Rightful Role of Government Part 2

This is Part 2 of a two-part article on what I believe is the rightful role of government.

I wrote this in response to a couple of different groups that have been agitating for the scrapping of the US Constitution.

Before you go throwing the Constitution under the bus because of how it is being subverted today by an immoral people in favor of an anarchist view that has NEVER operated successfully, you should consider that our foundation is built on the notion that "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."  To me, that sounds a lot like the rallying cry of Libertarians and anarchists.  So what are they fighting against except the notion "that  to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,..."

Libertarians and anarchists seem to want to throw out the baby along with the bath water.  The bath water is dirty (our government has become corrupted) so get rid of the baby since it made the water dirty (abolish the Constitution because it frame the government which others have corrupted).  This is a foolhardy approach to solving the problem, and one which, if followed will result in much less individual freedom, not more.

For more than 100 years, the US Constitution stood as a bulwark, generally doing a good job of protecting the majority of people from the predations of a minority (the minority being those who want to exercise unrestricted power over others - call them "king-men" (and women) if you will).
And protecting the minorities (minorities of race, religion or creed) from the predations of a majority.  There are notable big exceptions such as slavery and when the US Government declared war on the Mormons before the Civil War.  And there are notable smaller exceptions such as when local governments were corrupted and turned a blind eye to the operations of groups like the KKK who operated according to their own views of right and wrong (lawful and unlawful).

The Rule of Law has ushered in an unprecedented era in world history.  Today, the rule of law is being supplanted by the rule of regulatory fiat (monarchy or Executive Orders) posing as the rule of law.  Regulatory fiat (monarchy) allowed both the creation of the Ma Bell Monopoly and its later dissolution.  Regulatory fiat allowed the creation and later dissolution of the railroad monopolies.  Regulatory fiat (monarchy) has allowed the creation of the postal service monopoly and allowed the partial dissolution of that monopoly into its present pathetic state.  In this country the supplanting of the Rule of Law began when the ideas of Marx and Engels were embraced by powerful and weak Americans who wanted power and embraced the notion that the State should embody the will of the people instead of serving as a bulwark against the usurpation of their individual freedoms.  Inasmuch as people adopt the view that the state is to embody the will of the people, rather than serving the people to protect their individual freedoms, then they are embracing the notion that the state and the strengthening of the government of the state is the starting point for the solution to all of society's ills. 

The obverse view, that the state exists solely to preserve individual freedom, puts the burden for righting societal injustices or inequities on the shoulders of each individual and requires them to act on their own or to persuade others to join their cause with their time, energy and money given freely to act to improve the lot of the poor or other downcast or disadvantaged peoples. 

Too many people would rather abdicate their individual responsibility, along with their individual freedom, to government, thereby giving the government the ability to coerce folks who are not like-minded to support the "noble" causes adopted by the masses (or presented by demagogues to attract the attention and pity, or concupiscence of the masses).

I believe that government has no business getting into the business of charity.  And the federal government and Supreme Court have no business trying to legislate or adjudicate moral issues.

When government gets into the business of charity - providing economic help to disadvantage sectors of society, several bad things happen:

1. Government robs individuals of the responsibility to account to God for their treatment of the poor and needy by making the individual contributions both compulsory and utterly without connection to the individual contributor.
2. Government sets up programs which always have the unintended consequence of increasing the number of people in disadvantaged group.
3. Government always put most of the money (consistently around 80%) devoted to the issue into the hands of facilitators and government employees and a fraction (consistently around 20%) into form of actual benefits delivered to the needy.

When the Federal Government and the Supreme Court get into the business of legislating or adjudicating moral issues, several bad things invariably happen:

1. The democratic process is short circuited.  Instead of allowing for lively public debate to be held in each state and locality and allow local people to decide with their votes or vote with their feet by moving to localities that favor their views, a decision is forced upon major sectors of the society which is in direct conflict with their moral views.  This does not settle the matter, rather it drives lasting wedges between different segments of society.
2. When the Federal Government or Supreme Court try to settle a moral issue with laws or rulings, they ride roughshod over the right of every citizen to the free exercise of conscience.  They make it illegal to be on the "wrong/losing" side of a moral decision. 
3. This trampling of rights of conscience can only lead to what is, by definition, subversive behavior as people will violate the law, seek to thwart the enforcement of the law, or even violently oppose the government that is seeking to impose the law which they find morally reprehensible.

