Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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Before the break,
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we were really
heavy into debating,
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discussing this
Christian nation concept
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that really drives so much
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of the religious liberty
discussion in the US of late.
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Well, I think of
Sandra Day O'Connor,
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a former Supreme
Court Justice, she wrote,
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"The religious zealot
and the theocrat frighten us
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in part because we understand
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only too well
their basic impulse.
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No less frightening is
the totalitarian atheist
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who aspires to a society
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in which the exercise
of religion has no place."
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So there are the
Christian nationists
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on one hand and yet
there is the secular humanists
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that really are at war
against freedom of religion.
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I think of Ronald Reagan Jr.,
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his commercial
on TV that you see,
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"The freedom from
religion foundation."
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Yes.
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And a lot of people argue,
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"Yeah, we must be
free from religion."
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But how far do you take that?
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You know, you are not
going to get very far.
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I mean, you may get some
followers to support that,
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but to deny that we
don't have Christian roots
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and we don't have a
Christian foundation
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and a Christian
society culturally
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is really leading our
nation down a bad road.
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I used to listen a lot
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to the late
Christopher Hitchens debates
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because he was
a radical atheist,
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and he had a lot of
history on his side.
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And of course,
those that attacked him
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would often bring up Stalin or,
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you know, some other
secular or Hitler even although.
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I think what's
wrong with Hitler is,
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Hitler had allied himself
very close to the state church
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and even to Roman Catholicism.
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But my take on history is that
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atheism is a
mortal enemy of faith.
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But its weapons,
mockery, ignoring,
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and just marginalizing religion.
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Right wing religionists,
as Sandra Day O'Connor
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was referring to,
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they will cut off
your head and string you up
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and crucify you
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in all in the name of
justice and righteousness.
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I think it's an easy
point, especially in the US
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where some of our worst
excess is the Ku Klux Klan.
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It was anti-Catholicism,
what Christian America,
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and we don't want to
go back to those days.
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Well, I had a professor
of Portland State University
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years ago in Oregon.
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That was a former Mormon bishop
who had turned atheist, okay,
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and he was my
philosophy professor.
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I took three courses from him.
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Brilliant guy,
brilliant individual.
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But he made an argument
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that I fought against
and I still don't believe
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is accurate or true.
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You see, they're
motivated by something
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that we don't realize.
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They believe that a
society free of religion
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will be even moral, more moral
than a society with religion.
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So they believe in moralism,
they believe in morality.
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Of course.
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They say they do, okay?
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And that our society
would be even more moral,
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but you don't dare use
the word righteous with them
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because they don't like that.
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Well, it's the
morality of the preservation
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of the species.
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Yes, exactly.
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So that's their argument,
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and a lot of
people don't understand
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that side of the argument.
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I went to the Elko Athletic Club
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when I was a
pastor in Elko, Nevada
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way out in the middle of
northeastern Nevada desert.
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And there was a guy
who was worth millions
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and then he squandered it
by gambling in United States.
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He came from Ireland and
ended up losing everything
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and ended up being
taken by this woman
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who owned this business in Elko
called the Elko Athletic Club.
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And so you could
order from the bar there
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after working out.
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You can order
smoothies or whatever
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and then some people, you know,
got alcohol and everything.
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I was going to have a smoothie.
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But he and I used to have...
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He was a big old tall guy
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with handlebar
mustache and everything,
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bald and everything,
and funny looking guy,
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dark eyebrows, and
a really funny smile.
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Nicest guy though.
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Anyway, we would argue...
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Oh, I thought you
were describing a...
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For three and a half
years, we would argue
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almost daily at the
gym about, you know,
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what would a society
look like free of religion,
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absent of religion.
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And I said, "You
can't." I said, "It would die.
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This would be the
ugliest place on the earth."
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I said, "Christianity is
like the salt of the earth,
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like the Bible
says, like Christ said.
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Without it, you would
have no goodness in society."
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And so see, the atheists argue
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that you would
have even more goodness
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without religion.
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That's their argument.
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Well, I think...
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I think the answer
lies in the middle a bit.
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There's a natural morality...
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Naturally, those tribes
and societies prohibit killing
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and they regulate
interactions on a certain level
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that often are uncannily
similar to Christianity,
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or to Judaistic Christian
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type religions or even Islam.
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But that's not
the real question.
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We're talking about
what dynamic is driving,
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first, to be the
Christian nation,
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and what is the real threat?
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And like I'll
throw in a wildcard
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that I've never
heard anyone write about,
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but I think it's true.
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The most negative things
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you can say about
secularism, right?
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You explained how they believe
religion is their mortal enemy
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because better off without it.
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But we're faced
with a hybrid now.
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We have religious entities,
like the Church of England
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has said several
Archbishops of Canterbury
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that don't believe
in the virgin birth,
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don't believe in miracles,
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don't believe
in divine agencies.
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Right. Right.
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They are functioning
as radical secularism
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in their advancement of
their religious organization.
