“Reduced to its lowest terms, the great struggle which now rocks the whole earth more and more takes on the character of a struggle of the individual versus the state. . . . Do not think that all these usurpations, intimidations, and impositions are being done to us through inadvertency or mistake, the whole course is deliberately planned and carried out; its purpose is to destroy the Constitution and our Constitutional government....We have lost the conflict so far waged. But there is time to win the final victory, if we sense our danger, and fight.” (J. Reuben Clark, America Faces Freedom-Slavery Issue, Church News, September 25, 1949.)
“Brethren, let us think about that, because I say unto you with all the soberness I can, that we stand in danger of losing our liberties, and that once lost, only blood will bring them back; and once lost, we of this Church will, in order to keep the Church going forward, have more sacrifices to make and more persecutions to endure than we have yet known, heavy as our sacrifices and grievous as our persecutions of the past have been.” (J. Reuben Clark, Conference Report, p 116. April 1944.)
“So, brethren, I wish you to understand that when we begin to tamper with the Constitution we begin to tamper with the law of Zion which God Himself set up, and no one may trifle with the word of God with impunity.” (J. Reuben Clark, Conference Report, October 58, 1942.)
“You and I have heard all our lives that the time may come when the Constitution may hang by a thread. I do not know whether it is a thread, or a small rope by which it now hangs, but I do know that whether it shall live or die is now in the balance.” (J. Reuben Clark, Conference Report, October 58, 1942.)
“I voiced a warning against what we then knew as Bolshevism and Socialism, and what we now know as Communism. I thought I saw it coming, and it came.…And there is nothing that we should not do to preserve this country, and its liberties, and its free institutions.
…if [the conspiracy] 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.” (J. Reuben Clark, Conference Report, p. 80. April 1952.)
“There seems no reason to doubt that such real approval as the Charter has among the people is based upon the belief that if the Charter is put into effect, wars will end.…The Charter will not certainly end war. Some will ask,—why not? In the first place, there is no provision in the Charter itself that contemplates ending war. It is true the Charter provides for force to bring peace, but such use of force is itself war.…The Charter is built to prepare for war, not to promote peace.…The Charter is a war document not a peace document.” (J. Reuben Clark, Prophets, Principles and National Survival, p. 458. 1945.)
“It has been said we cannot have a world-state without a surrender of some of our sovereignty. This is probably true. But if and when we come to the surrender of that sovereignty, it must be done by an amendment to our Constitution authorizing it, the amendment to be made in the form and manner that we the sovereign people have prescribed in the Constitution itself. Let us not surrender our sovereignty by illegal usurpations by our treaty-making agents. I am speaking of voluntary surrender of sovereignty.…
“It cannot be too often repeated that any suggestion of any doctrine such as this at the time of the Convention, would not only have broken up the Constitutional Convention itself (it would have been treated with…scorn…) but would, having in mind the then temper of the people, also have made the formation of the United States of America under the Constitution an impossibility.…
“The whole of the discussions in the Constitutional Convention itself, in the State Conventions considering the adoption of the Constitution, and in The Federalist, all join in what seems a unanimous voice that the treaty-making power was to extend to the normal incidents of the intercourse and relationship of sovereign nations, and no further.” (J. Reuben Clark, May 29, 1959.)
“Not only does the Charter Organization not prevent future wars, but it makes it practically certain that we shall have future wars, and as to such wars it takes from us the power to declare them, to choose the side on which we shall fight, to determine what forces and military equipment we shall use in the war, and to control and command our sons who do the fighting.” (J. Reuben Clark, 1945.)
“The Constitution will never reach its destiny through force. God's principles are taken by men because they are eternal and true and touch the divine spirit in men. This is the only true way to permanent world peace, the aspiration of men since the beginning. God never planted his Spirit, his truth, in the hearts of men from the point of a bayonet.” (J. Reuben Clark, The Constitution, Conference Report, April 6, 1957.)
