Category Archives: Education

Voting Standards for Latter-day Saints

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Today, Utah is hosting its regular primary elections, although for federal and state and county candidates rather than for municipal ones. These elections may affect public policy far more than those on Election Day, by which time most choices have already been eliminated.

On this occasion, at the slight risk of alienating any of my readers who are not fellow members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I wanted to address the latter in this blog entry to attempt to remind them about what I’ve learned over time about official Church doctrine about voting standards. The following content is also available as a flier for anyone who might want to distribute it among their Latter-day Saint associates…

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has, since the mid-20th-century, remained neutral as an institution about specific parties and specific platforms and most policies; but it has still encouraged its members to involve themselves freely in politics while it has advocated consistent political principles to guide members in choosing well, including when voting in elections. This document attempts to compile a representative sample of Church pronouncements that pertain specifically to voting standards.

“Wherefore, honest men and wise men should be sought for diligently, and good men and wise men ye should observe to uphold; otherwise whatsoever is less than these cometh of evil.” – God (D&C 98:10)

“We believe that all governments necessarily require civil officers and magistrates to enforce the laws of the same; and that such as will administer the law in equity and justice should be sought for and upheld by the voice of the people if a republic, or the will of the sovereign.” – The Church (D&C 134:3)

“We engage in the election the same as in any other principle: you are to vote for good men, and if you do not do this it is a sin: to vote for wicked men, it would be sin. Choose the good and refuse the evil.” – Hyrum Smith (History of the Church 6:323)

“I will tell you whom we will vote for: we will vote for the man who will sustain the principles of civil and religious liberty, the man who knows the most and who has the best heart and brain for a statesman; and we do not care a farthing whether he is a whig, a democrat, a barnburner, a republican, a new light or anything else. These are our politics.” – Brigham Young (Journal of Discourses 13:149)

“I do not lift my voice against the great and glorious Government guaranteed to every citizen by the Constitution, but against those corrupt administrators who trample the Constitution and just laws under their feet.” – Brigham Young (Journal of Discourses 5:232-233)

“The laws of Heaven command us not to uphold and sustain men, except they are good men, who will sustain the Constitution of our country; and we are fulfilling the revelations in this respect as in many others, and we are carrying out the requirements of the Constitution of the United States.” – Wilford Woodruff (Journal of Discourses 7:104)

“Now, I am not caring today, for myself, anything at all about a political party tag. So far as I am concerned, I want to know what the man stands for. I want to know if he believes in the Constitution; if he believes in its free institutions; if he believes in its liberties, its freedom. I want to know if he believes in the Bill of Rights. I want to know if he believes in the separation of sovereign power into the three great divisions: the Legislative, the Judicial, the Executive. I want to know if he believes in the mutual independence of these, the one from the other. When I find out these things, then I know who it is who should receive my support, and I care not what his party tag is …” – J. Reuben Clark Jr. (Conference Report, 1942 Oct)

“All through the last political campaign they were saying, ‘Why doesn’t the Church tell us how we should vote?’ If the Church had done that, we would have a lot of Democrats or Republicans who would have wanted to apostatize. … When they would ask me who to vote for in the coming election, I would tell them to read Mosiah 29 and Section 134 of the Doctrine and Covenants, pray about that, and any Latter-day Saint could know who to vote for in any given election. It is just as simple as that.” – Harold B. Lee (BYU speech, 1961 Apr 19)

“However, above all else, strive to support good and conscientious candidates, of either party, who are aware of the great dangers inherent in Communism, and who are truly dedicated to the Constitution in the tradition of our Founding Fathers. They should also pledge their sincere fealty to our way of liberty—a liberty which aims at the preservation of both personal and property rights. Study the issues, analyze the candidates on these grounds, and then exercise your franchise as free men and women. Never be found guilty of exchanging your birthright for a mess of pottage!” – David O. McKay (Conference Report, 1962 Oct)

