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Chapter 13
Communism—An International Criminal Conspiracy
We are at war(1) with the communists and the sooner every red-blooded American realizes this the safer we will be . . . . We must continue to stiffen our national backbone in dealing with the communists and their dupes, sympathizers, and apologists. If we relax our guard for one moment, we court national disaster . . . . The communist threat from without must not blind us to the communist threat from within.
J. Edgar Hoover, 12/7/61
Early Warning to Church Members. [1936] With great regret we learn from credible sources, governmental and others, that a few Church members are joining directly or indirectly, the Communists and are taking part in their activities.
The Church does not interfere, and has no intention of trying to interfere, with the fullest and freest exercise of the political franchise of its members, under and within our Constitution which the Lord declared: “I established . . . by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose,” and which as to the principles thereof, the Prophet, dedicating the Kirtland Temple, prayed should be “established forever.”
But Communism is not a political party nor a political plan under the Constitution; it is a system of government that is the opposite of our Constitutional government, and it would be necessary to destroy our government before Communism could be set up in the United States.(2) [p. 212]
Since Communism, established, would destroy our American Constitutional government, to support Communism is treasonable to our free institutions, and no patriotic American citizen may become either a Communist or supporter of Communism.
To our Church members we say: Communism is not the United Order, and bears only the most superficial resemblance thereto; Communism is based upon intolerance and force, the United Order upon love and freedom of conscience and action; Communism involves forceful despoliation and confiscation, the United Order voluntary consecration and sacrifice.
Communists cannot establish the United Order, nor will Communism bring it about. The United Order will be established by the Lord in His own due time and in accordance with the regular prescribed order of the Church.
Furthermore, it is charged by universal report, which is not successfully contradicted or disproved, that Communism undertakes to control, if not indeed to proscribe the religious life of the people living within its jurisdiction, and that it even reaches its hand into the sanctity of the family circle itself, disrupting the normal relationship of parent and child, all in a manner unknown and unsanctioned under the Constitutional guarantees under which we in America live. Such interference would be contrary to the fundamental precepts of the Gospel and to the teachings and order of the Church.
Communism being thus hostile to loyal American citizenship and incompatible with true Church membership, of necessity no loyal American citizen and no faithful Church member can be a Communist.
We call upon all Church members’ completely to [p. 213] eschew Communism. The safety of our divinely inspired Constitutional government and the welfare of our Church imperatively demand that Communism shall have no place in America.(3) (First Presidency, 1936, E-39:488)
Another Warning Concerning Communism. [1942] We again warn our people in America of the constantly increasing threat against our inspired Constitution and our free institutions set up under it. The same political tenets and philosophies that have brought war and terror in other parts of the world are at work amongst us in America. The proponents thereof are seeking to undermine our own form of government and to set up instead one of the forms of dictatorships now flourishing in other lands. These revolutionists are using a technique that is as old as the human race,—a fervid but false solicitude for the unfortunate over whom they thus gain mastery, and then enslave them.
They suit their approaches to the particular group they seek to deceive.(4) Among the Latter-day Saints they speak of their philosophy and their plans under it, as an ushering in of the United Order. Communism and all other similar isms bear no relationship whatever to the United Order. They are merely the clumsy counterfeits which Satan always devises of the gospel plan. Communism debases the individual and makes him the enslaved tool of the state to whom he must look for sustenance and religion; the United Order exalts the individual, [p. 214] leaves him his property, “according to his family, according to his circumstances and his wants and needs,” (D&C 51:3) and provides a system by which he helps care for his less fortunate brethren; the United Order leaves every man free to choose his own religion as his conscience directs. Communism destroys man’s God-given free agency; the United Order glorifies it. Latter-day Saints cannot be true to their faith and lend aid, encourage ment, or sympathy to any of these false philosophies. They will prove snares to their feet. (First Presidency, CR-4/42:90)
The World’s Greatest Tyranny. Satan is making war against all the wisdom that has come to men through their ages of existence. He is seeking to overturn and destroy the very foundations upon which society, government, and religion rest. He aims to have men adopt theories and practices which he induced their forefathers, over the ages, to adopt and try, only to be discarded by them when found unsound, impractical, and ruinous. He plans to destroy liberty and freedom—economic, political, and religious, and to set up in place thereof the greatest, most widespread, and most complete tyranny that has ever oppressed men.(5) He is working under such perfect disguise that many do not recognize either him or his methods.(6)
There is no crime he would not commit, no debauchery he would not set up, no plague he would not send, no heart he would not break, no life he would not take, no soul he would not destroy.(7) He comes as a thief in the [p. 215] night; he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Without their knowing it, the people are being urged down paths that lead only to destruction. Satan never before had so firm a grip on this generation as he has now. (First Presidency, CR-10/42:13).
Two Contending Forces. Today two mighty forces are battling for the supremacy of the world.(8) The destiny of mankind is in the balance. It is a question of God and liberty, or atheism and slavery. The success of Communism means the destruction of Religion. As stated by a government committee:
Communism cannot dominate family life until it has first fought its way past the influence of religion upon the family. Communism cannot force its own brand of moral code upon a person without first destroying his moral code rooted in religion. Communism cannot make education a weapon in its hands so long as religion is secure in its own right to teach and to educate unless it has the power to remake the life of the people. It cannot ignore religion and do that.
(President David O. McKay, CN-7/18/53)
I come with another theme this morning—Two Contending Forces. Those forces are known and have been designated by Satan on the one hand, and Christ on the other.
In Joshua’s time they were called “gods of the Amor-ites,” for one, and “the Lord,” on the other. Paul spoke [p. 216] of “the works of the flesh” on the one hand, “fruits of the spirit” on the other. They are often spoken of as “selfishness” for one, “life of service,” the other. In these days, they are called “’domination by the state,’” on one hand, “’personal liberty,’” on the other; communism on one, free agency on the other.
