Participants: Lincoln Steed (Host), Charles Mills
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI000268A
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00:17 Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
00:19 This is the program bringing you news, 00:21 views, discussion, up-to-date information 00:23 on religious liberty events in the United States 00:26 and around the world. 00:27 My name is Lincoln Steed, editor of Liberty Magazine 00:31 and my guest on the program is Charles Mills. 00:35 I don't really know how to characterize you 00:36 except for me you are the voice of radio. 00:40 The voice on the other end of the line, that would be me. 00:42 For quite a few years, 00:43 we've done a radio program, have you? 00:45 Yes. What's it called now? 00:47 It's called Life Quest Liberty, 00:48 and it began on the Life Talk Radio network 00:51 many, many years ago. 00:53 And the idea of this program 00:55 was to put the message of religious liberty 00:58 out to as many as possible. 01:00 It was live for a while. 01:01 As the message of liberty as well. 01:02 It was live for a while 01:03 and that's what really I enjoyed about it 01:06 because the people who called in 01:08 would let us know exactly what they wanted to know. 01:11 They wanted to hear what religious liberty was, 01:15 how it was being used and misused. 01:18 How religious liberty was being perceived 01:22 in different parts of the world. 01:24 And the callers that called in on that show 01:26 really let us know what they wanted to hear about. 01:28 You-- might be sign of incipient aging or whatever 01:32 but I had forgotten about the callers, 01:34 that was a few years ago but they were great questions. 01:36 Absolutely. 01:37 And of course some of the people 01:38 were in very difficult situations, 01:41 others had deep philosophical disagreements 01:44 even with religious liberty and I liked it. 01:46 Do you remember any of the questions? 01:48 What's stuck in your mind? 01:49 You didn't mind that, people would-- 01:50 people tended to not agree on what religious liberty was. 01:57 They knew that they wanted it, 01:58 they knew that it was essential, 02:00 they knew that there are many places in the world 02:01 that were losing it 02:03 but what exactly was religious liberty 02:05 and a lot of times when they would call in 02:07 and talk to us you corrected them, 02:09 you gently corrected them to tell them 02:12 what religious liberty really was and what it wasn't. 02:15 And I think that's very important 02:16 in any kind of show about religious liberty, 02:19 any kind of series, any kind of program. 02:21 We need to know what it is, 02:22 because if we don't know what it is, 02:24 exactly what it is we're gonna be arguing points 02:27 that don't make any sense at all. 02:28 Right. 02:30 And I think as we've done this together over the years 02:32 you told me a number of times that you sort of see 02:35 where we're coming from more clearly. 02:36 And this is my burden, 02:38 nobody's against religious liberty. 02:40 No. no. 02:41 I haven't yet met anyone that is against it. 02:42 But people defined it so differently 02:44 that we really need to get to the definition 02:46 and explain it more clearly to them. 02:48 And lot of the callers I know because there a lot of people 02:51 who are writing on the magazine that what I would characterize 02:55 as sort of right wing religious conservative. 02:58 And their view of religious liberty, 03:01 it might be well intention 03:02 but it rooted has little bit in common with the Taliban 03:05 and those groups in the Middle East. 03:07 It basically religious privilege-- 03:10 That's exactly right. That's exactly right. 03:11 Religious liberty means 03:12 that I can do whatever I want to do 03:15 to whoever I want to do it, to whom I ever want to do it. 03:17 But they sort of draw the line there, 03:20 they say, okay, I can do these things 03:22 but I am not gonna let you do your things 03:25 if it doesn't agree with mine. 03:27 And religious liberty falls 03:28 right on his face at that moment. 03:30 Absolutely. 03:31 And not for them, they are free to do whatever-- 03:33 Yes, exactly. 03:34 But it's often being said that 03:35 religious liberty is proven by the minority, 03:37 not by the majority or the single person 03:41 or the stand out, the one that 03:42 doesn't go along with the others. 03:43 How you treat them, 03:44 how they are allowed to practice 03:46 their conscious conviction. 03:48 They either believe something or disbelieve it. 03:49 That proves-- 03:50 And once you know that, 03:52 once you have made that distinction, what it is-- 03:55 It follows through-- 03:56 Like we talked about it yesterday 03:58 on the car coming here to the studio, 04:00 once you understand it 04:02 then you have a whole new perspective 04:05 and understanding and appreciation of it 04:07 and suddenly you find yourself being a lot more tolerant. 04:11 I don't know if I want to use that word or not 04:12 because you don't like that word. 04:13 No, I don't. 04:15 Tolerance is one step from intolerance. 04:18 Exactly. 