through. Imagine then that at the end of the first school year your kind benefactor pays the school a visit. He meets you and asks you how you are doing. "Oh," you say, "I am doing very well, thanks to your bounty." "Are you studying a lot?" "Yes, I am making good progress." "What subjects are you studying?" "Oh, I am studying courses in how to get more lunch." "You study that? All the time?" "Yes. I thought of studying some other subjects. Indeed I would love to study them–some of them are so fascinating!–but after all it's the bread–and–butter courses that count. This is the real world, you know. There is no free lunch." "But my dear boy, I'm providing you with that right now." "Yes, for the time being, and I am grateful–but my purpose in life is to get more and better lunches; I want to go right to the top–the executive suite, the Marriott lunch." "But that is not the work I wanted you to do here," says the patron. "The question in our minds ought to be," says Brigham Young, "what will advance the general interests ... and increase intelligence in the minds of the people[?] To do this should be our constant study in preference to how shall we secure that farm or that garden [i.e., where the lunch comes from!]. . . . We cannot worship our God in public meeting or kneel down to pray in our families without the images of earthly possessions rising up in our minds to distract them and make our worship and our prayers unprofitable." Lunch can easily become the one thing the whole office looks forward to all morning: a distraction, a decoy–like sex, it is a passing need that can only too easily become an engrossing obsession. Brigham says, "It is a folly for a man to love? Any other kind of property and possessions. One that places his affections upon such things does not understand that they are made for the comfort of the creature, and not for his adoration. They are made to sustain and preserve the body while procuring the knowledge and wisdom that pertain to God and his kingdom [the school motif], in order that we may preserve ourselves, and live forever in his presence."

And about work? I once had a university fellowship for which I had to agree not to accept any gainful employment for the period of a year–all living necessities were supplied: I was actually forbidden to work for lunch. Was it free lunch? I never worked so hard in my life–but I never gave lunch a thought. I wasn't supposed to. I was eating only so that I could do my work; I was not working only so that I could eat. And that is what the Lord asks us: to forget about lunch, and do his work, and the lunch will be taken care of.

Not being an economist, I must here turn to the scriptures, where I find a succinct but detailed and lucid statement of the lunch situation, that is, of God's economic precepts for Israel, in the book of Deuteronomy.

Moses distributes the Lunch
After Moses had led the children of Israel for 40 years, he summed up all the rules and regulations by which they were to live in a great farewell address, which was to be preserved in writing on stone and parchment and periodically and publicly read to all the people. All prosperity and life itself in the new promised land would depend on the strict observance of the law. Certain general principles were to govern every aspect of life among the children of the covenant:

1. This is the law by which you are to live, and the only law (Deuteronomy 4:1): "It is your life: and through this ye shall prolong your days in the land" (Deuteronomy 32:47).

2. However impractical and unrealistic these rules and precepts may seem to the world, you are not of the world, but wholly withdrawn from it, a people chosen, set apart, removed, "peculiar," sanctified, "above all people that are on the face of the earth," "an holy people" (Deuteronomy 7:6). Israel is under a special covenant with God which has nothing to do with the normal economy of men; they are forbidden to do some things and required to do others which may seem perfectly absurd to outsiders.

3. The legal aspects of the thing are not what counts–the business of lawyers is to get around the law, but you must have it written in your hearts (Jeremiah 31:33), to keep it "with all thine heart, and with all thy soul," because you really love the Lord and his law, which begins and ends with the love of God and each other (Deuteronomy 6:5). It must be a natural thing with you, taken for granted, your way of life as you think and talk about it all the time, so that your children grow up breathing it as naturally as air (Deuteronomy 6:7#150;9).

4. Remember that everything you have is a free gift from God: You had nothing and he gave you everything (Mosiah 2:23-25).

5. Never get the idea that you have earned what you have; beware lest "when thou hast eaten and art full,... Then thine heart be lifted up and thou forget the Lord thy God," and you say to yourself: "My power [ability] (koakh) and might of mine hand [hard work: otsem yadhi, meaning the strength of my hand, or etzem yadhay, meaning my own two hands] hath gotten me this wealth [fortune]" (Deuteronomy 8:10, 14, 17). But you must bear in mind that God alone has given it all to you, and that it is not for any merit of yours, but for the sake of confirming promises made to your fathers that he has done it–if you forget that for a moment you will be destroyed (Deuteronomy 8:18–19). "And while our flocks and herds were increasing upon the mountains and the plains," said Brigham, "the eyes of the people seemed closed to the operations of the invisible hand of Providence, and they were prone to say, 'It is our own handi-work, it is our labor that has performed this!?"

6. The gifts of God have come to you not because of your righteousness, because you are not righteous, and have in no wise deserved what you have received, nor are you worthy of it (Deuteronomy 9:4–29). It is all given to fulfill promises made to righteous men before you. Moses' parting word to the people after 40 years of struggling with them was, "Behold, while I am yet alive with you this day, ye have been rebellious against the Lord; and how much more after my death?" (Deuteronomy 31:27).

As the law is laid down to Israel by Moses, each precept is accompanied by a reminder of their endless obligation to Jehovah, who took them in his charge when they were the lowest of the lowly and brought them with signs and wonders to a land where they have everything. With this in mind, God expects them to be as loving, merciful, and open–handed in dealing with down–and-outers as he has always been with them (cf. Deuteronomy 15:7–8). With this goes a promise, that no matter how much they give to others, he will always make it up to them many times over, "for the Lord shall greatly bless thee" (Deuteronomy 15:4).

Let us remember that Israel had been living for 40 years on a free lunch–manna from heaven. They did not have to work for it; indeed they were effectively prevented from taking any advantage of such a bonanza–it was simply their daily bread to which everyone had a right and of which no one could take more than he needed for himself on one day. If you ate more, it would make you sick; if with far–sighted business sense you stocked up on it, you would find yourself properly rebuked, for the stuff rotted and stank after twenty–four hours, except on the Sabbath. Every attempt to make the manna an object of free enterprise was ruled out–this was the ultimate free lunch. On the day the people entered the promised land, Moses told them that from then on there would be no more manna–but the free lunch would continue without a break. For in this hill country, he explained, they would be just as dependent on the rain of heaven as they ever were on manna from heaven for their sustenance, and God alone would provide it as ever (Deuteronomy 11:11–15). And what would they do to keep it coming? "If ye shall hearken diligently unto my commandments, . . . I will give you the rain of your land in his due season,... that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil. And I will send the grass ... for thy cattle, that thou mayest eat and be full" (Deuteronomy 11:13–15).

And what were the specific commandments they are thus enjoined to keep? That is what Deuteronomy is about. A large part of the law is taken up with "forms and observances" (see also Ezekiel 43:11); in particular, all the people are required to come together at regular intervals to celebrate, feasting and dancing together with great rejoicing, both to thank God for the abundance he had given them and to solicit a continuance of his bounty. Everybody was to have a good time and observe perfect equality in all things, seeing to it that nobody went hungry or neglected. With the first harvest in the new land, they were to bring a basket with samples of all the firstfruits in it, place it before the altar and say: "a Syrian ready to perish was my father" (Amorite, meaning "displaced homeless wanderer, vagrant"), dying of hunger; "and he hath brought us into this place, and hath given this land, even a land that floweth with milk and honey. And now, behold, I have brought the firstfruits of the land, which thou, O Lord, hast given me." The starving Syrian in question was Abraham the Hebrew (which also means "a displaced vagrant"). Saying this, "thou shalt set it before the Lord thy God, and worship before the Lord thy God: and thou shalt rejoice in every good thing which the Lord [Jehovah] thy God hath given unto thee, and unto thine house, thou, and the Levite, and the stranger that is among you," to show the Lord: "I have not transgressed thy commandments, neither have I forgotten them" (Deuteronomy 26:5, 9–13). If the people ever fail to observe this joyful activity of giving and sharing, they will suffer a complete reverse of all the promised blessings, "because thou servedst not the Lord [Jehovah] thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things" (Deuteronomy 28:47). In bringing his substance to the Lord, every man shall say: "I have brought away the hallowed things out of mine house" and then "give them unto the Levite and unto the stranger, to the fatherless, and to the widow, according to all thy commandments" (Deuteronomy 26:13). What was thus hallowed or consecrated to the Lord's work could not be used for any other purpose–it was still manna and not negotiable.

In passing through any field or vineyard in Israel, anyone was free to take what he needed if he was hungry (as the Lord and the apostles did; Mark 2:23); if the owner denied him that, he was breaking the law; if the person took more than he needed for lunch, then he was breaking the law–it was still manna (Deuteronomy 23:24–25). When gathering harvest, said the law, never go back to make sure that you have taken all the olives, grapes, or grain of your farm to the barn or to the press. That may be sound business practice, but the Lord forbids it. Some of it must always be left for those who might need it. From the wine and olive presses we get the word "extortion," meaning to squeeze out the last drop, another way to make a margin of profit–putting the squeeze on, wringing out the last drop. The Latter–day Saints, like the ancient Israelites, are to accept God's gifts gratefully and not "by extortion" (D&C 59:20).

The "primitives" and the ancients everywhere celebrated the free gifts of heaven with seasonal rites closely resembling those of the Israelites. The ritual showering of food from heaven was an important part of the ceremonies, dramatized by the actual throwing down of food and tokens from a high platform, mobile or stationary, into the crowd of worshippers. To these rites, which we have treated at some length elsewhere, Israel added a strong sense of moral obligation. Under the Mosaic Law everyone was constantly being tested for his generosity quotient; for as Brigham Young often reminded the saints, God has placed whatever we have in our hands only to see what we would do with it- whether we would waste, hoard, or bestow it freely. Though generosity cannot be legislated, no one in Israel could get out of taking the proper test, to show how far he was willing to go, granted complete free agency, in carrying out God's express wishes regarding the distribution of his bounties. "A tribute of a freewill offering of thine hand" was required of everyone; the offering could not be evaded, but the amount was left entirely up to the giver, "a freewill offering ... according as the Lord has blessed thee" or, as the Septuagint puts it, "to the limits of your ability." The amount is left up to you because it is you who are being tested (Deuteronomy 16:10).

