For Part One, Part Three, or Part Four, select your link and go.
For the most part, I don't play around with politics nearly as much as some. But Elder Ezra T. Benson spent a lot of time in that world, so it's natural that some of that would come out in his talks.
The next quote from his April 1972 General Conference talk had this to say:
The Quote
The Lord said that “the children of this world are in their generation
wiser than the children of light.” (Luke 16:8.)
Our wise founders seemed to understand, better than most of us, our own scripture,
which states that “it is the nature and disposition of almost all men,
as soon as they get a little authority …
they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.” (D&C 121:39.)
To help prevent this,
the founders knew that our elected leaders
should be bound by certain fixed principles.
Said Thomas Jefferson:
“In questions of power then, let no more be heard of confidence in man
but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”
Thomas Jefferson wasn't the only Founder who felt this way. They'd had enough of kings who could dictate whatever they wanted into law, with no guardrails whatsoever, and nothing the people could say about it.
My esteemed sixth cousin seven times removed wrote this quote in a draft of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798. The Revolution had been won, but the States were still at loggerheads with the federal government over different issues, just as they can be today. Jefferson and James Madison wrote this document anonymously in response to the Alien and Sedition Acts, which they believed violated constitutional limits on federal power.
The quote is found in Resolved #8 of this document, in an incredibly long paragraph - run-on sentences phased no one back then, apparently.
Instead of posting it here, I invite you to click on the link and wade through the word wall for yourself, if it suits you.
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