“And our nation will continue to degenerate unless we read and heed the words of the God of this land, Jesus Christ, and quit building up and upholding the secret combinations which the Book of Mormon tells us proved the downfall of both previous American civilizations.” – Ezra Taft Benson (Conference Report, 1975 Apr)

“May I urge you to seek out good, wise, and honest men for public office, and then support them with your vote. You will note the conditions wherein the Lord counseled that we should support men in political office. They ought to be ‘good,’ ‘wise,’ and ‘honest.’ Some men are good and honest, but not wise. These qualities combined provide statesmanship. I’ve said it many times: what we need today are men with a mandate higher than the ballot box!” – Ezra Taft Benson (New Era, 1978 Jul)

“Men who are wise, good, and honest, who will uphold the Constitution of the United States in the tradition of the Founding Fathers, must be sought for diligently. This is our hope to restore government to its rightful role.” – Ezra Taft Benson (Conference Report, 1979 Oct)

“Note the qualities that the Lord demands in those who are to represent us. They must be good, wise, and honest. Some leaders may be honest and good but unwise in legislation they choose to support. Others may possess wisdom but be dishonest and unvirtuous. We must be concerted in our desires and efforts to see men and women represent us who possess all three of these qualities.” – Ezra Taft Benson (Conference Report, 1987 Oct)

“Mike, if you vote for the lesser of two evils you are still voting for evil and you will be judged for it. You should always vote for the best possible candidate, whether they have a chance of winning or not, and then, even if the worst possible candidate wins, the Lord will bless our country more because more people were willing to stand up for what is right.” – Ezra Taft Benson (said to my associate Mike Thompson)

For more relevant quotations, please search the website latterdayconservative.org and/or study the book Prophets, Principles and National Survival by Jerreld L. Newquist, which compiles a treasure-trove of Church doctrine about political principles, and which was recommended in 1972 in General Conference to all Latter-day Saints worldwide. And, after you have learned God’s will about politics, please do it!

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Municipal Socialism via Zoning, “Smart Growth,” and Urbanism

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We should feel deeply concerned that many local Utah County politicians (including in both Provo and Orem) seek to implement so-called “smart growth” policies to redirect development from their town’s outskirts to its center in order to concentrate residents into walkable urbanesque mixed-use high-rises served by public mass-transit. It seems that these urbanization trends originated among socialists for ideological reasons, both to implement their practices and to encourage people to embrace their ideology, which we liberty-lovin’ Americans should both understand and oppose.

Enhanced urbanism was one of many techniques that the KGB used to subvert nations to embrace socialism. As KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov warned Americans in 1984 about this subject: “Very briefly on population distribution: urbanization and ‘delandization’ (the taking away of private land) is the greatest threat to American nationhood. Why? Because the poor farmer often is a greater PATRIOT than an affluent dweller of a large congested American city. Communists know this very well. The Soviets keep a very tight control over the size of their cities by the system of ‘police registration of residence’ called ‘propiska.’ They know perfectly well that the farmer will fight an invader until last bullet ON HIS LAND. ‘Underprivileged’ or urbanized masses on the other hand, may feel like meeting an invader with flowers and red banners. ALIENATION of people from privately-owned land is one of the very important methods of DEMORALIZATION.” And demoralization, by the way, is the first of the four stages of KGB subversion.

Such Soviet urbanization practices began gaining some popularity beyond the USSR during the 1970s, including in America under the label “smart growth.” “Smart growth” proponents advocated that their densification policies would increase choice, foster community, improve health, and protect nature, while opponents have criticized these policies’ tendencies to counterproductively exacerbate the same problems that they were purported to alleviate. “Smart growth” has since associated itself with the broader concept of “sustainable development,” which exploits radical environmentalism to falsely excuse socialism, including at the municipal level. And, aided by such excuses, socialists (whether overt or covert or unwitting) have striven to needlessly urbanize small-town America, and to incentivize their residents to needlessly abandon their privately-owned cars for inefficient public mass-transit. And these same collectivistic trends are now flourishing even in Utahn cities like Provo and Orem.

