Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is the
program bringing you news,
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views,
discussion, argumentation,
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insights 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 Gregory Hamilton,
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president of the North-West
Religious Liberty Association.
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We've been really
into the weeds on history
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on this discussion
of, lately, neo-fascism,
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moving in even to the
citadel of democratic liberalism
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in the United States.
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And of course, the ramifications
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for religious
freedom, along with that.
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Because it was just fascism,
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which is not a good system,
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still Christianity
and religious freedom
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might not be encouraged,
but you live with it.
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From the Bible, I
don't see any charter
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for Christians to
overthrow whatever the order is,
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we live within that system.
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Right.
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But describing it, we
have to call despite-despite
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and fascism is not a good
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structural development for civil
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and religious freedom, is it?
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No, it isn't.
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And I contemplate a
statement out of the book,
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The Great Controversy,
page 443, that goes like this,
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"In order for the United States,
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our country, to form
an image of the beast,"
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now when we
talk about the beast,
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we're talking about the
ancient Roman Catholic power
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or the holy Roman Empire...
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And an image is a copy.
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In which the church
dominated and controlled,
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the state
manipulated and controlled
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the will of the state, the
will of emperors and kings,
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so as a church type paradigm,
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in which the church
controlled the state.
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"In order for United States
to form an image of the beast,
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or in a likeness of that
model, of church in state,
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the religious power must so
control the civil government,
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that the authority of the
state will also be employed
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by the church to
accomplish her own ends."
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So if that's the future,
which is clearly foretold here
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in Great
Controversy of page 443,
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we see it in Revelation
13, we see it in Revelation 17,
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then what kind of
government is that,
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it's very clearly a government
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that is
manipulated and controlled
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by religious
factions or religious peoples.
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Because in the United States,
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you have so many
different religions,
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you know, a big
melting pot of religions
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and so they got to come together
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on something that's common,
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and usually it's
economics or it's, it's...
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Or the environment.
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...political desperation.
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Yeah, the environment.
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The environment
seems to be doing that.
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And so there
seems to be all these,
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now do you mean the
climate change issue...
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Or the degradation of the world.
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...or the political environment.
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No, that the world
environmentally is collapsing.
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And the very,
as, as the Pope says
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in his document on,
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I'm trying to
think of the Latin term,
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my mind is getting blank,
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but it came out just a year ago
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and he says there that
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the very survival of
humanity is dependent upon this.
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Well, when that's at stake
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and you're presenting it
from a religious point of view,
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who's gonna resist it.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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I do think, as
a prelude to that,
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religious
fundamentalist terrorism,
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99 percent of it from Islam,
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is acting as a foil to bring
some of these changes about.
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But I think the real survival
issue is the environment.
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Islamic fundamentalism doesn't
threaten that very being.
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No, it doesn't.
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And a lot of people use
that as a big poster child,
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the big bugaboo, so
to speak, to, you know,
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to state all kinds
of outrageous things.
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But the problem I'm having
is this whole idea of religions
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coming together,
in a common cause,
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to basically turn the
nation around back towards God.
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I mean if you looked at
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one particular
Republican candidate,
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during the primary season,
he was clearly into that,
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in the name of
restoring the constitution
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and religious
freedom, ironically.
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That particular
candidate was into dominionism.
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Yes.
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And dominionism,
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most people don't know about it,
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but it's the first cousin
to Christian reconstructionism,
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which is the Christian
version of the Taliban.
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An Old
Testament legal framework,
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where there's death
for Sunday breaking,
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and death for
abortion and things like that
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or those that are
involved with abortion.
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It seems that there seems to be
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a potential
paradigm shift, you know,
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the pendulum swinging.
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A lot of people
say "Well, okay."
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What if this image
to the beast is formed?
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In Seventh-day Adventist terms
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of understanding Bible prophecy,
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does it come from
socialism, the social left?
