Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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Before the break,
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we were both
singing a strong song
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about the need of
investigative journalism
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and a free press.
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And it's role not just in
civil liberties generally,
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but the greatest
liberty, religious freedom.
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Well, you know,
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it's not really an
accident of history, Lincoln,
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that we have a bundle of
rights in the First Amendment.
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We have no
establishment of religion,
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free exercise of religion,
free speech, free press,
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and the right of
people to petition
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for redress of
grievances, and assembly.
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All of these rights
are bundled together
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in one sentence,
in one amendment.
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And if you think about
it, what are we doing here?
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You know, we're exercising both
religious freedom, free speech,
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free press, all
in one fell swoop
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by recording this program.
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You really can't divide
these liberties up too much
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and it's been said
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even by one of our
Liberty dinner speakers
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that religious liberty is
pretty much the litmus test
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for all the civil liberties.
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It is, absolutely.
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But you can turn it
around a little bit.
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If you don't have
freedom of the press,
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you're not likely to
have freedom of religion.
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Well, that's true too.
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So they exist together
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and even as you
were reiterating them,
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you know, it
played into my burden
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that we need to understand
the stream of history.
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They get back
to the Magna Carta.
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Well, and look,
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I think we Americans
are rather complacent
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about the state of our liberties
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and they can be
lost very quickly.
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You know, Anthony Lewis
wrote the definitive book
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"Freedom for
the Speech We Hate."
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And when you look at the history
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of free speech in this country,
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free speech has not
been very well protected.
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At worse, I'd like to
add sum, you can lose it
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and not know you've lost it.
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There's a poem that
I love and just a line
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just popped in my
mind by Dylan Thomas.
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And he says, at the end he says,
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"Though I sang in my
chains like the sea."
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You know, we can sing
about from see the shine,
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shining city of
the great liberties.
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But maybe to an
onlooker in another country
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it's not such...
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I mean I'm not saying it so,
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but it could be where it's
not such a free country anymore.
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Well, look that's, you
know, my quick listing.
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In America we're only
free as long as we're relevant.
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You know, as long as the
powers that be don't care about,
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you know, what you're doing,
and what you're saying, yeah,
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you can, you're free
to say whatever you want.
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But if you become a threat,
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if you become
sufficiently influential
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that you're taken
seriously, watch out,
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you know, somebody is
going to try to take you down.
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Yeah.
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And that may not be because
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there's anything
structurally changed,
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but it's the dynamic of forces
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that using the existing
system can restrict you,
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it's always been so, and
money, and large organizations
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have long trod on
individual freedoms.
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And that's part of the
reason we're pushing back.
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You know, one of the
things that I say about bias
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in the press, you know.
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And like you I read widely.
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Well, first of all
bias is not a bad thing.
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The role of the
press is to criticize
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the existing powers that be.
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The press is not doing its
job, if it's just a rubber stamp
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and going rah-rah to
who is ever in power.
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It has to be finding
fault, that's its job,
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that's what we need it to do.
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If you're looking for bias,
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look at why the
stories being told.
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Not all of the story
is full of false facts
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or it's fake news.
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No, the story is likely,
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you know, in the
responsible journalism,
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they have very
good fact checkers,
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and editorial
policies, and what have you,
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and they're very careful.
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You know, the
major New York Times Post
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and, you know, the
major magazines and all
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are very good at making sure
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that they get
their facts straight.
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The question is
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why are they telling this story?
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Why did they choose this story
rather than a different story?
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That's where you'll see
elements of bias coming.
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But a lot of
what is happening now
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is not just bias,
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it's almost not
fake in the sense,
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but it's a narrative
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that's based on
some lies basically.
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There are stories
that's made up, made up.
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Not all the facts, but
the premises are made up,
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premise and
then convenient facts
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have been
accumulated to tell it.
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And I...
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Since we spoke about it
before, Fox will do that.
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And I watch Fox, I
have no burden against them,
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to me it's entertainment.
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It tells me what
other groups are saying,
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but I've been watching
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on some of the
recent developments
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that it's particularly
was on the discussion groups.
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I see them discuss,
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and then I turn on another
one of any other channels.
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And it's like they're talking
about the same real events
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that I know half a bit.
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But this gets us
to our core concept.
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And perhaps it's just hit me,
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perhaps a big problem
in the US is confusing news
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with entertainment.
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Well, we want to be
titillated not informed.
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But this is a problem,
it goes back decades where,
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you know, in order
for television news
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for example to survive,
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it has to get the ratings
and it's all about the ratings.
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And to get the
ratings, you have to entertain.
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So what entertains,
you know, the latest,
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you know, car crash or,
you know, some disaster.
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And so the thing,
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but it's a
matter of public record
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that Donald Trump received
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something like a
billion dollars worth
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of free media coverage
during the election campaign.
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That unquestionably
was a huge contribution
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to his political success.
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Now why did he get
all that press coverage
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because he was entertaining.
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He was interesting.
