Rocky Mountain Straight Talk

Greetings, Gentle Reader,

This earth life will never mete out much fairness, so things work out better if we just stop whining and go to work. Each of us will get a raw deal from time to time, as does every other person on this planet. Whiners not only make themselves miserable, but everyone who has to live around them.

Heavenly Father has put us on a fallen planet. He would not have done that to us, unless He knew it would be good for us. When we whimper and whine, complain and bellyache, we are telling Him that He just does not measure up to our idea of a loving father. We want smooth sailing, and He has given us storms and wild tempests.

So, who is right, Heavenly Father or us? If we are right in our desire to have a life of ease, then Heavenly Father has to be wrong. If He is right, and what He has put us into is best for us, then we are just being ungrateful brats. Neither of these scenarios is pleasant, but one of them has to be right.

Most of us know better than to rant and rail at Heavenly Father, but do we feel the same about endless whining? We should. It doesn’t help, and it always hurts.

Remember the young mother whose husband came in, unexpectedly, from the fields and was dead within hours? We read of it in the Church News. She was not prepared to support her two small sons. She hadn’t the schooling to do so. But she had no choice. She could have whined her life away, but she buckled down, got her degree and supported her two boys through childhood and into adulthood. Then she went on missions and, finally, did endless work for others in the temple. She worked her way through life, rather than whining her way through life. What a difference attitude makes!

Once upon a time, when one of my sons was playing basketball, I remember sitting on the sidelines, shouting, "Fight harder! Fight harder!"

His team was not winning, and it was obvious the boys were simply not fighting with all their hearts. They were going through the motions, but they were not paying the full price, and as a result, they were losing. Life is like that. We have to play it with all our heart, otherwise, the vicissitudes of life, some of them downright gruesome, will roll right over the top of us, grinding our face into the dirt in the process.

After a game like that, some teams sit around and assure each other that the loss was not their fault. The referee wasn’t fair, the court wasn’t properly maintained, the coach did a lousy job. No! The kids didn’t fight hard enough. They failed themselves.

That’s the story of many people’s lives. They have failed and are continuing to fail themselves. This is human nature at its most irresponsible. It doesn’t matter what my problem is, it isn’t my fault. If all else fails, I’ll blame it on my ancestors for giving me lousy genes.

In modern America, one of the worst instances of our failing ourselves, our mate and our children, and even our grandchildren, is the overwhelming divorce rate. It is too easy to throw in the towel, so to speak, and sue for divorce. The wife isn’t as pretty as she used to be. He is going bald, and besides, he’s a grouch, an overweight grouch. He has an overhanging gut he didn’t used to have.

Okay. So he no longer looks like a movie hero. She no longer looks like a movie queen. So what? Get used to it!

A dear friend’s oldest daughter began to have trouble with her marriage. Her husband of many years became verbally abusive, and openly let her know that he really didn’t like her anymore. My friend had reached the point of advising her daughter to end her temple marriage, but she approached me about the subject before she did so. She was surprised when I told her the statistics concerning unhappy marriages turning around within approximately a five year period, about 80% of the time, IF the couple determinedly sticks it out.

A short time ago, I asked her how her daughter’s marriage was coming along. She happily stated that her son-in-law had ceased to be abusive and once again had become a loving husband.

There is no way to know what had happened in that marriage, but the wife had refused to end it, though her husband seemed to be attempting to push her to do so. Her determination to honor and continue to value her temple marriage had paid off. More than anything else, she knew the Lord would not want her to walk away from her eternal vows and commitments, so she had simply chosen to be obedient. She didn’t whine and blame anyone else. She didn’t really know what was wrong, so she just buckled down and stuck it out. We LDS must try to follow her lead.

Sometimes a mate simply walks out and no one can stop him or her. Sometimes an offspring walks away from the church, from his or her vows and from all responsibilities. We can’t win them all, all of the time, but we can always determine within ourselves to fight to the very end. The Prophet Joseph did that. He was the best of the best, and we can and should follow his lead. We simply need to put our head down, like any good work horse, and pull our load. We can do it, and it will be eternally worth it.

This fake world of ours is run by plastic people, who want our money... all of it. To accomplish this, they must convince us that products that have no real value are indispensable. They have to create discontent within us. They must convince us that we are too fat, too thin, smell bad, wear unfashionable clothes, aren't sexy enough, etc. Creating dissatisfaction opens our wallets. Let's watch them in action.

When I turn the TV on, chances are that I will see someone pumping iron or running. (He may be unable to tell right from wrong, but my, oh my, does he look good!) Perhaps, he is working at one of those weird machines that exercises every part of the body. They are capable of finding and torturing muscles that didn't even exist when I was a kid. And, that's because a sadist invented those muscles the day I turned forty.