Thus at the end of six years a servant must be allowed to leave the master's absolutely free of all obligations; and "thou shalt not let him go away empty" (Deuteronomy 15:13); no, nor with two weeks' severance pay, either: "Thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of the floor, and out of thy winepress, of that wherewith the Lord thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him" (Deuteronomy 15:14). And then comes the most important part of the test: "Thou shalt surely give him, and thine heart shall not be grieved when thou givest unto him" (Deuteronomy 15:10). It is how you really feel about it that counts. If you hear of a poor man in the neighborhood, "thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother" (Deuteronomy 15:7–11). It is not sound business sense, obedience to orders, compliance with custom, or recognition of duty that are being tested, but the feelings of the heart, the capacity for compassion. No one is ever to charge interest for a loan, and every seven years all debts shall be automatically cancelled (Deuteronomy 15:1–2). Only by such a sweeping and uncompromising order as "the Lord's release" can men break the insidious network of indebtedness by which Satan holds all mankind in his power.

But one may not refuse a loan because the Lord's release is near, in which whatever you lent will not have to be paid back: "Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart, saying, The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand; and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother [the calm, appraising stare], and thou givest him nought; and he cry unto the Lord against thee, and it be sin unto thee" (Deuteronomy 15:9). This is an example of that meanness of spirit which offends God more than anything else. We have no laws ordering men to be charitable and open–handed, or penalizing that meanness of spirit which so often means an enhanced profit, for the obvious reason that no one can know what is in the heart of another. But God knows, and meanness of spirit is the one thing he will not tolerate. If one loved God with all his heart and soul and his neighbor as himself, few if any laws would be necessary; for such love, said the Lord, comprises all the Law and the Prophets; laws against base and contemptible actions are unnecessary for people to whom such actions are themselves unthinkable.

Thus to bring a flawed offering to the temple may be a shrewd and thrifty move, but it "is an abomination unto the Lord," because it is also a mean and petty thing (Deuteronomy 17:1), as are also double bookkeeping and different sets of weights in business (Deuteronomy 25:13). For the strong to take advantage of the weak is the standard pattern of meanness: Israel is not to pull its weight against weaker nations nor "meddle" in their affairs, even in her own interest (Deuteronomy 2:4–5). The greatest of curses was reserved for King Amalek, because he attacked the feeble ones who lagged behind when the Israelites were passing through his land (Deuteronomy 25:17–18). Israel must never forget any favor shown them by another nation, even reluctantly–ingratitude is meanness (Deuteronomy 23:7–25). To make merchandise of another's necessity is an offense to human dignity (though it is the basic principle of present–day employment practice). Thus if one takes a captive woman to wife and then wants to get rid of her, she must go her way free and not be sold for money, for "thou shalt not make merchandise of her" (Deuteronomy 21:14). Anyone who takes advantage of a virgin must marry her and pay her father handsomely, for "he hath humbled her" (Deuteronomy 22:28–29). One who is just married is not permitted to go to war, for by law he must stay home one year and "cheer up" his bride (Deuteronomy 24:5). It is base to question the virginity of a bride (Deuteronomy 22:13–30), and one who refuses to beget issue by his brother's widow is openly held in contempt, though he cannot be punished–he has offended her human feelings (Deuteronomy 25:5–10). One is required by law not only to shelter any escaped servant who flees to one's house, but to treat him well, living in his new home "where it liketh him best"; and what is more, the benefactor may not grumble about it–the slave's humanity outweighs all other factors (Deuteronomy 23:15–16).

Particularly reprehensible in Israel was the withholding of lunch from the helpless, the best–known rule of all being that "thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn"-i.e., to keep him from eating any (Deuteronomy 25:4). We are told that the people of Sodom and Gomorrah put nets over their trees to deny the birds their lunch, and "Abraham, seeing it, cursed them in the name of his God." The Ammonites and Moabites were under a special curse for having refused the Israelites, their enemies, bread and water while marching through their lands (Deuteronomy 23:4)?"aid and comfort to the enemy," indeed! The Iron Law of Wages may never be invoked in Moses's world: "Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy," i.e., by offering him the right to work on your terms (Deuteronomy 24:14). Some of Moses's laws would be quickly repealed by our present legislatures, such as that making it a crime to pretend not to notice when another man's ox or ass has fallen down and needs help (Deuteronomy 22:4)–even as a priest and Levite once looked away from one lying helpless and bloody by the road to Jericho. Regardless of expense, every man must put a railing around the flat roof of his house lest somebody fall and get hurt (Deuteronomy 22:8); that smacks of safety inspection–anathema to industry and especially to our Utah congressmen.

Private Property
In all the law of Moses with its perpetual concern for giving and receiving there is never any mention whatever of who deserves what, whether rich or poor, or who is worthy to receive what he needs–God "maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good,... the just and on the unjust" (Matthew 5:45). Need is the only criterion where lunch is concerned. Those who basely set themselves to scrupulously calculating the exact point at which they can open or close their hand to their brother, with meticulous definitions of "the truly needy," should consider how much of what they are giving is "truly private property," since the law of Moses deals impressively with the concept.

The words "property" and "private" have the same root (prop = priv by Grimm's Law) and emphasize the same thing–that which is the most intimate and personal part of an individual. The Oxford English Dictionary specifies "privatus–peculiar to oneself –that belongs to or is the property of a particular individual; belonging to oneself, one's own." And "proprius–own, proper, ... property, the holding of something as one's own." Both definitions fall back on Old English agen (German eigenï) "expressing tenderness or affection ... in superlative, very own." Webster has "Latin privatus apart from the state ... of or belonging to one–self, ... single, private, set apart for himself." What is privatum or proprium is therefore peculiar to one person alone (not a corporation). It is something I could not do without, under any social or economic system, and which would have little interest for anyone else, such as my clothes, shoes, books, notes, bedding, glasses, teeth, comb, etc. Because they are personal and indispensable to me and of no value to anyone else, they must be inalienable to me, for there is great danger if they fall into the hands of another. The bully on the block who grabs another boy's glasses can get him to do almost anything to get them back, because he must have them, and the bully knows it. The mill–owner who threatened to withhold lunch from the workers could always get them to work on his terms, claiming their lunches as his private property to dispose of as he chose.

These two totally different views of private property are sharply contrasted in a case often brought to mind by Brigham Young in telling of the good Latter–day Saint businessman who buys a widow's only cow from her for five dollars, "and then [goes] down on his knees and thank[s] God for his peculiar blessings to him." The widow's cow was truly her private property and by the law of Moses could not be take from her. But Old Bessy was something wholly different to the man who saw in her only an addition to his profits. He had no more personal interest, that "tenderness and affection" for one's own, than a dealer has for a thousand acres of canyon land (set aside by God as the proper sphere and element for his other creatures) which he bought last month, hoping to sell it next month to a Chicago syndicate or Arab oil emir for a neat profit. Such cannot be called private property at all.

But lunch is. In Israel every man received a plot of ground, assigned by lot, as his inalienable "inheritance"–it was his lunch and could never be taken from him, even because of debt. It was only as much land as he could "quicken" by his personal labor and loving attention, and no more. The same rule was observed in the settling of the Salt Lake Valley, where no man was allowed to buy and sell land or take more than he could cultivate. The small farm bestowed from tribal lands was also lunch and independence to the early Romans. But when the Conscript Fathers, claiming special privileges by divine decree for and by themselves, seized thousands of farms from the plebs to create their immense estates (the latifundia), as the English and Scottish lords did in the nineteenth–century Enclosure Movement, they forced the former owners either to stay on the land and go on working for them as serfs–for lunch only; or to move to the city, where the emperor, as God's vicar on earth, provided the famous "bread and circuses." The landlords, the industrialists of the time, did not contribute to the public lunch, the annona, which was a ritual and sacred affair, the food and lunch–tickets (tesserae hospitales) being actually showered from the skies by the emperor, acting as the kind and generous father of all. This should be noted here, because bread and circuses are routinely deplored as the cause of Rome's decline. What made them demoralizing was their secularization; in the later Rome in which money was everything, nobody took the divine scheme of things seriously (see the Roman Satirists); lunch was lunch and nothing more. Rome's Zion passed away with Numa, the Roman Enoch. So once lunch was taken care of, the poor Roman had nothing to do but go to the shows and support the political candidates who spent the most on getting elected, while the rich enjoyed their notorious Roman banquets and the depraved pleasures that went with them. For without a sincere religious awareness the free lunch corrupts rich and poor alike. It is the recognition of divine law that both sanctions and requires the free lunch for everybody.The closing chapters of Deuteronomy describe point by point the calamities that will befall Israel if every item of the law is not scrupulously observed. It is the exact reverse of the list of blessings promised if the law is kept. And these terrible things are more than warnings, they are specific prophecies of just what is going to happen, and just what did happen to Israel, "because thou servedst not the Lord thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things" (Deuteronomy 28:47). The identical situation obtains in the Book of Mormon, to which we now turn.

King Benjamin and the Free Lunch
In the time of Lehi, to judge by the Lachish letters and other evidence, the ruling party in Jerusalem was sponsoring an enthusiastic revival of the law of Moses in its purity. The trend is signified by the large proportion of personal names ending in –yahu or –iah, referring to Jahweh, Jehovah the Lord, who gave the law. Five hundred years later there was another such revival among the Nephites led by a pious and learned king, Benjamin, who was determined to preserve the same law in its purity. The name he gave his son Mosiah is clear indication of the survival of the tradition, of which King Benjamin by his dedicated studies was well aware. At the end of his reign he does exactly what Moses and later Joshua did: he summoned all the people together in the great annual assembly (they brought their firstlings with them) to hear a final exposition of the law from him as he handed over the rule and priesthood to his son. His great farewell address covers the same points as did that of Moses, yet it is highly original.