The decision of the Supreme Court to create a right to abortion, the decision of the Supreme Court to create a right to gay-marriage are high profile examples of situations where the imposition of a decision, instead of settling the matter, has provided a club for one group to attempt to rob the opposition of their rights to dissent on grounds of freedom of conscience.

What is needed today is not an abandonment of the US Constitution.  Rather what is needed is individual and mass commitment to adherence to the principles of individual responsibility and individual rights.  Along with acknowledgement that the exercise of individual rights requires the acceptance of the consequences of those exercises, including failure, unhappiness, ill-health, poverty, incarceration, disability, or even death.

The Constitution was designed to give us the opportunity to succeed and the opportunity to fail.  And, as every successful person knows, failure is always a necessary precursor to success.  What those who seek to cast aside the principles of our Constitution want is a framework that prohibits success and protects us from failure and from the negative consequences of our own choices.  That kind of institutionalized irresponsibility is what is largely wrong with our society today.

I believe that 90% of our current statutes and at least 50% of our Federal and State government infrastructures would evaporate if every regulation and every law passed or currently existing were forced to show 1) origination in the rights enumerated in the US Constitution and 2) adherence to the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence.

The problem is not the baby in the bath, the problem is the bathwater getting dirtier every minute  because mom and dad are using dirt for soap.  The problem is being compounded by the fact that some are deliberately throwing dirt on the baby because they want the baby to be thrown out so they can install their own child and rule the roost.

The solution is to find and elect individuals who are willing to adhere to and support a return to the foundational principles of individual responsibility AND individual freedom, protected by limited government restrained within the boundaries of enumerated powers consciously, deliberately and thoughtfully yielded by the people and preserved by the individual rather than collective energies of the people.

It took 100 years of misguided statism to get where we are today.  It will take many years, decades or perhaps even a century of unremitting, unceasing, individual vigilance and individual effort to regain the individual freedoms and responsibilities which have been usurped by those who I called statists (variously known as progressives, liberals, communists, socialists, marxist, maoists, etc.).

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. 

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.

Visit Tom's Amazon.com Author's Page

(c) Copyright 2015 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved. 

 Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

Rightful Role of Government - Part 1

This is Part 1 of a two-part article on what I believe is the rightful role of government.

I wrote this in response to a couple of different groups that have been agitating for the scrapping of the US Constitution.

One of those groups, the Libertarians and Anarchists want to scrap it because they believe that any government other than self-government is too much government.  Based on FaceBook (FB) posts adherents to these views have made, they view the Constitution simply as a vehicle to usurp their personal sovereignty. They also tend to embrace the decadent cultural stance that all forms of external government are equally wrong from a moral standpoint.  This stance utterly ignores the reality that under various forms of despotism like Socialism and dictatorships, their very ability to voice such opinions would likely be ended with a bullet to the head.  Which stands in sharp contrast to how the US Constitution protects their rights to free speech.

The other group that wants to scrap the US Constitution are the Progressives / Socialists / Communists / Liberals.  This second group wants to scrap it because it expressly thwarts their efforts to eliminate personal property rights, freedom of speech and freedom of conscience.  They use a variety of arguments against the Constitution and they have successfully implemented a vast array of laws, regulations and court rulings that fly in the face of the express authorities granted and reserved by the wording of the Constitution.  One of their chief arguments, not being able to truly contest the principles in the document, is that it was written by dead white farmers whose ideas are totally out of touch with the events of our day.  This argument ignores the facts that the principles embodied in the Constitution are derived from millenia of human experience and thought and that the "farmers" were actually among the best educated people in the world at the time and were experienced farmers, business owners, clergy, soldiers, philosophers and public servants.

There is no question (at least among serious students of history) that the US Constitution was an expansion of Federal power.  The problem at the time was that the Articles of Confederation left the union open to being picked apart by large European powers, mostly through connivance - since force would likely have been met with a united response from the American states.  And the Articles of Confederation had already proven inadequate for managing the financial obligations incurred in the war as well as the commercial and legal issues that were raised in the course of the Revolutionary War. 