“Smart growth” policies rely upon central economic planning through municipal zoning ordinances, which originated among European socialists and (like “smart growth”) are innately counterproductive. Zoning overrides free markets as it curtails development, reduces competition, reduces housing supplies while raising housing costs, mandates false “order” and/or aesthetics over genuine human needs, excludes “undesirables,” wastes people’s valuable time with needless paperwork, retards economic progress, and lowers standards-of-living. Zoning is partly why Los Angeles’ skyrocketing housing prices are driving away residents while Houston’s highly-affordable housing is attracting them. Zoning originally focused on separating functions, but it has increasingly shifted to focus on regulating form also, and such form-based code is vital in helping cities to implement “smart growth” policies. Provo’s city council openly considered adding such form-based code to its zoning ordinances within this last decade.

Over this last decade or so, local municipal officers in both Provo (through its Vision 2030) and Orem (through its State Street Master Plan) have adopted some “smart growth” policies to attempt to gradually concentrate their residents into downtown areas served by public mass-transit. Provo’s officers have proven very successful at implementing their vision through central planning, while Orem’s officers are currently facing tremendous opposition about their attempts to redevelop a few intersections into urbanesque hubs. Perhaps liberty-lovin’ Provoans could learn a few things from their Oremite counterparts. And hopefully both will eventually learn to scrutinize their local candidates better and to only support those candidates who not only understand individual God-given (or natural) rights, including free markets over central planning, but who will also consistently champion those rights. Please start today to motivate, educate, inform, mobilize, and organize your liberty-lovin’ neighbors for victory.

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Property Rights, Provo Grocers, and Zoning Laws

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We each have equal God-given (or natural) rights that end where the rights of others begin. All of our rights can arguably be derived from a few basic ones, which may be categorized as rights (1) over our bodies, (2) over the fruits of our labors, (3) over our children within reason as they mature, (4) to interact contractually via mutual voluntary informed consent, and (5) to defend ourselves against others’ aggression. Those last two rights justify us in chartering political systems, to which we contractually delegate limited authority to assist us in defending our rights from others’ aggression so that we may remain free.

It’s sad when our public officers reject their proper role as rights-defending servants to become rights-violating masters, instead, even to the point of behaving like Earthly monarchs to rule over us, dictating how we citizens will exercise our rights as if we exist merely to serve their interests. This is not only immoral but also impractical, as the grandiose central plans that a few mere mortals arrogantly devise to coerce upon the rest of us are generally inferior to the plans that many mere mortals (especially with divine guidance) freely work out amongst themselves through persuasion coupled with voluntary cooperation.

This is also true of zoning, which originated among European socialists. This municipal variety of central economic planning curtails development, reduces competition, promotes false “order” and/or aesthetics over genuine needs, reduces housing supply while raising housing costs, excludes “undesirables,” wastes people’s valuable time with needless paperwork, retards economic progress, and lowers standards-of-living. Every one of its alleged benefits is provided better within genuinely-free markets, which allow the most economical allocation of resources. Houston developed well with hardly any zoning laws and, as a result, enjoys exceptionally affordable housing, while California’s zoning laws (combined with other regulations) have rendered housing so unaffordable that prices are driving residents away.

People often migrate in the direction of greater freedom, which is one reason why many Californians are currently migrating to Utah County, although they are mostly bypassing Provo for now. Their reasons for avoiding Provo remain unclear to us at present in the absence of any professional survey results. However, it’s possible that Provo is repelling new move-ins with its own proliferating regulations, as Provo’s city code more-than-doubled from 2001 to 2021.

Provo’s regulation explosion is partly guided by Provo’s Vision 2030 (or Vision 2050), which is a grandiose central economic plan that mayor John Curtis instigated in 2011, and that Provo’s city councilors have since attempted to translate (as they’ve openly admitted) from abstract vision statement into concrete city code. These efforts have included city council discussions about enhancing Provo’s existing mostly-1970s-era zoning laws that regulate buildings’ function with additional laws that regulate their form. At one Vision 2030 discussion in 2016, Provo’s city councilors even discussed the possibility of requiring all Provo homeowners to landscape their yards in a manner dictated by municipal law. During this surreal discussion, one attendee remarked something about how, if Provo residents didn’t like their local aesthetics, then they could fire their mayor for a successor with better taste.

