Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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Before the break I was
talking to my last guest
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about his
starting a program called
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'The Manly Man' program.
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Well, this is another guest and,
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welcome, Steig.
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Thank you, Lincoln.
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You're my guest this
time, Steig Westerberg.
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And I have to even look at it
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because I want to
get your name right.
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And there is a
connection to my last guest,
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but you are the
man of the moment.
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The Manly Man program,
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I think is needed in society
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and the irony is the last
time I saw you and we spoke,
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we were both attending
a Montana Men's Group...
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Yes. Meeting, weekend meeting.
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Yeah.
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Actually, it was in a
hut, up near Bear Canyon,
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wasn't that in...
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Bear Canyon Ski
Lodge. In Montana.
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Yeah, Bear Canyon Ski Lodge.
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That was a Manly
Man get together.
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Yes, it was.
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But something came up there
and you have a burden on it
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that I want to discuss with you.
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You're the CEO and
the founder of Altoserv.
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Yes.
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A software company to
deal with information...
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Yes. Dissemination.
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In fact, as I was
joking, you probably know
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or could speak a lot
of the email controversies
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swirling around this country.
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I could.
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And how the service work? Yeah.
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But what does you,
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just tell me
briefly the background
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that you have in computers
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and information dissemination
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because you've had some very
successful companies I know.
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I have, well,
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so I am a bit of a technologist
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from a perspective of, you know,
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coming up with solutions
to problems that exist.
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And Altoserv is
focused on helping consumers
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be prepared for disasters.
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Yeah.
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Just this last week,
we had hurricane Matthew,
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sweep through the
eastern part of the US.
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Literally, thousands of people
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ended up with
significant damage.
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They need to then go out
and file insurance claims.
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People often
don't really understand
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what it means to be prepared,
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to have to do
something like that.
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And that's what Altoserv...
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You facilitate their response
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so that they can
link to the right agencies
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and the right
sources of help or?
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Well, specific...
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How does it work exactly?
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Specifically,
Altoserv is all about
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empowering the
individual to be prepared.
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So you gotta put yourself
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in the position
of imagining a loss.
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Imagine that you went
home from this business trip
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and your house had
burnt to the ground,
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would you...
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I do imagine that sometimes...
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It does happen.
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It happened to me, okay,
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so, not that the
house burnt to the ground
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but we had a fire.
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We've often gone on
trips, and we were like a 100,
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200 miles away...
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Did we leave the oven on? Yes.
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And so, you know,
envision what would you want
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to have proof of, in order
to substantiate the loss...
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I always see the end.
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And even to remember everything
that should be in the loss,
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you know, we are
always buying things
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and having things
placed around the house
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that literally you forget about,
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they just kinda
fade into the background.
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You know it's there,
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did you remember what it was,
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the make, the model,
when you purchased it?
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How much you paid for it?
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These are all crucial things
to getting an accurate and...
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So you help them establish
a database of all their...
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We focus on it from the
consumer perspective, right.
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So now, you know,
the consumers need
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somebody to enable
them and power them
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to understand what they have.
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All this
information is digitally stored
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on our cloud based system
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and then when it
comes time for a loss,
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which inevitably
will occur to everybody,
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we take that information
and we immediately price it,
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we have over 3000 retailers
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that are
participating in our system.
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And so based upon
make, model, description,
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how much you paid for it,
et-cetera, we will price it,
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we can do that instantaneously,
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whereas traditional approaches
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require you to write your
loss down on a piece of paper,
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it gets mailed off some place,
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weeks later, sometimes longer,
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they will come
back with a value.
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And
establishing value is crucial
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because that's what determines
the size of the cheque
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that you're gonna get
out of the insurance company.
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If you have purchased, you know,
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a shirt and it cost you $80
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and they come
back in, valued at $50
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and you've already purchased
that replacement at $80,
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you're out that delta.
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And insurance
adjusters are flexible,
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they're wonderful
people but, you know,
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they have
parameters placed around them
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and they have hundreds of claims
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that they're working
through, each adjuster.
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Hundreds of claims that
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they're
constantly working and so,
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you know, they
stay within parameters
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and so it's best to that their
claim get valued right away.
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It's an interesting concept,
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in conjunction with
end of the world scenario
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or the disasters at
a company in times...
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Yes.
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People are most famously,
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moments, letter they sent...
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Yes.
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You know, they're putting up
with six months worth of food
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and all of...
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Those, the
things you could argue,
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could do but what...
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Yeah.
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What you're saying is probably
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a more immediately
practical thing to do
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expecting some sort of...
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Yeah.
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Dislocation, short of the
mountains falling and the...
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Right.
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And the law's actual appearance.
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This is... And when you...
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A very good program.
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And when you have gone
through that sort of a disaster,
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it feels like it is
an end time disaster.
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Oh, I've heard too.
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Okay, I mean, and, you
know, so the goal, of course,
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is to ensure that
you're not victimized twice.