In both Deuteronomy and the book of Mosiah the great discourse on the law is divided into two parts. The first deals with the nature, importance, and purpose of the law. The history of Israel is traced from the beginning and the steps by which the people were brought to a knowledge of Jehovah, recounting their trials, tribulations, follies, punishments, and rewards. The holy nature of the covenant they have entered into is presented to them, and the glorious rewards and terrible punishments connected with it. In both books, the promised rewards are the same: You will prosper in the land which the Lord has given you, heaven and earth will bring forth in abundance, you will never have to fear a foreign enemy–success and security should be yours, for "a thousand generations" (Deuteronomy 7:9). "That ye may prosper in the land according to the promises which the Lord made unto our fathers," says Benjamin, consciously appending his words to those of Moses (Mosiah 1:7). "Ye shall prosper in the land, and your enemies shall have no power over you" (Mosiah 2:31).

For his great farewell address, Benjamin summoned all the people to gather by families around the temple, bringing "the firstlings ... that they might offer sacrifice and burnt offerings according to the law of Moses; ... that they might rejoice and be filled with love towards God and all men" (Mosiah 2:2–4). There you have it in a nutshell. He begins his discourse on an economic note: I "have not sought gold nor silver, nor any manner of riches of you" (Mosiah 2:12). "I, myself, have labored with mine own hands?. I can answer a clear conscience before God this day?. Learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God" (Mosiah 2:14–15, 17). "I, whom ye call your king, am no better than ye yourselves are" (Mosiah 2:26). He is setting the keynote, which is absolute equality. And that follows naturally from the proposition that we owe everything to God, to whom we are perpetually and inescapably in debt beyond our means of repayment: "In the first place,... ye are indebted unto him ... and will be forever and ever" (Mosiah 2:23–24). Let no one boast that he has earned or produced a thing: "Therefore, of what can ye boast...? Can ye say aught of yourselves? I answer you, Nay," right down to the dust of the earth, it all "belongeth to him who created you" (Mosiah 2:24-25). It is his property, not yours! What is more, no one can even pay his own way in the world, let alone claim a surplus: "If ye should serve him who ... is preserving you from day to day ... and even supporting you from one moment to another?I say if you should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants," i.e., consuming more than you produce, unable even to support yourselves (Mosiah 2:21).

And what do we do, then, to qualify for his blessings? "Behold, all that he requires of you is to keep his commandments; and he has promised you that if ye would keep his commandments ye should prosper in the land" (Mosiah 2:22). It never fails, says Benjamin, "if ye do keep his commandments he doth bless and prosper you" (Mosiah 2:22) and in return, "ye are eternally indebted to your heavenly Father, to render to him all that you have and are" (Mosiah 2:34), which is simply the law of consecration.

In his preliminary address, Benjamin, like Moses, impresses upon the people at length the great importance of the instructions he is about to give them, their binding obligation to keep them, and the great rewards that will follow. He purposely gets them into a high state of anticipation by telling them (confidentially) that what he is about to give them was made known to him personally "by an angel from God," so that this is indeed a divine restoration of the law that is being celebrated (Mosiah 3:2). Furthermore, he assures them that it is all good news, "that thou mayest rejoice [said the angel]; and that .. thy people? may also be filled with joy" (Mosiah 3:4), for all this looks forward to the coming of the Lord. Eager as they are, the people must again be cautioned before the law itself is set before them, for though the law of Moses is adapted to their weaker natures, these people, like those taught by Moses, remain "a stiffnecked people" (Mosiah 3:14), and after all God did for them, "yet they hardened their hearts" (Mosiah 3:15). "For the natural man is an enemy to God... and will be forever and ever, unless he... becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things" (Mosiah 3:19). At this point Benjamin again follows Moses' example by declaring that the words "which the Lord thy God hath commanded thee... shall stand as a bright testimony against this people" (Mosiah 3:22, 24).

Thus ended the first address of King Benjamin, by which the people were quite overcome, crying out for forgiveness and receiving a manifestation of the Spirit that filled them with joy (Mosiah 4:2–3).

Benjamin now recognized that they were ready to "hear and understand the remainder of my words," because at last they were "awakened... to a sense of your nothingness, and your worthless and fallen state" (Mosiah 4:4–5), aware that they could only put their "trust in the Lord,... keeping his commandments?. Believe in God;... believe that ye must repent;... always retain in remembrance, the greatness of God, and your own nothingness, and his goodness and longsuffering?. If ye do this ye will always rejoice, and be filled with the love of God" (Mosiah 4:9–13). That being so, "ye will not have a mind to injure one another, but to live peaceably, and to render to every man according to that which is his due" (Mosiah 4:13). And who decides what is due him? Not you! The Lord will tell you that: "And ye will not suffer your children that they go hungry, or naked, [or] ... transgress the laws of God" (Mosiah 4:14). Lunch will be provided, and "ye will teach them to love one another, and to serve one another," with no fighting or quarreling among themselves–this was not to be a competitive society (Mosiah 4:15). And beyond your family, "ye yourselves will succor those that stand in need of your succor; ye will administer of your substance unto him." A beggar is one who asks, for some reason or other not having what he needs: "Ye will not suffer that the beggar putteth up his petition to you in vain, and turn him out to perish" (Mosiah 4:16). He begs because he is hungry, and we must all eat to stay alive–to turn any beggar down, for all you know, is to sentence him to death–it has happened (Mosiah 4:16). The usual pious appeal to the work-ethic–there is no free lunch–will not do: "Perhaps thou shalt say: The man has brought upon himself his misery; therefore I... will not give unto him of my food, nor impart unto him of my substance that he may not suffer, for his punishments are just"–I worked for mine! (Mosiah 4:17). Indolent and unworthy the beggar may be–but that is not your concern: It is better, said Joseph Smith, to feed ten impostors than to run the risk of turning away one honest petition. Anyone who explains why he denies help to another who needs it, says Benjamin, "hath great cause to repent... and hath no interest in the kingdom of God" (Mosiah 4:18), which kingdom is built up on the law of consecration. "For behold, are we not all beggars?" That is no mere rhetoric–it is literally true: we are all praying for what we have not earned. No one is independent: "Do we not all depend upon the same Being, even God, for ... food and raiment, and for gold, and for silver and for all the riches which we have?– You are dependent for your lives and for all that ye have and are" (Mosiah 4:19–20). And that is just what you must consecrate to the building up of the kingdom: "O then, how ye ought to impart of the substance that ye have one to another" (Mosiah 4:21–22). We all give and we all receive, and never ask who is worthy and who is not, for the simple reason that none of us is worthy, all being "unprofitable servants" (Mosiah 2:21). "And if ye judge the man," who asks for your "substance that he perish not," and find him unworthy, "how much more just will be your condemnation for withholding your substance, which doth not belong to you but to God," who wants you to hand it on, and is testing you to see just how willing you are to hand it back to him when he asks for it–not at some comfortably unspecified date, but right now (Mosiah 4:22). Benjamin says he is speaking here to the rich, but the poor may not hold back either, for everyone should have enough but not wish for more; hence the poor who want to be rich, who "covet that which ye have not received," are also guilty (Mosiah 4:24–25). In giving, the poor may keep what is sufficient for their needs, and food, clothing, and shelter covers it (Mosiah 4:26), for the rule is summed up simply, that every man "should impart of [his] substance to the poor, every man according to that which he hath"–which is also the wording of Deuteronomy, for all have a right to food, clothing, and medical care, "both spiritually and temporally according to their wants" (Mosiah 4:26; 18:29).

Benjamin ends with the wise remark that no list of prohibitions would be sufficient to keep the people from sin: "Finally, I cannot tell you all the things whereby ye may commit sin; for there are divers ways and means, even so many that I cannot number them" (Mosiah 4:29). Instead of telling them what they should not do, he has told them what they absolutely must do, the minimum if they would expect God's blessings. If one who has more than he really needs (without which, in fact, he would be one of the "truly needy") and withholds it from those who do not have enough, he is stealing, holding on to that "which doth not belong to you, but to God" (Mosiah 4:22), who wants to see it distributed equally.

And that ends King Benjamin's discourse, devoted not to pious and high–sounding generalities but to the rule that whoever has more than he can eat must share to the limit of his resources with those who do not have enough. Two things are stressed in the address–need and the feeling of dependence. As to need, not a word is said from first to last about hard work, thrift, enterprise, farsightedness, etc., the usual preludes to the No-Free–Lunch lecture, and wo to the man who questions another's qualifications for lunch, for "the same hath great cause to repent" (Mosiah 4:18).

The second issue is independence. Charged with a special emotional impact for Americans, the word has become a fetish for the Latter–day Saints, and led them into endless speculations and plans. "They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare," says Paul–all of which the Lord has strictly forbidden (1 Timothy 6:9). In the scriptures the word "independent" occurs only once, describing the church with no reference to any individual: "The church may stand independent above all other creatures," because it is entirely dependent on "my providence" (D&C 78:14). It is dependence that is important for Benjamin, total dependence on God; and if you serve him with your whole heart and with your whole soul, you are free from dependence on any other being. In the law of Moses the Lord's release cancels all indebtedness of man, while God transfers his claims on our indebtedness to the poor; it is through them that he asks us to pay our debt to him. Let us refer back for the moment to Satan's promise of independence. When, following Satan's instructions, Cain murdered "his brother Abel, for the sake of getting gain" (Moses 5:50), he declared his independence: "And Cain gloried in that which he had done, saying: I am free; surely the flocks of my brother falleth into my hands!" (Moses 5:33). Recently this gospel was proclaimed by one of the richest Americans addressing the student body of Ohio State University (on TV): "There is nothing that gives freedom," he said, "like bucks in the bank." This seems to be the policy we are following today, and there is no doubt whose policy it is.

Feeding the Multitude
With the coming of the Lord in the meridian of time, the feasts of thanksgiving and supplication continued, yet without the shedding of blood, except at Easter, when the paschal lamb, like the earlier blood offerings of the temple, remained a similitude of the great atoning sacrifice. The Lord's Supper and the agape (love, charity) were meals of real food, shared whenever the saints came together for a meeting; and when the Lord visited them after the resurrection he routinely shared a real meal with them, in which he provided the food, looking forward to the time when they would all share in the new wine of the world to come.

