We are currently are experiencing an insurrection in the United States. One of the things the radical insurrectionists are demanding is that cities everywhere defund their police departments. Liberals don’t want us to have guns, police, or a military to protect us. They say they want to establish community groups to enforce laws and administer punishment. This is what occurred during the French Revolution, during the Reign of Terror, where some thirty thousand people were executed in these nonjudicial tribunals. If they bothered to study history, people would know what a bad idea this is.
Now, Latter-day Saints were put in this situation a couple of times. In Missouri, during the late 1830s, lawless mobs demanded that we turn in our guns, promising that they would leave us alone. When we complied, they put the last remaining Mormon settlement under siege for months, causing near starvation. They occasionally did raids there they burned homes, killed men, raped the women, and murdered children. They arrested and held our Church leaders without pressing charges for months. Then, in the dead of winter, they drove the people out of their homes and expelled them from the state. Many died and others suffered from exposure as they left bloody footprints in the snow as they fled eastward. It’s a good lesson to keep in mind when people demand you surrender your firearms.
The next lesson comes from Nauvoo, the city where the saints gathered and reconstituted after Missouri. The Latter-day Saints built a thriving city there over a seven-year period. Nauvoo was larger than Chicago was at the time. When persecution again raised its hand against the Mormon people, Joseph Smith was its primary target. Joseph, the founding prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, had been held in Missouri without charges for several months. There were attempts to kidnap him and return him to that state when it placed a bounty on him.
The Prophet had several bodyguards to protect him, but some boys wanted to help out. Brigham Young and some of the other leaders organized them into “Whittling and Whistling Brigades.” Most of the boys had pocket knives that they would use to whittle sticks or play “Mumbley Peg.” The boys were instructed to follow around sketchy-looking characters who arrived in the city. They would unobtrusively gather intelligence, listening in on conversations. They didn’t appear to be a threat of any kind and they were not supposed to engage their targets in any way. They were just to whittle and whistle if anything needed the attention of an adult. They were quite effective at deterring crime in the city because the bad guys didn’t like being shadowed by the young ones.
After Joseph Smith’s arrest and martyrdom while he was in protective custody of Illinois Governor Ford, the Nauvoo city charter was revoked. Without the charter, there could be no legal civil government: no mayor, no constable, no city council, or anything. Here’s where this connects to today. Imagine that your police department was defunded or abolished. How would you protect your city, your property, or your life? Today we would expect anarchy and crime to prevail. However, in old Nauvoo, it didn’t. How did they keep peace?
First, there was a community that had strong, shared culture and a religious orientation. Most US cities are not that way anymore. Most people don’t know their neighbors and society has all but destroyed the ability of religious groups to act in the civil domain. In Nauvoo, the people were God-fearing and they had a church discipline system to help enforce a moral code. Now, of course, the Church could not take someone’s property or put anyone in jail, but it could withdraw fellowship. That could easily provide enough leverage to influence behavior.
Then, without a constable, the Whittling and Whistling Brigades became very useful. They became part of a community militia that helped guard life and property. The boys with their knives were effective at gathering intelligence and the fact that they were indeed armed with knives, made them a small deterrent. Their whistles could bring adult aid quickly. It helped the community remain a safe place—much more than it would have been without a constable and a city government.
The insurrectionists’ plans won’t work because we are not a homogeneous group in our cities today. We don’t have a common, shared morality anymore. We don’t have effective community organizations that could treat the community with fairness. Most of all, we have a population of people who refuse to obey God’s commandments and have no moral center. Without a common morality, no police force can achieve peaceful law and order. The lesson to be taken here is that a community that will repent and follow God can function without a government or police. One that will not must rely of force and compulsion to ensure compliance and safety. Where the people keep God’s commandments, there will be peace ultimately.
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