04:19 Means you don't really like them. 04:21 It means bare them in the good times 04:23 but things get tough, no, we won't stand it. 04:25 Tolerance means, I like it 04:27 but I'll tolerate the fact that you don't like it. 04:29 No, no, no, that's not the way it works. 04:31 What is the way that it should work? 04:32 And we talked about this in the radio program a lot. 04:34 How does acceptance really work, 04:37 tell us about that? 04:39 Yeah. You are asking me now? 04:40 I'm asking you because I want you to-- 04:42 because this is important-- 04:43 Well, I think as far as acceptance 04:45 I think there has to be either 04:48 an ideally a reorganization the world-- 04:51 as the US declaration of independence says, 04:53 that we have unalienable of the rights from the creator 04:57 so at least to have a spiritual connection 05:00 but I think from humanistic point of view 05:03 you can also get it 05:04 if you recognize the inherent dignity 05:06 and rights of any other human being 05:08 that they have as much right as you. 05:10 And so you are quite their right with yours, 05:12 not yours and maybe it will give it to them. 05:15 But ether way that these to come 05:17 from full respect and allowance that, 05:19 that person is making their journey 05:21 at whatever it is you are okay with it. 05:23 Yeah. 05:24 But tolerance, I mean, 05:26 the history of religious liberty 05:28 or the enthuses of religious liberty 05:31 is just full of periods where there was fun, 05:34 tolerance and things went okay 05:36 but as soon as the stress came then persecution kicked in. 05:40 In good times, in most every country 05:42 you're gonna be okay. 05:44 Even in a hard-core dictatorship 05:45 or communist dictatorship, 05:47 when the times are good they generally 05:49 will allow the people to function 05:51 as long as they don't threaten the status quo 05:53 but when the stress comes that's when you discover 05:56 if there's any sort of the commitment 05:57 to allowing someone else to behave or think 05:59 or practice differently or worship differently. 06:03 And our world is in such stress now. 06:05 Big time. 06:07 We are in that area that you're talking about 06:10 where religious liberty is being stretched and broken 06:13 because of the stress of-- of what? 06:17 What are some of the stresses Lincoln, 06:18 that causes this breakage of religious liberty? 06:22 What are those stresses? 06:24 Are we talking about war, are we talking about finances, 06:26 what are we talking about? 06:28 I like having you on the program. 06:30 I need to digress a little bit. 06:32 We had a-- I had a co-host a few light-years ago, 06:36 people don't remember 06:38 and he used to kick me under the table a bit 06:40 and he says, you-- later he will say, 06:43 you're turning things around so that I am interviewing you. 06:47 But this is what we do on the radio-- 06:48 This is what we do at the radio. 06:50 I may slip back into that. No, that's all right. 06:52 I am just joking because I can see we're getting into, 06:54 but I like it where you sort of bounce the questions off. 06:57 Yes, yes. It's a radio show. 07:00 And I love having this program, and I hope our viewers do too 07:02 that we can really dialogue on a topic. 07:06 There are some secular TV interview programs 07:10 that I like and they are generally conversational. 07:13 And one-- I won't name the person 07:15 or I will send our viewers off to another program 07:18 but I like one of them where the host, 07:22 very knowledgeable but whether he's interviewing 07:24 Isaak Rubin or Gaddafi had once, 07:29 he talks to them just like someone 07:32 sitting in the lounge room debating the topic 07:34 rather than a reporter either as a lonely one 07:37 or as a few of the icons of reporting, 07:40 they think that they are superior 07:42 but still it's not a nice dialogue 07:44 and I think we need to just discus things 07:46 and viewer can see in the dynamic really the truth 07:49 or the error of what we are saying. 07:52 So back to the question, what was the question again? 07:55 What are some of the stresses we're talking about? 07:56 Well, the stresses are incredible 07:58 and of course there all the stresses 08:00 that we know from prophesy and from analyzing modern life 08:05 but I think economic stress is a very real in the world. 08:08 Even though in the West most people 08:11 can get the food they need 08:13 and house to live in and so on. 08:16 This is not true for most of the world 08:18 and with the recent economic dislocation in the world 08:21 there are things like rice and flours 08:24 in some countries have doubled or tripled 08:25 that instantly creates social instability. 08:29 Then you got in spite of the fact that-- 08:32 in my memory it's very dim to nothing, 08:35 the post-war era because I was born 08:37 and you were born just after World War II. 08:40 But we are really still living 08:41 through the shake-up after that, 08:44 the collapse of the imperial powers, 08:46 the redrawing of the Middle East for example 08:51 as well as South East Asia. 08:52 And most of those countries haven't yet sorted themselves 08:56 out into a coherence state like Iraq, 08:59 it's the case in point. 