Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is the
program bringing you news,
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views, discussion, analysis
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and up-to-date information
on religious liberty events
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in the United States
and around the world.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
editor of Liberty Magazine.
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And my guest on the program
is Attorney Allen Reinach,
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Executive Director of the--
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-Church State
Council. -Church State Council.
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I was hesitating, but--
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Celebrating our 50th
anniversary next year.
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I do remember the
anniversary discussions.
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So as with Liberty
Magazine, Liberty which I edit
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it's been published
continuously now since 1906.
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Okay.
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A lot older than I am and you.
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On one level
continuity and history is great,
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but the sad fact is that we
are living in such rapid change
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that something that existed
a decade or so ago is passe
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and something we have today
may have any viewers, 9/11,
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the world has
changed since 9/11.
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I remember reading in--
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well, I read a quote
from LaMonte magazine,
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the French news magazine,
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I remember
reading right after 9/11,
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this statement: it said we
have reached the point, it said,
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where the very idea
of freedom relatively new
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is in the
process of disappearing
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and being replaced
by its polar opposite,
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that of a global
terror of security.
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-A terror of security. -Yeah.
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Well, in my view we
lost the war on terrorism
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the minute we responded to 9/11
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and called it a war
on terrorism because
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the whole point of the attack
was not simply a destruction
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of physical property or
even a destruction of lives,
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it was to alter the structure
of society which we have done.
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We have caved in.
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We no longer put
freedom as the first priority.
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Security, the national security
state now trumps freedom.
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Yeah. I mean, in many
ways and it's very unfortunate.
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One example that I've
often given talking to groups
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about this is from World War II.
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I wasn't born then,
but I've read much about it
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and seen many videos of--
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Your kids don't
think you were born then?
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My kids are quite convinced that
I was a contemporary of Moses.
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Dinosaur, yeah.
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We are dinosaurs in the eyes
of a 12-year-old or thereabouts.
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A teenager.
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Yeah. But, you know,
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there's plenty
of visual evidence
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still with us from World War II
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and Germany-- not Germany,
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but Britain
under the German blitz,
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you know, for several,
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I think it was nearly 2 months,
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but suddenly weeks on end
the entire German air force,
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bombers, fighters
and the lot came over,
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a little Channel, 26 miles
I think, the English Channel.
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They came across the
Channel and they bombed
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the heck out of London.
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It was massive destruction.
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Then Hitler sent
the vengeance weapons,
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the buzz bomb,
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a post jet
powered guided missile
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and then the V-2s
that Iraq still uses.
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You know, the scant is a V-2.
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They were relatively modern
weapons raining down on London.
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I've never read
anywhere, never heard anything,
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there is nothing in the
records that says England's
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or even London's
viability was ever threatened.
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And here two buildings, three,
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let's give the
benefit of the third one
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that was taken down,
world trade center three.
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Three buildings go down
in one of our many cities
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and it's like our
existence is on the line.
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Not to denigrate, you know,
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the tens of
thousands of people that died.
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I'm sorry, that's not
even tens, 3,000 people.
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Three thousand people.
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But as far as
threatening our way of life
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as the President said,
it didn't even come close.
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The politicians know that
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the most power weapon
in their arsenal is fear.
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The politics of fear
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is one of the most
destructive elements
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in our nation today.
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The thing, if
anybody cares about freedom,
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the first thing
that they should do is
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resist the politics of fear,
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call it out for what it
is and oppose it because
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it's fear that has
completely destroyed,
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almost completely
destroyed our freedom.
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It's true.
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And then President
Bush is as culpable as any,
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but ironically, at the same time
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he said some things
that support what you say.
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Go back about your
shopping, do business as usual.
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We should have
clung to normality.
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And legally to the protections
that have seen the United States
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through centuries
of relative security
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and protection of the
rights of individuals.
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Well, now through the
revelations of Edward Snowden
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and the media that have
picked up some of our documents
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that he has on unearthed--
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We don't need to
make a judgment about
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whether he personally did
the right thing. About him.
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It's not about him.
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But the information
that came out is very real.
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Well, but this is stuff
that we have long suspected.
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And, you know, I
was trying look at
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what's really the
bottom line of all of this.