The Lord gave lunch to the people in the first place simply because they were hungry, they needed it, and he "was moved with compassion" (Matthew 14:14, 15:32). He both fed them and taught them, but the knowledge was worth far more than the food–he told them not to labor for that (John 6:27). When he miraculously produced the lunch, they wanted to accept him as their prophet and king (John 6:14–15), even as the Nephites, who when they had eaten and were filled all burst out in one joyful chorus of praise and thanksgiving (3 Nephi 20:9). Why the excitement? Hadn't they ever eaten dinner before? That had nothing to do with it; what thrilled them was seeing clearly and unmistakably the hand of the Giver, and knowing for themselves exactly where it all comes from and that it can never fail. Now if we ask, who at these love–feasts got the biggest share or ate the most? We at once betray the poverty and absurdity of our own precious work–ethic. Such questions would be nothing short of blasphemous to all present, as if one were to interrupt the ordinances and stop the feast by announcing: "Hold it right there, you people! Don't you know that there is no free lunch?"

The free lunch looms large in the Sermon on the Mount. First the Lord's Prayer: "Give us this day our daily bread" (Matthew 6:11); this comes with the understanding, expressed in the same sentence, that in return we are to show the same free and liberal spirit towards each other that he does to all of us: "And forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors." Next comes fasting, a most effective reminder of God's generosity to us and also of our complete dependence on him, a thing to be joyfully acknowledged (Matthew 6:16–18). Then an all–important principle; you cannot have it both ways, you cannot work for both employers, you cannot lay up treasures both on earth and in heaven–you cannot divide your heart between them; for to one master or the other you must give your whole and undivided devotion–both employers demand that, but only one of them can have it (Matthew 6:19–20). You must go one way or the other, there can be no compromise (Matthew 6:22–23). "No man can serve two masters": love and hate cannot be divided up between them, "ye cannot serve God and Mammon," mammon being to this day the regular Hebrew word for business, particularly money and banking (Matthew 6:24). You must not yield to the enticings of that other master, nor let his threat of "no lunch if you leave my employ" intimidate you–you must ignore him and his arguments completely: "Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet ... what ye shall put on" (Matthew 6:25). All such things are taken care of for God's creatures: "Behold the fowls of the air, ... your heavenly Father feeds them. Are ye not much better than they?" (Matthew 6:26). It was the practice in Sodom and Gomorrah, we are told, to rob all strangers of their money and then let them starve to death because they could not buy food; and the cities' inhabitants would put nets over their trees so that the birds would have no free lunch on their fruit. For Abraham, such meanness, as we have seen, was the last straw, and "he cursed them in the name of his God."

On the subject of dress and appearance the same rule holds as for lunch–sufficient covering is necessary, but don't go beyond that. If you cannot add a cubit to your stature, don't try to add other splendors to your person which it does not possess: forget the obsession with an impressive appearance that goes with aspiring to the executive lunch ("dressing for success"); simply appear as what you are, and don't fuss so much about it (Matthew 6:27–30). "Therefore," he says again, "take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or Wherewithal shall we be clothed?" (Matthew 6:31). The Gentiles spend their time going after these things–but you are not Gentiles.

Now comes a most enlightening explanation of the economics of the gospel, the answer to the natural question, How shall we get on in the world if we don't even think about such things? The injunction "take no thought" must be taken seriously, since it is one of the most oft–repeated in the scriptures, occurring in all the Gospels, in the Book of Mormon, and the Doctrine and Covenants. Here the formula "all these things" applies specifically to what we must eat, drink, and wear–food and covering (Matthew 6:32). It occurs three times as an objective clause, and the key word is seek. In the same breath we are told that the Gentiles seek after all these things, but we are definitely not to seek after them. We are to be busy seeking after something else, "the kingdom of God, and his [its] righteousness" (Matthew 6:33). But what about the other things, won't we need food and clothing too? Of course, they are very important, and you can rest assured that "your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things" (Matthew 6:32), and he will provide them. If you have enough faith to trust him (Matthew 6:30), and spend your days seeking what he wants you to seek, he will provide "all these things" as you need them (prostethesetai).

"But seek ye first (proton) the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added" (Matthew 6:33). It has become customary to interpret this as meaning that one should first go on a mission or get a testimony some other way, and then turn to the business of getting ahead in the world. But the word for first, proton, means first in every sense–first and foremost, before all else, in preference to all else, etc. It usually refers to time, but not in this passage. We are not told to seek first the kingdom and then seek "all these things"; nothing whatever is said about seeking them except the explicit command not to seek them. There is no idea of a time sequence here: Does one ever stop seeking the kingdom of God and his righteousness in this life, or was there ever a time before, during, or after a mission when one did not need food and clothing? We are not to seek them ever, for God supplies them ever.

The same teachings of the Lord are summarized in Luke 12, where he makes it quite clear that the command to "take no thought" applies not only to the apostles but to the entire church (Luke 12:22). He illustrates the principle of taking no thought for the morrow by the story of a man big in agribusiness (though it is only fair to note that it was a particularly fertile piece of ground and not the owner which "brought forth plentifully" and that the man himself did not, of course, do any work in the field). When with foresight and planning he had completed his arrangements for a splendid retirement he congratulated himself, saying, "My soul, take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry"–the deluxe lunch assured complete independence forever, with no humiliating necessity of praying for daily bread. "But God said unto him, Thou fool! This night thy soul shall be required of thee" (Luke 12:16, 19–20). Shouldn't he have worked for lunch at all, then? Answer: He should neither have made it the goal of his labors, nor got it by manipulating others.

God is not pleased with those who rebuff his offer of free lunch with pious sermons about the work ethic: "A certain king ... made a marriage for his son, and sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come. Again he sent forth,... saying,... I have prepared my dinner,... and all things are ready.... But they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm another to his merchandise" (Matthew 22:2–5). Back to the office and the farm as they virtuously called attention to solid work to be done and "made light" of mere partying. Yet it was a gross insult to their generous host. "Deny not the gifts of God!" is the final plea of the Book of Mormon (Moroni 10:8). Who would despise such gifts? We do, by not asking for them: "Yea, I know that God will give liberally to him that asketh" (2 Nephi 4:35), and they receive not because they ask not (2 Nephi 32:4). Moroni enumerates the spiritual gifts in the last chapter of the Book of Mormon, yet we rarely ask for these gifts today–they don't particularly interest us. There is only one that we do ask for in all sincerity, and duly receive, and that, for obvious reasons, is the gift of healing. But the other gifts? Who cares for them? We make light of them and prefer the real world of everyday life. We do not even ask for the temporal gifts, because we don't want them either–as gifts.

"Ye are cursed because of your riches," says Samuel to the people of Zarahemla, "and also are your riches cursed." Why? For two reasons: (1) "because you have set your hearts upon them," and (2) you "have not hearkened unto the words of him who gave them unto you. Ye do not remember the Lord your God in the things with which he hath blessed you, but ye do always remember your riches, not to thank the Lord your God for them" (Helaman 13:21–22). They wanted the riches desperately, worked for them diligently, and were obsessed with them once they had them; but they simply would not accept them as gifts, but only as earnings. Today we have gone so far as to drop the idea of "unearned increment," and insist on labeling all income, even that of which the recipient is totally unaware, as "earnings." Nobody is going to make us accept welfare!

Enough is Enough
"Having food and raiment," says Paul to Timothy, "let us be therewith content" (1 Timothy 6:8). We must have sufficient for our needs in life's journey, but to go after more is forbidden, though you have your God–given free agency to do so. "Our real wants are very limited," says Brigham; "When you have what you wish to eat and sufficient clothing to make you comfortable you have all that you need; I have all that I need." How many people need to eat two lunches a day? We all eat too much, wear too much, and work too much. Brigham says if we all "work less, wear less, eat less,... we shall be a great deal wiser, healthier, and wealthier people than by taking the course we now do."

It should not take too much hard work to assure anyone of the makings of a lunch; but what is one to do after that? That is the question. Aristotle's famous dictum in the Nichomachean Ethics I, that our proper function on earth is not just to live but to live well, to live as we can and should, reminds us that there should be no serious economic problems at the human level: after all, mice, cockroaches, elephants, butterflies, and dolphins have all solved the economic problem–their mere existence on earth after thousands of years of vicissitudes is adequate proof that they have found the secret of survival. Can we do no better than to dedicate all our time and energy to solving just that one problem, as if our whole object in life were simply lunch? "What is a man," asks Shakespeare, "if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more. Sure he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and god-like reason to fust in us unused." And what is it to be used for? Those very popular how–to–get–rich books, which are the guides to the perplexed of the present generation, say we should keep our minds fixed at all times on just one objective; the person who lets his thoughts wander away from anything but business even for a moment does not deserve the wealth he seeks. Such is the high ethic of the youth today. And such an ethic places us not on the level of the beast but below it.

For today many a TV documentary will show you the beasts of the field not spending their days perpetually seeking out and consuming each other for lunch, as we have been taught, but in pleasant relaxation, play, family fun, bathing, exploring (for many of them have lively curiosity), grooming, sparring, and much happy napping, etc. Even the most efficient killers hunt only every few days when they are really hungry, kill only weaker members of the herds, thus strengthening the stock, and never take more than they need, usually sharing it with others. Between meals we see leopards, lions, and tigers calmly loping through herds of exotic ungulates, who hardly bother to look up from their grazing at the passing visitors. It is only the human predator who keeps a 24–hour lookout for victims in the manner prescribed in the flourishing contemporary success literature.

"No free lunch" easily directs our concern to "nothing but lunch." The Adversary keeps us to that principle, making lunch our full–time concern either by paying workers so little that they must toil day and night just to afford lunch (his favorite trick), or by expanding the lunch–need to include all the luxury and splendor that goes with the super–executive Marriott lunch, about which Paul's letter to Timothy is most instructive. Let us return to it, considering the passage in the "original": "Having adequate nourishment (diatrophas) and decent covering (skepasmata) we shall with these suffice ourselves (arkesthesometha). But those who want to be rich (ploutein) fall into temptation (peirasmon, a test) and a snare (pagida, a trap, noose, decoy), and into hankering for many things (epithumias, a passionate desire to possess) which are silly (anoetous ; mindless, senseless) and harmful (blaberas), and which drag (buthizousi, plunge) human beings down to ruin (olethron, deadly danger) and utter destruction (apoleian). For the root (rhiza) of all evil doings (panton ton kakon) is the desire for money (philargyria, cash–loving), being driven by which people have gone astray, got lost (apeplanesthesan, Heb. abad, stray from the path) from the faith and become hopelessly involved (peripeiran, spitted, engangled) in agonizing situations (odunais, rapids, pangs). But thou, O man of God, keep away from these things" (1 Timothy 6:8–11). The Lord teaches the same lesson when he tells how members of the church fall away because of "the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, [which] choke the word (logos), and it becometh unfruitful (akarpos, fruitless, barren) (Mark 4:19; Matthew 13:22).