In spite of what flaws there may be in the US Constitution, it was as Cleon Skousen calls it "a 5,000 year leap" forward in the governments of men.  And, it still stands as the best form of government in existence today, even after some significant dismantling and perversion by forces (legislatures as well as courts) over the past 100 years. 

In fact, most of the flaws cited today are those created in the past 100 years by those who are seeking to destroy the Constitution.  The beauty of the US Constitution (and the Bill of Rights) as originally framed and interpreted is that it created a strictly limited Federal government while explicitly recognizing that the powers of government derive solely from the governed.  Prior to this time, nearly every government in the world assumed that the powers of government derived solely from God onto the shoulders of the monarch, and that the citizens were not citizens, they were subjects (a person who is under the dominion or rule of a sovereign) and they had NO inherent rights, the king being accountable only to God for the use of his power.

The Magna Charta was a huge leap forward in that it made the king accountable to the nobles and the people through the powers given to the parliament.  Previously the only accountability of the king was to those who could wield sufficient military or financial power to bring him to heel.  And financial power without the military might to back it was simply an invitation to have debts cancelled and wealth transferred at the point of bloody sword.

Anarchy or total self-government is not a realistic model for sustainable society in today's world.  In fact, the anarchist movement is largely a tool of the statists.  If the model of the anarchists were accepted, and every man became a law unto himself, human nature (essentially unchanged through 6,000 years of recorded human history) would soon find the strong preying on the weak.  The victims would band together and seek the protection of the strongest, or strength in numbers.  Either way, they would immediately have to trade some or all of their personal sovereignty for increased security.   The strongest would protect them and demand obedience and we would have feudalism and monarchy in short order.  Again, the stronger would "eat the sovereignty" the weaker until Empires were rebuilt and the monarch (the state) would again be the source of all authority and individuals would have surrendered all their individual sovereignty so that they would be prey only to one predator (their monarch) rather than be prey to a hundred different bullies.

The only time self-government (total individual sovereignty) will work is when the individuals will also agree to relinquish their sovereignty promptly (in a minute - e.g., minutemen militia) for self defense and the apprehension of predators (of the 2-legged variety), and agree to a common set of public standards for interaction (e.g.,  thou shalt not steal...).

Realistically speaking, the US Constitution has worked out very well for us so far.  It's bedrock is under unremitting attack right now and if it falls, the end result will be despotism, not freedom.  The US Constitution has successfully limited government and assured individual freedom for more than 200 years and helped create the most prosperous and powerful  nation on earth - powered by the will of individuals who believe that these freedoms are worth defending and that the principles underlying this structure are eternal beacons for the happiness of both individuals and society.

Coming Up - The Rightful Role of Government - Part 2, including...

• Predation by the minority
• Predation by the majority
• The Rule of Law

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. 

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.

Visit Tom's Amazon.com Author's Page

(c) Copyright 2015 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved. 

 Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

SCOTUS Decision Gives a Green Light to Push for Closet Christians

The recent decision by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) to establish same-sex marriage as a right, does not, by itself signal a dramatic change in the struggle between Christians and the LGBT community.  The real sign of imminent danger lies in the words of the majority opinion, both in what is said, and what is not said.

"Finally, it must be emphasized that religions, and those who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned. The First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths, and to their own deep aspirations to continue the family structure they have long revered. The same is true of those who oppose same-sex marriage for other reasons."

Notice first, the words of protection for Christians that are used:  "advocate" and "teach."  What is not said is that they "exercise" those beliefs.

I'm not the only one who noticed this dangerous omission by the majority.  A recent article in The Deseret News notes:

Chief Justice John Roberts said the majority's view offers "no comfort" to people of faith when contemplating the further religious liberty issues bound to arise from the ruling, saying that, "ominously," Kennedy's opinion doesn't discuss free exercise protections for groups or individuals.

What is the importance of 'exercise' versus teaching and advocating?  It means simply that you can still say you don't support same-sex marriage, but you cannot act on those beliefs.  If you make wedding cakes, regardless of how you believe, you won't have a choice in whether or not your edible sculpture, crafted to glorify the union of two lives, is used to glorify hetero-sexual marriage, or not.