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And many, many
Adventists still believe
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that it comes from
the socialist left,
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that somehow we're
gonna get a Sunday law,
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national Sunday law,
not just Sunday Blue laws
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for closing business
and about worship laws,
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from the left, okay,
which is interesting.
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Because when it says that
religion or religious powers
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must so control
the civil government,
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that the authority of the
state will also be employed
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by the church to
accomplish her own ends.
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I don't read anything
about socialism in there.
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Atheism, secular humanism,
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it's just the
opposite and I think
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it's a pendulum swing.
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What we see here is,
as we move more towards
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social programming on the left,
towards democratic socialism,
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there is this
lashing out from the right.
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And I want to add this.
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It's a pattern
of history anyway.
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Most, most
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dictatorships throughout history
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or governments that
are oppressive, okay,
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tend to be just a
slim or not a majority
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but a large
minority, in other words,
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they are not
actually the majority,
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which is interesting,
how they come to power.
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Well, you don't--
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We're back to a previous
discussion you and I had.
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And it boils down to
the country and the people.
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In a country where
most people don't vote,
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you are in need of that minority
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to still win a
morality in the actual election.
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Exactly. And
people don't realize that.
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And so if you just sit back
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and stay home
and you don't vote,
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which is very
American, to protest, not vote,
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but think about
what you are doing.
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You're allowing even
a significant minority
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to control the country
for a long period of time,
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in a very detrimental way.
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In order for evil to prosper,
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a good man just
need to do nothing.
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Well, the
Christian right currently,
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and this is my example,
the Christian right in America,
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which is basically made
up of evangelical Protestants
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and evangelical
conservative Catholics,
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all right, are clearly a
minority in this country.
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They represent about 38
percent in the election,
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and so when you
take that factor,
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if they come out
and vote in force,
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and democrats, liberals,
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who basically outnumber
republicans by two to one
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in terms of voting
registration rolls,
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if they stay home, that's
why they end up losing election.
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And so, I mean, we
saw with Bush versus Gore,
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I mean it was handed by
the Supreme Court to Bush,
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but it was such
a close election.
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But in that election,
evangelicals came out in force,
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all right, and
people forget that.
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Now there is nothing
wrong with evangelicals
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coming out in
force, I'm one of those,
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evangelicals
coming out in force,
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who vote for a president
that upholds the constitutional
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separation church date and will
appoint supreme court justices
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who uphold the constitutional
separation of church date
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and the free
exercise of religion.
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So...
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But that said, if
you go down the road
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of voting for candidates
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who appoint
supreme court justices,
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who want to tilt a
direction of religious authority
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in this country,
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it will take us down a road
of a different type of fascism
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than we've ever seen,
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because a national Sunday
law is a form of nationalism.
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Nationalism as properly defined,
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is a form of socialism.
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So people forget about that.
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When you
nationalize the auto industry,
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you socialized it.
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Think about that.
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Yeah.
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Now we are playing
with it is as a system.
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And it's explainable,
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I don't think the
American Electorate
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have any hankering
for despotic systems.
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But they're
delivering themselves,
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almost inadvertently
into this sort of a structure.
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You know, this
grand power of the state,
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where they defer
to it on every thing.
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And, there is a readiness
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for some sort of a religious
renewal to the country.
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People don't have to
be religious, and this is,
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you and I know,
there are a lot of people,
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we discuss this with, say,
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oh, you know people are
less religious than before,
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you don't have to be religious
in your personal spirituality,
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necessarily to be behind
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the movement
for public morality,
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and that's growing
up, same in Europe.
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Secular country,
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but the religious
identities are very strong.
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And I believe that
there is a reaction there
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that's gonna take on a
religious flavor very shortly.
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And add to that,
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if you've got a
dysfunctional congress,
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and you end up with
more and more presidents,
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you know, thinking
they've got to have
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more and more executive orders,
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where does that
take our country.
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Not a lot of people
say what president Obama,
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he hasn't been the worst
in terms of executive orders.
