Of Marx and His Side of History

January 27, 2022 Leave a comment

Photo by Maximilian Scheffler on Unsplash

Karl Marx was a bad prophet.  His record is abysmal.  Reality paved a road moving opposite to the predictions of Marx.  That is a serious problem for someone whose theories of economics, life, and the future boastfully rest upon assertions of inevitable fulfillment clothed in scientific jargon.

My friend, Alex Pollock, has frequently said to me that predicting the future is easy; having the predictions come true is the hard part.  Richard M. Ebeling, a professor at The Citadel, has done what many have not.  He has studied what Karl Marx foretold in comparison with what happened.  The differences are stark.  Ebeling reports, “Being blunt, every one of Marx’s ‘predictions’ has failed to come true.” (See Richard M. Ebeling, “How Marx Got on the Wrong Side of History,” June 16, 2017, Foundation for Economic Education.) To begin, Marx’s forecast of the progressive immiseration of the general population was exploded by the greatest increase in standard of living in the shortest period of time for the largest number of people in history. 

His prediction that mass production would render labor skills ever simpler and homogenous, rewarded with mere subsistence wages, compares poorly with the dramatic expansion of the complexity, variety, sophistication, and compensation of employment and employees in the nearly two centuries since.  I admit that I am not comparing Marx’s predictions with the reality in Marxist societies, where Marx’s predictions of employee drudgery and subsistence living have come too painfully close to fulfillment.

Indeed, perhaps only in such a view, where Marxist experiments have been tried, can one find any relevance of the Marxist concept of being on the “wrong side of history.”  The once oppressed residents of the former Soviet bloc are still trying to get caught up with their neighbors who did not spend decades living Karl Marx’s utopian nightmare.  That is to say, the idea that the Marxist conception of history having “sides” has only been demonstrated in the negative by regimes who have imposed Marxist prescriptions on what they call their “masses,” often within walls to keep them on the inside.

What history has shown is that no one controls it, other than God.  From time to time God provides His prophets visions of future history, usually with invitations and cautions, invitations to actions that will bring progress and happiness, and cautions that if ignored yield destruction and sorrow.  Those prophecies have always come true.  In that sense, and that sense alone, to be “on the right side of history” is to be on the right side of God and His encouragements and warnings.

God our Father loves us and our freedom so much that He gives us room for our exercise of choice in creating our own history, disinclined to force what He wants or to prevent what He hates, ever offering counsel and eager to help when asked in faith.  History is littered with the ruins of societies that acted otherwise, when they reached a point described in scripture as being “fully ripe in iniquity.”

Filed under communism, economic growth, freedom, future, God, Heavenly Father, history, Marxism, prophecy, prophets Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Of Vanity and Measureless Worth

January 14, 2022 Leave a comment

Photo by Jean Wimmerlin on Unsplash

Millions who were recently fully employed today choose to remain off the market.  The unemployment rate, measured by the number seeking work who have not landed a job, is therefore approaching record lows.  Available jobs outnumber those looking for them.  The total of all employed remains fewer than it was two years ago.  Too many have stopped looking.  With generous government benefits for doing nothing, more than a few have concluded, what is the point?

That is bad for the economy, but it is worse for those who have taken a pass at gainful employment.  It is the ancient attitude of personal desuetude.  Solomon, the King of Israel of antiquity, wrote, “I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.” (Ecclesiastes 1:14)  Has the spiritual wind that brings value to life gone out of people’s sails?  Or have many stopped unfurling their sails?  Giving up on work, are they giving up on living?

Having seen it all, and explored and pondered life, Solomon, the richest and wisest of kings, ruled Israel at its peak in wealth and sway.  Observing “all things that are done under heaven,” he concluded, “vanity of vanities; all is vanity.  What profit hath a man of all his labour . . .?” (Ecclesiastes 1:2, 3)  Solomon presented a powerful case.  He described the profound emptiness of the ephemeral existence he perceived.  Generations of people come and go, forgotten.  People’s eyes are not satisfied with seeing nor their ears with hearing.  There is little remembrance of what was done in the past, and what will come will be little recalled by those who come after.  Man’s search for wisdom finds grief and his increase in knowledge increases his sorrow.  “There is no new thing under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9ff.)