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So it isn't as simple
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as radical
secularists coming at you
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or wild-eyed
puritanical phonetics.
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Well, and that's an interesting
dynamic in Europe alone
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because what you have is,
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you have the
Eastern European countries
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that are pressing against
the Western European countries.
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Western European is pianism,
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seems to be taking the
increased secular road,
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and Eastern European
countries are more and more,
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taking a more fundamentalist
road including Poland
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just passed recently
in their parliament a,
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you know, nationwide Sunday Law.
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Family rest day.
Yeah, family rest day.
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And so I find that interesting
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but it seems that
they're converging.
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Who wins?
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I still think
even in this country,
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the United States of America,
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that
fundamentalism run amok wins.
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Why? Yes.
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Because I
believe that secularism
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is inherently apathetic.
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Well, that's what
I was saying earlier.
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They're not
likely to come at you
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with all the fangs showing.
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Right, right.
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And so because of their apathy,
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they just want
peace, live and let live.
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I mean, obviously, the
counterexample to that,
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the contradiction is
the French Revolution
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where you had secularists
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that basically overthrew
the religious and political...
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Yeah, they had a
particular reason for the hatred
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of religion at that time.
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But I think, the
French Revolution
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is an aberration.
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I don't think it's a really...
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Some people
say, "Well, you know,
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how do you defy what's
said in The Great Controversy
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by Ellen G. White?"
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I don't think
the French Revolution
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is the model to look at
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when we're looking to the future
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because I really believe...
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And who knows
the future? I don't.
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But what I am
saying is, I think really,
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I believe that we're
looking at an increased move
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towards fundamentalism.
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And what I mean by
that is simply this,
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you see a president
who basically garners,
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basically 37% of the
population's approval
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and won the Electoral
College vote but lost by, what,
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nearly three
million votes, okay?
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Now you say,
"Well, how could that be?"
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But here, look at that dynamic.
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It was all constitutional.
It's all constitutional.
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By the way we describe,
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it's an aberrant
sort of a situation.
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But in the democratic system,
you can have a vast majority
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that's apathetic and allow
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a very strong virulent
aggressive minority to rule.
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Absolutely.
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That's always been a phenomenon.
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And I think you're
seeing that in Congress.
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I think we're beginning to see
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the effects of that
in the Supreme Court.
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Before long, we're going to have
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right wing
fundamentalists conservatives
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in a religious bent that
fill the seats in the court,
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that take the place of
far left wing secularist...
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Which we have a problem
within the judiciary right now.
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...liberal judges.
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And so you have
this ongoing fight
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in our governmental
system and it should be clear
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to anybody watching it
that that's what's happening.
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Yeah.
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No, there's a
battle for the soul
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of the United States.
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Yes, yes.
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I think, and you
and I have agreed.
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I think, in my
lifetime, at least,
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plus, what I've
read in the US history,
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I think this is one of the
most troubling and dangerous
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episodes in the story
of the American republic.
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And Ellen White that
you referred to earlier,
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her writing, I
think prophetically
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to Seventh-day Adventist
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and to a larger
audience, sometimes.
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She said that the US one day
will repudiate every principle
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of the constitution.
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Now she also said,
leading to Revelation 13,
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the two
principles of Republicanism,
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in other words,
power of the people
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and Protestantism,
both and the threat.
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I agree, and I think
religious fundamentalism
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will eventually
take over this country
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in very detrimental ways
to our constitutional system
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and specifically
religious freedom.
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And it's only a matter of time.
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And again, I don't know
the future and neither do you.
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But we've been
given some earmarks
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both in
Revelation and in the book,
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"Great
Controversy" and other sources
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from current
history and current events
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to basically tell us that,
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"Hey, we seem to be
heading down this road."
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Will it stay on
that route? Who knows?
00:10:00.76\00:10:03.16
Some people have always thought
that secularism and atheism
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will take over this country
to bring about last day events.
00:10:06.27\00:10:08.90
But I think it's the
other way altogether.
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It's one of the great mysteries
of history, at least to me,
00:10:13.71\00:10:16.85
how in the establishing
of the United States
00:10:16.88\00:10:19.88
in the adopting and development
of a new constitution,
00:10:19.91\00:10:24.09
so many of the principles
could be barely religious,
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ideas is probably the
best you can give to them.
00:10:28.22\00:10:31.66
How many
irreligious or unreligious
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or thoroughly
secular people could come up
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with a document
that at its heart
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defends freedom of religion,
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not just as a line
item but as a concept?
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I think that's
the divine element
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in the history of
the United States,
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how God could guide people
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hardly knowing
what they were doing.
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But out of it, came a protection
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that exists to this
day of the ultimate right
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that we should all
have to recognize God,
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to worship Him, to follow Him,
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to proclaim Him in the way
that our conscience dictates.
00:11:09.00\00:11:13.10
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:11:13.13\00:11:16.67