Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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Before the break,
with guest, Greg Hamilton,
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we were talking about rights
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and Brown v. Board of Education.
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Just tell people very
clearly what that case was.
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Well, it
eliminated discrimination...
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It was aimed to eliminate it.
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In public schools,
yeah, that was the ruling
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that segregation was essentially
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a violation of the
Fourteenth Amendment.
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And that lay behind two things,
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I think, didn't
it? Or maybe I'm wrong.
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One, I know for sure,
picture of that little
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African-American girl
with the police taking
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her up the stairs to school
against the objection to...
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And Governor
Wallace saying that...
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Staying on the steps.
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We will not let
the federal authorities
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dictate over us as a state.
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That I think it led directly,
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although there
was another court case
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that mandated it
to school busing,
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which was part of
forced desegregation
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which was itself a problem.
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Yes, but that was
still overarching,
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the ruling was overarching
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in terms of
segregation altogether.
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But what I am
trying to introduce in it,
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there could be a problem,
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but sometimes the
solution can bring
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in another
problem almost as bad.
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Yes, but what's the other
problem that's almost as bad?
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I mean, the police show up.
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I mean, the Marshals show up
and the state guard was there
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and it was like a showdown
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but they had to
stand aside and they did.
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Well, I was
thinking about busing.
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We relocated
populations out of their area.
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Oh, yeah, right, yeah.
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Because that's sort
of shades of Stalinism,
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that's what
Stalin did in Russia.
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Right.
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And you know, people
died when they were sent
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radically from one
end of the Soviet Union.
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Well, and that's where
systemic injustice comes.
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I mean, systemic
racism, and one fix leads to,
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you know, maybe more problems,
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maybe lesser but still problems,
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and that maybe the case,
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really especially
when you see, you know,
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neighborhoods in one
section of the community,
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they obviously
have been sectored off.
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Well, let me throw in a thought.
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Religious liberty has
been called the first freedom,
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and it's in their
magazine's first thing,
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I think they
are playing on that.
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But I know and I am
back to what bothered me
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when I first came
into religious liberty.
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Practically, every religious
liberty law and many other laws
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has a little clause
in it that this is so,
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freedom of religion or whatever,
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unless there is a
compelling government interest.
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Right, compelling
governmental interest.
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So we are talking about a right,
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you think it's an absolute right
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or stand-alone right,
but government at least
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always reserves the right to
throw it out when they choose.
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But a compelling governmental
interest is so very hard
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to meet, you know,
it's still a very high bar.
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The courts have put it that way,
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but again, it's not an absolute,
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it's someone's determination.
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It might be a lower
bar in time of emergency.
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It still provides
protection against minorities.
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There's protection,
and I've talked to lawyers
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and you know, we are
not about to take that out,
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but it does trouble
me, and it's at least
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a historical reminder that
outside divinely instituted
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and administered rights,
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human understanding of rights
is a little bit changeable,
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variable
according to the dynamic
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of the human
experience, not absolute.
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No, of course not.
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I mean, and
nobody is suggesting that
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they are absolute in
every case and in every sense.
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But I think that the ideal is
something we are striving for.
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Of course.
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Ideals are always
worth striving for.
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Yes, but in law and in practice.
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I don't mean just as an
ideal not to be carried out,
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I mean, even if it's gradual,
as long as there is progress,
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you know, you've heard
of the progressive movement,
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as long as there's progress
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and I think that
that's a good thing.
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Well, let me quote from
my own editorial recently.
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Well actually in my editorial,
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I quoted from
the musical Popeye.
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Have you seen it?
It's cute. No, I haven't.
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And in the
musical, Popeye comes ashore
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and his robot from
being drifting in sea,
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and he is looking for
his father as it turns out,
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but he lands at this
little self-satisfied community
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that is absolutely dysfunctional
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and they sing a song, they say,
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"Sweethaven, God must love us."
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And then they...
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In other ways, they
are the blessed of God,
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it was a highly
symbolic musical,
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and then promptly Popeye
is taxed for stepping ashore,
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he is fined at every
point, he is not allowed to...
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Walking wasn't allowed.
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So, you know,
that's a divine thing,
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they've got all the rights,
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but they're not going to
give them to anyone else.
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And, you know, rights
and religious liberty rights
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are subject to too
many vagaries in my view.
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We need to uphold the
idea but not be under illusion
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that any state, in my view,
and this is deeply held view,
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no state is
going to go to the...
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It is going to
threaten its own viability
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to guarantee your right.
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Basically, it's a
matter of convenience
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for the state to
give you that right,
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more in very convenient
times, they will give it gladly.
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In stressful times, as
in England in World War II,
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a friendly state,
Germany and other places,
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they start to...
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I believe the rollback of
civil rights little by little
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is the precursor to the attack
on religious freedom rights.
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Of course.
