The growing world-wide responsibilities of the Church make it inadvisable for the Church to seek to respond to all of the various and complex issues involved in the mounting problems of the many cities and communities in which members live. But this complexity does not absolve members as individuals from filling their responsibilities as citizens in their own communities.

We urge our members to do their civic duty and to assume their responsibilities as individual citizens in seeking solutions to the problems which beset our cities and communities.

With our wide ranging mission, so far as mankind is concerned, Church members cannot ignore the many practical problems that require solution if our families are to live in an environment conducive to spirituality.

Where solutions to these practical problems require cooperative action with those not of our faith, members should not be reticent in doing their part in joining and leading in those efforts where they can make an individual contribution to those causes which are consistent with the standards of the Church.

Individual Church members cannot, of course, represent or commit the Church, but should, nevertheless, be 'anxiously engaged' in good causes, using the principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as their constant guide.

Ordinances and covenants help us remember who we are. They remind us of our duty to God. The Lord has provided them to help us come unto Him and receive eternal life. When we honor them, He strengthens us.

No wonder we sometimes shrink. A little voice may say, "I'd rather not do that. I'm not sure I can carry it through." But this is the very nub of our stumbling block. Until we covenant, which is more than a casual New Year's Resolution, He cannot bless us to keep our covenants. Without exception, the Lord appends a divine blessing to every covenant we make, guarantees a response from on high, and gives a promise and blessing. In the church our duties expand into privileges, and our privileges expand into higher duties. The most inclusive attendant blessing of the sacrament is His Spirit. And His Spirit, like He, himself, is not sent into the world to condemn the world, but to lift us. He is not committed to putting us down. The gifts and the fruits of the Spirit engulf all our deepest needs, whatever our present desires: insight, flashes of guidance, energy, all the virtues that center in Christ, and through them, all the fire that purifies our feelings and our aspirations. Yes, we come to the sacrament to renew covenants but we also come to be renewed—to be renewed with a divine infusion and then we increase in our strength to honor our covenants with Him and with each other.

We hope you will begin as of this date. If you have not already commenced this important duty in your lives, get a good notebook, a good book that will last through time and into eternity for the angels to look upon. Begin today and write in it your goings and your comings, your deeper thoughts, your achievements, and your failures, your associations and your triumphs, your impressions and your testimonies. We hope you will do this, our brothers and sisters, for this is what the Lord has commanded, and those who keep a personal journal are more likely to keep the Lord in remembrance in their daily lives.

Above all, be a genuine friend to the individuals and families you teach. As the Savior declared to us, "I will call you friends, for you are my friends" (D&C 93:45). A friend makes more than a dutiful visit each month. A friend is more concerned about helping people than getting credit. A friend cares. A friend loves. A friend listens, and a friend reaches out.

Knowing as we do that God set up this Constitution of ours and that He has declared it "should be maintained for the rights and protection of all flesh, according to just and holy principles," (D&C 101:77) it is the duty of every member of the Church to protect and defend the Constitution against any and all attack. In this country our lawful political allegiance runs not to any man, not to any party, not to any "ism," but to the Constitution of the United States and to the free institutions set up under it. There can be no tampering with the "just and holy principles" of the Constitution. No true Latter-day Saint can or will do other than reverence the Constitution; each will do all in his power to save it from pollution or destruction.

You and I to be worthy of our places in God’s Kingdom must be defenders of the faith and as someone has written, "If you have no enemies you say, alas, my friend, the boast is poor. He who has mingled in the fray of duty that the brave endure must have made foes. If you have none, small is the work you have done. If you have hit no cup from purged lips, you have never turned a wrong to right, you have been a coward in the fight."

Is it not apparent that it is impossible for government to "create" rights in one person or group without destroying the rights of another? When it gives special privileges to one it must deny them to someone else. This result is unavoidable because when government creates a "right" in one person, it must at the same time create a "duty" in someone else. A right is without any substance unless there is someone against whom it can be enforced. But the one against whom it is enforced is saddled with a duty he did not formerly owe. The law compels him to do something or refrain from doing something and punishes him if he refuses. But you cannot compel a person against his will, nor can you punish him, without taking from him either his right to life, his right to liberty or his right to property. Thus the law has destroyed his rights in attempting to create "rights" in someone else.

...if government can of its own volition create a right in one person which did not theretofore exist, it must needs have the power to impose a duty on another which theretofore did not exist. But it can enforce such a duty only by compelling the obligor to give up either his life, his liberty or his property, and this it cannot do without depriving him of his unalienable natural rights.

If governments are established only to protect rights, they are established only to enforce duties because every right is represented by a duty. Therefore, when government has enforced all the duties of man whether natural or acquired, it has completed the entire purpose for which it is formed and reached the limit of its powers. This is to conclude that government has no power to either create new rights nor impose new duties, but only to protect those rights and enforce those duties which already exist.