The same is true of a lot of other wedding-related business.  Now, the amoral capitalist would just shout for joy at the recent SCOTUS ruling because it means his prospective client base just expanded dramatically.  But, contrary to media stereotypes, capitalism is not a synonym for being amoral.  In fact the vast majority of business owners I have met have very strong moral codes.

Many of these business owners really love their work.  It is their passion that helps power their success.  And, if they are forced to use their work to glorify a behavior they believe is immoral, it will sour them on their work and take their heart out of it.

The SCOTUS majority would have us believe that the media stereotype is reality and that business is divorced from religion and morality.

Christians know that you cannot divorce any part of your life from your religion or morality.  Being a Christian means that you not only believe, but you exercise your beliefs, because God will judge us for ALL our deeds, our words, and even our thoughts, and how those aligned with what we know to be right.  In spite of The Godfather and The Sopranos, you cannot be amoral in your business and still be right with God.

Some will argue with me and say, "So what if SCOTUS opened the door for people to use the force of law to make people support same-sex marriage?  No reasonable LGBT proponent will do that."

Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Virginia who has argued religious freedom cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, said there has been "an appalling lack of tolerance on both sides" of the marriage debate, first among opponents who believed they could outlaw same-sex weddings, and now from those supporting the changes.

He goes on to say, "... the gay-rights side ... are now intent on crushing the rights of dissenters."

To put it another way, now that the 'shoe is on the other foot' extremists in the LGBT community wants to shove Christians into the same closet that they came out of.  The closet where it is not seen or spoken of in the public square.

Anyone who says that members of the LGBT community won't push for this is blind to certain lessons about human behavior evident in human history.

The Puritans, after fleeing state-sponsored religious persecution in Europe promptly established laws which not only established their own rights of worship, but restricted the rights of worship of those who were not in their sect.

In this country, many in the black community want to punish whites for race-based discrimination in the past by allowing a form of race-based discrimination going the other direction.  They have even managed to redefine racism in some textbooks.  They have gone from the dictionary definition of racism (which is color blind) to one that defines racism as discrimination of whites against blacks.

Here is the dictionary definition of racism:

belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human racial groups determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to dominate others or that a particular racial group is inferior to the others. 
a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.
hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.

In contrast with that definition consider this: 

Only white people can be racist, because only white people have institutional power.

 http://stuffwhitepeopledo.blogspot.com/2009/09/wonder-how-to-define-racism.html

And do you recall that Obama's former Attorney General, Eric Holder  while still in office said, "White people can be victims of racial injustice because they haven't suffered enough."  Meaning that the top law enforcement officer in the country wasn't willing to enforce the laws of the land if he didn't like the color of the plaintiffs, until white folks have been made to suffer a lot of discrimination and racial oppression.  Apparently, he didn't agree with Dr. Martin Luther King when he said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."  So, he thinks white people should be made to suffer the way blacks suffered from racism.  That sounds to me a lot like 'putting the shoe on the other foot.'

A Google search for "punish whites for racism" today yields more than 22 million hits.

In nearly every case of history where an oppressed minority managed to gain the upper hand, the result was the minority oppressing the majority in the exact same manner as they had themselves suffered. That is human nature.

Right now, the LGBT community if feeling that they have been an oppressed minority.  Now that SCOTUS has established their behavior as a right, the probability is almost a certainty that many of them will seek to put their opponents into the closet that they themselves came out of not so long ago.

In fact, some accounts I have recently read show that LGBT leadership is planning exactly that.  We have entered a time when instead of "live and let live", minority groups are not content with winning their rights, they want to exterminate the opposition.  What could breed such relentless antipathy in the hearts of people who claim to be all about love and freedom?  To my view, it can only be the subtle, soul-twisting influence of Lucifer, leading them defense of their own freedoms into attacks on the freedoms of others.

I think this SCOTUS decision marks the beginning of a bloody retreat from the public square by Christians in the US.


Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. 

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.

Visit Tom's Amazon.com Author's Page

(c) Copyright 2015 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved. 

 Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

Christian Socialist Is An Oxymoron

Some of you may not know what the word Oxymoron means, so let me start with that.

Dictionary.com gives this definition...

a figure of speech by which a locution produces an incongruous,seemingly self-contradictory effect, as in “cruel kindness” or “to make haste slowly.”