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And I think we don't
take that seriously enough.
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When we see systemic
injustice carried out
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against African-Americans,
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do we take that seriously
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as upfront
against ourselves or not?
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It's a change in the attitude
of how one group of humans
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see other human beings.
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And that's easily
transferable to another thing
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they might differ on religion.
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You know, it's been pointed
out I think very correctly that,
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you know, with all
the prejudices that float
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the human race, I mean
the human beings, racism,
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yes, is a very pernicious one,
but it's made more pernicious
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because people look
different, easy to identify.
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But we are
prejudicial in many other areas.
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It's a little more subtle
to identify someone that thinks
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differently than you either
politically or religiously,
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that's not on first sight.
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So racism is like the canary,
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in my view, it's like
the canary in the mind.
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You will notice it first
but it's not the only problem,
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and the end result of all
of this is the dissipation
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of the whole
waterfront of rights.
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Well, let me bring
up another example.
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You know, you've seen
the kneeling football players
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before football games, you know?
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The ones that
President condemned?
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Yeah, let me ask this question.
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Defending the
constitution and everyone's
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equal constitutional
right to free speech,
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is that more
important or coercing others
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through peer pressure
or threat of unemployment
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to worship the flag?
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And, you know, that to me
is a very important question
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because you know, if
you deny free speech,
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even on the job,
okay, and they're kneeling
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to protest systemic
racism in the country,
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they're not kneeling
to condemn the troops,
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they're not
kneeling to condemn the flag,
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and that sort of thing.
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And the reason
why I bring that up
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about flag worship
is this, nation worship.
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The United States has
already faced this test
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in two years
Supreme Court involving
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the Constitutional
Right of Jehovah's Witnesses
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to politely refuse
to pledge allegiance
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to the flag in
public school classrooms.
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Cantwell v. Connecticut, 1940
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and West Virginia
v. Barnette, 1943.
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Even the Seventh-day
Adventist church took
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to lead in defending their
right before the High Court,
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so and the Supreme
Court has ruled many times
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that even flag
burning is constitutional,
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not that I am
advocating for that,
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I am very much against
that, but that's not the point.
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The point is that
it is constitutional.
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I remember hearing Scalia once
in person talking about that
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and he says his own wife
vilified when he got home,
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"How dare you take that,"
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and he had to tell his own wife
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why he had to defend the
right of burning the flag
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even though he
found it abhorrent.
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Well, my question is
troops, when you think about...
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Are those football players
trying to insult the troops?
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No, the troops'
attitude is, or it should be,
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at least I've heard a
lot of troops say this,
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"Hey, we are there to
defend the constitution?
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What's more important?
The constitution or the flag?"
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And I'll point out...
I'll even differ from you.
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We should...I mean, I
am a Vietnam-era person
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and I didn't go to Vietnam,
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my number never came
up, it was horrible the way
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the military were
treated back then, draft days.
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But be careful of the opposite.
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Why are we duty bound to be
flag raisers for the military?
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They're like anyone else,
and as anyone else in a free
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society, they can be criticized.
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But we're creating a hierarchy
where they're above criticism,
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and that's not good for
all civil liberty and rights.
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What I was
trying to say is that...
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Yeah, and exactly what you're
saying is what I was trying
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to say is that when
it comes to the flag
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versus the
constitution, the soldiers say,
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"Hey, we go and fight
wars and die for the lone crazy
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in our country to defend
their constitutional rights."
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And that's how it should
be. And that's how it should be.
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But a lot of people
don't view it that way,
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and so they are
viewing this whole idea
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of rights as something that's
a privilege and not a right.
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Absolutely, very good point,
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confusing rights with privilege.
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And that's a problem.
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We have rights and we
need to defend them, folks.
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They are not just
privileges. Remember that.
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We are a nation of rights.
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Otherwise it would be tyranny.
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When the Apostle Paul came into
conflict with the authorities,
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it's very telling that
he used his citizenship
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and the rights that went with it
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to support his
evangelistic effort.
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But it's very
important to realize,
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as you can see
from his writings,
00:10:13.98\00:10:15.84
that that was not the
basis for why he was preaching
00:10:15.88\00:10:20.22
and indeed why
he was imprisoned.
00:10:20.25\00:10:22.72
In fact, in imprisonment,
00:10:22.75\00:10:24.09
he said he was imprisoned
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because of the
resurrection from the dead.
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We need to defend
what sometimes is called
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natural rights, we have a right,
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under guard for
certain freedoms,
00:10:33.83\00:10:36.46
religious
liberty is a prime one.
00:10:36.50\00:10:39.50
We should never imagine
that such basic eternal rights
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originate with and depend upon
00:10:45.44\00:10:48.34
the authority of civil
governance for their execution.
00:10:48.38\00:10:54.18
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:10:54.22\00:10:57.75