A cursory reading of Solomon’s Biblical book, Ecclesiastes, has led some to regard Solomon’s wisdom as having soured on existence.  A more careful reading reveals an inspired wisdom that reaches beyond the world.  Solomon recognized, and hoped to cause others to recognize, that lasting value is not to be found in the perishable things of mortality.  He declared, “I saw that wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth darkness.” (Ecclesiastes 2:13)  He taught that wisdom was not to be found in a focus on things under heaven, but in the things from heaven, the eternal things.  God gave us the world as the school for us to prepare for heaven.  A focus on the world itself is folly, nothing but dust in the end.  A focus on the eternal, however, can enrich life now and to come.

What are the eternal things?  The scriptures resonate with counsel to make our life bountiful.  In modern times, Jesus Christ offered an exemplary list of things that give us joy and meaning today and endow us for heaven.  “Remember faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, brotherly kindness, godliness, charity, humility, diligence.” (Doctrine and Covenants 4:6)

The temporary and transient are provided to be harnessed by us as we secure now and take with us what can be never ending.  What is that?  It is all that can go with us beyond the temporary grave, such as our family relations and the virtues that are developed in a family better than anywhere else.  I recently heard my daughter say that being a mother is the hardest work she has ever done, and she loves it.

Solomon urged a rearrangement of our priorities from an attraction to what would become inevitable vanity under heaven, to the use of what the Creator has given us to prepare for living in heaven.  “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.”  This is what Solomon called, “the conclusion of the whole matter . . .” (Ecclesiastes 12:1, 13)

The gift from Jesus Christ is to guide, preserve, magnify, and hold to every good thing which, if we will accept His gift, “without compulsory means . . . shall flow unto thee forever and ever.” (Doctrine and Covenants 121:46)

Filed under abundant life, death, eternal life, family, God, heaven, Israel, Jesus Christ, mortality, vanity Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Of Christmas and More than an Infant

December 12, 2021 Leave a comment

Photo by Stephen Andrews on Unsplash

This Christmas many people will sing and speak praises of a baby born in Bethlehem 2021 years ago.  Unfortunately, too many people never get past that story of the “Babe of Bethlehem.”  It is sweet, it is joyful, but it is not enough. 

The birth of Jesus, the Son of God, was miraculous.  Unlike the birth of anyone else, his birth was prophesied over thousands of years, with prophecies fulfilled in every particular, and prophecies that are continuing and accelerating in their fulfillment today.  What does that mean for us?  It means that this is all part of a very big deal.  It is what the prophet Alma said “is of more importance than” all (Alma 7:7).

We love to sing Christmas carols.  The words of carols, however, can at times challenge the vocabulary of little children.  In my younger years of singing “The First Noel” I was certain that the word “certain” in the second line was a verb, not an adjective.  “The first Noel the angel did say/ Was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay. . . ”  In my young mind “certain” described what and why the angel was speaking to the shepherds.  The angel appeared in order to certain the shepherds.

Today I am not so sure that I was wrong in hearing a verb.  The angel wanted those shepherds to know, to understand, to be certain of what they saw, and thereby to become witnesses of something extremely important.  The angel explained what was happening, what it meant, where it was happening, how to recognize the marvel, and then the shepherds quickly went to see for themselves, personally.  Immediately afterward they shared with others what they knew.

“And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy . . . . For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.  And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. . . . And they came with haste, and found . . . the babe lying in a manger.  And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.” (Luke 2:8-17, emphasis added)

Following His resurrection, Jesus was careful to make His disciples certain of His resurrection so that they might witness to others of what they knew, enabling others at first to believe and then come to know for themselves by the testimony of the Holy Ghost.

The Father and the Son want us to know so that we might understand—actually, so that we might not misunderstand.  They appeared to Joseph Smith, such that Joseph’s knowledge was, from the first, certain.  He then could testify, “I had actually seen a light, and in the midst of that light I saw two Personages, and they did in reality speak to me . . .” (Joseph Smith History 1:25)

I have gained my own witness that Joseph’s certainty was true.  I, too, have been certained by the power of the Holy Ghost.  I know for sure that God is real and that Jesus Christ is the resurrected Savior of the world.  God has given certain witness to Joseph Smith and the prophets since then, including the prophet today, Russell M. Nelson.  Many have believed and had belief confirmed into certainty by the assurance of the Holy Ghost.

