Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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Before the break with the guest,
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Attorney Alan Reinach, I
nearly said your full title,
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Church State
Council from California.
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We were talking about greatness.
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Indeed. What makes
America great again.
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Yeah, we all want to
be part of greatness,
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be on the winning team,
to be part of a great nation.
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And I think, at the moment,
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the United States is
legitimately reaching
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toward what makes us great.
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Unfortunately, a few
people that exemplify
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some of the less great aspects,
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they have come
out of the woodwork.
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But greatness is not a
bad thing to aim at, is it?
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Well, look, we
certainly have seen
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in the last election cycle
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that it's great
political rhetoric.
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You know, it's very
effective political rhetoric.
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You know, there's no
ifs, ands, or buts about that.
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And just like we can.
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I mean, most political slogans,
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they were very
designed to unleash potential.
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But let's put this back
in the prophetic setting
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because in Revelation 13,
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the same country
that has these wonderful
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aspirations of separation
of powers, of the rule of law,
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of respect for civil
and religious freedom,
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its own sense of pride
in its Christian heritage
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and its greatness
ultimately leads it
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to becoming a persecuting power
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and enforcing the
mark of the beast.
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Now how do you get
from these wonderful
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lamb-like principles
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to what can only be described
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as dragon-like satanic behavior?
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And I think that
what it is clearly
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in the pages of Scripture
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is this blending of
faith and patriotism.
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More around
political power, yeah.
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It's a pride,
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and it's a blending of
civil and religious authority
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because as persecution has to do
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with the government
making value judgments
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between religions
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which has always been
forbidden to our government
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to make value judgment.
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Because it's so fraught.
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Different governments are
going to decide differently
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of what is truth and error.
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They're not competent.
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The Supreme Court in the case
of Trump versus Hawaii upheld
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the so-called Muslim ban,
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totally ignoring
that we clearly had made
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a value judgment as between
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the majority
religion, Christianity,
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and holding people from
Islamic countries suspect.
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Yeah.
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You know, these
are valued judgments.
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This is something
that our government
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is constitutionally
prohibited from doing.
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Where this eventually
leads whether you agree
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with the outcome of
Trump against Hawaii or not,
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where this eventually leads is
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to the end
result of persecution.
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Yeah.
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And yeah, they're
hedging their bets.
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We know that there's an attempt
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to categorize an
entire religious group.
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And today, we
might be comfortable
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with that group,
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but the
political wind could shift,
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and it'll be another
group that's seen as inimical
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to the government's interests.
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So we don't want
to go down that trail.
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We've got a history of war
within the Christian history.
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In our own country,
you know, in recent years,
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we have this small group
called Westboro Baptist Church
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that goes and pickets funerals.
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There's an article on that.
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You know, and they're
extremely hostile to gays
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and what have you, and
are they representative
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of the larger
Christian community?
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No.
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Is Isis representative of
the entire Muslim community?
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No.
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Are they a real
problem, a real threat?
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Of course they are.
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But you know, to say
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that all Muslims are terrorists,
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I mean, I had a case...
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No, that's
clearly a gross overreach.
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I had a case recently, Lincoln,
where an Armenian Orthodox
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Christian was
mistaken for Muslim
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and was harassed
and run out of his job
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because they were, you know...
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And the same with the Sikhs,
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as you know, more
commonly confused, yeah.
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Yeah.
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And yet the Sikhs
have their own history.
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I asked somebody
from India recently.
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"You know, how do you
see the Sikhs in India?"
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And I knew the
answer because I've been
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to the Sikh
Golden Temple in India,
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and just a few months before,
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there was a
rebellion in the north,
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and the Indian Army
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actually invaded
their temple, profaned it.
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Oh, really?
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And that led
directly to Indira Gandhi
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being assassinated
by one of the Sikhs.
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Okay, this goes
back a few years.
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So this person said, "Oh, yes.
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We see that was
quite militaristic.
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But not in the same way as Islam
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and the Islamic actions."
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So it's not good for
one group to be mixed
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in with the other in this
sort of catch-all prejudice.
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And so we've got
to defend all groups,
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as you know, I'll reiterate it.
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Religious Liberty is for all,
or ultimately, it's for none.
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I see it as you just
can't start carving away
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a few religious
groups that you're suspicious
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of even with good cause.
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We have to...
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If we're going to talk
about America's greatness,
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we have to talk about...
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It was pluralism.
It was pluralistic.
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Overcoming
America's original sin.
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America's
original sin is racism.
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It was against
the Native Americans,
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and our treatment
of Native Americans,
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by the way, has also been
characterized as genocide,
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that we're a
post genocidal nation,
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which is a
pretty shocking thought.
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But, you know, how we
deal with the issues of race,
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with minorities, with,
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you know, whether
it's discrimination
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on the basis of national origin,
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or anything else, this
is America's original sin.
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And if we want, if we
aspire to true greatness,
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we have to
confront our original sin.
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You know, the Bible,
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of course speaks to
what is really great.
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Solomon was great
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because he knew God
and could understand
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the difference
between good and evil.
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And Ellen White,
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writing to
Seventh-day Adventist once,
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actually to editors,
she says, "Call no man great
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who hasn't chosen
God and His ways."
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And I think of Jesus' statement.
