Principle 28 The United States has a Manifest Destiny

The United States Has a Manifest Destiny to be an Example and a Blessing to the Entire Human race.

 D&C 109: 54 

54 Have mercy, O Lord, upon all the ^anations of the earth; have mercy upon the rulers of our land; may those principles, which were so honorably and nobly defended, namely, the ^bConstitution of our land, by our fathers, be established forever.

One of the most important characteristics of the first American settlers was their strong sense of mission.  They had a conviction that they were taking part in the unfolding of a manifest destiny of divine design, which would shower blessings on all of mankind.  Historian John Fiske writes,

"They believed they were doing a wonderful thing.  They felt themselves to be instruments in accomplishing a kind of 'manifest destiny.'  Their exodus [from Europe] was that of a chosen people who were at length to lay the everlasting foundations of God's kingdom upon earth....This steadfast faith in an unseen ruler and guide was to them a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night.  It was of great moral value.  It gave them clearness of purpose and concentration of strength, and contributed towards making them, like the children of Israel, a people of indestructible vitality and aggressive energy."

 It has continued to be a theme, that can be found in many inaugural addresses given by the presidents of the United States.  Just to clarify, this is a mission of a nation, and not about any kind of superiority.

John Adams wrote,

"I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in Providence for the illumination of the ignorant, and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth." 

And Alexander Hamilton wrote,

"It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force."  

He also went on to say that if the people of the United States failed in this mission, that is would bring about the "the general misfortune of mankind."

John Adams later said that if the people abandon the freedom that they have gained by the adoption of the Constitution, it would be "treason against the hopes of the world."

The Founders knew that they were taking part in something new, something different from anything else on the face of the earth.  They pursued the more noble course.  Shall we too go forth in such a noble cause? 

D&C 58:27 Verily I say, men should be ^aanxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness;
28 For the power is in them, wherein they are ^aagents unto themselves. And inasmuch as men do good they shall in nowise lose their ^breward.

There is no greater cause than the liberty of mankind.  It was in the war in heaven that this mission began, and it is here that it continues.  This nation has and will yet face tough and trying times, but it has a mission to fulfill, and the Lord has decreed that it will be fulfilled.  It is up to us, if we will accept the call to come to our nation’s aid, or if we will deny our responsibility and be cut off.

3 Nephi 21:11 Therefore it shall come to pass that whosoever will not believe in my words, who am Jesus Christ, which the Father shall cause ^ahim to bring forth unto the ^bGentiles, and shall give unto him power that he shall bring them forth unto the Gentiles, (it shall be done even as Moses said) they shall be ^ccut off from among my people who are of the covenant.
12 And my people who are a remnant of Jacob shall be among the Gentiles, yea, in the midst of them as a ^alion among the beasts of the forest, as a young lion among the flocks of sheep, who, if he go through both treadeth down and teareth in pieces, and none can deliver.
13 Their hand shall be lifted up upon their ^aadversaries, and all their enemies shall be cut off.
14 Yea, wo be unto the Gentiles except they ^arepent; for it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Father, that I will cut off thy horses out of the midst of thee, and I will destroy thy ^bchariots;
15 And I will cut off the cities of thy land, and throw down all thy ^astrongholds;
16 And I will cut off ^awitchcrafts out of thy land, and thou shalt have no more soothsayers;
17 Thy ^agraven images I will also cut off, and thy standing images out of the midst of thee, and thou shalt no more worship the works of thy hands;
18 And I will pluck up thy ^agroves out of the midst of thee; so will I destroy thy cities.
19 And it shall come to pass that all ^alyings, and deceivings, and envyings, and strifes, and priestcrafts, and whoredoms, shall be done away.
20 For it shall come to pass, saith the Father, that at that ^aday whosoever will not repent and come unto my Beloved Son, them will I ^bcut off from among my people, O house of Israel;
21 And I will execute ^avengeance and ^bfury upon them, even as upon the heathen, such as they have not heard.
22 But if they will repent and hearken unto my words, and ^aharden not their hearts, I will ^bestablish my church among them, and they shall come in unto the covenant and be ^cnumbered among this the remnant of Jacob, unto whom I have given this land for their ^dinheritance;
23 And they shall assist my ^apeople, the remnant of Jacob, and also as many of the house of Israel as shall come, that they may build a city, which shall be called the ^bNew Jerusalem.
24 And then shall ^athey assist my people that they may be gathered in, who are scattered upon all the face of the land, in unto the New Jerusalem.
25 And then shall the ^apower of heaven come down among them; and ^bI also will be in the midst.
26 And then shall the work of the Father commence at that day, even ^awhen this gospel shall be preached among the remnant of ^bthis people. Verily I say unto you, at that day shall the work of the Father commence among all the dispersed of my people, yea, even the tribes which have been ^clost, which the Father hath led away out of Jerusalem.

