<Note: Except for the last paragraph, the following document was produced
before 6:32 PM the sixth of December 2020. In light of events that took place on 6 Jan 2021 there is more to be
discussed.
This seems like a good time to introduce a few thoughts about
political issues. Next month (January of 2021) we expect to replace
Donald Trump with Joe Biden as president of the United States. As a
Conservative I have mixed feelings about this event. I do not
consider the election of 2020 to be any more honest or legitimate
than progressives did the election of 2016. However my reaction will
not be to declare that Joe Biden is “not my president,” I will
not demand that he be impeached nor will I move to a foreign country
merely because his interests are opposed to mine. I will not begin a
hate campaign.
Just because this
sort of resolution was sought for by Democrats and Progressives as
the result of the 2016 election does not mean I will act out the same
sort of foolishness. Instead, I will do my best to act the part of a
true conservative. To demonstrate what sort of behavior this entails,
I hereby submit a few excerpts from a conference talk given by James
E. Talmage in Salt Lake City, Utah, during October of 1915. This
will be followed by some reasons why Talmage had good cause to
resent the United States government and react in the way so called
liberals did to the four years of "The Donald" just past. Let’s see
what Talmage does instead:
Excerpts delivered in SLC Tabernacle, 1915
The mission of the Church is to prepare for the coming of the
Christ, for the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven, which has not yet
been set up upon the earth. Modern revelation makes plain the fact
that there is a distinction between the Kingdom of God and the
Kingdom of Heaven as we use, or should use those terms.
… But we have been taught still to pray that the Kingdom of
Heaven shall come, and the Lord has made plain that the Kingdom of
Heaven shall come and be made one with the Kingdom of God, which
latter is already set up upon the earth.
… God raised up mighty men who pledged their lives in defense of
those principles of liberty. The men who framed the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution of the United States were men who
acted as they did because the Spirit of God was operative upon them.
…
This nation has been directed from the first by the overruling
power of God, and though at times there have been internal troubles,
though some have allowed partisain preferences and prejudices to
becloud their view and shut out for the time being the greater
purposes and objects beyond, yet in time the Lord has brought out all
things well. And we as a Church and as individual membersof the
Church feel it to be a part of our religion and part of our duty to
our God to be loyal to the nation of which we form a part. Let that
loyalty be expressed in our united support of those in whose hands
the Lord has entrusted the affairs of this nation. In every
Latter-day Saint home prayer should be made for the President of the
United States, for his cabinet, for the national congress, for all
the officers of this nation, that they may be led to do that which
shall further the purposes of God in the advancement of this people.
I pray for the President of this Republic though I have never
professed membership in the political party to which he belongs. He
is to me no member of a political party but the president of the
nation; and he requires the assistance and direction and inspiration
of the Lord that he may accomplish the purposes which God intends to
have accomplished in the leading of this nation to its glorious
destiny.
And when the Kingdom of Heaven shall come it will be established
in the midst of this nation and upon this glorious land of Zion, the
American continent, and out of Zion shall go forth the law, and other
nations shall be governed by the laws of righteousness and the better
part of human nature shall be developed and the millennium of peace
shall be inaugurated. For this we are preparing. May our preparation
be effective, may we be true to the right, to ourselves, to our
fellowmen, and to our God, I reverently ask in the name of Jesus
Christ, our Master. Amen.
Delivered by James E. Talmage, Council of the
Twelve.
Salt Lake City Tabernacle, SLC, Utah, Sunday October
10, 1915
At the time of this speech Talmage held the same
office in his church as Reed Smoot did when appointed as the first
Senator of the state of Utah in January of 1903. Smoot was not
allowed to act as the Senator of Utah until the end of February 1907.
The intervening four years were spent in testimony and arguments that
now fill four large volumes of the public record. Four years of
trying to prevent any Mormon from ever serving in the Senate.
Fourteen years before Smoot was elected as Senator, federal courts
decided that “Mormon Aliens, though in all things else qualified
could not become citizens of the United States, because of their
membership in the Mormon Church.”
For now, I just wanted to say the 2020 election did not cause me any serious emotional angst. In my seventy six years I have only voted for one president that actually won. He was a president they loved to hate. I voted for him because Ben Carson (my actual choice) suggested it would be appropriate.