As a text I say to you, “Choose you this day whom ye will serve.” (Joshua 24:15)
In the beginning a being known as Satan came before the Father saying:
Behold, here am I. Send me . . . I will do it; (saving the human family who were to people this earth) wherefore, give me thine honor.
(Another—) But, behold, my Beloved Son, which was my Beloved and Chosen from the beginning, said unto me, Father, thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever.
There you have placed before you the two great forces.
Wherefore, because that Satan rebelled against me, and sought to destroy the agency of man, which I, the Lord God, had given him, and also, that I should give unto him mine own power; by the power of mine Only Begotten, I caused that he should be cast down:
And he became Satan, yea, even the Devil, the father of all lies, to deceive and to blind men, and to lead them captive at his will, even as many as would not hearken unto my voice. (Moses 4:3, 4)
“Choose ye this day whom ye will serve.”
Let us look at the man who disrupted the great consultation of the leaders of the world. In his heart are the teachings of Karl Marx. You students who have heard know about the kind of life he lived, how his wife suffered, how his children starved. Here is what one man said about him:
Marx loved his own person much more than he loved his friends and apostles, and no friendship could hold water against the slightest wound to . . . his vanity. Marx will never forgive a slight to his person. You must worship him, make an idol of him, if he is to love you in return; you must at least fear him if he is to tolerate you. He likes to surround himself with pygmies, with lackeys, and flatterers. All the same, there are some remarkable men among his intimates. In general, however, one may say that in the circuit [p. 217] of Marx’s intimates there is very little brotherly frankness, but a great deal of machination and diplomacy. There is a sort of tacit struggle, and a compromise between the self-loves of the various persons concerned, and where vanity is at work there is no longer place for brotherly feeling. Everyone is on his guard, is afraid of being sacrificed, of being annihilated.
Marx is a chief distributor of honors, but is also the invariably perfidious and malicious, the never frank and open incitor to the persecution of those whom he suspects, or who had the misfortune of failing to show all the veneration he expects. As soon as he has ordered a persecution there is no limit to the baseness of infamy of the methods.
So wrote Mikhail Bakunin the first Russian to become interested in revolutionary activities, and a party pillar who fell under the purge.
That same doctrine was advocated by Lenin who succeeded, who was a leader in the revolution in Russia. Note the same spirit:
We must hate. Hatred is the basis of communism. Children must be taught to hate their parents if they are not communists.
Listen to the amazing declaration of the former Russian commissar of education.
We must hate Christians and Christianity. Even the best of them must be considered our worst enemies. Christian love is an obstacle to the development of the revolution. Down with love of one’s neighbor! What we want is hate. Only then will we conquer the universe. (From The Naked Communist, by W. Cleon Skousen, p. 288)
That same spirit was manifest by a man by the name of Hitler. I quote from him:
In my great educative work, I am beginning with the young. Weakness has to be knocked out of them . . . . A violently active, dominating, intrepid, brutal youth—that is what I am after. There must be no weakness or tenderness in it. I want to see once more in its eyes the gleam of pride and independence of the beast of prey.
That is from The Voice of Destruction, pp. 251-252, by Herman Rauschning, confidant of Hitler and a member of the secret conclaves from 1932 to 1935.
Remember we were talking about two conflicting forces. You know the story of Hitler. Now, Khrushchev [p. 218] who, during his American tour last fall, according to The Salt Lake Tribune, said, “If anyone believes that our smiles involve abandonment of the teaching of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, he deceives himself poorly. Those who wait for that must wait until a shrimp learns to whistle.” That was 1959!
He spoke about a common goal. According to good authority, Edward Hunter, foreign news correspondent, who has studied Communism for many years, said that Communist goal means something different from what you and I have in mind when we speak about the millennium or a universal peace.
Unity in the Communist mind is voluntary submission to Communist discipline. This writer says:
To which force? Voluntary submission to Communist discipline. When you speak of peace, the Communists mean the cessation of all opposition to Communism, the acceptance of a Communist world. Then, and only then, can there be peace. This alone is what peace means in Communist language. Once this is understood the utter falsity and hypocrisy of Communist references to peace becomes at once obvious.
I have mentioned these things simply to emphasize one dominant force which has as its ultimate achievement and victory—the destruction of capitalism, the destruction of the free agency of man which God has given him, and that destruction may be brought about—as advocated by Marx himself—in a brutal way.(9)
What is the other force? It is just the opposite. Jesus said to the man who. came and asked him which is the greatest law, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve, and the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”
When Marx was asked one time what was his object, he answered, “To dethrone God.”
Jesus, the other force, said: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment, [p. 219] And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40)
Perhaps there was never a time in the world when these two forces faced each other as they did last Monday, as they are facing right today. (President David O. McKay, BYU, 5/18/60)
A Murderous Influence. I am sorry to see this murderous influence prevailing throughout the world, and perhaps this may be a fitting occasion to refer to some of these matters. The manifestations of turbulence and uneasiness which prevail among the nations of the earth are truly lamentable . . . . These feelings which tend to do away with all right, rule, and government, and correct principles are not from God, or many of them are not. This feeling of communism and nihilism, aimed at the overthrow of rulers and men in position and authority, arises from a spirit of diabolism, which is contrary to every principle of the Gospel of the Son of God . . . .
These things are beginning to spread among and permeate the nations of the earth. Do we expect them? Yes. These secret combinations were spoken of by Joseph Smith, years and years ago. I have heard him time and time again tell about them, and he stated that when these things began to take place the liberties of this nation would begin to be bartered away. (President John Taylor, 1881, JD-22:142-3)
Secret Combinations. Among the many signs of the times concerning which the prophets have spoken, there are none scarcely that are of a more threatening character than the combinations of various kinds which are being formed in the land. These combinations are ominous of evil. If they go on increasing as they have done for some years past, the consequences to our nation will be of a most serious, not to say dreadful, character.