Next, an expert cautions me to count the grams of fat and sodium in everything I eat. This is followed by an admission that the cholesterol obsession of the last several years may have overstated the problem, that eating foods high in fiber cause gas, and that the wonders of science
include a new chemical that will make my yucky, fake food taste delicious. Of course, I know that next year the wonders of science will include a discovery that this new chemical causes cancer. (Hey, Guys! I know this is asking a lot, but could you find which delicious foods are going to kill me and, then, stick with your story (about how they're going to kill me) longer than it takes to eat a Big Mac, please?)

The commercials start the moment I sit down, with a bowl of buttered popcorn. (Eating this is supposed to give me a guilty conscience, but, contrary to what is implied, eating butter is not worse than lying, cheating and stealing. )

My first bite coincides with the first commercial. It tells me that if I spend a fortune, I can lose all of the ugly fat that my popcorn will produce. I don't fall for the first commercial, so the second one is served up with my second bite of popcorn. In this one, a sexy girl and an unbelievably ugly
guy are preparing to eat dinner. The girl sprays something awful on their food and coos, " I can't believe it's not butter." Maybe, I should tell her that it isn't, but since I'm eating real butter on my popcorn, and she is eating runny, plastic goo on her dinner, I haven't the heart to set her straight.

Right after the runny, plastic goo succeeds in making my tummy feel funny, a gorgeous girl begins to sing the praises of a new phone system. (No! I don't want it!) The camera starts to swing and sway. I keep looking around for the Hawaiian dance band that's causing this undulating motion, but there isn't one, and it doesn't matter anyway, because if they don't come up with a dramamine commercial in just about ten seconds, I'm in big trouble, because the bathroom has been taken captive by a veritable hoard of little scrubbing bubbles, singing at the top of their tiny bristles, and I can't get in there, and I am going to toss my cookies (popcorn )!!

By now, I am so traumatized that I turn the TV off, go to bed and pull the covers over my head. I would consider taking two aspirins, but I'm sure that I saw a commercial warning me that aspirin causes obesity, or maybe it causes hair loss. No, I think it's bad breath, or, it could be constipation. I am becoming confused! Maybe if I take two aspirins, I will get my ZZZs. Help! I think I'm losing my grip.

I don't think I am up to the modern, glitzy world of con men who want to sell me everything from fake butter to fake hair, fake eggs to fake people. Each guarantees me that if I buy his product, I will become leaner, younger, more attractive and rich. Very rich. Right after I get the formula for becoming rich, very rich, the financial news tells me that everything is going to crash, and that I'm going to have to live in a grass hut on a tropical island, because I will be broke. Is that a promise?

Do you suppose that the experts could spend less time on the less important details of our diet and more time on the more important details of our society? For instance: A walk in a big city park is going to kill me a lot faster than a walk into McDonald's. Knives and bullets are faster than cholesterol. And, since most students think that there is nothing wrong with cheating, maybe we could concentrate a little less on their flabby muscles and a little more on their flabby sense of honor. In addition, If we don't want teens to have babies, maybe we should stop teaching them to have sex. That is what causes it. Remember?

Is it possible that we are spending too much time fiddling with things of lesser urgency, while Rome (America) is burning down around our ears?

Greetings, Gentle Reader,

Recently, we had a fascinating experience at our house, or, to be more precise, in our barn. I had gone to the barn to do morning chores when, to my surprise, I discovered that someone had been there during the night.

The signs were everywhere. The fascinating part of this hilarious episode was the criminal's apparent goal, which seems to have been to feed a baby animal (an orphan?) some goat's milk. Now, it is true that goat's milk has saved many an orphan, but it is unusual for the young critter to be brought to the goat in the middle of the night, without the owner's knowledge.

Our desperate criminals (well, maybe not too desperate) seem to have been good farm kids. They carefully kept the goats (probably little ones), which they seem to have let out into the runway, from getting into any grain. (Grain could have killed them.) They even covered a bucket of grain which I had left sitting out. They tried to do no damage, and they succeeded. They took one package of gum and two baby animal nipples.

This episode has brought us a lot of fun and laughter, and because of that, I would like to address this column to the young rascals who committed this not-too- serious crime.

Dear Young Men,

You needn't have turned off the intercom; we would not have been able to hear you through it anyway, unless you had pushed the "talk" button. If you need more milk, I will teach you how to work the head locks on the stanchion, saving both of us a lot of aggravation. Thank you for blocking the way to the grain so that the goats could not get into it. Unfortunately, neither could I. You did too good a job. (The 100 lb sack of bran, two sacks of 4-way and two bales of straw were too much for my astonished, bemused body to handle.)

I think I know which goat you took out of the stall and put on the stanchion. The amount of "sign" all over the milking room gave me a clue. She is a pretty tough customer, and can teach a grown man what bandaids and chiropractors are for. If I had been able to get a grip on your bodies, I would have made you clean it up. She sprinkled it liberally and most abundantly, and I cleaned it up, but not without some grumbling.

