Thoughts that I had from my family's trip to Missouri. And in this presentation, I'm going to specifically talk about our visit to Liberty jail. So here's a picture that prove I was there. Uh with these circle faced strangers around me. And as was the case throughout the trip, I was noticing all these
things that I thought had much deeper meanings. So one of one of the things I noticed this visitor center I believe was built in 1963. But sometime in the sixties on a site that the church had owned for some time, which was the site of the original jail and walking around the stone buildings. I noticed
you could even see in this picture, this carpet is cut directly to the uneven edge of the stone. And I just wondered how long it took somebody to work around this thing. And it's on all the sides. I believe, I know at least on two sides you can't see it but you walk around here. Um And, and it, it's
just cut, it's such precision. I I just, it boggled my mind imagining somebody working on this for days and days and days there's someone out there, at least one person who worked for a very long time, intricately cutting this and, and putting it back down and seeing where to cut it again and imagine
making a mistake and having to redo the whole thing. I, I just, that was crazy to me. Uh What's the significance of that? It's amazing how much attention we can pay to certain details while completely missing much more important things. Now, I have not so great things to say about the Independence Visitor
Center. And if you're watching these, in order, you already saw those, I'm recording it in reverse order if you care. But with this, this visitor center, I actually really enjoyed it. I think they, they, they did it right. Uh To a much greater extent, there's a lot more historical information in the
building that is focused on the actual location, but it's still easy to spend a lot of time and money on the things that aren't the most important things. Now, on a part for uh on a potentially related note, the volunteer who gave us a tour, she knew her facts very well. And as she was giving us the
, the rehearsed presentation, she mentioned how the church. So obviously, this is a cutaway and, and the L DS church when they bought this, the basement here, it was part of the basement of a house that had built, been built over the original jail, most of which had fallen apart. But when they rebuilt
it, they used as many of the original stones as they had and I tried really hard to see but I couldn't tell which ones of the stones were original and which ones were added. And she said this, this is why I was looking, she said in her presentation that some of the stones were original, but they're not
sure which ones are the originals and which ones are added. Now, it's, it's really interesting to think that it might be that there are two original stones out of this whole thing. And this isn't the greatest picture, but there's stone, it's cut away. There's a lot of stone here and it's a thick wall
. You can see how thick it is and there are loose rocks between the masonry wall and the timber and there's a roof here with a huge pile of rocks in the roof and all of that was to make it harder to escape. But, um, it, it, the minimum number of original stones is two because of the way it's described
that some of them original, it might be that only one or two were added. It's very unlikely that either of those is the case. And it's amazing to me that there is no obvious way of telling where in the middle of that range, the original number of stones is a ratio of original stones to new stones. Now
, does it matter in this case? Probably not at all. But do you understand the symbolism of this? Here's a monument to history where we're not even sure which parts of it are historical and which parts were added later. Now, what is the doctrinal implication of this or application of this? And it's so
interesting that they say that as part of the presentation now in making this video, I realize I might be ruining this for everyone else. I don't have the kind of audience where I mean, I don't think that the L DS church has an army of people looking into obscure youtube personalities to see what they
need to tweak in their visitor centers. But maybe they'll change the script if they get word of this. Um One thing I'd like them to change is that she shared this story and I think it happened at least twice that was mentioned in the presentation, but at least once for sure that the prisoners couldn't
stand in the basement. Now, this is my first time at this place, but I had heard this story many times and um as my wife and I were looking into the basement during the presentation, we could see because we were just sitting right here. There are chairs that, I mean, I'm 6 ft two. I can stand here. I
didn't, I didn't get in. I, I wanted to ask but I knew the answer would be no, but I could look and see that I, because these things are about a foot high, these, these pieces of wood and they're 123456 of them. Um, I, I could see that I could stand in here easily. It was taller than me. And, um, they're
, they're larger than a foot. Um, and the myth was that the prisoners couldn't stand up all the way and they're in this prison for months and, and they just couldn't stand and that it's always rehearsed when people tell the story. People used to be short back then. And so I asked the lady, I didn't expect
her to know. I said, how tall were these guys? And she knew the heights of the prisoners and she said, if I remember correctly because this was a month ago. Now she said the tallest one I think was uh 62, if I recall anyway, he was exactly because, because my very next question was, what's the height
of the basement? And she said the exact height of the tallest guy? She said that same figure which I don't remember what it was. If it was 62 or 64, I don't remember. But I just looked at her like you just said, they couldn't stand and you know their heights and you know the height of the basement. Why
would you lie? You know, that's not true. And it's like lady, this is impressive enough. You don't have to embellish things. Why would you do that. It's unbelievable. Like, is it not sad enough that they were taken from their families and kept for months on questionable charges in a very cold place with
insufficient food and there's no bathroom. They had to go to the bathroom right in front of each other and probably pass it up through a bucket through that trap door. They couldn't do anything out there wasn't a drain there. I mean, imagine that. Right. It's bad enough. You don't have to embellish it
. So finally I was ordering my questions to her to not get kicked out prematurely. And I'm just kidding, they were very hospitable. And, um, I didn't expect to get kicked out, but I wanted to ask questions to get honest answers. I didn't want to give the incorrect impression that I was just fishing.