In Europe, a condition of feeling has arisen, among socialists, nihilists, anarchists, and people of this type, that is exceedingly threatening to the governments under which people of this description live. They are agitating, and plotting, and spreading dissatisfaction among all [p. 220] classes. They have sufficient ground for complaint to make their appeals to their fellows very convincing . . . .
Thousands of these dissatisfied people from the various countries of Europe have flocked to the United States. Russia, Germany and Austria have contributed large numbers, and they have come filled with these ideas concerning the rights of man. Many have also come from other lands. They were uneasy in Europe, because of the distinctions which existed between the different classes there. They come over here and they see similar divisions in society in America . . . . they become agitators of a dangerous character even in this country, where there are no monarchs or nobles. The leaven of discontent has gradually spread, until combinations of a most formidible character have been formed in this country . . . .
This is a fearful picture, and we may know what the results will be, by reading the predictions of the prophets concerning the last days. Not only will these combinations of labor and capital spread, but combinations also of a political character, looking to the overthrow of governments and to the introduction of anarchy. (George Q. Cannon, 1890, JI-25:536)
The Plan of the Revolutionists. No thinking person doubts that our people, our nation, and the world are now passing through one of the great crises of the world’s history. We are in the midst of a world-wide revolution,(10) which is wholly alien to our free institutions and is foreign in birth, concept, and directing head. No man, of his own power, sees the end. But the end the revolutionists seek is fairly clear; it is the overturning of the whole existing order, political, financial, economic, social, religious, the complete destruction of our Constitution and the government established under it, and then the setting up some sort of despotism that shall destroy, in all these fields, the [p. 221] free agency which the Lord gave to man. The revolutionists plan that this is to be largely done during the war, [World War II] under the plea of war necessity; it is to be continued after the war under the excuse—if we are not then too cowed to require an excuse—that this new political order is necessary that we may rehabilitate the world. They count that then, after a little time, the revolution will be secure. There seems no doubt that this is their conscious, deliberate, planned end. We have gone a long way already down this road. (J. Reuben Clark, CR-4/41:18-19)
The Communists are said to have hundreds planted in our governmental offices.(11) Given a sufficient number of trained men to man the essential departments of gov ernment, and add to that a great proportion of the people dependent upon the government for their sustenance, they figure that at the opportune time the overthrow of constitutional government and the establishment of their kind of despotism will be an easy matter.
Whether this treasonable dream shall be realized will depend wholly upon how well those who see its coming shall be prepared to meet it. (J. Reuben Clark, 12/15/39)
Alien Leadership.(12) Ever since the end of the first World War an ever increasing un- American influence has been exerted amongst us, boring termite-like into our whole national structure,—financial, economic, social, and political. They have already hollowed out large portions of great beams of our structure; they are at work upon others. If they are not stopped they will make the whole edifice a paper-like shell to be demolished by the first whiff of untoward wind that may strike us.
This influence is in leadership largely alien,(13)—in birth, or in tradition, or in training and experience, or [p. 222] possessing alien concepts and alien philosophies. With them are some American-born rebel conspirators. These all form a vast army, some 3,000 of whom, handpicked, are said to swarm in Government offices, many in key positions, all ready, able, and willing to take over if their opportunity shall come, or be made . . . . (J. Reuben Clark, 10/7/43)
Plans of Revolutionists. I do know that the Communists and their co-conspirators, our American revolutionists, have planned out what postwar America is to be, and I also know that unless the rest of us are awake, they will have their way. For, as their sort have worked in other countries, they stop at nothing(14)—intimidation, lawlessness, plunder, arson, and murder, which they have rechristened with the sweeter name, “liquidation.” In other countries they have used all of these things wholesale wherever they have operated. They will do the same here, if their opportunity shall come . . . . [p. 223]
There is evidence to support the charge some make that the revolutionists have placed their members in key government positions, getting ready for the take-over when the critical moment shall come. (J. Reuben Clark, 1/24/45)
Two Systems of Revolutionary Thought. In the last half of the seventeen hundreds, beginning in the 1750's, two systems of revolutionary thought emerged. One system deals with our social, economic, and governmental order, the material things and aspects of life. This system is two-fold, embracing Socialism and Communism, and with these two I shall always hereinafter include, without naming them, those other family members of this foul brood, Nazism, Bolshevism, and Fascism. The other system (also with two important factors) deals with our religious beliefs, through what we call “higher criticism,’” and its twin, “’rationalism.’” Through the nearly two hundred years since their birth, which was practically as the birth of twins with a common sire of Error (save as to Communism and “rationalism,” both of which reach back into antiquity, to Plato’s Republic and dialogues—429-347 B.C.), these revolutionary systems have gained such influence as now to constitute a threat against our whole existing order, material and spiritual. Each of these two systems has gone forward under its own power, yet with such a full complementary relationship and activity, the one to the other, as can be accounted for only by assuming they are directed by one superior malevolent intelligence.
It may be said here that the great apostles of the material systems have often been men of high ideals and of lofty purpose, but their inspiration has come from the wrong source, and so they have reached wrong conclusions and have advocated wrong principles and methods.
Socialism, reduced to its lowest terms, aims at a revolution, by force if necessary, against our whole social and industrial order and existence, in matters pertaining to the production of the necessaries and luxuries of life, which production, in the new order, is to be wholly taken over by the State. [p. 224]
Communism aims at a revolutionary overturning, seemingly also by force if necessary, of our present system of distribution of products, the new system to be a completely equalized consumption and distribution, every man, speaking in general terms, to have the same as every other man, no more, no less, the amount any man gets to be wholly independent of how much he does for it, or whether or not he has done anything at all for it. The State is to take over this distribution. So between the two, we should have State production and State distribution, every man looking, on the one hand to the State, through some bureau or other agency, to tell him how, when, where, and at what to work, and on the other hand, every man likewise looking to the State to tell him when, where, and how much he can have of food, shelter, fuel, clothing, education, amusement, recreation, and religion, all this to be done by some bureau or other State agency. Do not mistake the foregoing for an attempted rhetorical outburst; it is not. It is a short statement of the actual facts.