The words to the carol, “What Child Is This?” are a soul-deep meditation on why the birth of this Baby is so important.  The musings lead to an answer found in what this Child would later do. 

I fear that many modern renditions of the carol miss—or perhaps even avoid—the point. Among the dozen or so recordings of that carol in my possession, I discovered to my surprise that all but maybe four leave out the second of three verses written by William C. Dix, the one that holds a central place explaining why this birth was important.  Some repeat, again and again, the true declaration that this Child is “Christ the King.” Recognition of that reality is essential, but how far does it get you?  Even Herod believed and feared that prophecy, a belief that goaded him to destroy all the babes of Bethlehem that his soldiers could find.

Why did Christ the King find it necessary to lower Himself to be born among men?  That is the central question, the answer to which converts our attitude toward Christ from reverence for a Divine Monarch into deeply felt love born of joy and boundless gratitude.  The second verse, too often skipped, explains what is at the heart of Christmas.  Here are the words.

Why lies He in such mean estate,

Where ox and ass are feeding?

Good Christians, fear, for sinners here

The silent Word is pleading.

Nails, spear shall pierce Him through,

The cross be borne for me, for you.

Hail, hail the Word made flesh,

The babe, the Son of Mary.

This little Child would be pierced by nails and spear when He was older but no less innocent.  Why would He submit to that?  Why would the King submit to that?

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

O sisters, too, how may we do,

For to preserve this day;

This poor Youngling for whom we sing,

By, by, lully, lullay.

Herod the King, in his raging,

Charged he hath this day;

His men of might, in his own sight,

All children young, to slay.

The song helps retell when jealous King Herod, fearful of even rumors of potential rivals for his throne, ordered the slaughter of all the children in Bethlehem of two years old and younger. Herod had been advised by the wise men of the birth of the future King of the Jews, in fulfillment of prophecy.  Herod missed his mark, for Jesus was no longer there. Joseph, warned by an angel, had taken his little family away to Egypt.

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

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

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

I conceive of a day, a moment, when those very men who pounded the nails into the Savior’s hands and feet come personally to realize, come face-to-face with what they have done.  What depth of grief that this knowledge will cause to the hearts of those men—when they become certain of the meaning of those moments in that day—I can imagine in only the smallest degree.  They will be the only men, among the billions who have trod the earth, who with hammers in their fists drove nails into the hands and feet of the Creator and their Savior.  What will that certainty mean to them?

Perhaps the Savior’s plea from the cross, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do,” (Luke 23:34) will be the beginning of some healing solace when they do know what they personally did.  I suspect that this is not the limit of the mercy that the Savior will extend to these, His brothers, who were so close to the Son of God in this horrible way.

Then I am drawn to consider, how will we feel when our day comes, and it surely will, when we stand face-to-face and see those wounds in His hands and feet?  How will we feel when we come to understand perfectly, as we will, that our own, personal sins made those wounds necessary, that because of what we knowingly have done there was no other way, that we helped to make those nails unavoidable?  More, how will we feel, looking in the Savior’s eyes, when we fully understand that depending on our repentance the suffering that we personally caused was entirely and eternally worth it, or in absence of our repentance for us for naught?  At that moment our joy and our love or our grief and pain will be without measure.

Let us decide now, for we may, to let our loving hearts enthrone Him.  May we decide now, today, that we, when brought into the personal presence of the Savior, will be like the ancient Nephites, who did “bow down at his feet . . . and worship him; and . . . kiss his feet, insomuch that they did bathe his feet with their tears.” (3 Nephi 17:10)

Filed under Christianity, Christmas, Heavenly Father, Holy Ghost, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith, joy, knowledge, prophets, repentance, sacrifice Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Of Majority Rule and Minority Freedom

November 23, 2021 1 Comment

Photo by Davide Ragusa on Unsplash

The majority rules, the minority be damned.  That is the heart of a democracy.  The Founders of the United States wisely chose a different course.  They recognized that popular majorities are inherently unstable, ever shifting, never constant, with little patience for the minority.  Each of us, however, is always and ever part of some minority.  The Founders sought a durable nation that would accommodate variety, so they established a republic.  More precisely, they established a democratic republic, where representatives are chosen by democratic action.