I will also offer my own definition of Christian here:

A Christian is someone who believes that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the Messiah, the Only Begotten Son of God after the flesh.  And who is attempting to follow the teachings of Christ as they are found in the scriptures.

Again, Dictionary.com, when using Christian as a noun (as I am here) says that a Christian is:

A person who believes in Jesus Christ; adherent of Christianity. A person who exemplifies in his or her life the teachings of Christ

Now, we need to define Socialism.  Again, Dictionary.com is helpful:

1.
a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole
2.
procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.
3.
(in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of asociety to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.

George Bernard Shaw, the noted Fabian Socialist, said that:

"Socialism, reduced to its simplest legal and practical expression, means the complete discarding of the institution of private property by transforming it into public property and the division of the resultant income equally and indiscriminately among the entire population." (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1946 ed., Vol. 20, p. 895.)

In short, Socialism drives toward the ultimate end of private ownership of anything and everything.  In practice, it is characterized by using the coercive powers of government to take resources from those who are producing them and redistribute those resources to those who merely consume them.  This coercive redistribution is called taxes.  It is coercive because, if you don't pay your taxes the government can take your money, your business, your home and even your freedom.

Don't get me wrong, this isn't an anti-taxation rant.  Nor am I advocating that we don't pay our taxes.  I am simply making the point unmistakably clear that taxation is not a voluntary program.

Now that we understand the meaning of the words in my title, we can fully understand what I mean to say by stating that "Christian Socialist Is An Oxymoron."  I am saying that you cannot genuinely and totally believe in Jesus Christ AND be trying to follow his teachings AND embrace the political and economic tenets of socialism.

Please note, I am being very exact in my words here.  When I say you "totally believe in Jesus Christ" it means that you don't pick and choose what to believe from among the things he teaches.  You either believe everything he said, or you believe none of it.  Because, either he was the Son of God, or he was a liar.

I believe totally in Jesus Christ.  AND I do my best to follow his teachings.  I am nowhere near perfect in this effort, as those closest to me can attest.  But, I am trying.

I know that there are many folks who will disagree with my bold statement that Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable foes.  But it is true.

First, let me give you some of the ammunition those who disagree will use.  Then, I will show you how they are really firing blanks.

In the New Testament the second chapter of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles appears to describe how the adherents of early Christianity were embracing a form of socialism.

44 And all that believed were together, and had all things common;45 And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.

And again in Chapter 4 we read:

32 And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.

 34 Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, 

 35 And laid them down at the apostles’ feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.

 And from the Book of Mormon we get this about the Christians who were living in ancient America after the resurrected Jesus appeared to them, let them feel the wounds in his hands and feet and taught them, it appears they embraced socialism:

 19 And they taught, and did minister one to another; and they had all things common among them, every man dealing justly, one with another. 20 And it came to pass that they did do all things even as Jesus had commanded them.

3 Nephi 26

And this:

2 And it came to pass in the thirty and sixth year, the people were all converted unto the Lord, upon all the face of the land, both Nephites and Lamanites, and there were no contentions and disputations among them, and every man did deal justly one with another. 3 And they had all things common among them; therefore there were not rich and poor, bond and free, but they were all made free, and partakers of the heavenly gift.

4 Nephi 1

In our own times, sometime in 1838 (note that the Communist Manifesto was written in 1848), Joseph Smith, Jr. the first president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints introduced to the Saints something called "The United Order."

For brevity, I will summarize here what happened in The United Order.  Members of the Church who desired to enter this Order handed over all their worldly goods to their Bishop (their religious leader).  The Bishop then put these into a 'storehouse' to be used by the Saints.  Then, the Bishop gave to each member in the Order from the storehouse according to their needs and abilities.  To be clear, he deeded these things back to them for their use.  Then, they were expected to pay a tithe (10%) on the gains they made from what he deeded to them.

According to LDS teachings, this United Order is what was being referred to in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles.  I accept that, and will address this as fact.  I will, from this point forward, refer to the United Order as what Christians practiced in this context.

From all of this, it appears that every devout Christian should be signing away their worldly goods to their church and then living off of what the church gives back to them.  Proponents of Socialism use these evidences to support their stance that Christ was saying we should give up private ownership and give to the poor so that we will have "no poor among [us]."

