27 Questions To Ask Your LDS Friends About The Constitution

Brothers and Sisters, as a fellow Latter-day Saint, I ask you:

1. Where was the Constitution when they drove us from New York in the dead of winter in 1832?
2. Where was the Constitution when the mobs of Kirtland assaulted the Prophet, tried to murder him, and caused the death of his adopted son from exposure?
3. Where was the Constitution when the assassination attempts became so severe that Joseph had to flee Kirtland?
4. Where was the Constitution when the mobs took the Kirtland Temple from us and gave it to our enemies?
5. Where was the Constitution when the Missouri militias beat our church leaders and destroyed their property?
6. Where was the Constitution when the Missouri militias drove the Saints from Jackson County in a mass and violent pogrom?
7. Where was the Constitution when the Missouri government exiled the Saints to a specific part of the state and forbade them to live anywhere else?
8. Where was the Constitution when the people of Gallatin, Missouri attacked us to prevent us from voting?
9. Where was the Constitution when Apostle David W. Patten became the first martyr of the Restoration when he and other Saints were killed defending their homes from rampaging Missourians?
10. Where was the Constitution when the Missourians attacked our homes and threatened to exterminate all men, all women, and all children, even our babies?
11. Where was the Constitution when the Governor of Missouri ordered outright genocide and unleashed his soldiers to burn our homes, steal our cattle, destroy our crops, shoot our men, gang rape our women, and kill our children?
12. Where was the Constitution when our leaders were illegally imprisoned in a dungeon hole in the ground in the dead of winter?
13. Where was the Constitution when the Saints were driven into the frozen wastes to die from exposure and starvation?
14. Where was the Constitution when the mobs of Illinois beat our men, burned our homes, and declared their intent to exterminate us?
15. Where was the Constitution when the Illinois Governor, a modern Pontius Pilate, knowingly delivered the Prophet and Patriarch into the hands of their murderers?
16. Where was the Constitution when those same murderers walked free?
17. Where was the Constitution when the Illinois Governor allowed those same mobs to drive us into the frozen wastes of Iowa instead of protecting our natural and civil rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness?
18. Where was the Constitution when our families lived in frozen mudholes on the prairies and starved, many unto death?
19. Where was the Constitution when our people were ravage by disease in the refugee camp of Winter Quarters?
20. Where was the Constitution when, after a decade of hard labor to make the desert bloom as the rose and to build a city in wastes, the US government sent an army to attack and kill peaceful citizens?
21. Where was the Constitution when the US government spent decades persecuting and imprisoning our men and women in violation of their natural and First Amendment rights?
22. Where was the Constitution when the US government made it illegal to live in consensual loving families while legalizing every manner of whoredom imaginable?
23. Where was the Constitution when the US government stole our property, attacked our church, and sought to destroy our faith?
24. Where was the Constitution when the Supreme Court declared it legal to imprison people for the peaceful practice of their religion?
25. Where was the Constitution when the Federal government exerted an absolute right to regulate and control marriage, to tell you who, what, when, where, and how you may or may not be with the person you love?
26. Where was the Constitution when they drove President John Taylor into an early grave as he grew sicker and weak fleeing Federal persecution for his faith?
27. Where was the Constitution when the local, state, and federal governments did their best to destroy the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ?

I’ll tell you where it was. Either it could do nothing for us, or it actually empowered and protected those who hated us in their unceasing efforts to annihilate us. In either case it did nothing to aid the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Our own history of brutal persecution and gross hatred proves the truth of the words of the great 19^th century abolitionist Lysander Spooner:

Nevertheless, the writer thinks it proper to say that, in his opinion, the Constitution is no such instrument as it has generally been assumed to be; but that by false interpretations, and naked usurpations, the government has been made in practice a very widely, and almost wholly, different thing from what the Constitution itself purports to authorize. He has heretofore written much, and could write much more, to prove that such is the truth. But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain—that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.

^{NO TREASON. No. VI. The Constitution of No Authority. pg. 59}

There is a better way.