A republic works, and can only work, by respecting and accommodating one another sufficient to find agreement, which is often elusive.  A representative legislature by definition gathers delegates who have their own minds, who carry with them divergent views and interests, and who cherish rights to be respected.  From my personal experience I have observed that no one in Washington is your ally or your opponent all the time.  I find that reassuring, and occasionally surprising.

This structure accommodates several things that we hold dear.  Our republic accommodates differences of opinion, or even better said, varieties of opinion.  I have rarely been in a conversation with more than two people where all were in agreement on every point raised.  I have similarly rarely been in such a conversation where I did not benefit from the interplay of ideas.  We often can reach a consensus, but it is not consensus on all things.  A republic embraces this. 

In a republic no majority mandates our tastes.  Our republic, for example, allows for an assortment of cultures.  It had to or would never have been created.  I like to bring flags to our family reunions, symbolizing our cultural heritages, from my parents’ families to those of the new in-laws as our children have married.  With preeminence for the Stars and Stripes—reminding us of the attraction of this nation—our family unity makes enjoyment of those cultural influences an enrichment, in our clothes, in our menus, in our games and sports, in our traditions.  I see that in other families.  In much the same way, the constitutional foundation of our republic fosters a commonality upon which a cornucopia of good things thrives.

A republic requires several things that we find necessary, embedded in our Constitution.  It requires freedom of religion, free speech, private property, a market economy, separation of powers, a federal system of government, among other things.  God Himself implores freedom of religion on His earth, free hearts with devotion to be freely extended to Him and expressed in love to His children.  A market economy means that we are free to exchange our time, talents, and resources with one another, without being limited to choices that only the majority favors, hence the incredible selection of goods and services, often some only favored by a few (like my argyle socks).

The Founders understood a principle of governance also articulated in scripture:

“We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.” (Doctrine and Covenants 121:39)

Best to reduce the chance, especially should one profess to represent the majority of the people.  Safer, as in our federalized republic, to divide such power.  I recall Senator Phil Gramm, for whom I worked for many years, saying how frustrated he was when first elected to Congress at how little one person could accomplish in Washington.  He added that after a while that gave him great comfort.

Filed under Congress, Constitution, democracy, federalism, free speech, God, government, markets, religious freedom, republics Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Of Trains and Autumn Kindness

October 28, 2021 Leave a comment

Photo by Emma Frances Logan on Unsplash

Autumn, mountains, and a slow train ride:  lovely.  I have been ready for such a calmly pleasant excursion.

That was our recent experience aboard the Potomac Eagle, departing from Romney, West Virginia, for a three hour tour along the South Branch of the Potomac River.  What could be lovelier?  I will tell you:  the people.

You arrive early, to get all things in readiness for a promptly on-time departure.  To a person, each member of the crew was genuinely friendly.  They did not look to be manufacturing a happy face; their amiability was easy.

While the South Branch flows into the Potomac, there is no sign of partisan backwash way upriver.  We could not have felt farther from the rarified atmosphere of today’s national capital.  Whether employees or passengers, I could not guess for you the political persuasion of anyone I met.

The most refreshing air on this autumn day was that we were spared exposure to any of the fissures that some are trying to foster—or foist—upon most Americans.  There was a natural sense of community that comes when genial people gather. 

The tour narrator, who described points of interest as we proceeded along the tracks, did display a hometown sense of veneration for Romney as the oldest town in West Virginia, a claim resting on the evidence of having the oldest municipal charter, by a matter of hours.  Shepherdstown makes a claim to be older, although the record is that the governor signed the legislation establishing the town of Romney before lunch on December 13, 1762, and after lunch signed the legislation establishing the community that became Shepherdstown.  Such are the documents of local history.  (For those interested in such matters, I refer you to the well-written and documented, “The Founding of Romney:  West Virginia’s Oldest Established Town,” at http://www.HistoricHampshire.org.)   