Neither Socialism nor Communism has always taught the same principles nor advocated the same measures; these have varied as have the times and as have the people proselyted. These systems have never aimed at consistency in their proselyting, for in this they have always been opportunistic, advancing from time to time the principles that promised converts. But they seem never finally to have surrendered or fully abandoned beyond recall any principle or method once pronounced. Whatever might draw the multitude at any given time and place, that they have used and doubtless will use.
Some Revolutionary Methods to Take-Over. Before turning to specific statements of the purposes of these isms, we should perhaps, that you youth may be on your guard, say a word or two about the methods the proponents of these isms have said they might use, short of actual force, to bring about this revolution. One method that has been framed is this: they will gradually secure control of the regular State governmental machinery through the exercise of the elective franchise in the prescribed constitutional manner, but by corrupt methods, including wholesale purchasing of votes by money, or through [p. 225] coercion by fear. Then, having so secured control, they will overturn the regular governmental order and set up the revolutionary forms. The Political Activity Committee of one of our great labor unions could be used for this purpose.
Another method talked about is to bring by general strikes of labor unions and guilds such a chaos in transportation, production, and distribution,(15) and in the normal, lawful processes of government, that the revolutionists could seize control of the governmental machinery and so work out their revolution. We have seen in other countries and to some extent in our own, incidents and operations that readily suggest how this could be done. A variant of this is the sympathetic strike or French syndicalism.
Still another method that has been proposed is thoroughly to beuraucratize the regular governmental machinery; then to make government so intricate and complex that the normal machinery cannot manage it; following this to usurp and lodge all governmental operations in the executive department; then through and by the administrative bureaucrats that shall have been trained in the functions of the regular governmental legislative and judicial agencies, they will, finally, when the critical moment comes, openly take over, by a planned peaceful revolution, the whole government, abolish the Constitution, and rob us of our free institutions and liberties. Our own alphabetical bureaus and their practices show how easily this could be worked out.
Lastly, these revolutionists propose the outright use of force.(16) [p. 226]
Each of these methods leads to the utter destruction of our present social, economic, and governmental system, and the setting up instead of some system that shall make of the State, collectively or in separate units, the despotic head of all human activities, including religion, and again I say, only because it all threatens Christianity am I speaking about it to you today.
Unfortunately, as I have said, this multi-headed system has made it wholly clear that in order to reach and to maintain their revolutionary objectives they must do certain things which intimately and vitally affect every Christian, not only to his own destruction but to the destruction of Christianity itself, which today is our concern. Otherwise I should have left this whole matter to the politicians and would not have mentioned it here. Yet in order that you young people may be properly on guard to preserve your liberties and your religion, I must, if I am to be honest with you (and I am sure you would wish that) name some of them.
Destruction of Liberty Planned. We have already said that for the effective worship of Christians, there must be a free people. Yet this multi-headed revolutionary system, with their illicit offspring, plan a destruction of our personal liberties and the establishment of complete absolutism. One writer says” “. . . the revolution which is to replace capitalistic society by a new order must rest on the realization of the fact that they are being robbed of their freedom as persons.’” Or as another writer puts it” “Any communistic success is conceivable only at the price of the absolute surrender of liberty.” It “would have to control everything absolutely—the family life, even in its most intimate aspects, as well as the commercial undertakings . . . . Unless some are to do more than their share of production, a watch has to be kept over the labors of all. The hours of rising are fixed for everyone, the clothes they must wear, the food they must eat—all these things have to be ordered in the interests of the diligent as well as of the lazy, and the result is a perpetuation through a man’s lifetime, of the condition of a child at school.”
Thus men are to be completely regimented in their [p. 227] whole living. They lose their initiative and their God-given free agency, had from the very beginning. Their only freedom is the freedom to be the slave of the State. Liberty, as we have always known it, is dead. We cannot live that life and live Christians at the same time. That is my reason for mentioning it today.
Again, this multifold, yet broadly co-operating system, affirms the necessity, in order to secure success, of regulating the most intimate of our family relationships. Analysts declare that it was at one time proposed that in order to control a too rapid increase in population (which it was considered would be fatal to the system) there must be a birth control by an “insistence on celibacy—an unnatural and unhappy state of things; by the attempt to regulate the sex relationship within the home—an interference that independent spirits will not tolerate; and, lastly, by a variety of experiments in free love, in which the fact that the community carries the burden has been made the excuse for practices that would mean the death of society.” The Communistic Manifesto of Carl Marx declared for free women.
Here we of the Church become vitally concerned. The union of the sexes in lawful wedlock was ordained of God. It is the only sexual relationship between man and woman that God does not condemn. “They twain shall be one flesh . . . What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” Adultery, fornication, free love, are abominations in the sight of God.
We Christians cannot support any system which would put such unholy practices into effect. The family unit is the most sacred of all earthly relationships; its safeguarding and perpetuation is the common duty of every righteous man. That is the reason I call this to your attention today.
Anti-Christian Isms. Now as to Christianity itself: One writer not unfriendly to Socialism affirms that modern Socialism “’is almost uniformly hostile to organized Christianity’” and in certain “secularist labor circles” the view is actively held that Christ is a pure myth. It is common knowledge that when some of the fundamentals of these revolutionary systems flowered best in France, [p. 228]
God was cast out, dethroned, and a Goddess of Reason set up instead thereof, and actually worshipped in Notre Dame. Thus these isms would destroy the worship of God, obliterate Christianity, and make of Christ a myth. Every Christian is thus vitally concerned and so I mention it to you . . . .
While, as I have already said, certain elements of this Socialist-Communist system had their beginning in antiquity and have appeared at various times since, yet they had their real beginning in the modern world in the last half of the seventeen hundreds. The writings and doctrines of such men as Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Rosseau really started it on its way. Rosseau published his Control Social in 1762.
