The Church on Socialism (and its many Hydra-like heads with different labels)

A portion of a letter written by the First Presidency to Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration about the New Deal and it's obvious ties to communism, socialism and fascism.  Fascinating stuff, for those who try to reconcile the theft of our rights and freedoms and virtue-signal about it even as they do so, regardless of political party (although of course, most of that apologia comes from Democrats, but Establishment Neoconservative Republicans are really not much better.  Both have thoroughly embraced the principles condemned in this letter, and sometimes using the dishonest and facile shield of a "private corporation" doing the oppression is OK, because hey, it's not the government.  This is beyond stupid.  Corporations are creations of the government; they literally can't exist except that law has brought them into being, and their lobbyists own most politicians and actually write the text of most bills). Bolded text has been highlighted specifically by me.  The notes following each highlighted portion are my own words maintained below.

Viewing all of these things it will be easy for you to understand that the Church has not found it possible to follow along the lines of the present general tendency in the matter of property rights, taxes, the curtailment of rights and liberties of the people, nor in general the economic policies of what is termed the “New Deal”. The great bulk of what these people are trying to do is, in final analysis, absolutely contrary to the fundamental principles of which we have spoken. It is the considered, long considered opinion of President Grant and those who are associated with him, that our nation cannot be preserved if the present governmental policies shall continue. We do not believe that any other great nation or great civilization can be built up or maintained by the use of such policies.* As we see one liberty after another encroached upon, we look with deepest anxiety toward the possibility of an attempt to take away religious freedom from the American people. We went through this experience in our early days. We know from the stories of our fathers and our grandfathers what it means to be deprived of the right to worship God according to the dictates of our consciences, and of the hardships and tragedy that accompany such a denial. We face this situation and this possibility, we repeat, with deepest apprehension. 

As we see it, there is no way in which we can, to use your own words, “preserve and perpetuate our freedom—freedom to govern ourselves, freedom of speech, and freedom to worship God according to our own light,” except we shall turn away from our present course and resume the normal course along which this great country traveled to its present high eminence of prosperity, of culture, of universal education, and of the peace and contentment which we enjoyed prior to the inauguration of the “New Deal”. 

These things are not matters of partisan politics with us. We care nothing as Church leaders about partisan politics as such, nor about the dominance of one party or the other. We grant to every man  the right to vote as he wishes, and we would not control his vote even if we could. But we do reserve to ourselves the right to tell our people what we think is right regarding politics as affecting the fundamentals of our government system, to warn them of the dangers that lie under the present  course, and to try to persuade them that their peace, their happiness, and their security do not lie along the path of the present trends of government. 

Truly, we do not believe that—again to quote your own words—we can “preserve and perpetuate our freedom—freedom to govern ourselves, freedom of speech, and freedom to worship God according to our own light” unless we turn squarely about and return to the old-time virtues, and reenthrone our liberties and free institutions. 

We have done in the past, we are doing now, and we shall continue in the future to do everything within our power to secure this turning about of which we speak. We confess to you that it has not been possible for us to unify our own people even upon the necessity of such a turning about, and therefore we cannot, unfortunately, and we say it regretfully, make any practical suggestion to you as to how the nation can be turned about. But the President of the United States could do it in good part if he were willing to exert his effort along that line, but this he appears not to be willing to do. 

We pray—and when we say we pray, we mean we offer a supplication to our God and your God who we believe can hear and answer prayers and does do so—that wisdom will be given to our national leaders to the end that we may face about and return to the old virtues. We shall continue our supplication and to our supplication we shall add such works as we are able to do, to bring this about. 

Now we have said all of the foregoing with a complete understanding in our own minds that we have said nothing or little of anything that may now be of practical value, but this much we feel we can definitely say, that unless the people of America forsake the sins and the errors, political and otherwise, of which they are now guilty and return to the practice of the great fundamental principles of Christianity, and of Constitutional government, there will be no exaltation for them spiritually, and politically we shall lose our liberty and free institutions.