I will add that the little town of Romney exhibited no signs of the “privilege” that critics say is rife among the population.  You can count the houses as you drive through.  I saw none either auspicious or dilapidated.  The homes and the cars and trucks parked in the driveways were not the late model foreign luxury wheels prevalent inside the Washington beltway.

I wish that what I say of the people I met that day in Romney could also be said of others with whom I have associated around the country this year.  I have to report that I could say that.  People seem to enjoy being in each other’s company, friend, family, or new acquaintance.

By the way, the valley of the South Branch of the Potomac is well known for its many bald eagles.  Sit on the riverside of the train for the best eagle views, wooded mountain slopes on the other.

Filed under America, benevolence, civility, friendship, kindness, Washington Tagged with , , , , ,

Of Demagogues and Ideologues

September 29, 2021 Leave a comment

Photo by Natalya Letunova on Unsplash

The demagogue has ever been the bane of democracies.  By definition, democracies rest upon the choices of the people.  When wisdom guides, democracies prosper.  As history shows, wisdom does not always prevail, and it never does when demagogues do.  Since the demagogue seeks his own power by taking power from others, once the people give him their voice they will be hard-pressed to get their power back; the democracy deteriorates into dictatorship, invoked in the name but never the reality of the rights of the people.

So I wrote some time ago.  Experience since then has reinforced the points I raised.  I wish that it had not, as such experience is painful.

On the early side of Summer an insightful essay in the June 2021 edition of The New Criterion illuminated the companion to the demagogue, the ideologue (see, David Guaspari, “Ideologists amok”).  Sometimes they can be the same person, as ideologues frequently employ demagoguery.

Reflecting on demagogues and ideologues, I more recently imagined a conversation with someone who displays characteristics of such a one.  As with a similar conversation of which I wrote in the past, I refer to my interlocutor as Burning Cynders, to preserve the fanciful nature.  I will leave it to you to imagine whether this reminds you of anyone.  It went something like this.

WAA:  I understand that you consider the United States to be a horribly oppressive place.

Cynders:  Horribly oppressive, and practically everyone is a victim.

WAA:  How can everyone be a victim?  If there are victims, there must be oppressors.

Cynders:  There are, but they are victims, too.  The oppression is systemic, that we all inherited.  Even the victims help maintain it.  I pause to allow you to grasp the vastness of the subject.

WAA:  Thank you.  Does that mean that you help to perpetuate the system, too?

Cynders:  I did, until I figured it out.  Now that I understand, I am trying to liberate people from it. 

WAA:  Are the millions of people immigrating to the United States coming here to be liberated from this oppression?

Cynders:  They are coming here because they know that I and those who are with me are working to throw off the oppression.

WAA:  Like why the Founders first came here.  I thought that people want to come to America for a freer, more prosperous life.  Which problems did they miss?

Cynders:  You don’t understand; your thought is distorted by the system.  No single problem can be solved without solving all problems.  You are part of the problem.

WAA:  That might be debatable.  How about we discuss what this land offers that attracts so many people.

Cynders:  The debate is over.  I’m here to teach you.  I know why they are coming.  They sense that I am working to throw off the oppression, to change the system, to change America.  Traumatized by their journey, the trauma raises their consciousness to the need for transformation.

WAA:  What key reforms do you have in mind?

Cynders:  I’m not interested in reform.  You cannot reform this system.  It is fundamentally corrupt and oppressive.  It must be torn down and built anew.  There will be a new system, without oppressors or oppressed.

WAA:  It seems to me there was a lot of tearing down in the twentieth century by the Lenins, Stalins, Hitlers, the Mussolinis, the Maos, Pol Pots, and many others.  History shows us the ruins, but I don’t see the end of oppression in the experiments in bread-rationing socialism.

Cynders:  There were bold efforts, but they didn’t try hard enough or long enough.  As I said, oppression is in the whole system.  It’s in our culture, our religion, our laws, our families, our healthcare, our schools, in the language we use. 

WAA:  What will this new world look like? 

Cynders:  No one knows.  No one can tell you.  It may take generations to break down and build right.  This generation may not see the fruits of its work; still, it will bless future generations.  But can there be any sacrifice too great for a world without any oppression, with no victims, no oppressors?