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Okay, he was more entertaining
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than, you know,
George Bush, or Marco Rubio,
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or you know any one of
a number of other people
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who, you know, arguably
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were more
experienced politically
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and may have
been better qualified.
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You know, but the focus is on...
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You can throw in arguably.
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Well, I mean,
it's just the facts.
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Look I'm not trying...
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Doesn't mean the
president was incompetent or is,
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that's irrelevant, but
he was not a politician.
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Right. He was not a politician.
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And they were experienced.
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So, you know, I think
the media is undergoing
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some self-criticism certainly.
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But it brings us back
to our core question of,
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you know, how do
we understand truth
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in a post modern age
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when everything
that goes on around us,
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we're, you know,
we're having a hard time
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getting to the actual
facts because of the spin.
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And we're not even willing
most of us to listen to facts
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that conflict with
our preconceived ideas.
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And that's a real problem.
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Yes.
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But I was about to say
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what I do and I
hope other people do.
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When I listen to
anything, that's not just news
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or read a book,
I'm constantly...
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I read facts and
figures, I run it past the ones
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that I already know that
I verify them in my mind.
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I'm fact checking.
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Did you do that when you read?
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Well.
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But if you don't have
the background knowledge
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or have never
tried to acquire it,
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how would someone
today know up from down.
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And it does struck me,
the Bible over and over again
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says that, "The very
elect will be deceived
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at the end of time."
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And this has to be
part of this dynamic.
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You can't believe your eyes.
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And, of course, videos can
be manipulated, not just words,
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you know, and
there's some joke things
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that I've seen online
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where they'll
have public figures
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saying something grotesque,
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and you can micro edit
video and sound of them.
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So quite literally
most people know now,
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what you see isn't what you get.
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It can be manipulated in
gross ways, not routinely,
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but there's
always that possibility.
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And without knowledge to compare
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to what they have
been, what they're saying.
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I think people are
not critical thinkers
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as in the large,
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of course, there's
wonderful exceptions.
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But overall, modern society
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and in
particularly the United States
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is one of the
most modern countries
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is in a bad situation.
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I do a mini evangelistic
series based on prophecy.
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And at the beginning,
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one of my
premises is to tell people
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the problem is not
that you're skeptical,
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it's that you're
not skeptical enough,
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because as you
just quoted from Jesus,
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"At the end of
time, even the very elect
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will be subject to deception."
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I think one of the elements
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that is very
dangerous for us as Christians,
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we're very law
and order oriented.
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So for example, there's a
lot of current controversy
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over American
immigration policies.
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I'm not going to get
into the substance of it,
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but what I see from
conservative Christians
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is a very one sided approach
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to the issue, it's law.
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You know, if this
is what the law is
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and either you're
on the right side of it
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and there's so many dimensions.
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And it seems to me,
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you can still respect the
government as the law giver
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and it's chosen to have this law
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for whatever reason.
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But we can morally
object to how it's applied
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if people are being mistreated
in the name of that law,
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we object to the mistreatment,
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that's not ever to be
acceptable to a Christian.
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Well, and there's a lot,
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certainly there's
a lot of dimensions
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to the whole immigration issue.
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Why are people fleeing?
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What are the social issues?
00:09:52.49\00:09:53.82
What's the geopolitical?
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What is the United
States influence been
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in Mexico and Central America?
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What about, you
know, the drug problem,
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this a push and pull?
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You know, it's
American demand that creates...
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To create facts.
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The fact that we
need another program.
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The facts are,
more people are leaving
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than are coming
in at the moment.
00:10:09.14\00:10:10.87
Yes. Well, there's that too.
00:10:10.91\00:10:12.97
But freedom of the press
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is so central to
religious freedom.
00:10:14.91\00:10:17.55
And frankly, I fear for
our ability to really see
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what is truth
and to grasp reality.
00:10:22.98\00:10:25.79
Standing before Governor Pilate,
00:10:28.92\00:10:31.33
Jesus calmly and
in a dignified way,
00:10:31.36\00:10:33.66
in spite of the
blood and the gore
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dripping down His forehead said,
00:10:36.67\00:10:39.10
"I'm the Way, the
Life, and the Truth."
00:10:39.13\00:10:42.30
And Pilate
said, "What is truth?"
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Most people that
read that just think of it
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as a narrative.
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But he was asking a
deeply philosophical question.
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And I believe in many
ways, in our modern world
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we're seeing the demise of truth
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or at least an
understanding of it.
00:10:58.25\00:11:01.29
Is the media
telling us the truth?
00:11:01.32\00:11:03.49
Can we find the truth?
00:11:03.53\00:11:04.96
Would we know it if we found it?
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I think unless one
realizes that God's way
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is the only way to
truth that He is indeed
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the epitome of
truth, and we seek Him,
00:11:13.74\00:11:16.81
and like Solomon an
understanding of his way,
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and the ability to
define between truth and error,
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light and dark, we'll be lost.
00:11:23.68\00:11:26.58
We will go into a moral
and intellectual darkness.
00:11:26.61\00:11:31.39
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:11:31.42\00:11:35.22