I am not sure whether SHE climbed the wall and dumped supplies of every type onto the floor (yes, you did find and pick up almost all of them), or whether she just arranged to make YOU climb the wall and dump the supplies. As I said, she is a pretty tough customer.

Now kids, what you did was not harmful, but neither was it strictly right. If you had called, I would have crawled out of bed and helped you. (Oh, I know it wouldn't have been anywhere near as much fun if I had been there, but I would have seen to it that you had colostrum milk too, if you needed it.)

I don't have to question what kind of parents you have. Your behavior has given them away. They have taught you to be responsible and decent. (Unfortunately, there is no cure for adolescence, except time.) If I could find out who your parents are, I wouldn't tattle on you, because I know that they would kick your cans so hard that you would have to take your meals standing for at least a week. (Yes, you do deserve it, but you have given me so much fun that you have softened me up.) What I WOULD make you do is pay for one package of gum and two lamb nipples. That's what you owe us. Now, let me tell you what we owe you.

I.O.U. for:

1) A reminder that there are good, strong parents who teach their children, and good (albeit dingy) children who learn what they are taught.

2) A much needed reminder that kids will be kids, and that they still get involved in the same kinds of rattlebrained, but hilariously funny, antics that we did when we were kids.

3) A renewed faith in American youth. (Any young squirt who would go to the lengths you went to, in order to care for a small animal, is admirable and deserving of praise, and the praise should come right after you get your cans kicked.)

4) A reminder that some crimes are very real, and both serious and important, while other crimes (?) are none of the above.

5) A reminder that kids are only young once, and that they should not to be expected to behave as though they are adults, until they truly become adults.

You did well kids. If you need more milk, just call. The number's in the book.


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In the 1700's and early 1800's, liberty was on the minds of the world's truly great people. John Curran said, "The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt." Those are strong words, but they are true, and they will never cease to be true.

When Benjamin Franklin was asked, "What have you given us, Mister Franklin?" He replied, "A republic, Ma'am, if you can keep it." He also said, "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." Herbert Spencer, an English philosopher, said it perfectly: "The republican form of government is the highest form of government, but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature - a type nowhere at present existing."

Edmund Burke was of like mind when he said, "Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their appetites... Society cannot exist , unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."

In 1776 John Adams wrote, "The only foundation for a free Constitution is pure virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our people in a greater measure than they have it now, they may change their rulers and the forms of government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty."

Does that make you feel a little discouraged? We already have considerably less freedom than our grandparents had, but by and large, we are a considerably less virtuous people than our grandparents were, and if those who gave us our freedom knew what they were talking about, and they did, the two are closely connected.

They were convinced that we would not, that we could not, keep our freedom, unless we gained a level of virtue that the people of their day did not have. Not only have we not attained that level, we have abandoned our ancestors level of virtue, preferring instead to rate our pleasures by their degree of stimulation, rather than their virtue. We have embraced the notion that each of us has the right to define virtue for ourselves, using whatever standard we choose.

That concept presupposes that there is no such thing as absolute right or wrong, an idea that, from their writings, was anathema to those who created this nation. Most unnerving are these words, uttered by a man named William Sprague, "In the same proportion that ignorance and vice prevail in a republic, will the government partake of despotism." Unfortunately, the truth of that utterance is being borne out in every corner of our country.

Judges are legislating from the bench, when their appointed task is to interpret laws written by others and to judge whether those laws have or have not been broken. Our Congress has become a maze that is almost impossible for our lawmakers to negotiate, but even so, too many serve their own interests, rather than their constituents and their country. A man named John Hall left us this bit of priceless wisdom, which applies to this problem: "Men do things which their fathers would have deprecated, and then draw about themselves a flimsy cordon of sophistry, and talk about the advance of humanity and liberal thought, when it is nothing after all but a preference for individual license."

One of my earliest memories is of a young man saying, "Laws were made to be broken." And yet, Will Durant, historian, says, "man became free when he recognized that he was subject to law." The Romans refined that concept by creating a system in which both the people and the rulers were subject to the law, and that was a novel thought! Our own John Adams invoked the philosophies of the Greeks, Romans and even the British when he defined a republic as "a government of laws and not of men." That is the type of government our forefathers created for us.

Benjamin Franklin stated his philosophy concerning the rights of man in this manner, "Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature." Since it is a right bestowed upon us, it is ours to use or abuse as we choose.

Unfortunately, the great men of our country have warned us that a depraved people cannot keep their freedom, and yet, moral and social depravity are the most visible driving forces in our country today. It seems that we have chosen to abuse our freedom.