In strict coincidence with this beginning another and equally destructive ferment was working in the religious field, and to the same end, namely, a destruction of a belief in God, and, by a later extension, in his Son, Jesus Christ. (J. Reuben Clark, CN-6/16/45)
East Minus West Equals Zero. Communism did not originate with Marx. Over the centuries since Plato, various philosophers have put forth principles embodying the fundamentals of communism. Several countries of the Western world, including the United States, Great Britain, France, and Germany, have had small organizations formed that experimented with the principles. In the relatively recent past, Karl Marx gave impetus to the concepts governing a great country.
To this point practically all efforts to establish the system either in small communities or on a broader base, have failed . . . . The history of the world to this date, is a capitalistic history, and the achievements in science, art, literature, economics, governmental and social, are a product of that system. Until the recent past, communism has furnished practically nothing to develop the world in any of these fields,(17) and now it advances on the basis of discoveries and inventions that originated in the capitalistic [p. 229] world and its system. Communistic principles have always failed This must be so because men are more than animals, biological entities. (J. Reuben Clark, CN-4/9/60)
The Enemy Within. There are present in our own United States influences, the avowed object of which is to sow discord and contention among men with the view of undermining, weakening, if not entirely destroying our constitutional form of government. Timely references and appropriate warnings have been given on the danger and evils of war. There is another danger even more menacing than the threat of invasion of a foreign foe. It is the unpatriotic activities and underhanded scheming of disloyal groups and organizations within our own borders. The government knowing who and where the enemy is can make ample preparation to meet his attacks. But the secret, seditious scheming of an enemy within our own ranks, hypocritically professing loyalty to the government, and at the same time plotting against it, is more difficult to deal with . . . .(18)
So it is in government. It is the enemy from within that is most menacing,(19) especially when it threatens to disintegrate our established form of government. (President David O. McKay, 1956, 1-91:33)
Lincoln’s Prediction. I remind you at this point that Lincoln, speaking before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield in 1837 (he was then not yet 28 years old), with far-flung vision and prophecy, declared that our country need not fear all the armies of the world, with a Bonaparte at their head, for such could not, he said, “by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years.” He affirmed [p. 230] our real danger would come from the hands of some ambitious man who would rise up from amongst ourselves and burning and thirsting for distinction, would gratify his ambition, whether by emancipating slaves or enslaving freemen Events of the past few years have abundantly shown how this tragic fate of enslaving freemen might be brought to us. (J. Reuben Clark, CN-11/29/52)
Communist Strategy. Today there are in this country enemies in the form of “isms.” I call them Anti-Americanisms. Only a few of the leaders fight openly—most of the army carry on as termites, secretly sowing discord and undermining stable government. Of the truth of this statement recent investigations made by a committee of the United States Senate bear ample evidence. Of the menace of one of these, Dr. William F. Russell, Dean of Teachers’ College, Columbia University, in an address “How to Tell a Communist, and How to Beat Him,” is one of the many authorities whom we might quote as to the pernicious activity of these groups.
He says:
Communist leaders have steadily insisted that Communism cannot live in just one country. Just as we fought to make “the world safe for democracy,” so they are fighting to make the world safe for Communism. They are fighting this fight today. Every country must become Communistic, according to their idea. So they have sent out missionaries. They have supplied them with funds. They have won converts. These converts have been organized into little groups called “cells,” each acting as a unit under the orders of a superior. It is almost a military organization. They attack where there is unemployment. They stir up discontent among those oppressed . . . . They work their way into the unions, where they form compact blocks. They publish and distribute little papers and pamphlets. At the New York Times they pass out one called “Better Times.” At the Presbyterian Hospital it is called “The Medical Worker.” At the College of the City of New York, it is called “Professor, Worker, Student.” At Teachers College it is called “The Educational Vanguard.” These are scurrilous sheets. In one issue I noted twenty-nine errors of fact with a deliberate error of fact in each paragraph. These pamphlets cost money—more than $100 an issue. The idea is to try to entice into their web those generous and public-spirited teachers, preachers, social workers and reformers who know distress and want to do something about it. These Communists [p. 231] know what they are doing. They follow their orders. Particularly they would like to dominate our newspapers, our colleges and our schools. The campaign is much alike all over the world. I have seen the same articles, almost the same pamphlets, in France and England as in the United States.
You see, when it comes to fighting Communists I am a battle-scarred veteran. But after twenty years I cannot tell one by looking at him. However, only the leaders proclaim their membership. The clever are silent, hidden, anonymous, boring from within. You can only tell a Communist by his ideas.
Their method of working their way to the seizure of power he describes as follows:
Talk about peace, talk about social equality, especially among those most oppressed. Talk about organization of labor, and penetrate into every labor union. Talk on soap boxes. Publish pamphlets and papers. Orate and harangue. Play on envy. Arouse jealousy. Separate class from class. Try to break down the democratic processes from within. Accustom the people to picketing, strikes, mass meetings. Constantly attack the leaders in every way possible, so that the people will lose confidence. Then in time of national peril, during a war, on the occasion of a great disaster, or on a general strike, walk into the capital and seize the power. A well-organized minority can work wonders.
(David O. McKay, CR-10/39:103-4)
Organized Paganism. I think this is the first time in all history when God’s people have been faced with an organized paganism more or less guided and directed by one who denies God and says he is unconvertible from his atheism.(20)
We get the impression that he has in mind that his Marxian ideology, and his atheism, shall gain control somehow and make of all of us the followers of his doctrines. He preaches peace, I may say, and then he [p. 232] preaches the abandonment of certain weapons of war, then he preaches that we go back to traditional warfare, where numbers count, he preaches that we shall destroy our military installations, and if he gets rid of these, I see no end to what he may try to do . . . .
Now, let us have no illusions about this, brethren and sisters. The plan is really one of exterminating God and Christianity. Into our hands has been placed through divine ordinations, the Holy Priesthood after the Order of the Son of God. In our hands is the responsibility of carrying forward.