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You've already
been a victim once
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by whatever the accident was,
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whatever the peril was,
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you then don't want
to be in a situation
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where you are not able to
get fully recovered and rapidly.
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Yeah.
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Now it's a wonderful
concept and, you know,
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even before our
discussion that day,
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I didn't fully understand
what you're doing, it's...
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Yeah.
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It's not just a good business,
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it's good common sense
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and it does connect
with preparing for the future
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which is what
we're all trying to do.
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Yes.
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Christians generally, in
living in town where the end
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and on religious liberty we're,
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we have liberty now
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but you can't
take it for granted,
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you have to prepare...
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Yeah.
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For when it may be
under more open threat
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and have a contingency plan.
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That is correct.
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So what do you think?
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Now I'll ask you personally,
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I know you're not a survivalist.
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No.
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You're a fellow Christian,
Seventh day Adventist.
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Yes.
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What you've put in essence,
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part of this into practise
through a business and...
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But what is it that struck you
about the age that we live in?
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Do you think this
is the time of peril
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and how do we deal with it?
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Well, it is. Instantly.
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It is a time of peril
and the peril, of course,
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is greater in
certain regions of the world.
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You know, we read
about the rapid events
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and the horrible
events that will happen,
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in books of
Daniel and Revelation
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and guess what?
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That is
happening today, right now.
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It does seem to me...
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Yeah, in certain
parts of the world.
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Yeah, now here
specifically in the US,
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we see problems where laws
and agencies are crafting rules
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distinctly different than was
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that are
restricting religious freedom.
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That's not quite as
severe as, you know,
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being under threat of having
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your head
removed by a terrorist.
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Well, no, but...
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But nonetheless...
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One thing can lead to
another. Yeah, exactly.
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It may not be totally separate
but that may be the end point
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even for an innocuous loss.
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Absolutely, and I see
pressures on all fronts.
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I feel that we're very
far down that particular path.
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You know, it's
become almost trendy
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to talk about the Nazi era
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and some of the
things that happened.
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But I think in a way
familiarity has bred ignorance.
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Mm-hm.
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Just a couple of days ago,
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I was listening to a program
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where they were some
survivors of all of that
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and they said something
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that's often not
thought much about.
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They said that it
still troubles them,
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they can't really
get their head around,
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how a western civilized
rational supposedly society
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could establish this
process not just to kill people
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because that's happening
all the time unfortunately,
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the Middle East and
violence in the streets
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even in the US cities,
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there's violence,
murder and mayhem...
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Yeah. In many ways around us.
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But they said the fact that
it was without much emotion,
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it was done in a
bureaucratic way...
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Mm-hm.
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Cold bloodedly in
a western democracy
00:09:06.61\00:09:09.61
and civilised people.
00:09:09.64\00:09:10.98
Yeah.
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And by inference that means
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that it's not impossible anyway.
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And there's things that
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we need to remind
ourselves as a community
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or else we can
drift into that...
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Absolutely.
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It's really,
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it's the bureaucratic anonymity
of Groundswell Movements
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that become institutionalized
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that could do
such a bloodless thing.
00:09:33.44\00:09:35.30
Yes, yeah.
00:09:35.34\00:09:36.87
And I know, know your burden
00:09:36.91\00:09:38.97
is to use the
power of the internet
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and the new communications tools
00:09:43.01\00:09:44.81
to keep reminding people...
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Yeah.
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Of their rights, their freedoms
00:09:47.58\00:09:48.92
and to keep a public view
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on some of these
legal developments
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that could otherwise, sort of,
00:09:54.99\00:09:56.66
secretly develop and then maybe,
00:09:56.69\00:09:59.33
suddenly come upon us
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or even then
coming upon us suddenly.
00:10:01.06\00:10:03.67
Yes.
00:10:03.70\00:10:05.03
Well, you are absolutely right,
00:10:05.07\00:10:06.84
what really kind
of got me focused
00:10:06.87\00:10:08.80
on this aspect of
things was a senate bill
00:10:08.84\00:10:12.44
in California focused on
00:10:12.47\00:10:15.54
restricting the
way their schools,
00:10:15.58\00:10:19.11
private, non-public I mean,
00:10:19.15\00:10:21.68
I think it's important
for people to understand,
00:10:21.72\00:10:23.32
these are private institutions,
00:10:23.35\00:10:27.09
and the lack of ability
for them to be religious
00:10:27.12\00:10:31.69
in the way that their
tenant should teach them to be.
00:10:31.73\00:10:35.56
And so historically,
religious organizations
00:10:35.60\00:10:38.30
like this have
been exempt from laws
00:10:38.33\00:10:41.90
that are largely
in a secular world
00:10:41.94\00:10:44.94
viewed as discriminatory.
00:10:44.97\00:10:48.71
And this bill was an attempt
to start picking a way at that,
00:10:48.74\00:10:52.71
right, and start removing
some of those protections.