Such form-based code, like traditional zoning, originated among socialists and has been touted as a means to implement “Smart Growth” policies. These are an attempt to forcibly redirect municipal development away from a city’s outskirts toward its center in the guise of “saving the natural environment.” Such overt environmentalism arguably conceals socialism, as socialists have long understood that rural landowners tend to be more patriotic and conservative than urban dwellers—so, by forcibly confining a town’s growth so that its city center develops in an urbanesque manner, socialists can perhaps help their ideas to flourish more easily within it. Such “Smart Growth” policies are also blatantly part of Provo’s Vision 2030, along with its successor Vision 2050.

Even without such form-based enhancements, Provo’s existing zoning laws still violate our equal God-given (or natural) rights to both property and contract, which form the basis of genuine free markets. For example, Smith’s bought some land long ago in west Provo with the intent to construct a shopping center on that land someday, and Smith’s management has since been waiting for it to make financial sense to do so. But Provo’s city councilors recently decided to forcibly hasten this process by rezoning this land so that Smith’s could no longer use its property to construct what it intended, while hoping that this impediment to competition will encourage other grocers to build stores in that same area. And those city councilors have also been examining alternative locations in west Provo on which competitors might build. Their primary motivation is reportedly to prevent west Provo residents from leaving town to buy their groceries, as this reduces city tax revenue.

Whenever the state forcibly overrides the market, the results are invariably detrimental. Frederic Bastiat wrote expertly about the persistent difference between the overt intent of public policy and what those same policies unintentionally achieve through indirect effects upon a complex system. For those same reasons that he stated so eloquently, forcing a grocery store into existence where it does not (yet) make economic sense for it to exist causes economic inefficiencies that hurt every consumer generally. Rather than centrally control or manipulate markets, it’s better to allow free people to freely work out such things amongst themselves. And, more importantly, it’s also the right thing to respect everyone’s property rights.

The “bottom line” is that zoning must end, including in Provo. Zoning violates rights and it does more harm than good. But zoning won’t end without significant changes in the sort of municipal politicians that Provoans have been electing. And those politicians won’t change unless/until more liberty-lovin’ Provoans involve themselves in municipal politics. And involvement won’t increase unless residents like YOU choose to engage in precinct-level activism by engaging your neighbors, motivating them, educating them, informing them, organizing them, mobilizing them, et cetera. Please choose to do so. And you’re welcome to use this website if it help any.

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Rightful Liberty Versus Both Police Abuses and BLM Violence

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All lives matter, including black lives, and it’s great to attempt to remedy inequities in how our society values people. Such noble ends have been proclaimed by Black Lives Matter, but BLM protestors have engaged in terribly-counterproductive means, such as pillaging-and-burning while attempting to foment a violent Marxist revolution. Their violence even touched Provo yesterday, as some rioters committed attempted murder and property damage. Such destruction does not build both unity and mutual respect, but it can help victims (whether real or fancied) to become oppressors.

Both tyrants and criminals feel emboldened whenever public officers do nothing. And some have readily accused Provo police of “standing down” under orders from Mayor Kaufusi; however, this author has not yet seen any credible evidence to support these claims. Although we have definitely criticized the mayor (and her predecessor) for many statist policies, we desire to comment ONLY about things that she has actually done, and not about imaginary grievances. And we also like to applaud her when we notice her getting things right. So, at this time, we express our gratitude that (unlike some other mayors) she has NOT treated such crimes with astounding permissiveness. Or proposed bad policies (yet) in response, as far as we’ve noticed.