The parables of the Lord are particularly rich in matters relevant to the free lunch, and in them Jesus appeals before all things against meanness of spirit. What could be more abominable than to "offend one of these little ones," taking advantage of the helpless? What shall we say of one who uses the gifts that God has given him to take from others, no matter how legally, the gifts which God intends to give them? "The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king.... One was brought unto him which owed him 10,000 talents.... The servant fell down,... saying, Lord, have patience with me and I will pay thee all. Then the Lord of that servant was moved with compassion,... and forgave him the debt. But the same servant went out and found one of his fellow–servants, which owed him an hundred pence: and he laid hands on him and took him by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest," and had him taken to prison (Matthew 18:28). It was all perfectly legal–we cannot legislate pity and compassion; altruism, argued Ayn Rand, is the greatest weakness in our society and the greatest obstacle to the unhindered operation of free enterprise. But the kingdom of heaven, of which the Lord is here speaking, does not operate on that principle: "O, thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me," said the Lord. "Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee?" (Matthew 18:23–35). Then the King "delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due to him. So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses [or debts, the word is aphete, cancel a debt]" (Matthew 18:34–35).

And you are to be equal
For the Last Days everyone has been invited to work for the kingdom with singleness of purpose and to enjoy the free lunch of the saints. The first words of the Lord to the youthful Joseph after he had introduced himself in the grove were, "Behold the world lieth in sin at this time and none doeth good no not one.... And mine anger is kindling against the inhabitants of the earth to visit them acording [sic] to this ungodliness." That being the present situation, we may well ask in just what it is that renders the present world so depraved. The answer is loud and clear: "Behold, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and that which cometh of the earth, is ordained for the use of man for food and for raiment, and that he might have in abundance" (D&C 49:19). Malthus was wrong; there is no need for grabbing, "for the earth is full, and there is enough and to spare" (D&C 104:17). And what is wrong just now? But it is not given that one man should possess that which is above another, wherefore the world lieth in sin" (D&C 49:20). So that is where the offense lies; some are taking more than they should and using the power it gives them over others to make them do their bidding. But how much is too much? "And wo be unto man that sheddeth blood or that wasteth flesh and hath no need" (D&C 49:21). The one criterion for taking is need, specifically "for food and raiment," not for sport or display.

We begin, as in the other scriptures, with the basic principle that everything we have is a free gift from God: "The earth [is] my very handiwork, and all things therein are mine;... and behold this is the way that I, the Lord, have decreed to provide for my saints" (D&C 104:14, 16). That does not mince matters but gets right down to business. He wants us all equal, "that the poor shall be exalted, in that the rich are made low" (D&C 104:16). And he wants to make us co–workers in the project, which is all for our benefit: "It is expedient that I, the Lord, should make every man accountable, as a steward over earthly blessings, which I have made and prepared for my creatures" (D&C 104:13). He wants all his creatures to enjoy his bounty, with never a mention of who is worthy or deserving–as ever, the only principle of distribution is that of need: "You are to be equal, or in other words, you are to have equal claims on the properties for... your stewardships, every man according to his wants and his needs, inasmuch as his wants are just" (D&C 82:17). That limitation on wants is important, since one often wants what one should not have; a want is "justified" only when it is a true need, and as we have seen, our real needs are few..."food and raiment," mansions and yachts not included. In introducing this particular revelation, the Lord repeats for the third time what he has said in the grove: "The anger of God kindleth against the inhabitants of the earth; and none doeth good, for all have gone out of the way" (D&C 82:6). And always the same reason is given for that anger, that men withhold God's gifts from each other in a power–game, and that this is the prevailing evil of the age.

How do we distribute it then? "I have given unto the children of men to be agents unto themselves" (D&C 104:17). You are perfectly free to make all the money you can; just as you are perfectly free to break any one of the Ten Commandments, as millions do every day, though God has forbidden it, as he has forbidden seeking for riches. But your behavior once you have entered a covenant with God will be judged by the standards which he sets: "Therefore, if any man shall take of the abundance which I have made and impart not his portion, according to the law of my gospel, unto the poor and the needy, he shall, with the wicked, lift up his eyes in hell, being in torment" (D&C 104:18). A clear reference to the rich man who fed Lazarus the beggar with crumbs (Luke 16:23).

Modern revelation has some interesting things to say about idlers: "Let every man be diligent in all things. And the idler shall not have place in the church" (D&C 75:29). We are all to work in the kingdom and for the kingdom. "And the inhabitants of Zion also shall remember their labors, inasmuch as they are appointed to labor,... for the idler shall be had in remembrance before the Lord" (D&C 68:30). Note that it is not the withholding of lunch but the observant eye of the Lord that admonishes the idler. This refers to all of us as laborers in Zion, and "the laborer in Zion shall labor for Zion; for if they labor for money they shall perish" (2 Nephi 26:31). That is the theme here: "Now, I, the Lord, am not well pleased with the inhabitants of Zion, for there are idlers among them; ... they also seek not earnestly the riches of eternity, but their eyes are full of greediness" (D&C 68:31). An idler in the Lord's book is one who is not working for the building up of the kingdom of God on earth and the establishment of Zion, no matter how hard he may be working to satisfy his own greed. Latter–day Saints prefer to ignore that distinction as they repeat a favorite maxim of their own invention, that the idler shall not eat the bread or wear the clothing of the laborer. And what an ingenious argument they make of it! The director of a Latter–day Saint Institute was recently astounded when this writer pointed out to him that the ancient teaching that the idler shall not eat the bread of the laborer has always meant that the idle rich shall not eat the bread of the laboring poor, as they always have. "To serve the classes that are living on them," Brigham Young reports from England, "the poor, the laboring men and women are toiling, working their lives out to earn that which will keep a little life in them [lunch is what they get out of it, and no more]. Is this equality? No! What is going to be done? The Latter–day Saints will never accomplish their mission until this inequality shall cease on the earth." But the institute director was amazed, because he had always been taught that the idle poor should not eat the bread of the laboring rich, because it is perfectly obvious that a poor man has not worked as hard as a rich man. With the same lucid logic my Latter–day Saint students tell me that there were no poor in the Zion of Enoch because only the well–to–do were admitted to the city.

But quite apart from who works hardest, how can the meager and insufficient lunch of a poor child possibly deprive a rich man's dinner table of the vital proteins and calories which he needs? It can only be the other way around. The extra food on the rich man's table does not belong to him, says King Benjamin, but to God, and He wants the poor man to have it (Mosiah 4:22). The moral imperative of the work–ethic is by no means the eternal law we assume it to be, for it rests on a completely artificial and cunningly contrived theory of property. Few seem to be aware today that less than 50 years ago it was considered among the upper classes of England to be a disgrace to work for a living, and the landed gentry refused intimate contact with families who were (sniff) "in trade," i.e., business. It is custom alone and not an eternal law of nature that gives us our attitude toward these things.

A common objection to the economic equality on which the scriptures insist is that it would produce a drab, monotonous sameness among us. But that sameness already exists–we all have about the same number of eyes, ears, arms, legs, etc. Few people are twice as tall or twice as short as the average, and Binet was unable to come up with an IQ double the average. Also, few of us need two lunches a day. We might as well face it, we are all very much alike in such things, though the thought mortally offends some people. It is in the endless reaches of the mind, expanding forever in all directions, that infinite variety invites us, with endless space for all so that none need be jealous of another. It is those who seek distinction in costly apparel, living quarters, diversions, meals, cars, and estates who become the slaves of fashion and the most stereotyped people on earth. And it is because communism is a "dialectical materialism" that it is the drabbest show of all, though our rival establishment is not far behind. "You may say," says Brigham, "'If we live, we must eat, drink, and wear clothing'; and 'He that provideth not for his own household, has denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel'; [by 'providing' the same writer means 'food and raiment... and therewith content'] numberless arguments of this kind will present themselves to the minds of the people, to call them away from the line of their duty." It is Satan's clever decoy to that fervid consumerism (Veblen's "conspicuous consumption") which is a confession of mental, moral, and spiritual bankruptcy.

Brigham Young also noted, however, that if the wealth were equally distributed one fine day, it would not be long before it would be as unequal as ever, the lion's share going to the most dedicated and competent seekers for it. True enough. But wealth is not lunch, and to make it such is an offense against nature. Let us say the lunch is equally distributed one day, and soon one man because of his hustle is sitting daily on 70,000 lunches while many people are going without. He generously offers them the chance to work for him and get their lunches back–but they must work all day, just for him and just for lunch. Lunch and the satisfaction of helping their generous employer to get hold of yet more lunches (for that is the object of their work) are all they get out of it. Is this an exaggeration? Come with me to the mines of Scotland in which my grandparents toiled, as described by them and by Her Majesty's Commission on the Labour of Women and Children in Mines, 1842:

Children are taken into these mines to work as early as four years of age, . . . often from seven to eight, while from eight to nine is the ordinary age.... Female Children begin to work in these mines at the same early ages as the males.... Parish apprentices, who are bound to serve their masters until twenty–one years of age,... shall receive only food and clothing. [Lunch is what they live for.] The employment ... assigned to the youngest Children,... requires that they should be in the pit as soon as the work of the day commences, and,... not leave the pit before the work of the day is at an end.... Children engaged in it are commonly excluded from light and are always without companions.... In some districts they remain in solitude and darkness during the whole time they are in the pit.... Many of them never see the light of day for weeks together.... From six years old and upwards, the hard work... begins,... [requiring] the unremitting exertion of all the physical power which the young workers possess.... Both sexes are employed together in precisely the same kind of labour.... [All] commonly work almost naked.... In the East of Scotland [where the Nibleys were so employed], a much larger proportion of Children and Young Persons are employed,... and... the chief part of their labour consists in carrying the coals on their backs up steep ladders.... The regular hours of work for Children ... are rarely less than eleven; more often they are twelve; in some districts they are thirteen; and in one district they are generally fourteen and upwards.... In the great majority of these mines night–work is part of the ordinary system of labour....The labour ... is ... generally uninterrupted by any regular time set apart for rest and refreshment; what food is taken in the pit being eaten as best it may while the labour continues. [Why not? If there is no free lunch, why should there be a free lunch hour?] In many mines the conduct of the adult colliers to the Children ... is harsh and cruel; the persons in authority in these mines, who must be cognizant of this ill–usage, never interfere to prevent it.... Little interest is taken by the coal owners in the Children.... In all the coal–fields accidents of a fearful nature are extremely frequent.... No money appears to be expended with a view to secure the safety, much less the comfort, of the workpeople.... Very generally in the East of Scotland, the food is poor in quality, and insufficient in quantity; the Children themselves say that they have not enough to eat; and the Sub–Commissioners describe them as covered with rags,... confining themselves to their homes on the Sundays [because] ... they have no clothes to go in.... Notwithstanding the intense labour performed by these Children, they do not procure even sufficient food and raiment.... The employment in these mines commonly produces... stunted growth of the body.... The long hours of work, [etc.], in all the districts, deteriorates the physical constitution.... The limbs become crippled and the body distorted.... Muscular powers give way.... This class of the population is commonly extinct soon after fifty."