And so, um, at some point in the presentation, I think the names of the prisoners were mentioned and one of the prisoners happened to be Liman White. Now, I have obviously heard of Lyman White. He was a very big deal in the early days of Mormonism. And, um, I was surprised to learn that I knew that he
had had a falling out with Brigham Young over the fact that he was intent on following Joseph's last command to him, which was to go to Texas and make an, uh, establish a settlement there. And Brigham Young said no order canceled, you're gonna come with us and he said, no, I'm gonna do what Joseph told
me because he outranks you. And that was the split. Right? Well, it turns out and I, I knew that Lyman had been in prison with Joseph, but I didn't know that he actually is the one that was the anchor of the whole Aaman Diamon settlement and that they had actually platted out an entire city there. Uh
, Lyman White had a ferry and a cabin there and he was the, the anchorman on the ground. They even had dedicated a lot for a temple there. So he was, he was quite an important person. And if you, if you look up, even just his Wikipedia page, you can read about all the, the, um, the roles he played in
early Mormonism. And, and so, uh, I asked a question about Lyman White and I don't, I can't remember what it was and she, her attitude was basically Lyman who, and then she changed the topic because the L DS church doesn't like talking about Lyman White. But these were close compatriots of Joseph. There
were only a few people in this prison. It was, uh, it was Joseph Smith, it was his brother. It was Lyman White. I think there were three others. Alexander mccrae. I don't remember the other ones who were there, but, oh, Sidney Rigdon was one but he got let out early anyway. So that's just very interesting
. Ok. Um, last slide in the upstairs of this visitor center they take you through first. There's, there are a bunch of historical pictures. It's really cool. Ok. It's, it's well done. It's brief but it's, it's well done. It's what you'd expect. It's, it's kind of a museum but this kind of surprised me
. I was shocked by this, uh, this picture I took, they have a, a, a board right there that lays out where each temple site dedication was and I showed this in um another presentation and I, I think that I'm conflating where this is now. Um It, it's, I think it's actually in the Independence Visitor Center
, but uh I was saying it was in the Liberty jail. I'm not sure which of them it's in. But regardless, I'm showing this because of the information that's on it. Not where it was. If you're, if you've read and you're familiar with the doctrine and covenants, the county names here should be familiar Jackson
Clay Caldwell and Davies, you'll, you will have read about these county names. And so here's a question for you. Why was it all about the county back then? Why were they just constantly talking about counties? The reason is because they, they were besieged by legal problems and the, the legal system
was used to persecute them because the people were unhappy with the fact that they came in in large numbers and changed the demographics of the county because the people understood that in a county, the way the majority of a county thinks is going to dictate how everyone gets to live. That's how it works
in the American system. The county is the organic unit of democracy. And, um, whereas all other levels of government were intended to be representative democracy. Once you get to the county, it's much more direct. It's, you know, where there's a, if, if the demographics of the majority point in one direction
, that's the way it's gonna be to a very extensive degree in the lives of people. Why? Because the sheriff is elected, the sheriff gets to decide what laws to enforce for the most part in the modern times. There are some exceptions in some places like last I heard, I think in Utah, a police officer I
knew said they don't have a choice when it comes to domestic violence. They have to arrest someone if there's, if there's evidence that a crime has been committed. But whatever the details are, the point is, sheriffs can decline to enforce the law. And so them being elected, they're accountable to the
people who elect them and they can lose their jobs if they don't do their jobs in a way that the majority accepts. So it's a wonderful check and balance on governmental power. Prosecutors same story now, prosecutors aren't elected but their boss, the D A is, prosecutors can decline to prosecute a case
and they can do that even if they believe a law has been broken like sheriffs, they're supposed to exercise their own judgment in this and furthermore, with prosecutors and I guess cops, to an extent they really have to think about. Is there enough evidence here to convict someone of a, of committing
a crime? Because if they're not, they're just wasting money and time by chasing after people that aren't gonna get convicted, then there's some sort of hearing hearings are presided over by the judge and it's the judge's job to decide whether there's enough evidence to go to trial. Local judges are elected
, it's a county position. Then you've got juries, juries are selected from the county population. And so if a majority of a county feels a certain way about a certain idea, you can bet statistically that the jury, a majority of the jury is gonna feel that way too. And so guess what, where you live matters
and early Mormons found this out the hard way they came in with something less than a majority and scared the people into thinking that they were gonna become the majority. And so in a, I'm broad brushing in a major way, the majority made up reasons to get them prosecuted to kick them out. And when they
couldn't do it legally, they just spun up mobs to do it illegally knowing that the legal system was beholden to whatever they told them to do or not to do. This is the strength and the weakness of our system. It works great when a majority of the people are halfway decent, but when a majority of the
people are willing to do the wrong thing, it doesn't work anymore. So what's interesting to me is that very few people have raised the topic of county governance since the early Mormons headed West, most of them since NAVOO, the, the topic of local governance has really not been discussed. Now, the Salt
Lake Valley that was a settlement where is 100% L DS and outside of the United States. But very soon after that, uh once again, it was sort of sucked in and they had to play by the rules of the rest of the country which they immediately succumbed to in making polygamy illegal in order to gain statehood
. So there you have it where you live, matters and the county you live in matters a lot. You're going to see this become a much more pronounced piece of people's lives as we go forward. And there are already examples of this. There are already examples of this. The people who participated in January
6th uh that, that they were brought up on federal charges, but still obviously the legal system had uh an effect on their lives. And most of those people are still tied up in that there are other situations too, other examples. So this matters. So you should think about that. If there's a takeaway, it's
that you can't do what God wants you to do in any old place. You will be limited by the people around you or forward it. You're going to either be uh advanced or impeded by the people around you. And so you should start thinking about that because the idea that your house is just some kind of island
, your apartment is just some um refuge from the world that only holds true when there's immense unmerited prosperity. And as these things are taken away, you're going to see a reversion to things that we thought were limited to history. You're going to see this in a big way. So you may as well get ready