Before we buy in to this view, let's look a little deeper at the differences between Socialism and the United Order.  And let's start by looking at what happened to one specific man and his wife when they sought to join the United Order while keeping back some of their property for their own discretionary use.

Acts Chapter 5 tells us the cautionary story of Ananias and his wife Saphira.

 1 But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession,
 2 And kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and brought a certain part, and laid it at the apostles’ feet.
 3 But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land?
 4 Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.
 5 And Ananias hearing these words fell down, and gave up the ghost: and great fear came on all them that heard these things.
 6 And the young men arose, wound him up, and carried him out, and buried him. 7 And it was about the space of three hours after, when his wife, not knowing what was done, came in.
 8 And Peter answered unto her, Tell me whether ye sold the land for so much? And she said, Yea, for so much.
 9 Then Peter said unto her, How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord? behold, the feet of them which have buried thy husband are at the door, and shall carry thee out.
 10 Then fell she down straightway at his feet, and yielded up the ghost: and the young men came in, and found her dead, and, carrying her forth, buried her by her husband.

The key point I want to make from this is not about how dangerous it is to lie to God.  Rather, I want to emphasize what Peter said, "Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power?" The rights of this couple to have private property were not looked down on by Peter, rather they were affirmed by him.  And, their entry into the United Order was voluntary.  No one was being forced to sell their goods and join the Order.  

So, the first essential difference between Christianity and Socialism is that Christianity is entirely voluntary.  And, within the broad ground of Christian practice, providing assistance to the poor is considered a Christian duty.  But the fulfillment of that duty, as every Christian knows, is between the individual and God, and the accounting comes at the Final Judgment.

In contrast, Socialism is a compulsory system from start to finish.  Socialism uses the gun to ensure that everyone within their reach gives up their private property, whether they embrace Socialism or not.  Further, their objective is not to eliminate poverty, rather it is to destroy prosperity.

Now, some of my good LDS friends, and even some family, mistakenly believe that Socialism and the United Order are the same girl, just wearing a more chaste dress.  For them, and everyone else, I offer this link to a talk that was given in a General Conference of the Church, at the express request of the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  The talk is titled, "Socialism and the United Order Compared."  The talk was given in April 1966 by Marion G Romney, who was at that time a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

Allow me to quote a couple of key passages here:

No, brethren, socialism is not the United Order. However, notwithstanding my abhorrence of it, I am persuaded that socialism is the wave of the present and of the foreseeable future. It has already taken over or is contending for control in most nations.

We here in the United States, in converting our government into a social welfare state, have ourselves adopted much of socialism. Specifically, we have to an alarming degree adopted the use of the power of the state in the control and distribution of the fruits of industry. We are on notice, according to the words of the President, that we are going much further, for he is quoted as saying:

"We're going to take all the money we think is unnecessarily being spent and take it from the 'haves' and give it to the 'have nots.'" (1964 Congressional Record, p. 6142, Remarks of the President to a Group of Leaders of Organizations of Senior Citizens in the Fish Room, March 24, 1964.)

Socialism takes: United Order gives

That is the spirit of socialism: We're going to take. The spirit of the United Order is: We're going to give.

The President of the United States (POTUS) that Romney was quoting was Lyndon Baines Johnson, the man who initiated "the war on poverty" and it was the means for waging this war that he was referring to in this quotes.

Please note that President Johnson is saying that un-elected US Government bureaucrats will decide how much money we need by deeming part of our spending unnecessary.  They will then, "take" and "give" according to their judgment, and whatever policies their superiors have put in place dictate that judgment.

To put this in perspective, consider the money you need to go visit your ailing parent, child, sibling or friend.  A government worker can say, "That trip is unnecessary.  Your child/parent/sibling/friend will live or die regardless of your visit.  I am taking the money you saved for that trip away from you.  I will take a portion of the money to pay for my time, and then, I will give the remainder to someone who believes that they deserve this money more than you."

Now, there are some who will say that this is just semantics.  Or that we are arguing over tomato or tomatoe.  That is a glib lie.  And I will illustrate the lie very easily.

Picture this:  You see a man taking money out of his wallet and handing it over to a homeless person.