One thinks of the infamous Roman mines, the ultimate in human horror stories; yet the workers there were all condemned criminals and enemies captured as slaves–these in Great Britain were innocent little children. No free lunch to undermine their characters! The pious mine–owners even waived the sacred imperative of the Sabbath in their case–even that yielded to the sanctity of the work–ethic: "A custom bearing with extreme hardship upon Children and Young Persons [is] ... that of continuing the work without any interruption whatever during the Sunday," when "the labour ... is continued for twenty–four hours in succession." –a 24–hour shift to make up for the every other Sunday they have off! When some proprietors tried doing away with the system it was found that is was "without disadvantage to their works"–they lost nothing; yet even after it was shown unprofitable, the "custom... still prevails." Better break the Sabbath than lose the honest day's work these kids owe you. The triumph of the Work Ethic is complete.

Of course the mine–owners and their lawyers responded with moral fervor to the charges in the report. They freely admitted that the condition in the mines "in regard both to ventilation and drainage is lamentably defective." But what can they do about that? "To render them... safe does not appear to be practicable by any means yet known" ...so don't hold them responsible! Again, if "persons in authority in these mines... never [interfere] to prevent... harsh and cruel [treatment]," it is because, as they "distinctly [state], that they do not conceive that they have any right to do so" let us keep this on a high moral plain, it is the owner's own business what they do with their property. If no money at all is "expended with a view to secure... safety" ...remember, that would be confiscatory–need we be reminded that in 1982 a very devout Senator from Utah labored to cut federal mine inspection in half to save money for the mining companies? If the kids work in "passages... so small, that even the youngest Children cannot move along them without crawling on their hands and feet, in which unnatural and constrained posture they drag the loaded carriages after them," again I ask you–is anyone to blame for that? Did the owners create those thin seams of coal? To quote the report: "As it is impossible, by any outlay compatible with a profitable return, to render such coal mines... fit for human beings to work in, they never will be placed in such a condition [of fitness], and consequently they never can be worked without inflicting great and irreparable injury on the health of the Children." So you see there is just no way around it; the work must go on, since the coal is "a main source of our national wealth and greatness," which makes the mine owners benefactors of the human race. Also bear in mind that if "notwithstanding the intense labour performed by these Children, they do not procure even sufficient food and raiment," it is "in general" because of their "idle and dissolute parents, who spend the hard–earned wages of their offspring at the public house." Though nearly all of the parents worked in the mines too, very many of them were too crippled by sickness or injury to continue, but that is no excuse for getting drunk.

Of course we must not overlook the fun side of working in the mines. "The coal mine, when properly ventilated and drained,... and the side passages... of tolerable height, is not only not unhealthy, but... is considered as a place of work, more salubrious and even agreeable than that in which many kinds of labour are carried on above ground" –an eloquent commentary on those other kinds of labor. And the excitement of it: where "seams of coal are so thick that horses go direct to the workings, or in which the side passages from the workings to the horseways are not of any great length, the lights in the main ways render the situation of these Children comparatively less cheerless, dull, and stupefying." Here the little nippers could pop out of the side passages and take a look at the magnificent sight of a feeble line of lights burning in the damp and murky main passage–and when you hear a horse–car actually go by, what a thrill! And rest and relaxation– "From the nature of the employment, intervals of a few minutes necessarily occur during which the muscles are not in active exertion," so it is not necessary after all to "interrupt" the work "by any regular time set apart for rest and refreshment; what food is taken in the pit being eaten as best it may while the labour continues." And that labor builds strong bodies: "The labour in which Children ... are chiefly employed,... namely, in pushing the loaded carriages of coals,... is a description of exercise which, while it greatly develops the muscles of the arms, shoulders, chest, back, and legs, without confining any part of the body,... afford[s] an equally healthful excitement to all the other organs." So who are they to complain if they are crippled at the ages of thirty and forty, and "extinct soon after fifty"?

The story of the mines has been told not to harrow up our souls, but as a gentle reminder that the principles and practices of the nineteenth–century industrialists are still wholly and enthusiastically endorsed by the people of our own society, in proof of which we could cite present–day instances almost if not quite as horrendous as Grandpa's stories of bonny Scotland. The reason things have not changed lies in the basic nature of those principles, of necessity stern and inflexible. A thing is either free or it is not; a free lunch would have to be for everybody, and that would never do in the "real world" in which we live. The communists are even more insistent than we are on having a world in which everybody must work, work, work for lunch, with no other expectation in time or eternity than a booming economy here and now. Their periodic slumps and collapses are as predictable as our own, but that will not correct their fanatical obsession with a single way of doing things. We are wasting our time talking about free lunch in the world as we know it.

But the world as we know it is the very antithesis of Zion, in which we should all be living at this very moment. I have cited a few passages from the Pearl of Great Price, Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, and Doctrine and Covenants to show that whether we like it or not, in all those five dispensations of the gospel the free lunch was prescribed for all living under the covenant, and at the same time very special kinds of work were assigned to each and all of them, the object of which was not lunch but the building up of the kingdom and the establishment of Zion. Our real temporal wants, we have been told repeatedly, are few, and are taken care of by the law of consecration. And in every dispensation, failure to act on principles which they promised and covenanted to observe, the most important being the law of love, has brought to an end the felicity of God's people and covered them with confusion as their enemies prevailed against them. No one is more completely "of the world" than one who lives by the world's economy, whatever his display of open piety.

Thus Moses sums it up: "See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil, . . . blessing and cursing" (Deuteronomy 30:15–19). We have already seen what is required of us to merit the blessing, and to these things Moses adds a useful list of the worst crimes that Israel is likely to commit, the most certain to incur the cursing. There are eleven sins in the list (Deuteronomy 27:15–26); all of them are of a secret and underhanded nature, and at least eight of them consist in taking advantage of weaker parties. The essence of evil being thus clearly exposed, the rationalizing, theorizing, and legalizing of the dialectical materialists on either side of the Iron Curtain is irrelevant to the issue. Which is, that anyone who can argue that it is permissible to deny food to the hungry when we have food "shall with the wicked lift up his eyes in hell."

This started out to be an exhilarating study of the pleasures and advantages of the free lunch. But as it progressed it became more and more depressing as the relevant scriptures accumulated and the gulf steadily widened between the Zion of God and those Babylonian institutions in our midst that brazenly bear the fair name of Zion as a gimmick to promote local business.

We are being asked even at this moment to choose between the peculiar economy which God has prescribed for us and what we have always considered the more realistic, convenient, and expedient economy by which the world lives and in which at the moment it is convulsively gasping and struggling to survive. The difference between the two orders is never more apparent than at lunchtime, in the homely perennial ordinance that was meant to unite us all for a happy hour but which instead divides God's children with the awful authority and finality of the last judgment–in which, by the way, the Lord assures us that the seating order is going to be completely reversed.

Notes

* This talk was given April 20, 1982, to the Cannon–Hinkley Club at the Lion House in Salt Lake City. It was published in BYU Today (November 1982): 8–12.

1. Quoted by John C. Whitcomb, The Genesis Flood (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1964), 443.

2. Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, tr. Edward Fitzgerald (New York: Avon Books, n.d.), LII.

3. Hoimar von Ditfurth, Children of the Universe (New York: Atheneum, 1976), 10.

4. Lewis Thomas, "On the Uncertainty of Science," Key Reporter 46 (Autumn 1980): 2.

5. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, "What Is Life?" in Biology Today (Del Mar, CA: Painter, 1972), xxix–xxxi.

6. R. Buckminster Fuller, Intuition (New York: Doubleday, 1972, 135.

7. Ibid., 138, 142.

8. Ibid., 110.

9. Ibid., 112.

10. Von Ditfurth, Children of the Universe, 13.

11. Fred Hoyle, "The Universe: Past and Present Reflections," Engineering and Science (November 1981): 10,12.

12. Ibid., 12.

13. John K. Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), 48.

14. JD 3:323

15. Dean C. Jesse, ed., Letters of Brigham Young to His Sons (Salt Lake: Deseret Book, 1974), 199.

16. JD 11:115

17. Ibid., 8:134

18. Ibid., 3:257.

19. Hugh W. Nibley, "Sparsiones," Classical Journal 40 (June 1945): 515–43.

20. Gerald Friedlander, Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer (New York: Hermon Press, 1965), 176; cf. Lewis Ginsberg, Legends of the Jews, 7 vols. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publications Society of America, 1968), 1:245–50; cf. Nathan Ausubel, A treasury of Jewish Folklore (New York: Crown, 1948), 124.

21. JD 13:302.

22. Friedlander, Pirke ke Rebbi Eliezer, 176; cf. Ginsberg, Legends of the Jews, 1:245–40; cf. Ausubel, A treasury of Jewish Folklore, 124.