“I wish to say with all the earnestness I possess that when [you] see any curtailment of these liberties I have named, when you see government invading any of these realms of freedom which we have under our Constitution, you will know that they are putting shackles on your liberty, and that tyranny is creeping upon you, no matter who curtails these liberties or who invades these realms, and no matter what the reason and excuse therefore may be.” (J. Reuben Clark, Improvement Era, 1940.)
“Nor may we overlook that great doctrine of neutrality set up under Washington himself and Jefferson and Hamilton, which was aimed at and brought about the localizing of international armed conflicts, and the preservation , under prescribed rules, of peacetime intercourse between belligerents and nonbelligerents. War was to curse as few people as possible. This has been jettisoned for the concept that every war should involve all nations, making all suffer the ravages of a global war.
“Until the last quarter of a century, this gospel of the Fathers was the polar star by which we set our international course. In the first hundred thirty years of our constitutional existence, we had three foreign wars, the first merely the final effort of our Revolution, which made good our independence. During the century that followed we had two foreign wars, neither of considerable magnitude. During the next twenty-three years, we had two global wars. While the gospel of the Fathers guided us we has peace. When we forsook it, two great wars engulfed us.” (J. Reuben Clark, Let Us Have Peace, Church News, November 22, 1947.)
“President Wilson had the full departure in mind [of the Founders doctrine of neutrality] when he declared: ‘Everybody’s business is our business.’ Since then we have leaped ahead along the anciently forbidden path.” (J. Reuben Clark, Let Us Have Peace, Church News, November 22, 1947.)
“In our course under the new gospel of interference with everything we do not like, we have gone forward and are going forward, as if we possessed all the good of human government, of human economic concept, of human comfort, and of human welfare, all of which we are to impose on the balance of the world,— a concept born of the grossest national egotism.” (J. Reuben Clark, Let Us Have Peace, Church News, November 22, 1947.)
“Yet, to repeat, we have entered into new fields to impose our will and concepts on others. This means we must use force, and force means war, not peace. What has our apostasy from peace cost us?” (J. Reuben Clark, Let Us Have Peace, Church News, November 22, 1947.)
“In values of government and law, these wars and the interminglings of men of different concepts of freedom and human rights, have brought into our own system, the despotic principles of European systems, against which the Fathers warned…” (J. Reuben Clark, Let Us Have Peace, Church News, November 22, 1947.)
“I believe American manhood is too valuable to be sacrificed on foreign soil for foreign issues and causes.” (J. Reuben Clark, Let Us Have Peace, Church News, November 22, 1947.)
“I believe that permanent peace will never come into the world from the muzzle of a gun. Guns and bayonets will, in the future as in the past, bring truces, long or short, but never peace that endures.” (J. Reuben Clark, Let Us Have Peace, Church News, November 22, 1947.)
“I believe America’s role in the world is not one of force, but is of that same peaceful intent and act that has characterized the history of the country from its birth till the last third of a century.
“I believe that moral force is far more potent than physical force in international relations.
“I believe that America should again turn to the promotion of the peaceful adjustment of international disputes, which will help us regain the measureless moral force we once possessed, to the regeneration and salvation of the world. We now speak with the strong arm of physical force only; we have no moral force left.” (J. Reuben Clark, Let Us Have Peace, Church News, November 22, 1947.)
“I believe in the old faith and the old works, under which we had so much of peace. I am a political isolationist in the full sense of the term and am not fearful in declaring it.…I believe political isolation will bring to us the greatest happiness and prosperity, the greatest temporal achievement not only, but the highest intellectual and spiritual achievement also, the greatest power for good, the strongest force for peace, the greatest blessing to the world.…We can and should mind our own business and let others do the same.” (J. Reuben Clark, Let Us Have Peace, Church News, November 22, 1947.)