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Now when you consider
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Woodrow Wilson has
some like 1100 of them,
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when you consider that
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
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had about 1800 of them,
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when you consider
that Ronald Reagan
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had something like 900,
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Bill Clinton had a
little about, little over 1000,
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then you have George W. Bush,
who had 497, I think it was,
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and then
president Obama comes along,
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and he barely has
a little over 200,
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you know, so I think,
he's got the bad rap on that.
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But that said, there seems
to be some executive orders
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that he's put forward, they say,
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they're so egregious, which,
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you know, I can understand that.
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But the point is this,
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if you got a dysfunctional
congress in the future
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that becomes increasingly
dysfunctional, if it does,
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become
increasingly dysfunctional,
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then that gives right to
an all powerful presidency,
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and an all
powerful executive branch,
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which is not what
the constitutional
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founders intended.
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And so when you look at
the definition of fascism,
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which involves a centralized,
autocratic government,
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headed by a
dictatorial leader, I mean,
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the
constitutional founders intended
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a strong central government
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but not a strong
central autocratic government.
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Are you sure they intended
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the strong central government?
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Yes, they did.
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I firmly believe that.
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In the Alexander
Hamilton tradition...
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They intended it to be strong,
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but it had to defer to
the south state sovereignty.
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It was only in
defense, they wanted it,
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and in interstate commerce.
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Yeah, I don't agree
with that at all, yeah.
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That's, I mean,
that's plainly stated...
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We can have
another discussion on that.
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The
constitutional founders intended
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a strong central government.
00:11:44.23\00:11:46.40
And they didn't however
intend a strong central,
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autocratic
government by a dictator.
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And so we have
to understand this,
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when we are
talking about fascism,
00:11:54.38\00:11:56.44
we need to be as careful
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as a nation of
going down the road,
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of a fascism that is
the fascism of the future,
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a fascism in which church
and state are joined together,
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which is the most dangerous
form of government, in history.
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History has
proven that very much.
00:12:11.16\00:12:13.70
So let's remember that,
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let's be responsible
citizens and go down the road
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of upholding religious freedom.
00:12:20.54\00:12:22.97
We tend to think of fascism
00:12:23.00\00:12:25.91
as a purely secular phenomenon.
00:12:25.94\00:12:29.71
But if you think back
to the recent experiments
00:12:29.74\00:12:32.25
with fascist
socialism, if you like,
00:12:32.28\00:12:36.08
both the Nazis and
the Italian fascists
00:12:36.12\00:12:40.66
had accomplished
their gain on power
00:12:40.69\00:12:43.66
by a close
alliance with the church.
00:12:43.69\00:12:47.60
Today, as we drift toward
a form of democratic fascism,
00:12:47.63\00:12:52.50
if you like,
00:12:52.53\00:12:53.90
I think there is the
very real likelihood,
00:12:53.94\00:12:56.71
because it's
already partially apparent
00:12:56.74\00:13:00.04
that religious
forces will be the enablers
00:13:00.08\00:13:03.55
in this new
dynamic that creeps upon us
00:13:03.58\00:13:06.88
in a democratic gauze.
00:13:06.92\00:13:09.92
But the end result will
be a fascist totalitarianism
00:13:09.95\00:13:14.42
that not only worships
the instruments of the state,
00:13:14.46\00:13:18.06
but has us directly
worship the gods of the state,
00:13:18.09\00:13:22.83
and the
religious and secular goals
00:13:22.86\00:13:25.33
melted together
of that same state.
00:13:25.37\00:13:28.40
History never
quite repeats itself,
00:13:28.44\00:13:31.77
but the models
of history are clear
00:13:31.81\00:13:36.54
and we are drifting
00:13:36.58\00:13:38.38
in a rather
fascist direction today.
00:13:38.41\00:13:42.12
For Liberty
Insider, I'm Lincoln Steed.
00:13:43.69\00:13:47.09