We do not have now a united front to this united paganism. We are still torn and divided among many sects. But the problem we face, if the plans of the Marxian paganism are carried out, is our extermination.(21)
God has declared that the Lord will never take away or give another people the authority and the gospel plan which we have. I want to bring home to every one of you brethren and sisters of the Church, and to others so far as I may speak, the seriousness of this situation. You cannot mollify an unconvertible, you may not hope that after his ends are gained, for any but the treatment he has administered upon others . . . .
I have a feeling, brothers and sisters, that any man or woman who voluntarily subjects himself to this pagan ideology, who voluntarily lives within its jurisdiction, who voluntarily under this theory gives up his free agency, has lost his testimony and is on the road to apostasy.
I cannot bring too strongly that here in the last days, paganism is under one head, and that head is guided by Satan himself.(22) Please, brethren and sisters of the [p. 233]
Church, keep the home fires of testimony and knowledge of the gospel and of God and of Jesus Christ, keep the home fires burning in your homes, in your priesthood quorums, and all the rest, for I am sure, one way or another we shall have to face dire persecution. (J. Reuben Clark, CR-10/59:46)
Brethren, I do not suppose that any of you have had communistic leanings. I suppose that all of you love your country, love the Constitution, love the free institutions under which we live, love our freedoms. But if there be any, may I ask you, prayerfully and humbly, think this thing over, because if it comes here it will probably come in its full vigor and there will be a lot of vacant places among those who guide and direct, not only this government, but also this Church of ours.(23) (J. Reuben Clark, CR-4/52:80)
Church’s Greatest Threat. Recently a feature writer for one of the western newspapers of the United States called at my office and during a brief visit inquired about the “greatest threat to the Church today.”(24) I immediately replied, “Communism, with its godless ideology, its complete subjection of the individual to the [p. 234] state and its complete materialism.”
The entire concept and philosophy of communism is diametrically opposed to everything for which the Church stands, belief in deity, in the dignity and eternal nature of man and the application of the gospel to the hopes for peace of the world. (President David O. McKay, statement to London press, 2/24/61)
A Distortion of Truth. On June 12, 1955, Sir Percy Spender, Australian ambassador to the United States, delivered a speech at the Union University of Schenec tady, New York, at the time they conferred an honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Laws upon him. I agree with what he said in that speech, relating to present-day efforts, and I quote part of it as follows:
Today, freedom—political, economic and individual free-dom-lies destroyed or is in the course of being destroyed over great areas of the globe. And it has been destroyed in the name of freedom. A vast struggle for the mind of man is now being waged—a struggle in which I hope each of you with all your heart will take part. In this struggle truth is distorted by those who have not the slightest regard for truth. All the words which mean so much to us—like Liberty, Freedom, Democracy—are being despoiled and prostituted by the enemies of Liberty, Freedom, and Democracy.
A ruthless dialectical battle is being waged against the Christian way of life, against political liberty, against individual freedom, and it is being waged in the name of Freedom. Black becomes White, Tyranny becomes Freedom; The Forced Labor Camp stands for Liberty; the Slave State is represented as Democracy. This is the deadly challenge of Communism. And in this challenge those who put their emphasis upon man as an economic being—and there are plenty in every so-called free country in the world today who do just that—those who explain man in terms of scientific and chemical facts and the accident of circumstance, those who treat human beings as so many “bodies,” those who deny man’s spiritual and individual existence—each of them aids and hastens the destruction of the political institutions on which our free society rests, and whether he knows it or [p. 235] not, supports the dialectics and the aims of International Communism.
(President David O. McKay, CR-10/62:6)
We Shouldn’t Deal with Russia. I cannot see that we are gaining anything under present conditions, but the Russians are gaining everything they want . . . .
It seems incomprehensible how civilized people can put up with such autocracy, such dictatorship. I may be unchristianlike in my feeling, but I would not deal with a nation which treats another as Russia has treated America. It is a condition which cannot be permitted to exist. Russia is determined to kill capitalism and to spread communism throughout the world. (President David O. McKay, CN-8/6/52)
Communists Yield to Force. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints looks with deep concern upon the attitude of communism toward the Christian religion.
A third World War is inevitable unless communism is soon subdued. Communism yields to nothing but force.(25)
Communism looks upon the individual as a mere cog in the wheel of the state. That is a false doctrine. The state exists for the welfare of the individual. Another thing, government by dictatorship must be supported by force—the only power it recognizes . . . .
During the present world crisis the greatest need in the world now is spirituality. (President David O. McKay, Salt Lake Telegram, 4/26/51)
Lack of Patriotism or Stupidity? Liberty loving people can no more expect to secure cooperation from communism in the establishment of peace than Christ could secure such cooperation from Satan. Communism being what it is, will never voluntarily yield in its evil purposes. Every time it negotiates, it advances its own cause or it does not deal. The inadequacy of our own statesmen to deal with it is pointed up by the fact that [p. 236] since World War II, fifteen countries containing more than six million square miles of territory and six hundred fifty-three million people,—a third of the world’s population—have been drawn behind the iron curtain. And to our everlasting shame, much of this has been done with our acquiescence. Whether this is a debit to the patriotism or a credit to the stupidity of the responsible persons, I do not profess to know. But this much we all know, it never could have been acquiesced in by men understanding communism and understanding the price of peace as defined in these remarks. (Marion G. Romney, BYU, 3/1/55)
A Lukewarm America. Our civilization and our people are seemingly afraid to be revolutionary. We are too “broadminded” to challenge what we do not believe in. We are afraid of being thought intolerant—uncouth—ungentlemanly. We have become lukewarm in our beliefs. And for that we perhaps merit the bitter condemnation stated in the book of Revelation 3:16: “So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.”