“In my view, our whole international course and policy is basically wrong, and must be changed if peace is to come. Our policy has brought us, and pursued, will continue to bring us, only the hatred of nations now — and we cannot thrive on that, financially or spiritually — and certain war hereafter, with a list of horrors and woes we do not now even surmise.” (J. Reuben Clark, Let Us Have Peace, Church News, November 22, 1947.)
“Someone will, at this point, play the ace question, with that smug finality that always accompanies it, — What would you do? I frankly answer, I do not know, for I do not know the facts. Furthermore a critic with no authority or power in a situation, and from whom is withheld a knowledge of facts, is under no obligation to propose an alternative. He may rest by pointing out defects in policy.
“We, the common people, have not been told the facts for years, since long before the last war broke. We are not now being told the facts. We can only surmise. But give us the facts and we will answer. And in our multitude of counsel you will find wisdom.” (J. Reuben Clark, Let Us Have Peace, Church News, November 22, 1947.)
“…that statement of the Lord, ‘I have established the Constitution of this land,’ puts the Constitution of the United States in the position in which it would be if it were written in this book of Doctrine and Covenants itself. This makes the Constitution the word of the Lord to us. That it was given, not by oral utterance, but by the operation of his mind and spirit upon the minds of men, inspiring them to the working out of this great document of human government, does not alter its authority.” (J. Reuben Clark, Conference Report, p. 90. April 1935.)
“The ravening wolves are amongst us, from our own membership, and they, more than any others, are clothed in sheep's clothing, because they wear the habiliments of the priesthood…We should be careful of them.” (J. Reuben Clark, Conference Report, April 1949.)
“Then as the crowning savagery of war, we as Americans wiped out hundreds of thousands of civilian population with the atom bomb in Japan, few if any of the ordinary civilians being any more responsible for the war than were we and perhaps no more aiding Japan in the war than we were aiding America. Military men are now saying that the atom bomb was a mistake. It was more than that: it was a world tragedy.…And the worst of the atomic bomb tragedy is not that not only did the people of the United States not rise up in protest against this savagery, not only did it not shock us to read of this wholesale destruction of men, women and children, and cripples, but that it actually drew from the nation at large approval of this fiendish butchery.” (J. Reuben Clark, Conference Report, October 1946.)
“Again, and as another check upon the executive, in his conduct of international relations, the diplomatic representatives of the government must be, as we the people provided in the Constitution, nominated by the President and approved by the Senate. But the habit is growing of appointment by the President of quasi-diplomatic representatives, ‘ambassadors at large’ they call them, who ‘going to and fro in the earth and walking up and down’ — to use Job’s phrase — bring their harvests to the President. President Wilson was the first to give this device considerable importance when he sent the ubiquitous Colonel House to Europe. Col. House (not approved by the senate) with the President’s approval, committed us to enter World War I on the side of the Allies more than a year before Congress declared war.” (J. Reuben Clark, Church News, November 29, 1953.)
“[This planned destruction of agency would be] largely done during the war, 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.” (J. Reuben Clark, warning the church prior to American entry into World War II, and prior to the establishment of the United Nations. Conference Report, April 1941.)
“We are entering [the United Nations] with the blind infatuation of a nation of Darius Greens, [a mindless fictional character popular at the time] ignoring all laws, disregarding all experiences, and blindly and blithely moving out with the confidence of a set of ignoramuses.…
“On no account should we have gone forward on the theory that maybe the Charter Organization will work out and so let us make a try. Unless we are ready to plumb the depths of sorrow and ill that can come from a failure.…” (J. Reuben Clark, Prophets, Principles and National Survival, p. 454. 1945.)
“Again I warn that there are amongst us evil influences plotting and conspiring to destroy all that we hold sacred in our Church and in the nation. If we shall fall asleep to these dangers, we shall some day awaken to find ourselves their slavish victims.” (J. Reuben Clark, Conference Report, October 1939.)
“We are in the midst of the greatest exhibition of propaganda that the world has ever seen.” (J. Reuben Clark, Conference Report, October 1941.)
