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Choosing Righteous Judges

Choosing Righteous Judges. www.kevinhinckley.com. Letter to BYU Editor.

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Choosing Righteous Judges

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  1. Choosing Righteous Judges www.kevinhinckley.com

  2. Letter to BYU Editor This is in response to the May 20 letter "Thanks California," discussing the California Supreme Court's decision to effectively legalize same-sex marriage. The author raises a valid point. Proposition 22 showed that the voice of the people didn't want same-sex marriage and the court disregarded that will. However, he ignores an important democratic principle: tyranny of the majority. The California constitution does not have to define marriage for the court to make this decision. The court is basing their ruling on a more fundamental principle: equality. Proposition 22 infringed equal rights. I applaud the California Supreme Court. Question: What is our student missing here?

  3. King Mosiah Old Testament Book of Mormon 500 YEARS Of KINGS JUDGES RIGHTEOUS JUDGES KINGS (Tyranny of the Minority)

  4. Voice of the People Mosiah 29 25 Therefore, choose you by the voice of this people, judges, that ye may be judged according to the laws which have been given you by our fathers, which are correct, and which were given them by the hand of the Lord. 26 Now it is not common that the voice of the people desireth anything contrary to that which is right; but it is common for the lesser part of the people to desire that which is not right; therefore this shall ye observe and make it your law—to do your business by the voice of the people. 27 And if the time comes that the voice of the people doth choose iniquity, then is the time that the judgments of God will come upon you; yea, then is the time he will visit you with great destruction even as he has hitherto visited this land. Question: Does this sound like the US Constitution?

  5. President J. Reuben Clark "I have a complete confidence in the aggregate wisdom of the...people if they are given and made to understand the facts. The wisdom of the mass is always greater than the wisdom of the individual or of the group.  The few may be more subtle, more agile-minded, more resourceful; they may for a time push to the front and scamper ahead in the march; they may on occasion and for a time entice us down the wrong highway at the crossroads. But the great slow-moving, deliberate-thinking mass plods along over the years down the Divinely appointed way.  Led astray, they slowly, cumberously swing back to the right road, no matter what the toil or the sacrifice may be, and when they start the return, they crush whatever lies in their path. So has humanity come up through the ages." (cited in Prophets, Principles, and National Survival, p110)

  6. Hugh NibleySophists and Rhetoric [Early Sophists], enjoyed a sensationally successful career teaching rhetoric, which he frankly describes as the secret of winning success by cultivating appearances… Socrates also foresees that honest study has no more chance of competing with this sort of thing than a conscientious doctor would have of keeping his child patient, in competition with a pastry cook who prescribed nothing but dessert. … Lucian tells us that the public simply laughed at the hard courses of the philosophers and went across the street to the rhetorical schools that advertised the same knowledge available in quick and effortless courses with positive assurance of a good job and big pay. Rhetorical education eliminated from its curriculum everything that the student would not put to direct use in the social situation. … As their courses became ever simpler, shorter, and spicier … the rhetoricians supplanted content with glamor, which they cultivated with great skill. … they saw that if the lost, witless world of declining antiquity hungered for intellectual and spiritual guidance, it was simply mad for entertainment. So with their wonderful art the Sophists, the great traveling orators, supplied everything at once. Performing foxes, a tightrope artist, a fifteen-minute domestic skit, a couple of clowns telling dirty jokes, and a famous traveling rhetor would make up an afternoon in the theater. In the schools they were sensational… Topnotch rhetors amassed immense fortunes by fabulous gifts and fees… and the whole world zealously followed every detail of their private lives. 9 … Every town in the empire kept its own staff of high salaried grammarians and Sophists, and boasted of being a little Athens in its own right. And it was all just show: the deliberate cultivation of appearances as the surest road to money and success. "It is astounding," writes Professor Schanz, "with what silly stuff the public was fed." But the public asked for no better, and the rule of rhetoric was: Give people what they want, and you have them where you want them. Hugh Nibley, World and the Prophets, 108.

  7. Nephite Sophist- Nehor And it came to pass that in the first year of the reign of Alma in the judgment-seat, there was a man (Nehor) brought before him to be judged, a man who was large, and was noted for his much strength. And he had gone about among the people, preaching to them that which he termed to be the word of God, bearing down against the church; declaring unto the people that every priest and teacher ought to become popular; and they ought not to labor with their hands, but that they ought to be supported by the people. And he also testified unto the people that all mankind should be saved at the last day, and that they need not fear nor tremble, but that they might lift up their heads and rejoice; for the Lord had created all men, and had also redeemed all men; and, in the end, all men should have eternal life. And it came to pass that he did teach these things so much that many did believe on his words, even so many that they began to support him and give him money. But Alma said unto him: Behold, this is the first time that priestcraft has been introduced among this people

  8. 1st Presidency Message "Laws which are enacted for the protection of society have no value except when they are administered in righteousness and justice, and they cannot be so administered in righteousness and justice, if dishonest men occupy administrative offices.... "Without beneficent laws, righteously administered the foundations of civilization crumble, anarchy reigns, decay and dissolution follow." (CR, Oct 1928)

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