A BYU English professor (Brian Jackson) wrote an op-ed today in the Deseret News all about the McCarthyite parents in Alpine School District who got upset over nothing at John Goodlad and Alpine’s use of his phrase “Enculturating the Young into a Social and Political Democracy.” Read the article, and then read the excellent comments that follow which expose how little research and understanding this fellow has of John Goodlad (who Charlotte Iserbyt called America’s “premier change-agent” in her expose on the American education system entitled “The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America”).

https://www.deseretnews.com/article/700037194/Political-sentiment-is-far-from-reason.html

If we would make the world better, let us foster a keener appreciation of the freedom and liberty guaranteed by the government of the United States as framed by the founders of this nation. Here again self-proclaimed progressives cry that such old-time adherence is out of date. But there are some fundamental principles of this Republic which, like eternal truths, never get out of date, and which are applicable at all times to liberty-loving peoples. Such are the underlying principles of the Constitution, a document framed by patriotic, freedom-loving men, who Latter-day Saints declare were inspired by the Lord.

It is highly fitting as a means of making the world better, not only to urge loyalty to the Constitution and to threatened fundamentals of the United States government, but to warn the people that there is evidence in the United States of disloyalty to tried and true fundamentals in government. There are unsound economic theories; there are European “isms,” which, termite-like, secretly and, recently, quite openly and defiantly, are threatening to undermine our democratic institutions.

Today, as never before, the issue is clearly defined—liberty and freedom of choice, or oppression and subjugation for the individual and for nations.

As we contemplate the deplorable fact that within the brief space of one year, ten European nations have lost their independence, that over two hundred and fifty million people have surrendered all guarantees of personal liberty, deeper should be our gratitude, more intense our appreciation of the Constitution, and more strengthened our determination to resist at all costs any and all attempts to curtail our liberties, or to change the underlying system of our government. (“Essentials of a Better World” 698)

California school officials are in shock by what one teacher posted in his classroom.

This story caught my eye. Wow Nancy. After all these years of telling churches they had no say in things related to government, now you are telling them to instruct their members to support your reforms? That’s amazingly hypocritical.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/05/06/pelosi-urges-catholic-church-play-major-role-immigration-overhaul/

“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday urged Catholic leaders to “instruct” their parishioners to support immigration reforms, saying clerics should “play a very major role” in supporting Democratic policies.”

I was sent the following job announcement for a school in Jordan School District. This identical ad actually appears for a few of the schools in the district showing a requirement to thoroughly know Goodlad’s Moral Dimensions in order to be hired.

I read this letter at the state convention last Saturday and asked this young man to email me a copy so I could send it out. I hope we’ve got more like him in the rising generation to help light the way! What a great letter.

Dear Rep. Matheson:

I am an eighth grade student at Mountainville Academy in Alpine, Utah. I am highly concerned about the terrible state our nation is in. I am especially concerned about health care and the way our congress has handled it. Instead of listening to common sense and reason, they listened to special interests, unions, and the socialist countries of Europe. We can all agree that our nation’s health care system needs to be fixed, but creating a totalitarian system where the government forces you to buy health insurance is not the answer. This is why we need you to repeal the health care law.

It has been proven time and time again that a universal health care system is a terrible way to improve the health of the citizens. What a disgrace it is to the miracle of modern medicine, that the person making decisions about my health won’t be a surgeon or a doctor, but a politician in Washington who most likely doesn’t know anything about medicine. The result of this system will be decreased health and less care for patients.

If this “health” care system was all about health, then why the hefty price tag? If they really want to improve the health of Americans, then why is the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in charge of our health care instead of private health care providers? The answer is simple, it isn’t about health care, it is about power and control. After this bill was passed, the US government now owns among others; the entire health care system (which is 1/6^th of our economy), the student loans industry, pieces of General Motors and Chrysler, and almost 70 percent of my home state Utah.

We all know that what they are doing is unsustainable. I believe that this was the plan all along. There are many politicians in Washington that would like to fundamentally transform these united states into some socialist utopia where the roads are paved with gold and candy rains from the sky. The only way for them to do it is to first slowly build up their framework within our economic infrastructure, then they tear it down and start on their path to communism, which will ultimately fail. I believe that this law will become the straw that will break the camel’s back .

We need to repeal this law so we can fix health care the right way, by puting it in the hands of the people! The government is just a tumor that feeds on the entrepreneurial spirit of Americans. If we remove the tumor, then Americans are free to work their magic. That is what they did in the forgotten depression. Let me explain, during 1920-1921 our country went through a small depression. It could have lasted for many years like the great depression, but it didn’t.Thomas E woods explained why in his paper, The Forgotten depression; “The economic situation in 1920 was grim. By that year unemployment had jumped from 4 percent to nearly 12 percent, and GNP declined 17 percent. No wonder, then, that Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover (falsely characterized as a supporter of laissez-faire economics) urged President Harding to consider an array of interventions to turn the economy around. Hoover was ignored. Instead of “fiscal stimulus,” Harding cut the government’s budget nearly in half between 1920 and 1922. The rest of Harding’s approach was equally laissez-faire. Tax rates were slashed for all income groups. The national debt was reduced by one-third..”By the late summer of 1921, signs of recovery were already visible. The following year, unemployment was back down to 6.7 percent and it was only 2.4 percent by 1923.” That is the beauty of the free market system. If you have a problem, you have the people solve it, not the government. Ronald Reagan once said; “Government is not the solution to our problem, Government is the problem.” What they did during the lost depression is what we need to do with health care, get government out of the way so private insurers and health care providers can straighten out the mess.