This is a sad commentary on a civilization which has given to mankind the greatest achievements and progress ever known. But it is even a sadder commentary on those of us who call ourselves Christians, who thus betray the ideals given to us by the Son of God Himself. Again, I ask, are we going to permit the atheistic Communist masters, fellow travelers and dupes to deceive us any longer? (Ezra Taft Benson, 9/22/62)
Socialism is Communist Strategy. While we might effectively bridle or destroy every so-called” Communist within our own borders, we shall not vanquish this political virus, and its common forerunner, state socialism, so long as people are determined to achieve security through state-imposed materialistic schemes rather than through righteous living and wholesome activity as free men.
The road we’re traveling in much of the free world today is, “the road to Socialism, insolvency and surrender” . . . .
Never in recorded history has any movement spread [p. 237] its power so far and so fast as has socialism-communism in the last two decades. The facts are not pleasant to review. Communist leaders are jubilant with their success. They are driving freedom back on almost every front.
Yet in spite of this shocking achievement of God-less communism our citizens here in the U.S. seem lulled away into a false security.
Let us not be lulled away into a false security. Let us not become misguided dupes of which there are many throughout the free world. It is estimated that in the U. S. for every actual Communist who is maneuvering and pulling the strings behind the scenes, there are 100 to 1,000 completely misguided Americans who are not Communists, but who are being used to help the Communist cause.(26) Some will support co-existence with Communism as something we will have to learn to live with . . . . Others will say there is no danger in socialism—in policies that would weaken and destroy our private enterprise system. Socialism, they say, has no relationship to Communism.
It is my conviction that the paramount issue today is liberty against creeping socialism. Collectivized socialism is part of the Communist strategy. Communist dupes and left-wingers use every strategism to make socialism sound appealing and seem inevitable. Their aims for the U.S. include greatly expanded wasteful spending, higher and higher taxes, increasingly unbalanced budgets, wild inflation followed by government controls over our economy and lives, greater centralization of power in Washington and so on ad infinitum.
We will never win our fight against Communism by making concessions to socialism. (Ezra Taft Benson, CN-9/2/61)
The Pattern in Cuba. Just a short time ago Fidel Castro broadcast to the world his boastful confession that he had been a hard-core communist all of his adult life. He gloried in the fact that he had been able to confuse [p. 238] and deceive many people simply by saying he was not a communist. And because there were gullible people in this and other countries who believed his false assertions, he was able to establish a Soviet beachhead—“A communist satellite under active Russian control.”
Americans must face the cold hard fact that Fidel Castro was encouraged and supported [by Americans] in his seizure of Cuba. Why? Simply because many Americans were led to believe the falsehood that he would resist Soviet influence and restore the full basic liberty of the Cuban people. A few of us issued early warnings based on unimpeachable evidence. Two United States ambassadors repeatedly warned that Castro was part of the communist conspiracy and that he was working for the communist conquest of Cuba. These voices went unheeded.
This is merely a repetition of the same deceitful pattern which was used after World War II to have us tolerate revolutionary communists in China—to accept them as “agrarian reformers” and allow them to seize and enslave some 450,000,000 people on the Chinese mainland.
This is the same deceitful pattern which we have been asked to accept in the Congo, in Laos, in British Guiana, etc. In fact, everywhere the communist conspiratorial machinery is preparing for a seizure of power, we are assured there is no immediate danger from communism.
In less than half a century this evil system has gained control over one-third of mankind, and it is steadily pursuing its vicious goal of control over all the rest of the world. It is time, and past time, for us to be alarmed.
I raised a voice of warning two years ago following my return from South America. And now, today, Cuba is being used as a base to spread subversion and armed revolution throughout Latin America. Cuba is being used as a funnel through which communists are infiltrating other American Republics. There can be no stability in Latin America so long as “the shadow of the hammer and sickle is darkening the Western Hemisphere.” The communist objective is to isolate North America. [p. 239]
Less than fifteen years ago communism was not a powerful force in Latin America. Today it is not only strongly present there as an enemy to be reckoned within it is openly allied with a government located on an island only about 90 miles south of Key West, Florida.
The only political party now functioning in Cuba is the popular Socialist Party—the Communist Party under another name.
It is authoritatively reported that by the end of 1958 there were 316 known communist or pro-communist publications in Latin America, the largest number being 55 in Mexico. About one half are newspapers and other periodicals. There were more than 150 communist publishing houses and bookstores. These activities have increased sharply since 1958. (South Wind Red, by Ray, p. 17.)
True to communist and dictator tradition, the Cuban government has deprived its people of the rights of a free press, free elections, and the protection of other fundamental human rights.
How did this situation come about? How is it possible for communism to be here and now moving into Africa, pressing upon all of Asia, threatening the Middle East and increasingly becoming a danger in the Western Hemisphere?
There are, of course, many reasons. Our apathy—our complacent indifference is a major cause. We have permitted ourselves to be pacified and lulled away into carnal security as Book of Mormon prophets predicted. (See 2 Nephi 28:21.) (Ezra Taft Benson, CR-10/62:15)
Many Asleep in Zion. Who then is to blame? What then can be done?
To some extent we Latter-day Saints and Americans everywhere must share some blame for we have not been awake to the warnings of the prophets. We have not exerted our righteous influence as citizens to stop this disastrous course. Our skirts are not entirely clean. Many of us have been asleep in zion—the Western Hemisphere.(27)
“But,” say some, “why should we be so concerned. [p. 240] After all if the Lord wants them to get the gospel message, they’ll get it.”
Of course, if the Lord desired, he could this instant preach the gospel to every soul and do all our genealogical work. He could also right every wrong, feed the famished, plant our crops, train our children, etc. But his doctrine requires us to do our best ourselves in these areas and ask the Lord’s help in our endeavors. After we’ve done all we can, then the Lord will cover for us.
Now what can be done? We have missionaries and Saints in South America. Those countries fall within the scope of the Monroe Doctrine. These countries are now being pushed in the direction of bondage—the loss of liberty.