23. JD 13:302

24. Ibid., 12:122

25. Shakespeare, Hamlet, act IV, scene iv, line 38.

26. Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness. (New York: Signey, 1961), vii–xi.

27. The 1832 recital of the First Vision as dictated by Joseph Smith to Frederick G. Williams. See Milton V. Backman, Joseph Smith's First Vision (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1971), appendiz A; cf. Dean C. Jessee, ed., "The Early Accounts of Joseph Smith's First Vision," BYU Studies 9 (1969): 280.

28. JD 19:47.

29. Ibid., 1:200.

30. "First Report of the Commissioners: Mines," in British Parliamentary Papers, 11vols. (London: Clower and Sons, 1842; reprinted Shannon, Ireland: Irish University Press, 1968), 6:255–58 (emphasis added).

31. Ibid., 259.

32. Ibid.

33. Ibid., 255.

34. Ibid.

35. Ibid., 257 (emphasis added).

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid., 259.

38. Ibid.

39. Ibid., 258.

42. Ibid.

41. Ibid.

42. Ibid., 256.

43. Ibid.

44. Ibid.

45. Ibid., 258–59.

46. Ibid., 258.

References: http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=transcripts&id=119

AR

Mentors vs Advisors

2008-01-22T07:21:00.000-08:00

Whatever direction we go we will need mentors. Shawn and I had a discussion about this and I realized that what a mentor is, isn't exactly clear. Robert Kiyosaki in his book Choose To Be Rich talks about Mentors and Advisors and here's what I learned:

The difference between a mentor and an advisor: A mentor has "been there, done that". He or she has become succesful in the particular industry that they are in. They have gone the path the you want to take and can lead you in the right direction.

Advisors have a specific knowledge in a specific area of expertise, these are people that you can call for councel in a specific realm (lawyers, tax strategists etc....). These people are crucial members of your team, but they are not mentors.

Finding Mentors: figure out what type of business you want to do. Example; If you want to buy a franchise, you should find someone who has successfully owned a franchise. Preferrably someone who has owned that franchise. (a Subway franchise owner may not be the best mentor for you if you want to buy a McDonalds franchise).

How to find mentors: you dont neccesarily have to know them beforehand. Ask your financial advisor or attorney, they may have worked with people who have been in your field. It is not always best to have your friends be your mentors, don't be afraid to find someone who you don't know.

Exchange: when asking someone to be a mentor for you, you are asking for time and resources and there must be an exchange. What can you provide for your mentor in exchange for his time? Maybe you can volunteer at his office or personal services. Sometimes people get jobs working for their future mentors.

Many Mentors are flattered and willing to be your mentor, but because there are only so many hours in a day you need to be aware of that. Potential Mentors will want to know that you are eager and willing to put in the time needed to get the most out of the exchange. In other words, you should be willing to jump at will for opportunities to learn.

We need to search our network and see who is out there that can be mentors for us. As we build or team I am certain that we will find somebody willing to exchange with us.

Recommended additions to the book list.

2008-01-11T11:54:00.000-08:00

I got this recommended reading for those in the Freedom Fast Track from their website:

Killing Sacred Cows Garrett B. Gunderson. Killing Sacred Cows boldly exposes myths, fallacies, and misguided traditions about the world of personal finance and presents a revolutionary perspective on prosperity destined to shake up an industry and create unprecedented opportunity and wealth for mission-driven individuals.

Good to Great Jim Collins. Explore what goes into a company's transformation from mediocre to excellent. Based on hard evidence and volumes of data, the book author (Jim Collins) and his team uncover timeless principles on how the good-to-great companies like Abbott, Circuit City, Fannie Mae, Gillette, Kimberly-Clark, Kroger, Nucor, Philip Morris, Pitney Bowes, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo produced sustained great results and achieved enduring greatness, evolving into companies that were indeed ‘Built to Last'.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Stephen R. Covey. Stephen R. Covey's book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, has been a top-seller for the simple reason that it ignores trends and pop psychology for proven principles of fairness, integrity, honesty, and human dignity. Celebrating its fifteenth year of helping people solve personal and professional problems, this special anniversary edition includes a new foreword and afterword written by Covey exploring the question of whether the 7 Habits are still relevant and answering some of the most common questions he has received over the past 15 years.

As A Man Thinketh James Allen. As a Man Thinketh is a literary work of James Allen, published in 1902. The title is influenced by a verse in the Bible from the book of Proverbs chapter 23 verse 7, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is.”

The Dog Poop Initiative Kirk A. Weisler. A true story of scoopers and poopers, Of pointers and heroes. Of those who score real goals, And those who score zeroes.
Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics Henry Hazlitt. Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics.

The Jackrabbit Factor: Why You Can (Paperback) Leslie Householder. "The story that will inspire you to dream bigger than ever. Richard is at the end of his financial rope and disappears into the woods behind his home. Where has he gone, and what is required of Felicity before she can find him? Unlock with Richard the secret behind the voice of inspiration and find out for yourself how truly dependable and ingenious your own inner voice can be."

The Law Frederic Bastiat. No work before or since has made such a compelling case for freedom. Bastiat's message will influence students of liberty for years to come.

The Laws of Lifetime Growth: Always Make Your Future Bigger Than Your Past (Hardcover) Dan Sullivan & Catherine Nomura. There are some who believe that they've already gone as far as they can go. Then, there are some who find the question inspiring, but feel they lack confidence or direction. Still, there are some who answer, "The sky's the limit!", but question how they're ever going to get there by lateral moves. No matter where you are in life: There's always room to grow. The Laws of Lifetime Growth offers remarkable, instantly usable insights, changing the way you think, and empowering you to take command of your future.

Leap Robert Castiglione. Bob Castiglione is a pioneer in applying the principles of economics to personal finance. His LEAP program is a unique and coordinated approach to building and protecting wealth.

Man's Search for Meaning Viktor E. Frankl. Frankl's timeless memoir and meditation on finding meaning in the midst of suffering With a new Foreword by Harold S. Kushner and a new Biographical Afterword by William J. Winslade Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of others he treated later in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. Frankl's theory-known as logotherapy, from the Greek word logos ("meaning")-holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful. At the time of Frankl's death in 1997, Man's Search for Meaning had sold more than 10 million copies in twenty-four languages. A 1991 reader survey for the Library of Congress that asked readers to name a "book that made a difference in your life" found Man's Search for Meaning among the ten most influential books in America. Beacon Press, the original English-language publisher of Man's Search for Meaning, is issuing this new paperback edition with a new Foreword, biographical Afterword, jacket, price, and classroom materials to reach new generations of readers.

The Master-Key to Riches (Paperback) Napoleon Hill. Based on the Andrew Carnegie formula for money-making, THE MASTER-KEY TO RICHES describes in step-by-step detail today's greatest practical philosophy of success....This amazing philosophy, culled from the success experiences of hundreds of the world's most powerful and wealthy men, will show you how to succeed in any walk of life.

The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams & Reaching Your Destiny (Paperback) Robin S. Sharma. Everyone loves a good fable, and this is certainly one. The protagonist is Julian Mantle, a high-profile attorney with a whacked-out schedule and a shameful set of spiritual priorities. Of course it takes a crisis (heart attack) to give Mantle pause. And pause he does--suddenly selling all his beloved possessions to trek India in pursuit of a meaningful existence. The Himalayan gurus along the way give simple advice, such as, "What lies behind you and what lies before you is nothing compared to what lies within you." Yet it is easy to forgive the story's simplicity because each kernel of wisdom is framed to address the persistent angst of Western white-collar professionals.

The Proper Role of Government Ezra Taft Benson. In a few pages, Benson is able to summarize what all of us know instinctually, but sometimes have a hard time explaining in the face of current moral non-absolutes in the political world.

The Prosperity Paradigm Steve D'Annunzio. We never see the way it is, we see the world the way we are. People have unknowingly been programmed with a series of fear-based beliefs that greatly influence how they see the world, and therefore what they can achieve in the world. The Prosperity Paradigm will help you clean the lens of your inner eye, so you can more clearly see the already existing opportunities in a new way.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money--That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! (Paperback) Robert T. Kiyosaki. Personal-finance author and lecturer Robert Kiyosaki developed his unique economic perspective through exposure to a pair of disparate influences: his own highly educated but fiscally unstable father, and the multimillionaire eighth-grade dropout father of his closest friend. The lifelong monetary problems experienced by his "poor dad" (whose weekly paychecks, while respectable, were never quite sufficient to meet family needs) pounded home the counterpoint communicated by his "rich dad" (that "the poor and the middle class work for money," but "the rich have money work for them"). Taking that message to heart, Kiyosaki was able to retire at 47. Rich Dad, Poor Dad, written with consultant and CPA Sharon L. Lechter, lays out his the philosophy behind his relationship with money. Although Kiyosaki can take a frustratingly long time to make his points, his book nonetheless compellingly advocates for the type of "financial literacy" that's never taught in schools. Based on the principle that income-generating assets always provide healthier bottom-line results than even the best of traditional jobs, it explains how those assets might be acquired so that the jobs can eventually be shed.

The Road Less Traveled M. Scott Peck. By melding love, science, and religion into a primer on personal growth, M. Scott Peck launched his highly successful writing and lecturing career with this book. Even to this day, Peck remains at the forefront of spiritual psychology as a result of The Road Less Traveled. In the era of I'm OK, You're OK, Peck was courageous enough to suggest that "life is difficult" and personal growth is a "complex, arduous and lifelong task." His willingness to expose his own life stories as well as to share the intimate stories of his anonymous therapy clients creates a compelling and heartfelt narrative.

The Science of Getting Rich: Attracting Financial Success through Creative Thought (Paperback) Wallace D. Wattles. In his bestselling book, Wallace D. Wattles explains that “universal mind” underlies and permeates all creation. Through the process of visualization we can engage the law of attraction--impressing our thoughts upon “formless substance” and bringing the desired object or circumstances into material form. The author emphasizes the critical importance of attitude: only by aligning ourselves with the positive forces of natural law can we gain unlimited access to the creative mind and its abundant rewards.