I would like to conclude with another passage from Thomas Woods’ paper; “The experience of 1920-1921 reinforces the contention of genuine free-market economists that government intervention is a hindrance to economic recovery. It is not in spite of the absence of fiscal and monetary stimulus that the economy recovered from the 1920-1921 depression. It is because those things were avoided that recovery came. The next time we are solemnly warned to recall the lessons of history lest our economy deteriorate still further, we ought to refer to this episode, and observe how hastily our interrogators try to change the subject.” I hope that you will use the lessons learned in the past to help our country today.

Sincerely,

Mitchell Baker

Saturday’s convention was a packed house with a strong distaste for the advances of the federal government. As such, my amendment which recognized that article 4, section 4 of the constitution gives the federal government the right to interfere with a state’s business if forces within the state try to subvert republican government, turned down the amendment until a better one could be recognized. I had several people that voted against it encourage me to try again but without that language so we’ll take it up next year at the state organizing convention.

The convention itself was packed. Over 98% of delegates were present and by now you know most of the outcomes. Bridgewater and Lee will face off in a primary with Bennett being eliminated. Rob Bishop sailed through. Philpot squeaked by without the need for a primary and his opponent Matheson will have to go to a primary having failed to get 60% of his party’s vote. Howard Stephenson (my senator and a champion of Alpine school district parents for his work on helping fight fuzzy math) also got through without the need for a primary.

OK, this isn’t directly related to the purpose of this site, but it’s such an awesome point by Morgan Freeman that I am compelled to post it. It’s time we drop the racist dialoging in this country and treat each other as individuals and not with multicultural labels.

I came across this excellent address by Jefferson and if you’re pressed for time, just read the bold items below. If you’re REALLY pressed for time, just read the items in blue which directly relate to our Republican form of government.

Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address

March 4, 1801

Friends and Fellow-Citizens:

Called upon to undertake the duties of the first executive office of our country, I avail myself of the presence of that portion of my fellow-citizens which is here assembled to express my grateful thanks for the favor with which they have been pleased to look toward me, to declare a sincere consciousness that the task is above my talents, and that I approach it with those anxious and awful presentiments which the greatness of the charge and the weakness of my powers so justly inspire. A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful land, traversing all the seas with the rich productions of their industry, engaged in commerce with nations who feel power and forget right, advancing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye—when I contemplate these transcendent objects, and see the honor, the happiness, and the hopes of this beloved country committed to the issue, and the auspices of this day, I shrink from the contemplation, and humble myself before the magnitude of the undertaking. Utterly, indeed, should I despair did not the presence of many whom I here see remind me that in the other high authorities provided by our Constitution I shall find resources of wisdom, of virtue, and of zeal on which to rely under all difficulties. To you, then, gentlemen, who are charged with the sovereign functions of legislation, and to those associated with you, I look with encouragement for that guidance and support which may enable us to steer with safety the vessel in which we are all embarked amidst the conflicting elements of a troubled world.

During the contest of opinion through which we have passed the animation of discussions and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers unused to think freely and to speak and to write what they think; but this being now decided by the voice of the nation, announced according to the rules of the Constitution, all will, of course, arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good. All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful shore; that this should be more felt and feared by some and less by others, and should divide opinions as to measures of safety. But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government can not be strong, that this Government is not strong enough; but would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this Government, the world’s best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest Government on earth. I believe it the only one where every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern. Sometimes it is said that man can not 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.

Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter—with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, 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 has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations. Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever State or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies; the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the people—a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism; a well disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened; the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.

I repair, then, fellow-citizens, to the post you have assigned me. With experience enough in subordinate offices to have seen the difficulties of this the greatest of all, I have learnt to expect that it will rarely fall to the lot of imperfect man to retire from this station with the reputation and the favor which bring him into it. Without pretensions to that high confidence you reposed in our first and greatest revolutionary character, whose preeminent services had entitled him to the first place in his country’s love and destined for him the fairest page in the volume of faithful history, I ask so much confidence only as may give firmness and effect to the legal administration of your affairs. I shall often go wrong through defect of judgment. When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground. I ask your indulgence for my own errors, which will never be intentional, and your support against the errors of others, who may condemn what they would not if seen in all its parts. The approbation implied by your suffrage is a great consolation to me for the past, and my future solicitude will be to retain the good opinion of those who have bestowed it in advance, to conciliate that of others by doing them all the good in my power, and to be instrumental to the happiness and freedom of all.

Relying, then, on the patronage of your good will, I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make. And may that Infinite Power which rules the destinies of the universe lead our councils to what is best, and give them a favorable issue for your peace and prosperity.

Someone asked where Ezra Taft Benson’s quote came from that was used in my original letter to the Daily Herald. This is the talk.

A Plea to Strengthen Our Families

Elder Ezra Taft Benson. General Conference, October 1970.

As a people, we have three great loyalties: loyalty to God, loyalty to family, loyalty to country.

I come to you today with a plea to strengthen our families.

The Family Unit

It has been truly stated that “salvation is a family affair … and that the family unit is the most important organization in time or in eternity.”

The Church was created in large measure to help the family, and long after the church has performed its mission, the celestial patriarchal order will still be functioning. This is why President Joseph F. Smith said: “To be a successful father or a successful mother is greater than to be a successful general or a successful statesman …, ” and President McKay added: “When one puts business or pleasure above his home, he, that moment, starts on the downgrade to soul weakness.”

And this is why President Harold B. Lee said only yesterday, “The Church must do more to help the home carry out its divine mission.” Read the rest of this entry »