WAA:  Sounds like you are out to alter the very nature of humanity.

Cynders:  You are not as hopeless as I feared.  Maybe you can be educated yet.

I pause the conversation there.  Time to play with my grandsons.

Filed under America, communism, demagoguery, hubris, immigration, socialism, statism, tyranny

Of Sincerity and Talking with God

September 23, 2021 Leave a comment

Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

In the 1700s, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, referring to times of personal stress, wrote, “I turned with my request to my Invisible Friend.  I was received so kindly, that I gladly came again.”  Speaking with God is simple.  It may not always be easy.  A basic requisite is sincerity.  When we share with our Heavenly Father a sincere message from the heart, He is eager to listen. 

That is also a basic criterion for us to hear God.  Our Heavenly Father is eager to speak with us when we are sincerely listening.  That means sincerely wanting to know what our Father wants us to know, and being sincerely willing to do what He asks us to do. 

This is prayer and revelation.  Such prayers are answered, and our lives can be made happier.

Can that happen now?  Can I speak with God and get a personal answer?  Yes.  The Lord has given us a prophet today, Russell M. Nelson, who reminded us, as prophets have often taught, that the “privilege of receiving revelation is one of the greatest gifts of God to His children.” 

The Lord has never desired that His prophet be the only one to receive revelation.  When Moses led the children of Israel through the desert, he replied to a complaint about someone in the camp receiving revelation, “would God that all the Lord’s people were prophets” (Numbers 11:29).  Our Father does not want us to wander in the dark, not knowing how to cope with life’s problems.

We are all in the process of dying.  That is why this existence is called “mortality.”  But until we reach the end of that process, we are also in the process of living.  Our Father likes to help us to live well, so that when we die we will be able to live with Him eternally.  He will show us how if we sincerely want to know.

When I was a child, I wondered what it would be like to live in the day when Apostles of Jesus Christ walked the earth.  Some years later I came to know that I was living in those days, that once again Jesus Christ has called Apostles, from ordinary professions, to follow Him in teaching the Father’s children how to live with joy. 

One of these Apostles of Christ is David Bednar.  He recently spoke with a young man whose wife, just a few months before, died from cancer.  The man asked, “What can we do to understand God’s will for us in our personal life?”  With great tenderness Apostle Bednar addressed the question.  He said that he knew that the man’s departed wife was “a righteous woman, and no righteous man, no righteous woman passes before his or her time.” 

Turning to the question of God’s will for this young widower, he recounted a similar conversation with a young girl at a funeral for an older brother.  She had asked, why would God let this happen?  This Apostle of Christ candidly said to her, “I don’t know, but I know God knows, and because I know God knows, I’m O.K. not knowing right now.”  So, he invited this son of God to listen to the revelations from the Lord and, while yet in this life, press on to do what his loving Father inspires him do. 

The gift of personal revelation continues available to this young man.  It is available to each of us, too, as we sincerely seek it.

Filed under death, God, Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, mortality, Moses, prayer, prophets, revelation, Russell M. Nelson Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Of Civil War and National Unity

August 24, 2021 2 Comments

Photo by Veronica Livesey on Unsplash

At a sesquicentennial distance the Civil War can become too easy to romanticize.  We can be tempted to envision some charm in it.  From a prolonged study of the Civil War, via many sources and a variety of formats, I find little romance in it.  The brutality and misery of that war have not been overstated.  Fortunately, there was work that was noble and heroic, such as the ending of slavery.    

A more peaceful solution, in hindsight, was available and likely, as the operation of the Constitution was steadily bringing about.  Perhaps it took a civil war challenge to that Constitution to make people recognize—the slaveholders especially—that a peaceful end to bondage would have been preferable.  Abraham Lincoln, a casualty of the war, perceived in a few words at the Gettysburg commemoration, that the Civil War was “testing whether [our] nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

To what conception and dedication did Lincoln refer?  “A new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

It must be understood that Lincoln observed that this nation had not fully achieved those principles.  He called it “unfinished work.”  Building on how well that work had begun, Lincoln praised how far it had been “so nobly advanced.”  Our nation, conceived in liberty, embraced a dedication to which our Founders bound themselves and their posterity, to achieve the proposition that each of us was created equal.  As the price in blood and suffering mounted, he was asking whether such a dedicated nation, still in its adolescence, could continue.