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The bottom line is
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you are only free as
long as you don't matter,
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because as soon as
you matter to somebody,
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everything you do and
say is being scrutinized.
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And there is no hiding from
the cameras that are everywhere.
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You know, they can listen,
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you have a cell
phone in your pocket,
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it doesn't matter
if it's on or off,
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they can listen
to your conversation.
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Your car has an inbuilt GPS.
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Not the GPS on the dash.
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But it's in
there, your cell phone.
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The satellites
overhead can scan you.
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And I spoke to a government
computer expert recently
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and he pointed out that there is
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a type of side reading radar
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that can actually
see inside of your house.
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I mean, there
literally is no escape.
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Now these things
are not in themselves,
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I keep maintaining pernicious
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technology is
providing these tools,
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but for any government
or any system to readily
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then sort of put these
into use is quite startling.
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Look, in prophetic terms we
talk about the United States
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being founded as a
republic, as a Protestant
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and Republican nation
and eventually repudiating
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every principle
of our constitution.
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And sovereignty in this nation,
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at least in theory, drives
from the people, not the state,
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but we have turned
this whole thing inside out.
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As soon as we have a
national security state,
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a national security apparatus
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and we have our huge
sector of our foreign policy
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and our public policy
being decided in secret,
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we no longer have a republic,
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we no longer have a government
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where the people have
any semblance of control
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over the way our
nation conducts itself.
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I know. You and I
read many articles,
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you know, analyzing this
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and they point
out very correctly
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that often military operations,
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often relationship
between countries are hampered
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when things are
all out in the open.
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There's a necessity of,
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you know, a country
to keep these secrets.
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Well, that might
be true in that realm,
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but as you just pointed
out, for a free and open society
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to survive it
has to truly be open.
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Once you allow the secrecy
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and what comes with
it is non accountability.
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Exactly.
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And so, you know, one article
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we've been reading has
to do with the billions,
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hundreds of billions of
dollars we've been spending
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on the national
security apparatus
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and how much of
it's been wasted.
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There is no accountability
and contractors are buying,
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you know, influence
and making contracts
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worth millions and
millions of dollars
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and whether they're delivering
anything for their money--
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Well, this is in one regard
we hope it's being wasted.
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But we're all being watched and,
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you know, I saw
something recently where,
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you know, an ex-security
employee was being interviewed
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and the
interviewer made the comment.
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They said, why
should I have to worry
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if I'm doing nothing wrong?
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And he said something
that resonated with me.
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I suddenly saw it.
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He says, "just
remember you are not the one
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that gets to define
what is right and wrong."
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So it's all-- we saw this--
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I'm not making
any connection between
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the West or United States
in particular and communism,
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but under the communist system
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where there was ongoing
surveillance, and I went to,
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I remember in
Bulgaria in particular, seeing,
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they were actually uniform,
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but they were
called security services.
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They were going on
with little black briefcases
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into every home, every business,
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checking every
document, updating the records.
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You know, they had
that, where you had that,
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they were collecting
innocuous information
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but if suddenly the
authorities thought that
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person is up to no good,
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almost
everything they were doing
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then fits within
their matrix of suspicion,
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like taking Patriot Act.
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The Initial Patriot Act
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means they can survey
what you take out of a library.
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Well, if they think
you are a terrorist,
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they look in the
library that you took out
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as many people did after 9/11,
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took out a book on Islam,
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they got a developing
interest in radical Islam.
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So the bad
construction is put on.
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Freedom is not served by this,
nor is security ironically.
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There is an improper
assumption, a false assumption
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that we have to
trade freedom for security.
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We need to debunk that myth.
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If we don't have freedom then
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what difference does
it make about security?
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Security for
what? To be conformist,
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you know, clones doing our
part in the global economy,
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good little consumers
who keep their mouth shut,
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who consume
mindless entertainment
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and don't have a
thought or a life,
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thought worth
thinking or life worth living.
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You know, as soon
as you have a thought
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that descends
from the global order,
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you are under suspicion.
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It is George
Orwell come home to roost.
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Yeah, I think at some point
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I'm gonna have a
program on George Orwell.
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Read 1984, read it often,
00:11:05.01\00:11:07.72
read Huxley,
read Brave New World.
