Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is a program brining
you news, views and discussion
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and up-to-date information
on religious liberty issues
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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 this program,
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my special guest is
Ambassador Dr. Robert Seiple
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and when I say
ambassador that's for real
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because you were the first ever
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ambassador-at-large
for Religious Freedom
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for the United
States. That's right.
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So you had a great privilege
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from a religious
liberty perspective
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to represent not
just religious liberty
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but your country.
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Yes, it was a great privilege
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and I won't
trade it for anything.
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I have to say,
if you're the first
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there is some
positives that go with it
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because nobody
knows, what to expect.
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Yeah, probably thinks
that you wouldn't want
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to share on this program with
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but it was a
wonderful experiment I think,
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more than an
experiment an initiative
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that United States took to place
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religious liberty on
this, this high status.
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It was good initiative.
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Just think if you're one
of the 600 million people
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being persecuted because
of your faith around the world
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and here, at the time
the last reigning super power
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it's tough to
say that to a Nazi,
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but the Russia
remain super power then
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it is taking up their cause.
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Speaking for them in the house
of power in Washington, D.C.
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these nameless,
sometimes faceless people
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are been advocated for and
that's a very positive fame.
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Yeah, you know, wonderful.
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And as you are saying
this, you know, I'm reminded
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of what's come out
recently from the pew forum.
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They've researched
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at least quantified that
say as not many 70 percent
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of the world's
population live under regimes
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or in a context of repression
of religious freedom, right.
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So you had a big
challenge ahead of you
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when you went out selling forth
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on behalf of the United
States and religious liberty.
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Ones like working for the poor,
you'll never be out of the job.
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No.
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Because you have the poor
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and unfortunately
we have persecuted
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and you are right, there
are tremendous vulnerabilities,
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when people are coerced.
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I mean faith is, for
faith to be authentic
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and has to be freely embraced.
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So anything that is coercive
whether it's a government,
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some imposition,
a conflict, a famine
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whatever begins to work against
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that kind of
inherent freedom is wrong
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and has to be challenged.
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You've really kept to the chase,
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because-- Are we're done?
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I don't even-- No, but I don't
always say that on this program
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but that is the
ultimate criteria
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of the religious freedom.
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If this coercion involved,
even coercion to a correct
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from my perspective
even if someone with--
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I'm Seventh-day Adventist
so if someone was coerced,
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the government did it
or even the church force
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someone to worship on Saturday
that would be still wrong,
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wouldn't it, even though
it's perhaps a right activity.
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So when we're dealing
with religious liberty
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we have to
really keep our radar on
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is there force involved,
is free will restricted.
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Well we have to do that,
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but also
governments have to do that.
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Governments have
to understand that,
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this issue if you
look at identity get large
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one of the primary
components of the identity
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is how people
feel about their faith.
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I mean its stronger, it's
more passionate than ethnicity,
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then gender than anything.
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I mean that's why religious wars
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are so destructive. Absolutely.
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We got this very powerful,
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passionate people
going out one another
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and taking them as
prisoners normally,
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literally and
we end up with wars
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that are longer and more
brutal and less predictable.
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Yeah, on this program we
have discussed that before
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and you're bringing
the essential distinction,
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most wars are fought
over control of territory
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or excess to resources,
water was the classic one.
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You can attain that,
you know beat the others,
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gain the water hold or
whatever in the walk in we're
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but when you are talking
about religious conflict,
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it's more existential, isn't it?
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And internal.
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Yes, you're often
dealing with the absolute other,
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the absolute evil
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and when you've got
religious fanaticism
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by want to cease
until as an extermination.
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And normally
the conflict itself,
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the tensions
embodies in a conflict
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will make this
identity even stronger.
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I use to go to
Bosnia in the early 1990s.
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You never saw a woman
wearing a burkha in Sarajevo,
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five years later you
saw them all over the place.
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Because the war
had got into place
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of destructive behavior
where people were taking stands
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and making stands and saying,
"hey this is my identity."
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Now, Bosnia is a good
example of something bad,
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you have people who were
passionate about their faith.
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There are few different groups
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and ethnic
cleansing some times two
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and three times over
in a particular village
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taking place because
people were not prepared
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to understand the
diversity of the neighborhood
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and the other
became a challenge to them
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and the other
sometimes have to be eliminated.
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Yeah, I remember
the Bosnia conflict
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and the background as you say.
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At what point were you appointed
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at this position was
Bosnia underway at that point?
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Because it's fairly
early in the Clinton--
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No, this came out of my
World Vision experience,
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but soon after I came--
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And our viewers
should be aware that
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before that you were
president of World Vision.
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Yeah, and then went to
the state department in 1998.
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And one of my first
trips was back to Bosnia.
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Bosnia is kind of key because
it has so many things about us.
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It says that we don't remember
what happened in World War II
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and the
elimination of an entire race
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because as they
thought differently,
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they looked differently,
they worship differently--
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Throughout the
Serbs and the Croats.
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So you had the Serbian orthodox,
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you have the Catholic
Croats and you had the Muslims.
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But I think it
goes further back.
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I don't think the modern
world remembers very well
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that this is the leftover
debris of the clash of empires
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in religions with the
Islamic inroads at the Europe.
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Well, it certainly
goes back to the 1300s.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Yeah and some of the
things that happened then in--
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again a lot of this
is religious in nature
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and it says something
about the long memory,
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the long historical memory
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when something happens that put
your religious views at risk.
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Its one thing to forgive
it's another thing to forget
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and those folks never forgot.