00:10:52.75\00:10:55.22
And one of the rationales
for doing that is that
00:10:55.25\00:10:59.82
these schools
take government money.
00:10:59.85\00:11:01.19
Yeah.
00:11:01.22\00:11:02.56
And that they're
publicly accredited
00:11:02.59\00:11:04.76
and they're open to all people.
00:11:04.79\00:11:06.13
Yeah.
00:11:06.16\00:11:07.50
Because it is worth mentioning
00:11:07.53\00:11:08.86
and what you say is even worse
00:11:08.90\00:11:10.63
than you could
describe it quickly.
00:11:10.67\00:11:12.67
But it's worth
saying that churches
00:11:12.70\00:11:15.20
and their core operations
are still well protected.
00:11:15.24\00:11:18.71
Yeah.
00:11:18.74\00:11:20.08
These were
educational institutions...
00:11:20.11\00:11:21.44
Right, the
educational institutions.
00:11:21.48\00:11:22.81
Not the insurance itself.
00:11:22.84\00:11:24.18
Yes, and this is
sort of, and out there,
00:11:24.21\00:11:25.78
thing that's semi public,
I mean, it is public but,
00:11:25.81\00:11:28.88
you know, as
far as structurally,
00:11:28.92\00:11:30.25
it's semi public.
00:11:30.29\00:11:31.62
Right.
00:11:31.65\00:11:32.99
And they are very vulnerable
00:11:33.02\00:11:34.36
and you're right to
be troubled about this.
00:11:34.39\00:11:35.72
We're gonna have
programs on this in the future.
00:11:35.76\00:11:37.19
We fully expect
while this particular
00:11:37.23\00:11:40.13
initiative was defeated,
00:11:40.16\00:11:41.50
it will come back and come back.
00:11:41.53\00:11:42.86
Yes.
00:11:42.90\00:11:44.23
And so the intention to meddle
00:11:44.27\00:11:45.60
in the autonomy of
church schools is very real
00:11:45.63\00:11:48.84
and the probability of its
quite success is very high.
00:11:48.87\00:11:52.04
So we need to counter this.
00:11:52.07\00:11:54.78
See, I view this situation,
00:11:54.81\00:11:58.41
I view that education
is a highly personal choice
00:11:58.45\00:12:01.98
between the
students and their parents.
00:12:02.02\00:12:04.75
And they make a
choice for higher education
00:12:04.79\00:12:09.12
while thinking
very carefully about
00:12:09.16\00:12:11.16
what their own
personal belief system is.
00:12:11.19\00:12:13.76
So they're choosing to go
to a private Christian school
00:12:13.80\00:12:17.47
that has the beliefs that
they embody in their life.
00:12:17.50\00:12:19.90
That's a very good point,
00:12:19.93\00:12:21.27
the expectation of the families,
00:12:21.30\00:12:23.64
sending a child there
is not what the government
00:12:23.67\00:12:26.17
or some government politicians
are wanting in this case,
00:12:26.21\00:12:30.41
it's voting the very will...
00:12:30.45\00:12:32.71
In a certain sense,
the will of the people.
00:12:32.75\00:12:34.68
Yes, yeah, they absolutely are.
00:12:34.72\00:12:37.35
And so in this particular case,
00:12:37.39\00:12:39.92
my belief is that the people
are buying a bill of goods,
00:12:39.95\00:12:44.76
they're paying for a
certain of level of education
00:12:44.79\00:12:47.73
and they should be able to
get what they're purchasing.
00:12:47.76\00:12:50.87
It's been said and I
think it was in the 'Good Book'
00:12:50.90\00:12:53.60
that a house divided
against itself cannot stand.
00:12:53.64\00:12:57.37
As we look to the
Middle East today,
00:12:57.41\00:12:59.71
that is the
epidemy of that comment
00:12:59.74\00:13:03.95
because not only is there
an undeniable and in fact,
00:13:03.98\00:13:08.28
extreme
persecution of Christians,
00:13:08.32\00:13:11.05
that the different
people groups within Islam
00:13:11.09\00:13:13.82
in the Middle East are
at each other's throats.
00:13:13.86\00:13:16.56
This is a sad situation,
00:13:16.59\00:13:19.19
a situation that does illustrate
00:13:19.23\00:13:21.43
an end time
scenario of every man's hand
00:13:21.46\00:13:24.33
being against his brother
00:13:24.37\00:13:25.93
and of great troubles
and persecutions coming.
00:13:25.97\00:13:29.04
Somehow, the West and Christians
00:13:29.07\00:13:32.94
from areas outside
this area of persecution
00:13:32.97\00:13:35.94
need to bring
the charity and love
00:13:35.98\00:13:39.11
and accommodation
that Christ represented
00:13:39.15\00:13:43.28
and need to bring what amounts
to true religious freedom.
00:13:43.32\00:13:49.66
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:13:49.69\00:13:52.19