Through the 21 months following Gettysburg, the price would grow higher and more horrid while the people of that day persevered and demonstrated that the nation would endure, as it has to our day.  Further headway was made to fulfill our founding principles.

Today is a time for our dedication to be tested, as such a nation will always be.  Loud, magnified voices—there were those in Lincoln’s day demanding to end the effort (he nearly lost his reelection to some who preferred a compromise with the slavocrats)—today parade the obvious that our nation has not yet achieved all of our Founders’ ideals, and so demand that we abandon those ideals.

They prescribe a return to the age old pattern whereby in exchange for our liberty the self-selected few are elevated to mold the rest, prescriptions that somehow end up profiting the new bosses.  As in the past, while dressed in varieties of costumes, the chieftains, kings, czars, fuehrers, commissars, and other ugly monsters reshape societies that eventually devolve into ruin.

Their “modern” strategy is similarly old:  divide and conquer.  Rhetorical crossbows aim darts first at the failings of the very human Founders, to whom they assign blame for anyone unhappy with himself.  Next they guide their unhappy victims against our founding ideal, “the proposition that all men are created equal.”  Their bizarre assertion is that any failure in the ideal’s complete achievement justifies its trashing, the more violently the better.  Upon the ruins of civil disorder, disunion, and violence, they would build in the name of “equity” where they have destroyed fundamental equality. 

That is the program of those positioned to claim to be more equal than others while they rake in a bigger share of the proposed “equity.”  It is all old naked ugliness when denuded of the costumes.  In time it has always failed, but not without putrid fruits of misery.

In 1863 Abraham Lincoln appealed to his hearers for increased devotion to ensure that our nation, governed of, by, and for the people, should not perish.  Succeeding generations have united to nurture the nation.  It is our task to answer the divisive calls with our dedication to advance the work so nobly begun.

Filed under Abraham Lincoln, America, anarchy, Civil War, Constitution, demagoguery, freedom, individual worth, slavery, statism Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Of I and We

July 17, 2021 Leave a comment

Photo by Ilona Frey on Unsplash

Perhaps you have been chary of letting other people speak for you.  I know that I have.  I tend to bristle when someone announces what “we” are going to do without consulting with the “I”s in the “we.”  I feel much the same when I hear someone declare what “we” think without caring to learn what I and the other components of “we” think. 

Sometimes it is necessary or unavoidable to have someone speak for me.  I think of representative government.  A Congress of 330 million people will either get nothing done, or it will devolve into rule by a dictator who has, as an effective demagogue, arranged for enough of all of us to cede to him their will.  The city states of ancient Greece experienced both failings of genuine democracy—mob rule and dictatorship—and displayed how it never worked for long.

The Romans, inhabiting a city state governed by a king, threw off their king and created a democratic republic that flourished for several hundred years.  They elected Senators to represent them.  The Romans did not like a king who spoke for them without asking, but they thrived under a system of Senators who spoke for them, but only after obtaining the Romans’ permission.  That worked for centuries until the process of gaining permission—elections—became corrupted.  The Senators concurrently became corrupted, unwilling to face blame for making decisions.  The democratic republic was replaced by a government of emperors and Caesars.  Rome afterwards oscillated between civil strife and dictatorship on the way to collapse and invasion.

In the years following 1776 we, as a people of free individuals, united to shake off our king who claimed the privilege of referring to himself as “We” when speaking.  In 1787 “We the People,” through our chosen representatives, also established a democratic republic.  That followed the formation of democratic republics in each State.  Both sides in the debate to ratify the new Constitution emphasized keeping representatives tied closely to the represented.  Skeptics wondered whether that would actually happen or long endure if it did.

Individual people, representatives and represented, are imperfect, as the Founders understood.  We each prize our individuality and the liberty to live it.  We each can also be tempted to exert our will over others.  Consider the occasional neighborhood “WE BELIEVE” yard signs.  Are these an expression of personal faith or a declaration that you and I ought to consider ourselves included in the “WE”?  I wonder about the latter when I see decrees by federal officials, state governors, and local mayors extending government force to the seemingly anodyne slogans ornamenting the signs.  The man who today sits in the oval office, who would not dare to call himself a czar, has appointed a man (previously rejected by a national election) to be the nation’s “Climate Czar.”