What can we do to help meet this grave challenge from a godless, atheistic, cruelly materialistic system—to preserve our God-given Liberty?
We can encourage our government wherever we live, to stand firm at all costs against any further expansion of despotic communism.
We can support our government in keeping the flame of liberty burning in the souls of the oppressed—wherever they may be throughout the world.
We can heed the words of men like Edward Hunter who for twenty years has been reporting communist conspiracy and brain-washing from abroad and who recently wrote this:
Escalation was the reason Americans had to stand by and watch with folded hands as a young man bled to death a hundred feet from them at the Berlin wall of shame, although we had every right to go in and stem his bleeding under wartime agreement.
Imagine anyone telling an American, only a few years back, that we would stand by idly, witnessing a man die needlessly because he wanted to be free! . . . [p. 241]
Escalation is why we stood by wringing our hands when the East Germans started building the wall, whereas is now known, their orders were to stop if we showed any serious resistance.
Escalation, if continued, will complete our softening-up, until we “bury ourselves,” as Khrushchev predicts . . . .
This soft escalation policy in Cuba starting in 1958, permitted “a small band of hoodlums, under the leadership of Fidel Castro” to conduct “open warfare against the established government of Cuba, which was friendly towards the United States . . . .” We have, thus passed the time for soft and easy action to protect ourselves, we have only one course of action left: to destroy Communist power in Cuba by force of arms.
As I visited among the good people of Cuba in 1955, I had a secret hope we would soon be able to bring to them the truths of the restored gospel. What are our prospects now? People said in Cuba in 1955: “It cannot happen here. We love liberty.”
The insidious but rapid take-over of Latin America is drawing ever closer to the final showdown.
Unless godless communism is stamped out of Cuba, it is only a matter of time until like Czechoslovakia, other missions will likely close and more of our Father’s children will be deprived of their liberty and the fulness of the everlasting gospel.
The message of salvation must move forward. God grant that every effort to stay its growth will be frustrated.
Courage and statesmanship are imperatively needed today. We must take chances for liberty. May God bless our national leaders in this time of crisis.
Yes, the effective preaching of the gospel can only thrive in an atmosphere of liberty. Yes, we all say, we love liberty. But that is not enough. We must protect and safeguard that which we love. We must save liberty. (Ezra Taft Benson, CR-10/62:18-19)
Communist Victory in Cuba. We are dealing with a cunning opponent in Premier Khruschev. He is a master of deceit. It is he who won in Cuba recently. Premier Khruschev had taken a tactical “one step backward” by promising to remove Cuban missiles but this had been [p. 242] followed by the prescribed “two steps forward” when he obtained the claimed promise of the President of the United States that the blockade would be removed and, most important, that no one would invade the Cuban islands provided Russian missile bases were withdrawn.
And now, in our latest move, we pay $53 million in goods—plus $2.9 million in dishonorable tribute and ransom blackmail to a lying, godless communist dictator . . . .
Why do we, the greatest power in all the world, pay tribute to an unprincipled tyrant on an island 90 miles away ? Why do we bow and scrape to a blustering godless murderer who heads up a freedom-destroying world slave system that is in deep trouble everywhere? Why? . . .
The President said to the Cuban Freedom Fighters: “It is the strongest wish of the people of this country, as well as the people of this hemisphere, that Cuba shall one day be free again, . . .”
All true Americans share the President’s wish—but it will take much more than wishes to achieve this freedom.
It appears that legally and diplomatically, Cuba has been abandoned to communism—and all of Latin America threatened with this insidious evil.
And now we imprison patriotic exiled Cubans who would fight to deliver their own people from human bondage. This action “has sent a chill of dismay through the hearts of freedom-loving people everywhere.”
With our national prestige at or near an all-time low, when will we act like men of courage? Why this continuing policy of softness toward communism? When will we begin to take positions based on what is right and then stand firm? The language and action of firmness will be respected and is the only safe course for our great nation to pursue. When will our national leaders mention, at least, the Monroe Doctrine? (Ezra Taft Benson, 1963, The Threat To Our Freedom, pp. 27-31)
It Can Happen Here. It is almost unthinkable that any people would knowingly and willfully take on themselves the yoke of communist oppression. No nation has ever done so yet. If large masses of the Cuban people have done so, it is because they have been duped or [p. 243] coerced.
As a people who have known only liberty, we are inclined to feel, it cannot happen here. We have become lulled away into a false security.
A most brilliant discussion of the Latin American problem, which appeared in the May, 1961, issue of American Opinion, concluded with these words:
. . . history gives us one last chance. If the American people are too blind or too cowardly to take that chance, then, whether or not we as individuals deserve it, you and I and all that we hold dear . . . must suffer the doom that history mercilessly imposes on fools.
Why are we so timid in standing up to a Godless communist police state which can’t even feed its own people, and whose economy, they know, will not support a major war. They “lead from weakness and we retreat from strength.”
I say to you it can happen here. It is happening here. We have retreated from the Monroe Doctrine. Our liberty is in danger. But we go blithely and gullibly on our way. Some of us fall for the Kremlin line(28) as planned by the mass murderer Khruschev and call patriots “extremists”(29) and accuse courageous liberty-loving citizens of “dividing our people.” . . .
We must be vigilant. Let us unite. Let us join in our fight against the forces of anti- Christ. (Ezra Taft Benson, CR-10/62:17) [p. 244]
A Deception in America. There is a deception going on in our country this very moment which is just as dangerous to the United States as the false pretensions of Fidel Castro were to Cuba. It is amazing to me that some of our citizens seem to take special delight in ridiculing the warnings of government investigators and the cry of alarm which comes from Iron Curtain refugees when they see how the United States is being led carefully down the trail of disaster.(30)
Clear back in 1953 the Jenner Committee published a report on June 30 of that year which should have sobered the entire country. This report stated:
1. The Soviet international organization has carried on a successful and important penetration of the United States Government and this penetration has not been fully exposed.
2. This penetrat |