That seems a lovely picture, doesn't it.  It warms the heart.

Now, let's complete the picture.  There is another man in the picture, he is holding a gun on the first man.

What's the difference? Tomato or tomatoe?

The first picture is what we call charity.  It is a voluntary act of sacrifice by one party to aid another.  We call it being a good Christian, giving back, and being charitable.  We universally consider it a virtue.

The second picture is what we call robbery.  It is the forcible redistribution of property and it is universally considered a crime, unless we give it the imprimatur of government and call it taxes and welfare.

Some might argue that when Marion G Romney decried the differences between the United Order and Socialism, he was going astray from the intentions of Joseph Smith, who was the source of the original revelation on that program.  Let's see what Brother Joseph had to say about property rights.  In 1835 he stated:

 1 We believe that governments were instituted of God for the benefit of man; and that he holds men accountable for their acts in relation to them, both in making laws and administering them, for the good and safety of society.
 2 We believe that no government can exist in peace, except such laws are framed and held inviolate as will secure to each individual the free exercise of conscience, the right and control of property, and the protection of life.

Doctrine and Covenants, Section 134 

So, Joseph Smith asserted that the right and control of property ranks right up there with protecting freedom of conscience and protection of life as primary duties of governments to their constituents.

Some will read this and still wave their hands in dismissal and say, "The end of the matter is to help the poor as Jesus said we should.  So what does it matter if we do it through governmental or private means, as long as the end objective is met?"

This line of reasoning is that the end will justify the means.  A premise espoused by Nicolo Machiavelli in his book on effective leadership titled, "The Prince."

While the world may buy in to this reasoning, Christians should know better.  You cannot simply make the world be filled with righteous people by killing all the folks you think are sinners.  That is what led to the Spanish Inquisition, a notorious chapter in the history of churches.  It has also led to numerous wars that were initiated with the public objective of ridding the world of the unbelievers.  Even Islam, probably the most successful at spreading religion by force, has suffered the ill effects of using bad means while attempting to gain good ends.

When the armies of Islam swept across North Africa and Eastward across Persia and into India, the story was always the same in every conquered town.  "People of the Book", Christians and Jews or Infidels, were separated from everyone else, who were labeled Pagans.  The Pagans were given the choice, accept Allah as god and Muhammed as his prophet, or be killed on the spot.  Those with the courage of their convictions were killed.  Everyone else joined up, whether or not they actually believed.  The result was a Caliphate that was filled with Muslims, who believed whatever they wanted and did what they wanted, as long as they manifested the outward signs of belief.

Of course the Infidels were given a choice too.  They could accept Allah and Mohammed, or they could be forced to pay for the privilege of remaining alive, every single year.

Forced conversion, whether it be Islam, Christianity, or any other, does not produce converts.  It ends up with a church or religion that is torn apart by sects and division as members go their own ways based on their own ideas of what being a good member means.  In Islam, we see this today in the violence between Sunni and Shi'a.  In Christianity it was seen most clearly in our days in the 'Troubles' of Northern Ireland where Protestants were pitted against Catholics.

The ultimate purpose of religions is to get us to believe and behave in a moral manner because we believe it is in our own long-term (eternal) best interests.  When anyone attempts to enforce moral beliefs on others, the force destroys the morality.  When government, and the coercive power of taxation, are used to achieve moral ends, morality is destroyed, not enshrined, because belief and willing action are both irrelevant and rendered null.

Belief and willing action are the heart and soul of true religion.  They are the heart and soul of what Jesus Christ and his Apostles teach.

Not only is Socialism at odds with Christianity, it is at odds with every religion that embraces the notion that each individual must freely choose to accept or reject God on the grounds established by that religion.

My conclusion in all this matter is this:

1. Christians have a moral obligation to help the poor and needy.
2. Forcing people to give to the poor and needy is immoral and results in very bad ends instead of the good ends that are being sought.
3. Government as the means of administering charity is the same thing as trying to force people to do something good.  It will have very bad outcomes for everyone involved.

Because the use of force to get people to believe and behave in a moral manner is in total conflict with the teachings of Jesus Christ, no one call legitimately call themselves a Christian and say they support Socialism.

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. 

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.

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