09:00 I mean, Sykes-Picot Agreement 09:05 between the French and the English 09:07 where they just basic-- 09:08 well, they didn't do it randomly, 09:10 they looked at the people groups in the region, 09:13 the Sunni's and Shiite's 09:15 which are not ethnically different 09:17 but just doctrinal division within Islam, 09:20 they looked at the different tribes in Iraq, 09:24 they looked at the Kurds, 09:26 a whole ethnic group that in a swaths from Iran 09:30 right across the Turkey and they drew lines 09:33 right through all of those things purposely 09:36 because they figured it would create a weak state, 09:38 that suited the imperial thinking. 09:41 But in our era it means 09:42 that you got dysfunctional states 09:46 with rivalries between people, some of those rivalries 09:49 link across the border to another country. 09:52 With the US, we of course 09:54 we got the collapse of the Soviet Union 09:56 and that old antagonism 09:59 but the Russia is rising up in power again. 10:03 And as it rises from the ashes it's not a secular state now, 10:07 or it's not a communist secular state 10:09 but it's now a state highly influenced 10:11 by resurgent Eastern Orthodox Church. 10:15 So the bubbling-- and I could go on and on, 10:17 but all of these dynamics mean that there's social 10:20 and economic distress, there's religious antagonisms 10:24 that have always been there but they are not heightened 10:26 by these border issues and economic issues. 10:31 And our world is in a state of fear 10:33 that I don't think has existed for hundreds of years now, 10:36 certainly two centuries ago. 10:41 Even thought the last century turn wasn't long ago. 10:44 I did an interview with a lady in Atlanta on another program, 10:48 we were talking about health. 10:50 And there was rather frightening statistic 10:52 that African American women consistently have children 10:57 of low birth weight and premature children. 10:59 And the studies have to come out-- 11:01 discover that it's because of the prejudice. 11:04 Because of prejudice women are under stress 11:07 and when they are under stress they have problems 11:10 with their health and all kinds of problems. 11:13 But what she said is-- 11:14 we were talking about prejudice and what not. 11:17 What she said was very important to us. 11:20 She said that, when you are in competition for anything-- 11:27 if 12 people go into a place to get one job... 11:32 even though they maybe all qualified 11:34 they start looking at-- 11:36 they being the people who are asking for the job, 11:38 start looking at their differences to say, 11:41 oh, my difference is not as different as yours. 11:44 I am white, you are black so there's a difference, 11:47 so you need to hire me because I am white. 11:50 The same thing could be said about religion. 11:52 Well, your religion is kind of off the wall, 11:54 your religion is not mainstream, 11:56 your religion is marginalized 11:57 and because you are different from me, 12:00 because you are not like me I am superior to you. 12:04 And because my religion stretches back 12:06 for thousands of years I am better than you 12:10 because of that fact. 12:11 So they use religion as a tool 12:14 to boost themselves up to better themselves. 12:17 Well, the example you're giving-- 12:19 you started to pick on I think the Middle East, 12:22 you're hitting that direction. 12:23 But I think more closely in the United States, 12:26 anyone that knows US history knows that different waves 12:30 of immigrant have caused problems in the workplace 12:32 because they've been competing for the jobs. 12:34 And one very stressful migration with the Irish, 12:39 mostly Catholics coming in, 12:42 and I don't think there was initially great prejudice 12:46 against Irish or Catholics per say 12:49 but quickly as they started lining up for the jobs 12:52 when there was an economic distress 12:54 and it peaked at different times 12:55 but I remember one time 12:57 at the beginning of the civil war 12:59 when they were in direct competitions for jobs 13:04 and very quickly the antagonism 13:07 against the Irish turned into antagonism, 13:11 hatred and violence against catholic 13:13 and there were street riots in New York City 13:16 where people went out specifically 13:18 to lynch and to kill Catholics. 13:22 And yet you wouldn't credit it in a country 13:23 like this that's open and progressive 13:25 and most people either had escaped persecution 13:29 or liked it here because they didn't have 13:31 those sort of attentions but how quickly it came up 13:34 when there was an economic competition. 13:37 That was the stressor that cause that to happened. 13:39 There's a little more going on in the world in economic issues 13:43 but economic issues will quickly 13:47 create these sorts of dynamics. 13:50 I can see our time is running out 13:52 and the risk of getting out on another toping. 13:54 Stay with us, we'll be back. 13:56 We'll talk little a bit more about the radio program 13:58 and maybe a lot more about the world as it is today. |
Revised 2015-01-08