In verse 20, we see the key, we must repent and come unto Christ in order to avoid being cut off as prophesied.  In order for the United States to fulfill her mission, we must each personally fulfill ours, to become sanctified, purified, and having cleansed our inner vessels, so that we may then be filled with the power of God, and be instruments in His hands.  There is no other way.

Thomas Jefferson Warns of Dangers of National Debt

The Principles of Liberty | Principle 22

"A Free People Should be Governed by Law and Not the Whims of Man"

If mankind are governed by the whims of men they are subjected to every changing inclination of sudden illogical changes of mind, ideas, or actions of those in power.  This is ruler's law at its worst.  In this kind of society, no rights are secure and nothing is dependable; things are in a constant state of flux.  Nothing is fixed nor predictable for the future.

The Founders defined law as a 'rule of action', which was binding on the ruler as it was upon the people.  It was designed to give society a stable frame of reference so the people could feel secure in making plans for the future.  John Locke said:

Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to everyone of that society. and made by the legislative power erected in it.

Under established law, every person's rights and duties are defined.  Such a society gives the people a feeling of liberty, liberty under the law.  The American Founders believed that without the protection of law there can be no liberty.

John Locke also pointed out that unless a society can provide a person with a code of fixed and enforceable laws, he might as well have stayed in the jungle.

To this end it is that men give up all their natural power to the society that they enter into, and the community put the legislative power into such hands as they see fit, with this trust, that they shall be governed by declared laws, or else their peace, quiet, and property will still be at the same uncertainty as it was in the state of Nature.

John Adams also agreed when he said:

No man will contend that a nation can be free that is not governed by fixed laws.  All other government that that of permanent known laws is the government of mere will and pleasure.

 Aristotle said:

Even the best of men in authority are liable to be corrupted by passion.  We may conclude then that the law is reason without passion, and it is therefore preferable to any individual.

 And from this we can see that Aristotle disagreed with his mentor Plato, who believed that that the ideal society should be governed by a few who would rule according to scientific principles and make on the spot decisions and force the people to do what is good for them.  He said that if there was not a man with this scientific knowledge, then law would be required, but it was only the second best thing.

the difference appears to be perspective.  Rather then looking at law as a merely a code of negative restraints and prohibitions, the Founders considered it to be a system of positive rules by which they could be assured of enjoying their rights and the protection of themselves, their families and their property.  John Locke said it best:

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 when there is no law.

The Founders were sensitive to the fact that people only have confidence in laws that they can understand, as well as feel that it is of relative permanence, which will not be continually changed.  James Madison said this so well:

It will be of little avail to the people that the law are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be revealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow.  Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known and less fixed?

 Thomas Jefferson resigned from the congress in 1776 in order to return to Virginia to make certain that the state laws were rewritten so that when independence had been won, the people would have a model system of legal principles which they could both understand and support.  The complex codes and laws of our day could be similarly improved with such a great housecleaning as Jefferson did for Virginia.  Imagine what James Madison would think of our legislature and senate who pass bills that are so large that they have not read them when they vote on them, that vote on bills that are not yet even written!

The 28 Principles of Liberty| Principle 21

"Strong Local Self-government is the Keystone to Preserving Human Freedom"

Political power automatically tries to gravitate towards centralization, the purpose of the US Constitution is to prevent that from happening.  Centralization of political power ALWAYS destroys liberty by removing the decision-making function from the people on the local level to the officers of the central government.

When this occurs, the people start to lose the spirit of voluntarism and the will to solve their own problems.  They also cease to be involved in community affairs.

This contrasts with the New England town spirit where every person had a voice and a vote.  How different from the Anglo-Saxon tribal meetings, where the people were considered sovereign and every man took pride in participating.  And even more, how different from ancient Israel where the families of the people were governed in multitudes of tens, fifties, hundreds, and thousands, where problems were solved on the levels where those problem originated.    This is what the Founders considered the golden key to preserving liberty.

Thomas Jefferson said "These wards, called townships in  New England, are the vital principle of their governments, and have proved themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-government, and for its perservation.

Jefferson was anxious to have America revive the customs of their Anglo-Saxon ancestors, including strong local self-government.  Historian Richard Frothingham has pointed out that in ancient England there were political and territorial divisions that were similar to that of Ancient Israel.  "Tythings, hundreds. burghs, counties and shires", in which the body of inhabitants had a voice in managing their own affairs.  That was until that ruling classes were installed in its place, undermining the ancient freedom of the municipalities.

Even as this situation arose, in the backs of the minds of the people, they remembered the the right of freemen of the past, and thought that it was something that might be brought about again.