Returning to our your original letter and our reply thereto regarding the selling of Defense Bonds. The Church as a Church does not believe in war and yet since its organization whenever war has come we have done our part. Our members served in the war with Mexico, not such much in the Civil War because we were so far away, but our members went into the Spanish-American War and they went into the World War, and the records will show that they acquitted themselves honorably. But, nevertheless, we repeat, we are against war. We believe that international difficulties can and should be settled by peaceful means, and that America’s great mission in the world is to bring this about. We believe that our entry into this present war by sending our men abroad (and this seems now to be deliberately planned) would constitute not only a mistake but a tragedy. We believe that the present war is merely a breaking out again of the old spirit of hatred and envy that has afflicted Europe for a period of a thousand years at least. We do not believe that this war will settle anything when it is over because we believe that the peace, whoever dictates it, will be primarily the outgrowth of hate, and hate never settled anything righteously. 

However, we do thoroughly believe in building up our home defenses to the maximum extent necessary, but we do not believe that aggression should be carried on in the name and under the false cloak of defense.† We therefore look with sorrowing eyes at the present use to which a great part of the funds being raised by taxes and by borrowing is being put. We are much impressed with the views of those military and naval men who say we are not militarily threatened. We believe that our real threat comes from within and not from without, and it comes from that underlying spirit common to Naziism, Fascism, and Communism, namely, the spirit which would array class against class, which would set up a socialistic state of some sort, which would rob the people of the liberties which we possess under the Constitution, and would set up such a reign of terror as exists now in many parts of Europe.‡ We feel that our defenses should be built against this danger even more than the touted danger of foreign military invasion which many responsible military men tell us cannot come. 

Perhaps we might close with a statement that should be unnecessary to make. We love America; we love the Constitution; we love the Government that has been established under it; we love our liberties and our free institutions; we believe in them; we believe that God actually ordained this in order that we, the Mormon people might be set up and established, for our revelations declare we hold the true plan of life and salvation. We wish to do all that is humanly possible to do to preserve our free institutions and this Constitution and the Government as it was set up under it; we do not wish knowingly to do one act or to say one thing that will tend to destroy these divinely given privileges and blessings. 

We trust you will pardon this long letter, but we feel we must say that you invited it. 

Trusting that the Lord will point out some way, will somehow bring about a rejuvenation of the American spirit along with a true love of freedom and of our free institutions, and for Constitutional government, we are, 

Faithfully yours, 

Heber J. Grant
J. Reuben Clark, Jr.
David O. McKay
The First Presidency

* You should be familiar with the policies of the New Deal and the philosophy behind them to understand the context here.  And it's not specifically the New Deal that he's talking about; he's talking about the socialist spirit which animated the New Deal, and which (ironically, as we were "fighting communism" during the Cold War) we normalized and adopted wholesale in America.  Few people even pay attention to the vast encroachment of the government into our lives these days, but back in the time of Heber J. Grant, the only interaction anyone had with the Federal Government at all, unless you worked in politics in D.C. was with the Post Office.

† Invasion, no.  This may seem like the prophet was wrong about the attack on Pearl Harbor, but he wasn't.  Even if you discount the various theories of advanced knowledge that FDR may have had about the attack, he was deliberately provoking a reaction from the Japanese because he desperately wanted to get involved in the war.  President Grant's warning is completely and entirely appropriate, even in light of what we know happened.

Moreover, when you see the war-like and bloodthirsty calls of the so-called conservative "Neoconservatives" who have had our army overseas fighting all kinds of wars in our "defense"; few if any of them wars in which we can point to clear defensive objective, we can see even how far the so-called Right has come from the wisdom of the prophet and the Old Right to which he, and almost everyone in America who wasn't a seditious de facto foreign agent belonged.

‡ You can see also that he wasn't fooled by the rhetoric that Nazism (spelled with two i's in those days, I suppose) was a Right-wing ideology.  It's absurd to think that a socialist ideology would ever be considered Right-wing, and yet, there you have it.  The only choices we have had during most of our life time in terms of political options, are Radical Leftism from a generation ago, and new Crazy Insane Radical Leftism of today.  There hasn't actually been an active Right in America in generations, in spite of the fact that that's the natural inclination of Americans.  But after generations of brainwashing and propagandizing, few even recognize what the Right is anyway, or they think that common sense normal Right Wing ideas are some kind of radical extremism.  This sad state of affairs won't change until people stop being afraid of dishonestly being called "racist" "sexist" "anti-semitic" or "extreme" and normalize those ideas all over again.