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Now when you
went back to that area
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did you see
evidence of reconciliation
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about these religious factions?
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That's interesting.
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And we compare with Rwanda
which also was very traumatic.
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And we saw
evidence of reconciliation
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right afterwards.
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You could use the word
in Bosnia, it was too raw.
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People had seen what
it had been done to them,
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had done to what to
what they'd done to others
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and you couldn't
talk about reconciliation.
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So what we did and
again we are talking about
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World Vision's involvement there
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is to work on parent
teacher's associations.
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The point of
commonality is my children,
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my children and
education they're getting.
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We also worked in
terms of athletics
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and so we had a volleyball team
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where you consciously
choose some Croats some Serbs
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and some Bosniaks, Muslims
to go against the other team
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and to see how
that can begin to work.
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But they were long, long way,
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this is hardly
traumatized nation.
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So, you know that's a wonderful
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sense of
community reconciliation
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but it seems to me in that area
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there is really
been more partitioned
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than community heeling,
unlike South Africa and Rwanda
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that you mentioned where there
was the truth and reconciliation
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and the healing
of the community.
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I don't really think
that's happen in the Balkans.
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No, and the sad thing is
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if you look at
the date and codes,
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first off all we have a
date and peace agreement
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because fatigues
sadden. Where did it sadden?
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It sadden because
of ethnic cleansing.
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Where the lines drawn?
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Well, the lines
now are functional
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how successful you were
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in ethnically
cleansing the other.
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That's a good point.
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It's a bad point but--
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So it mix for a lousy map. Yeah.
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But the map makes
for terrible history.
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Yeah.
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Even as you're saying that
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I was just reading
article about the Euro troubles
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and I am wondering how that's--
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have you heard
anything how the economic,
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the economic malaise
in Europe at the moment
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is that
destabilizing that area further.
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I don't know I just
came back from Athens.
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And it seemed like
everybody wanted euros.
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And the things are
going on as normal there.
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Well, yeah, they
are going on as normal
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and it's an expensive country.
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I was surprised I
thought, with all the problems
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this would be the last great
bargain, it's not a bargain,
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and Europe is
fighting all kinds of issues.
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What, what to do with Turkey.
Is Turkey in, is Turkey out?
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So as Greece is going to
be a viable partner and so on.
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It's one of those
grand experiments of history.
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Absolutely.
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And may, may not
have enough logic
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and simplicity to make it work.
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And I know some of
our Seventh-day Adventist
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evangelists are
starting to invoke
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the image of Daniel 2 again.
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You know those
feet of iron and of clay
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that had bond too well.
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But it's certainly
got a high goal to unify
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all of these so often
warring factions in Europe.
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But even though I'd be
interested in comment on this.
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Even though Europe appears to be
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a thoroughly
secular mosaic state
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I think religious
forces are bubbling along
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just fine in Europe and
every now and again is in
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and on the friends
there in Bosnia things pop up.
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It's hard to say, because I am
not sure what's bubbling means.
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I'm not sure how
optimistic one should be.
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Well no, not
bubbling in the bubbly sense
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but what trust of a
mind as you are talking,
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you know, this the
sense of existential threat
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in Germany and France
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and few other countries from
all of the immigrant workers
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many of whom
come from Middle East
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not technically the Middle East
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but from Turkey
and Islamic countries
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and North Africa,
usually Muslims. Yeah.
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And so religion, first of all
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just like in the US
with the Irish Catholics.
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Yes, there is immigrant
other that the people object to
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but religious label that
accentuates the difference.
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You know, the
problem is someone said that
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difference between an
optimist and the pessimists
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is that the pessimists
always has more facts.
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And I think you
look up you're today,
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and probably this is
true at any part of the world
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that pessimist has more facts
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and you can draw the very
pessimistic point of view.
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It's not inconceivable
that in Arab springs
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that was so destructive
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and so much of hope differed
euphemistically speaking
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and its so chaotic
now in its aftermath
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in terms of the
structures that remain
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and who's doing the governing
and who is been hurt by them.
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It's hard to imagine--
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it's easy to imagine
that this could spillover
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into other parts
of, old and new Europe
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and have some of
the same problems.
00:12:16.48\00:12:19.74
Those things are scared.
00:12:19.77\00:12:20.80
That would be
interesting development
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and I agree with you.
00:12:22.64\00:12:24.15
But that you can't really
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project easily
what would happen.
00:12:25.80\00:12:27.19
But the other
well, wasn't it Tennyson
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he said "The
old order changeth."
00:12:30.24\00:12:33.49
But we don't know
what the new order.
00:12:33.52\00:12:34.72
Wow, but that's where
we're headed, I know them.
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Yeah. That's the great joy.
00:12:37.31\00:12:38.78
What I am afraid of
from the point of history
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is that new
Europe sounds a lot to me
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like the alliances
that preceded World War II.
00:12:44.97\00:12:48.32
It was and World War I for that
matter primarily World War I.
00:12:48.35\00:12:52.42
You know, whole
series of alliances
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when something kicked then
automatically this country would
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fight this country until
the whole groups were at--
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We have
something thing brings up
00:13:00.86\00:13:02.44
those kinds of
discussions. Yeah.
00:13:02.47\00:13:05.25
And religion is not
only potential problem
00:13:05.28\00:13:08.05
but it can be a plus.
00:13:08.08\00:13:10.08
This is time for a
break so stay with us
00:13:10.11\00:13:11.79
and we will continue this
very interesting discussion
00:13:11.82\00:13:14.01
with Ambassador Seiple.
00:13:14.04\00:13:15.51