And this is exactly what happened as Englishmen pulled away from the mother country and migrated to America.  The assemblies reappeared, and old rights were once again enjoyed.  As they wrote their laws, they were determined to protect the freedom of the individual and provide for a healthy local government.  Only those things that which related to the interest of the entire commonwealth were delegated to central government.

James Madison emphasized the necessity to reserve all possible authority in the states and the people.  The Constitution delegates to the federal government on that which involves the whole people as a nation.  He wrote, "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined.  Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.  The former (federal powers) will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce....The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State."

Thomas Jefferson emphasized that if the oncoming generations continued the Constitutional pattern, the federal government would be small and cohesive and would serve and an inexpensive operation because of the limited problems which would be assigned to it.  He wrote, "The true theory of our Constitution is sure the wisest and best, that the states are independent as to everything within themselves, and united as to everything respecting foreign nations.  Let the general government be reduced to foreign concerns only, ans let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except as to commerce, which the merchants will manage the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves, and our general government may be reduced to a very simple organization, and a very inexpensive one; a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants."

A WARNING from John Fiske:

"If the day should ever arrive when the people of the different parts of our country shall allow their local affairs to be administered by prefects sent from Washington, and then the self-government of the states shall have been so far lost  as that of the departments of France, or even so closely  limited as that of the counties of England, on that day the political career of the American people will have been robbed of its most interesting and valuable features, and the usefulness of this nation will be lamentably impaired."

Principles of Liberty| Thomas Jefferson's Prophetic Wisdom

The 28 Principles of LIberty: Principle 18

"The Unalienable Rights of the People are Most Likely to be Preserved if the Principles of Government are Set Forth in a Written Constitution."

The one weakness of the Anglo-Saxon common law, was that it was unwritten. Due to the fact that the whole people were aware of the principles, they seemed to be indifferent to writing them down. According to Dr. Colin Rhys Lovell, this was customary until they converted to Christianity. Prior to that, it was unwritten and considered immutable.

It was the Norman conquest that taught the Anglo-Saxons in England a bitter lesson. A majority of their treasured rights disappeared through the flood of blood and oppression. They did regain them very slowly over a period of time, a few centuries, and gradually were written down. In A.D. 1215, King John virtually had a sword held to his throat, due to the national crisis, and signed the Magna Charta, which set forth the traditional rights of the freemen as well as the feudal barons who had been serving under King John.

During that same century, the model parliament came into being which compelled the King to acknowledge that principle of no taxation without representation. Later, in 1628, Charles I was pressured into signing the People's Petition of Rights and the English Bill of Rights was signed in 1689 by William and Mary.

Through the centuries, the British have tried to manage the political affairs with no written constitution and relied on these few documents as a source of reference. They did prove very helpful to the Founders, but they felt that the structure of government should be structured in a more permanent and comprehensive form. So, the tradition if a written constitution in modern times is completely American in principle and practice.

The first written charter for America was the Mayflower Compact of 1620. If became more comprehensive when Thomas Hooker and his associates adopted the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut in 1639. The charter makes no reference to the British Government nor the Crown, but the source of its authority as "We, the people."

Montesquieu said that the writing of a statute or a charter is "oftentimes better regulated by many than by a single person." The Founders agreed with this idea and considered it wise to filter it through the wisdom and experience of many delegates assembled in a convention rather then leaving it to the genius of some individual.

James Madison stated, "It is not a little remarkable that in every case reported by ancient history in which government has been established with deliberation and consent, the task of framing it has not been committed to an assembly of men, but has been performed by some individual citizen of preeminent wisdom and approved integrity. Minos, we learn, was the primitive founder of the government of Crete, as Zaleucus was of that of the Locrians. Theseus first, and after him Draco and Solon, instituted the government of Athens. Lycurgus was the lawgiver of Sparta. The foundation of the original government of Rome was laid by Romulus, and the work completed by two of his elective successors, Numa and Tullius Hostilius. On the abolition of royalty the consular administration was substituted by Brutus, who stepped forward with a project for such reform, which, he alleged, had been prepared by Servius Tullius, and to which his address ontained the assent and ratification of the senate and people. This remark is applicable to confederate governments also. Amphictyon, we are told, was the author of that which bore his name. The Achaean league received its first birth from Achaeus, and its second from Aratus."

It is always difficult to operate through a committee, a group, or a convention as the Founding Fathers did. The final product was far stronger then any individual alone could have written it. And time has also proven the incredible value have having a written document for reference, a standard, rather then relying on a few scattered statutes as the fundamental law of the land.

The 28 Principles of Liberty are adapted from W. Cleon Skousen's Book 'The 5000 Year Leap' and are brought to you by Fragrant Smoke.