The Ultimate Gift: A Novel (Paperback) Jim Stovall. The intent of Jim Stovall, in writing this book, was to share the importance of life's major "gifts" in the form of a story. The author, Jim Stovall, has made many achievements himself; despite blindness, he has authored various books and is Co-founder and President of the Narrative Television Network.

Unique Ability: Creating the Life You Want (Paperback) Catherine Nomura, Julia Waller & Shannon Waller. For over twenty years, The Strategic Coach Inc. has helped successful entrepreneurs balance their lives and make more money by focusing on the things they love to do and do best. Now this wisdom has been made available to a general audience. Full of original ideas, enlightening stories, practical exercises, and Strategic Coach wisdom, this book is sure to change lives by showing readers how to explore the endless freedom and satisfaction that comes from doing what they love.

Wealth in Families (Paperback) Charles W. Collier. My purpose in writing Wealth in Families is to encourage you to think deeply about the fundamental questions surrounding wealth and its effect on your family. If I am successful, you may find yourself choosing to alter the ways in which you plan and act with regard both to your wealth and to your family.

Rich Dad's Who Took My Money?: Why Slow Investors Lose and Fast Money Wins! (Rich Dad's) (Paperback) Robert T. Kiyosaki. Having your money work for you instead of working for your money is a good practice. But beware of investment strategies that are easy but don't offer the chance to really learn about investing. Mutual funds, banks, and some brokers often want to lock your money into buy-and-hold schemes or, worse, to trade excessively and churn up fees. In an abridgment that is both concise and far-reaching, the authors describe a step-by-step strategy for not getting snookered. A core lesson for anyone wanting financial control, this is the best ever and most personal example of Rich Dad's financial wisdom, regardless of your current job or how much you have to invest.

AR

Thought for us all.

2008-01-11T07:31:00.001-08:00

OK guys....the question has been lingering, what would we do with a big chunk of money if we had it. We obviously don't know exactly what to do right now, but here's a thought that I had today while listening to the Investors Paradigm Podcast (10/22/07).

What if someone came up to us 15 years ago and said I need YOU to teach the gospel to this family in a foreign country in a foreign language. 15 years ago we would have been baffled by this thought!! So the obvious is that now we know that we all pulled that off and were able to change lives and teach fluently. What happened to get us there?

1. We went to teachers and had them teach us the language and the gospel, and through our own studying and education these teachings became internalized.

2. We surrounded ourselves with like minded people that all had the sames goals and desires and standards that we had and we taught each other and learned from each other.

3. We went out into "the Field" and applied all the principles and strategies that we learned, continued to educate ourselves daily, continued to discipline ourselves daily and DID IT. Although we may have embarrassed ourselves many times, failed and got discouraged, we continued to do it until the fear was gone.

We may also be able to testify that even now we fail, because we have'nt kept up on the language, it slips a little and we need to up our education and application of these things. It's not out of reach to reach our potential and live our soul purpose, it just takes time.

Your thoughts?

AR

Ideas for Curriculum of Abundant Life Principles that helped me to have a paradigm shift:

2008-01-10T14:42:00.000-08:00

1. Define your soul purpose

We focussed on 5 categories; Spiritual, Physical, Social, Mental and Financial and wrote down macro-goals, desires, wants, needs, talents, passions, etc. Then, with a new perspective on what is meaningful to us and what makes us happy in life, we wrote down a few "soul purposes". Throughout the process we wrote down many things that we will do on a daily/monthly and yearly basis that support our soul purposes. We are far from finished but it was a great start and has already changed our lives.

2. Study the principles
So far I have been able to identify and grasp the following few principles. i don't completely understand many of them so I will phrase them in a way that I understand:

a. God is the source of Prosperity
b. The earth's resources are abundant..not scarce!. A human beings talents, virtues and abilities are abundant...not scarce!.
c. exchange creates wealth.
d. exchange is encouraged by self-interest and leads to a division and improvement of labor. The improvement of labor benefits society because I am driven by self interest to provide the absolute best service and produce possible so that others will want to exchange.
e. dollars follow value. Therefore, seek to create value and not money.
f. People are either Producers or Consumers.
g. One's Soul Purpose should be the guide to their decisions in life.
h. Human life value is the source and creator of all property value and therefore humans are our most valuable assets...not $$, not a home, not a job, etc.

So far, some of the best sources to me for studying these principles are:

a. Rick Koerber and his Free Capitalist radio podcasts. ex: July 16, 2007 The Rick Koerber show podcast. I listen everyday.
b. Adam Smith and his book; The Wealth of Nations. I read it everyday.
c. Adam Record
d. Matt Wren
e. Kristen Record
f. The Word of God
g. putting them into practice everyday.

"keep the commandments of God and ye shall prosper"

SR

The Abundant Life According to The Prophet of God

2008-01-10T13:25:00.000-08:00

The Abundant Life

By President Spencer W. Kimball

Always remember the source of prosperity and abundance
“I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10.)

link

Teasers from the talk:

"The abundant life is also achieved as we magnify our view of life, expand our view of others, and our own possibilities." Spencer W. Kimball

"The abundant life, of course, has little to do with the acquisition of material things, though there are many wonderful individuals who have been blessed materially and who use their wealth to help their fellowmen. The abundant life mentioned in the scriptures is the spiritual sum that is arrived at by the multiplying of our service to others and by investing our talents in service to God and to man."

"Self-mastery, then, is the key, and every person should study his own life, his own desires and wants and cravings and bring them under control."

"Man can transform himself and he must. Man has in himself the seeds of godhood, which can germinate and grow. As the acorn becomes the oak, the mortal man becomes a god. It is within his power to lift himself to the plane on which he should be."

another great talk on abundance

Teaser from the talk:

"One of the characteristics of the earth is its great abundance. For our benefit God has cached away in sixteen inches of topsoil the ingredients for food and clothing in rich abundance. A good farmer using proven agricultural methods may get many tons of a given crop from this earth-reservoir and still have his sixteen inches of topsoil left undiminished. The Creator has provided most growing things with many times more seeds than are necessary for their reproduction. Think how many kernels of corn grow on one stalk, and each kernel is capable of reproducing the entire plant."

"Each of our bodily organs was built much stronger than our needs ordinarily require. Our stomachs will hold far more food than is needed to keep us alive. We could see well with just one eye, but the Lord gave us two. We could hear with one ear, but the Lord has given us two. He gave us two kidneys, two lungs, and two nostrils. It is also true that by the same process of exercise, our minds, our personalities, and our faith can be almost inconceivably expanded. But our greatest possibility for expansion and development comes in the area of our talents, our virtues, and our abilities. These great personality powers are capable of the most fantastic multiplication."

SR

Quick Thought

2008-01-10T07:28:00.000-08:00

Energy (Light) can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only be transferred from one source to another-

Challenge for the day: How can we utilize the principle taught in this statement to create value for others?

Organization Method

2008-01-09T14:33:00.001-08:00

Adam and I were talking today and he mentioned something about organizing and we talked a little bit about it. A thought from 7 Habits came into my mind and I don't know exactly what context it was used, but I think it can be a great way to organize our time, our day and our lives.

Basically we can classify everything we do into 4 different categories of importance:

Urgent and Important: Time deadlines, phone calls that need to be made now, things that if you don't do them right now, there will be undesirable consequences.

Urgent, Not Important: A fellow co-worker comes up for a chat, things that you feel you need to do right now, for whatever reason, but that aren't really that important in the long run

Not Urgent, Important: Things like reading your scriptures, preparing for a test, deep cleaning the house, food storage, things that don't have immediate deadlines, but by accomplishing them, we find ourselves prepared down the road.

Not Urgent, Not Important: TV Shows, Movies, Meaningless Chatter about sports (Michelle would be proud of me for putting that) and anything else that we do that really doesn't create any lasting value for ourselves or for other people.

Quick Challenge,

Take today and organize some of the things that you did today into these four categories. I think that we spend our time far too often doing things in the Not Urgent, Not Important realm.

Start now and for the rest of the day, write down some of the things that are Urgent and Important and need to be done right now. Then write down things that are Not Urgent, but Important and do those things next.

Black Bean and Corn Enchiladas 01-SEP-01 28

2008-01-09T07:14:00.001-08:00

Here's another good one... I'm making it tonight. Visit www.vegetariantimes.com for some great recipes. That's where I got this one. You can do a recipe search... type in Black Beans and it will come up with a bunch of recipes that contain black beans. You can also find lots of vegan recipes here too... I love this site!

6 Servings -- Egg-free

Here’s a fresh-tasting Mexican dish that is as satisfying as it is simple to make.
Meal Plan: Serve with a sliced jicama and orange salad sprinkled with fresh lime juice and a dash of cayenne.

2 (15-oz.) cans black beans, rinsed and drained
2 cups frozen corn
1/3 cup sliced scallions (white and light green parts)
1 large tomato, chopped
1/3 cup plus 2 Tbs. chopped cilantro
1 tsp. dried oregano
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
Dash of ground chipotle (optional)
20-oz. can low-sodium enchilada sauce
12 (6-inch) corn tortillas
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese or soy cheese (2 oz.)

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 375F. In large nonstick skillet, combine black beans, corn, scallions and tomato. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat. Add 1/3 cup cilantro, oregano, cumin and chipotle powder. Cook, stirring occasionally, until mixture is slightly thickened, 4 to 5 minutes. Remove from heat.
2. Coat medium baking dish with thin layer of enchilada sauce.
3. Place tortillas in stack on microwavable plate; cover with moist paper towel. Microwave tortillas on high until soft and heated through, about 1 minute. Dip tortillas in enchilada sauce to lightly coat and spread with about 1/4 cup bean mixture. Roll tortillas and place seam side down in baking dish. Spoon any remaining filling over enchiladas and cover with remaining enchilada sauce. Sprinkle with cheese and bake, uncovered, until bubbling, 15 minutes.
4. Sprinkle enchiladas with remaining 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro and serve.

PER enchilada: 235 CAL; 9 G PROT; 8 G TOTAL FAT (4 SAT. FAT); 34 G CARB.; 20 MG CHOL; 138 MG SOD.; 7 G FIBER