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"He who would
be great among you,
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let him be as a servant."
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Yes, but I think, I mean,
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I can make a good
argument that ultimately,
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America's greatness,
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the greatest part of its
story 'cause it's not all great,
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but its greatness derived
from its Christian morality
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put into action, a good nation.
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Well, but if we're
going to talk about America
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in terms of being Christian,
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I think we have to distinguish
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between the Christian
people and the nation.
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So to me, kind of the
sine qua non of Christianity
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is the Sermon on the Mount.
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But I don't think that
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there are many
Christians among us,
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you know, I hesitate to say any,
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who would contend that
America as a Christian nation
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should vigorously implement
the teachings of the Sermon
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on the Mount,
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that in our
relations to other countries,
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we should turn the
other cheek, for example.
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Well, now you are
getting into what I've...
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The government
was designedly secular
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for any number of reasons.
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But in this regard, I think,
out of respect for religion.
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But it worked well
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when a critical
mass of the population
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was informed by a
Christian morality,
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a Christian sensibility.
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I mean, there's any
number of statements
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that the framers expected that.
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Obviously, we don't buy
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into the spurious
historical argument
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that it was intended to be a
Christian nation structurally
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and governmentally, and so on.
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Not at all.
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In the founding generation,
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there was acknowledged
by many of the leaders,
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religious freedom for Jews,
for Catholics, for Muslims,
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you know, that we
had this broad concept.
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And really, this kind of,
I call it live and let live.
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You know, we all
have the right to live
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according to our own values,
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our own beliefs,
not just to have them
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but to live
according to them as long
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as we're living in peace
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and not infringing on
the rights of the others.
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And I've got to be politically,
at least, historically honest.
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I believe that live
and let live derived
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from the Enlightenment
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secular
principles, and from deism.
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Well, I think the Golden Rule
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had something
to do with it also.
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Well, that's why
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the good
Christians went along with it.
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But I don't think
it came from that.
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What I mean is it
was an outside force
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that spread that and
it took root in the US
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and it's worked to
the advantage of old faith
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and of religious freedom.
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Well, if I can express
a little different view...
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Of course, you can.
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You know, look,
Jefferson was expressing,
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you know, the
broad understanding
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when he talks about,
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you know,
God-given inalienable rights
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endowed by our Creator.
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You know, he wasn't expressing
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a pure
enlightenment rationalist view.
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I could say the influence.
And he wasn't a pure Christian.
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No, he wasn't,
which is why I say,
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you know, he is
writing for the society,
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not for himself.
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But he was the moral hero,
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I think, one of the moral heroes
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of this new
experiment, there's no question.
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You know, so
there was a shared...
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You've said it
earlier in the show,
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Protestant ethos
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that founded our
culture of rights,
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our respect for law, etcetera,
was based on Protestant ethos.
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No, absolutely.
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I mean...
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We're just
differing on some terminology,
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but religion has
been the bedrock,
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social
environment that this country,
00:10:03.33\00:10:05.17
the US became great on.
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But self-interest is
not a Christian value.
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You know,
selfishness is kind of,
00:10:11.34\00:10:15.58
in some sense, the original sin
00:10:15.61\00:10:17.41
that the scripture
really rails against.
00:10:17.45\00:10:20.52
"Self-sacrifice,
taking up your cross,
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and following
after me," Jesus says.
00:10:22.75\00:10:24.89
You know, that's kind
of core to the gospel.
00:10:24.92\00:10:27.76
So if America
aspires to be great,
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I think humility is in order
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and return to some of
these first principles
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of the rule of law,
separation of powers,
00:10:35.80\00:10:38.27
of respect for civil
and religious freedom.
00:10:38.30\00:10:40.87
I often spend
time comparing notes
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with my
predecessor, Clifford Goldstein,
00:10:46.78\00:10:49.48
and I know that on one occasion,
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I hit pay dirt with him
when I mentioned a poem called,
00:10:50.98\00:10:53.35
"Ozymandias," king of kings,
and it's a poem that says,
00:10:53.38\00:10:57.75
"Out in the
desert, abandoned by all,
00:10:57.79\00:11:00.46
and with the
drifting sands around,
00:11:00.49\00:11:02.19
there's a huge visage,
00:11:02.22\00:11:03.56
and underneath a sign,
it says, 'I am Ozymandias,
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king of kings, you
know, fear and trembling,'"
00:11:06.26\00:11:09.13
And it says, "Nothing
stirs but the desert birds."
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When we talk about greatness,
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something like
that I think puts it
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in a certain perspective
because what is great.
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We've toned down statues
all over the US of great heroes
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of the wrong cause in the past.
00:11:23.24\00:11:25.31
And others, like Saddam Hussein,
00:11:25.35\00:11:27.02
not only the statue
but the very existence
00:11:27.05\00:11:29.45
has been snuffed
out by revisionism.
00:11:29.48\00:11:31.99
Ellen White, speaking to
Seventh-day Adventists says,
00:11:32.02\00:11:34.46
"Call no man great
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who hasn't had the wisdom
to choose loyalty to God."
00:11:36.46\00:11:39.96
That, at the end of the day,
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is all that can
constitute true greatness.
00:11:41.60\00:11:44.70
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:11:44.73\00:11:47.80