How important is freedom to the people of this country? What price are we willing to pay to keep our freedom? We already know how important it was to our ancestors, because we know what price they paid to secure it and keep it. They knew the difference between freedom and a life of servitude, and they were determined to have freedom for themselves and their descendants. But is it important to us?

John Randolph said, "The principle of liberty and equality, if coupled with mere selfishness, will make men only devils, each trying to be independent that he may fight only for his own interest." Are we willing to bring more than selfishness to our desire to retain our liberty? If we have nothing more to offer than self interest, George Hillard's words apply to us: "If liberty with law is fire on the hearth, liberty without law is fire on the floor."

Though we have been playing with fire for more than half a century, where our liberty is concerned, it is not too late to accept that we will not enjoy our freedom much longer, unless we halt our slide into a moral sewer. In short, while fire on the hearth is great, few are so naive as to think that fire on the floor will be the same. But that is where it will be shortly, and unless we take action, it will burn our country down around our ears.

Greetings, Gentle Reader,

We Americans are living in an increasingly wicked world. It wasn’t supposed to be this way in the Land of The Free and The Home of The Brave, but it is.

Our courts are mandating the acceptance of lifestyles that we LDS know are forbidden by our Heavenly Father. We know it is never good to go against His will, because He only tells us not to do things that are harmful to us. Therefore, by extrapolation, our courts deliberately are ordering us to accept things that will hurt us. That is diametrically opposed to the mandate the Constitution gives them, but many 21st century judges don’t see it that way. They see those Constitutional requirements as basic guidelines laid down by a bunch of old fashioned fuddy duddies, who were entirely too religious for modern America.

Now, if you tell your small child not to jump off the dining room chairs, and he continues to do it, you know it is only a matter of time before he will get hurt. You know you have given him a mandate that will keep him from hurting himself. He doesn’t see it that way. In his eyes, you are telling him you don’t want him to have fun.

That is how supporters of these destructive lifestyles look at Heavenly Father’s laws. He just doesn’t want them to have fun. In fact, that is an accusation leveled at parents by some of their teenage boy’s friends. "You just don’t know how to have fun, so you don’t want him to have fun." Teenage boys are especially susceptible to such blandishments. That abundant testosterone tells them to stand up to any tyranny, whether real or imagined, and what could be more tyrannical than an order to eschew all fun.

Could we say we have our work cut out for us? I think so! So, how do you defeat this dragon? You know which dragon, the one that is determined to steal not only your child’s virtue, but his very eternal life.

This is no easy task, but some parents have been much more successful than others. Why? It has to do with the degree of love and guidance, strong protective love and guidance, they show their children. Will it always succeed? No, but it is vastly better than allowing them too much room.

Remember that most teenage boys are made up of 95 parts of testosterone and foolishness and 5 parts of good sense. Am I saying they are bad? Of course not. I’m saying they don’t have enough wisdom and experience to recognize danger when they see it. Nor do they have enough natural fear to turn tail and run when they are in genuine danger.

Some of our bravest soldiers, throughout our nation’s history, have been teenage boys. In December, 1941, when Pearl Harbor was attacked, they left school in droves to enlist. They lied about their age and went off to war. Am I finding fault with such bravery? I’m sitting at this computer and crying as I think of it, which should settle that question. But their bravery often outweighs their wisdom, which is where wise fathers and mothers come in.

Make sure your children genuinely like you. Never, but never, belittle them. Make sure they respect your knowledge. Keep up with the dangers of this age, and never hesitate to teach them what to fear. Do your homework. They will know if you are uneducated concerning the drugs they are being offered, the sexual enticements they face. Teach them about sexually transmitted diseases. Tell them about the elevated chances of marriage failure for couples who live together before they marry.

More than anything else, once they are married, teach them to watch their tongue with their spouse. One of the nastiest marriage destroyers is that mind set that says, "Hey, I have a license!" when they are spoken to about their mean verbiage.

Teach them about living within their means, which so often means they must not use credit cards. Irresponsible behavior where money is concerned is a surefire marriage killer, and if it doesn’t kill the marriage, it will keep the couple in abject bondage, yet all the while, they will continue to be barraged by credit card offers.

Teach them it is not a compliment to be offered a credit card, though they will be told it is. In truth, it is a fishing expedition to see whether they are sufficiently gullible to fall for the line of a good con-man.

Finally, make them understand that we are living in the day of Satan’s last stand. There is nothing he won’t try. There is no war he will hesitate to facilitate. There is no tyrant he will fail to support. There is no vicious social system he will fail to engender, especially if it will abuse Heavenly Father’s beloved daughters and degrade his equally beloved sons.

We do, indeed, live in a spiritually dangerous age, and we parents are on the front lines. Let us take a page from our teenage sons’ book and fight to the last day of our mortal probation for those sons and daughters. Heavenly Father expects no less, and, indeed, He deserves no less.