Unfortunately, responding with bad policy is something that we will need to counteract in the near future. Marxists have repeatedly employed a “pincers” movement of applying pressure from both above and below—for example, they will use street groups to foment riots and then use politicians to propose bills that allegedly address rioters’ concerns but that actually further the Marxist agenda. Which is arguably why some federal politicians are now considering legislation that would begin to nationalize our local police officers. Police nationalization, along dumbing-down and militarization, is part of the long-term Marxist agenda for our nation. Such dangerous trends would render our local peace officers more like a federal standing army that some aspiring Caesar could potentially wield to subjugate our nation from within.

National police are normal in totalitarian regimes, but are antithetical to free societies. Ideally, with respect to our fellow mortals, we should each be kings or queens of our own figurative castles, and nobody else’s, free to love/serve God and our neighbors according to the dictates of our own respective consciences. Whether or not we choose Him as our Master, the state should NOT be our master but our servant, with the specialized duty of expertly helping us to defend our equal God-given rights from others’ aggression so that we may remain free. The state’s larger jurisdictions exist NOT to rule but only to serve the smaller jurisdictions within themselves, of which the smallest units are individual households.

So, to preserve a free society, we need to actively oppose efforts to nationalize and dumb-down and militarize our local peace officers, including by electing like-minded municipal officers. Politicians who incentivize our police to wantonly behave like brutal thugs will only give increased legitimacy to anarchic BLM rioters, which will only provide further excuses to corrupt politicians to enact counterproductive reforms, thereby perpetuating a vicious cycle toward tyranny. As in the movie “WarGames” (1983), the only way to win such a power struggle is to NOT participate in it. Let’s keep this cycle broken by actively promoting liberty, instead, along with peace, respect, and the value of EVERY human life, whether black or blue or both or neither.

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Provo’s Budget for FY 2021

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Provo’s city council recently adopted a budget for fiscal year 2021, which was reduced somewhat due to the COVID19 pandemic of 2020.

During this budgeting process, some citizens advocated defunding Provo’s police force in response to recent incidents of local police abusing their power to violate citizens’ rights. These calls derive from valid concerns because police, like other public officers, should act within the limits of their delegated authority (including due process) to expertly help people to defend their equal God-given rights from others’ aggression. And it’s sad when police become aggressors themselves. Such trends toward police aggression are arguably facilitated by ongoing nationwide efforts to nationalize and dumb-down and militarize our local peace officers. Such a national police force could be used as a standing army to conquer our nation from within, and is a normal part of totalitarian regimes. We should resist such trends, including abuse of our local SWAT team, but we should definitely NOT eliminate our police force. So, I applaud our city officers for rejecting such calls.

What they should actually defund—or, better yet, privatize—is most everything else in Provo’s municipal budget. As we’ve noted before, Provo’s city-owned businesses include a redevelopment agency, a power company, an airport, a television channel, a library, a performing arts center, a recreation center, a fitness center, a golf course, an ice rink, a water park, a beach, a park service, a gun range, a garbage-collection service, a recycling service, and a cemetery, none of which are involved in defending our rights. It would be better for Provo’s municipal officers to spin off all of these divisions fully into the private sector, and then sever all lingering ties with them. As competitive private enterprises, these former agencies would become far more innovative and efficient and effective, serving customers better—and simultaneously allowing public officers to focus better on defending rights, and perhaps also on a few other tasks like maintaining local roads. It’s always easier for public officers to focus on performing their core duties well whenever they aren’t needlessly overwhelming themselves with excessive responsibility over other parts of our local economy. And our economy always works best whenever politicians stop trying to subjugate it to their will and, instead, simply help defend everyone’s equal God-given rights from others’ aggression.

But such structural change won’t happen without electoral change. For at least 20 years, Provo’s public officers have remained rather enamored with big government. And this is partly because Provo’s municipal elections have remained dominated year-after-year by big-government voters. And they prevail NOT because they constitute a large percentage of Provo’s population, but because most voters don’t bother to participate. So, we who value our rightful liberty need to change this sad status quo. We won’t reverse these statist trends unless we grow our ranks in both numbers and effectiveness. And there’s no time like the present to begin—so, please make a plan and implement it.

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