Our Civic Duty

by Carlton Bowen (Utah)

Speech given at the evening forum of the IAP National Conference, January 19, 2002, Salt Lake City, Utah.  Carlton Bowen was the 2000 US Senate nominee of the Utah Independent American Party. 

Well, I would like to thank you all for this convention. It has been wonderful to come together to associate, to draw strength from one another -- and I appreciate it. I know it took a lot of hard work and effort. I am thankful for that.

The title of my talk is "Our Civic Duty." And I think its interesting -- this is something I've been contemplating a lot lately, actually for several years, and even more so recently -- and I won't make this judgment myself -- but most people view their civic duty as one thing -- by and large. And that is -- on voting day in November, which is the general election, they go to the polls and cast a vote. And I think that most people in our society, feel like if they have done that one thing, that they have done their civic duty.

Now you get a few other people who are a little more committed, and they feel like, "Well I'm a really good citizen because I voted in the primary." And then you get the real activists -- and they not only voted in the primary, they not only voted in the general election, but they are involved in a party -- either the Republican or the Democratic, and hopefully even in ours. But they are involved in a party, so they are activists.

And so, have we done our civic duty? I turn to the scriptures for guidance on this issue. I would like to read [an LDS Church] scripture that I feel clearly states a primary civic duty which goes right along with Mike's [Mike Lehman, a prior speaker] comments that he just made. This is in D&C 98:10 -- and for those who have no idea what the Doctrine and Covenants is, that's fine -- just listen to these words and judge for yourself whether its wisdom or not. But I think that people in any state [besides Utah] will agree that these words are wisdom, and that this is wise counsel.

[LDS Church Scripture] D&C 98:10: "Wherefore, honest men and wise men should be sought for diligently, and good men and wise men ye should observe to uphold; otherwise whatsoever is less than these cometh of evil." And those people who vote in November often complain at the same time about the lesser of two evils, that they had no choice. And that verses say, "otherwise whatsoever is less than these cometh of evil."

Do we diligently seek out the wise and the good and the honest? I am sorry to report that in my case, the answer is no. I have not diligently sought out the wise and the honest and the good to represent me. I try to make an informed choice. I believe there are many wise and honest and good in this room right now in our party. But I know there's more. I know there's more than that. And so, what can we do? And what can I do too?

I would like to tell a couple of personal examples. There are wise and good among us. And there are people who feel like we do among us that we don't know, even our neighbors that live within blocks of us.

When I first ran for office in 1996 for US House, 2nd District [Utah], as a Republican, I held these little meetings in libraries throughout Salt Lake County, because that's my district. And I passed out flyers in those areas to as many as I could. And I passed out a lot of flyers, but there were many in the hundreds of thousands of people in the district that were not in the library areas where I was holding my meetings. Very few people would show up at these meetings where the flyers were passed out.

At one of the meetings in a library, one person showed up. And I gave my little speech. And it was amazing how much this man felt exactly the same way I did. Well it turned out, this man was in my neighborhood. He was a neighbor. He lived less than a block away.

Now another experience, which is my own personal experience -- lets fast forward six years to 2001. There is a person that's been living in my neighborhood, again less than a block away. And he's been living there for about four years. My wife has got to know his wife. And she noticed in their home, that he has a lot of the same books that I have. Political books.

And so I hooked up with him, and I discussed some of these things with him, and we are very similar in our beliefs and attitudes. And I submit to you, and everyone that's listening to this -- that there are people -- two or three, or even one -- but probably two or three or more within blocks of you that feel as we do on political matters. And we need to work together. We need to find out who these people are so we can work together so we can fulfill our civic duty to seek out and find. So I think we need to find out who these other people are, and we need to work with them.

In our duty to find the wise and honest, what is wise? One person's definition of wise might differ from another's. And the Lord defines what wise is, again based on my scriptures. But again, I think anyone in America can agree with these words. He says in [LDS Church scripture] D&C 101:80, "And for this purpose have I established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose, and redeemed the land by the shedding of blood."

So the founders were wise. There were others who failed to believe or think and reason in the same way, that lacked the same logic, principles and values. But the founders, I submit, were qualified as wise. And those who are against what the founders taught are probably less than wise in many or most cases.

So what about our other neighbors who maybe don't feel quite the same way as we do?, who are perhaps the bulk or majority. We feel like we know; and they don't. Again, I can only speak from personal experience. But in many cases, we therefore take the attitude of "I'm smart and you are not. I'm better than you. How come you don't know these things? You ought to know these things. There is an enemy. You're helping the enemy -- because you don't believe as I believe."

And by adopting this attitude, we deny ourselves of their valuable resource. They are a resource. We deny ourselves of utilizing and working with them as a resource toward preserving all of our freedoms -- our freedoms, their freedoms. We deny ourselves that, because there's a gap.

I think there is one thing that would go a long ways towards bridging the gap, and this is to recognize -- although we might think these people are blindly following, which perhaps they are. I think that what can help -- and remember this, that in a lot of cases, probably in most cases where I live -- this is what's happening: These people are trying to do this -- [LDS Church scripture] Twelfth Article of Faith -- "We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers and magistrates, in obeying, honoring and sustaining the law."

That's all these people are trying to do. That's why they support their leaders. That's what they've been taught. And, in reality, there is a certain wonderful strength that comes from that. Because, those who are the enemy of freedom would seek to overthrow it by having us rise up against the very institutions that guarantee and secure our freedom for us.

Well, those are just a few thoughts on what can be done to fulfill our civic duty. And its my hope that each and every one of us hearing this can reach out to even a few around us, and work together with them to reach out to even a broader audience, to even more -- like the five houses next to us and not just the one next to us. There's a hundred people that we know and see regularly instead of just one or two. And then working with these people, we can regain the freedoms that we feel that we have lost; or secure the freedoms that we feel we still have. And we can achieve the very change that we are seeking.

That is my hope and my prayer. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.