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We are in a brave new world.
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By the way, I
discovered something.
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It's logical, but I
never heard of it before,
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but in a number of countries,
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I think Iran in particular,
they have banned Animal Farm.
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-But you know why? -Why?
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Because the main
characters of pigs.
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Totally missing
the real message there.
00:11:28.71\00:11:30.25
Yes, of course.
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Although I don't
really remember the pigs
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as being heroic
figures of any degree.
00:11:32.96\00:11:35.55
So they're condemned.
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But that's probably the
one that the average person
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would be as well
off to read Animal Farm
00:11:40.13\00:11:42.59
is often given to the children,
00:11:42.62\00:11:43.89
but it's telling a
very much a morality tale
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to warn people
of totalitarianism
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and how it comes
often under the guise of--
00:11:50.99\00:11:54.61
well, it says
all animals are equal
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but at the end,
some animals more equal.
00:11:57.33\00:12:00.73
So some freedoms-- all
freedoms are important,
00:12:00.76\00:12:03.30
but perhaps, in the
interest of security
00:12:03.33\00:12:07.22
we shuffle that a little bit.
00:12:07.25\00:12:08.94
So I think, you know,
in the substance of this
00:12:08.97\00:12:11.52
what Americans are
just beginning to realize
00:12:11.55\00:12:15.26
is that the
government is gathering
00:12:15.29\00:12:17.76
all of the data on
who you are calling,
00:12:17.79\00:12:21.16
what you are saying, all of
your emails are being stored up.
00:12:21.19\00:12:26.16
If anybody wants
to look at your life,
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they can read your emails,
00:12:29.91\00:12:31.82
they can review
your phone records,
00:12:31.85\00:12:33.95
who you've associated
with, your comings and goings,
00:12:33.98\00:12:37.63
your shopping history
if you don't pay cash,
00:12:37.66\00:12:40.64
anything that
you do with credit,
00:12:40.67\00:12:43.09
it's all an open book.
00:12:43.12\00:12:45.46
And again, it doesn't have to be
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anything wrong
with what you're doing,
00:12:47.69\00:12:49.05
but that's an intrusion,
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that's a violation of the
compact of a free society,
00:12:50.39\00:12:55.32
as long as they have
been free societies, right.
00:12:55.35\00:12:57.60
Well, the whole point
is to squelch dissent.
00:12:57.63\00:13:01.46
I don't know if it's the point,
00:13:01.49\00:13:03.06
but that becomes
the necessary end.
00:13:03.09\00:13:06.27
Look, there's some
very good analysis done.
00:13:06.30\00:13:12.75
You know, we've had two,
sort of, protest movements
00:13:12.78\00:13:15.52
since the economy
took a hit, back in 2008.
00:13:15.55\00:13:18.88
On the conservative side
you had the Tea Party movement,
00:13:18.91\00:13:21.92
on the liberal side you had
the Occupy Wall Street movement.
00:13:21.95\00:13:25.66
The Occupy Wall Street movement
was completely shut down
00:13:25.69\00:13:29.10
by the political establishment
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and that's been
very well documented.
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It was closed down at one point,
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and it was closed down
by the federal government.
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There was an FBI
conference call with literally
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something like 45
city mayors to coordinate
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the shutdown of
the Occupy movement.
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Now the point is not whether
you agree or disagree with,
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you know, any
message that was coming out,
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the point is that
we live in a society
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where dissent is
supposed to be permitted,
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we're supposed to
protect free speech,
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where the
government is not supposed
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to be acting to stifle dissent.
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And I've mentioned
in this program before
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because it gagged me,
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I just gagged
when I heard of this.
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About 10 years ago now,
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it's a great tradition in
the United States of free speech
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that when any
public official comes along
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you could
demonstrate, stick a placard up
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or even if you are so
inclined, call it out.
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Different people
find it offensive
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and I might find it offensive
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if I was the
President coming by,
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but it's a free society.
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But starting about 10 years ago
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free speech
zones were established,
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that were walled off areas
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and they were sometimes
miles from the location.
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We'll be back after a break
to discuss this serious topic
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and then get onto some
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implications for
religious freedom.
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