We are scheduled to reach 250 years of our democratic republic when the 17-year cicadas next return.  Will they emerge in a nation still governed by “We the People”?  Or might they come out of the ground where the voices of the I’s have been subsumed by other Czars who announce what We think, do, and say?  Creeping political correctness, which has been chastising free speech for decades, telling us what not to say, has lately become enforced by governments, workplaces, media, and schools.  As the prophet Isaiah warned, a man is made “an offender for a word” (Isaiah 29:21).

By the way, the titles “Czar” and “Kaiser” are derivatives of the Latin title “Caesar.”

Filed under Constitution, democracy, free speech, government, individual worth, mobs, republics, rights, Rome, tyranny Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Of Firearms and American Democracy

July 4, 2021 1 Comment

Photo by Jacob Morrison on Unsplash

A commentator on a Washington-D.C. area Spanish-language radio station was declaiming at unusual length against private gun ownership. What caught my attention that morning was his expression of wonder at the deep and widespread interest of people in the United States in owning firearms. He could not understand or explain it. He was lost. The interest in private gun ownership was a new cultural phenomenon to him.

No doubt it was, but he was correct to identify the passion for gun ownership as an element of the cultural life of the United States that is not only deep, but deep-rooted. Those roots go back to the very founding of North America by the first colonists, reinforced by subsequent waves of immigrants. The very first North American colonists had guns, as essential to survival as seeds and shovels. As Germans joined the English, the Scots, and the Dutch in the new land, followed by Irish, Swedes, Italians and others, guns traveled with the pioneers west.

Western European society invented common firearms and spread them among the commoners. By means of firearms the commoners won their new land. With their firearms those commoners also won their freedom from the lords and ladies who could no longer control the armed rabble, particularly in the English colonies, and particularly in the colonies that became the United States. Guns in the United States have been instruments of survival, physical and political.

What the kings and nobles of Europe could not know was that there is something powerfully democratizing in gun possession. Firearms ended the reign of the mounted knight and made it hard for kings and emperors to keep their thrones. No aristocrat in any palace was invulnerable to the meanest peasant armed with musket and ball. Guns have been an historically powerful equalizer and defense against tyranny and pillagers.

That democratizing process worked further and faster in America, where courage and a gun could tame a wilderness and provide freedom for the family. Far from the reach of government, and unanswerable for the pretended protection of the manor house, the typical American could take immediate responsibility for himself and his own security and that of his wife and children, backed up by the very real ability to assert that security. No one seems to know the origin of the proverb, “God created men, but Sam Colt made them equal,” but the armed nation builders of the American West understood and believed it.

That is to say that, in the United States at least, people have not needed government, and especially government protection, all that much. Gun ownership has always been at the core of American independence and democracy, essential from the founding up into modern times. It is a symbol of American freedom, but more than that, ownership of firearms is a tangible expression of the independence and self-reliance that are at the core of American citizenship, a culture of freedom sometimes new to people hailing from other parts of the world. It is not accidental that not only the right to keep firearms but the active right to bear them is recognized in our Constitution as fundamental, alongside freedom of expression, free exercise of religion, the protection of private property, trial by jury, and other cornerstones of our liberty.

As the dangerous frontiers of violence encroach again on families beyond the timely protection of law enforcement, that innate American self-reliance is reenergized, and well it should be. The examples of people saved by their guns from robbery, murder, and worse, are legion if little noted by the establishment media reporting from their armed security zones. In the face of increased violent criminal activity—whether from terrorists or thugs—why does it make sense to weaken the defenses of law abiding citizens? Why would the government of a free people impose regulations to expose those who live peacefully to the barbarous cruelty of those who consider a regulation no barrier to preying upon the disarmed? I do not understand it. As an American, I do not understand it at all.

Filed under America, civilization, Constitution, crime, democracy, exceptionalism, firearms, freedom, rights, tyranny Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

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