Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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Before the break, we
were really waxing of...
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One of us, maybe my guest,
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you're waxing
eloquent on church history
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and the Puritanism.
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They're excesses,
as they were many,
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and I was reminding you
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and the viewers
of the great heritage
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that we get by
way of John Milton,
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who was secretary
for foreign languages
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to Oliver Cromwell,
very close associate.
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And he wrote Paradise
Lost, Paradise Regained,
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as well as some other
great works of literature.
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But let's talk about
the application to the day.
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What echoes do
we see of that year
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and of that mentality
today in the United States,
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maybe in the
English speaking world?
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Well, the reality is
when Puritanism began,
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it was fighting
for religious freedom,
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but what it meant was
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it wanted freedom
for itself to exist.
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And when it did come into power,
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it restricted religious freedom
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because it had
achieved its goal.
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Then I brought up Roger Williams
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as having been kicked out
of the Massachusetts Bay Colony
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because of his
religious descendants
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and his desire to
have a religious freedom.
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It didn't happen
instantly though.
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No, no.
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They even offered him
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to be the pastor of
the main church there
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if you remember.
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Yes, I don't know if it
would have gone well, but...
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No.
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And I think he knew
that, but he wasn't...
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My point is he wasn't
disliked on first blush.
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No.
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They wanted to incorporate him,
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but they soon found out
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his views were a
little different.
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And his views got him
into trouble with them.
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And then when he left,
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he kind of becomes
one of the main voices
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in America early on
for religious freedom,
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and the Pennsylvania experience,
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and the whole
thing that happens there
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is another voice
for religious freedom.
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But the current forebears...
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I mean not forebears,
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the current
descendants of Roger Williams
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are largely the Baptists now,
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and the Baptists
who have been strong
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on religious freedom.
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The institute of
religious freedom down at...
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What's that
institute called in Waco.
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Baylor
Institute. Baylor Institute.
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J.M Dawson Institute and Baylor.
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There we go. But
it's been closed up.
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It doesn't
exist. Correct, correct.
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And that corresponded
with what you're referring to
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sort of rethinking of
how they would present
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religious freedom.
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Because they had
been presenting largely...
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Seperationism.
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Religious freedom by separation
from church and state,
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and now the
majority of the Baptists
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seem to be calling
for Christian state
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in order to have religious
freedom for Christians.
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And as we all know
what the Southern Baptists,
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they're not always that unified.
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No.
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And in Washington,
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there's the
Baptist joint committee
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for religious freedom,
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and we work very
closely with them,
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and their view is exactly
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as you stated the
historical position,
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the religious liberty for all
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under the model of
separation of church and state.
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But more and more,
there's a populist...
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It's a move away.
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For a Christian
nation that is seeing...
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And you've been in terming
it as religious entitlement
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rather than religious freedom.
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Yes.
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And it's the idea
of religious freedom
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for me and my kind,
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but no religious
freedom for anyone else.
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Well, they've never
gone that far to say that,
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but that's
implicit in that model.
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It's true.
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In many ways, the
cats are out of the bag
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because this
coalition and their actions
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through the administration
in dealing with blocking people
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from Islamic
countries and so on,
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that shows that there's a,
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you know, they haven't said
particularly bad things beyond
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we want to exclude them,
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but what they should
have said instead was,
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"You know, this is not
right to sort of marginalize
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whole religious groups
under the excuse of terrorism,"
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or whatever.
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Right.
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But they've lost
that opportunity.
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So they're not sensitive
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to the liberties
of non-Christian,
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non-Baptist, and so on.
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In previous
programs, you've emphasized
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that the rights of the
minority are at the core
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of the
understanding religious freedom.
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Why don't you
articulate that a little more
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in the current circumstance?
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Well, the best I could do is
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I'll tell you an example
that I told you in the break.
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Recently, I got
into a discussion
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with a black Muslim Chaplain
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at a certain meeting,
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and he was a wonderful person.
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I really was impressed
by him as an individual.
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I was a little troubled,
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you know, they hear reiteration
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of the theology
of nation of Islam,
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and he put himself
particularly referred
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to a larger Muhammad
and Farrakhan and so on.
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Louis Farrakhan has
got a lot to answer for,
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you know, he
appeared with Gaddafi,
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and Gaddafi was
attacking the US,
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and he was in Iran recently
when they were chanting Death
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to America and so on.
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And I wouldn't want to
be associated with that.
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But I told this,
this fellow I said,
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"It shouldn't be
necessary to argue
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at our differences so
much that I'm 100% satisfied
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with your
theology and you with mine
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before I can defend your right."
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I said, "True
religious liberty means
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that I grant you
the right to be wrong,
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grossly wrong to
believe something
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that I find
doctrinally offensive,
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but I will defend
your right to believe that
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and to practice
that to the death."
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Well.
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That's got to be
religious liberty
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because you
would want the reverse,
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you know, we were
talking about Adventists
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in their early days,
marginalized, even persecuted,
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the other thought they
were a crazy little group.
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Yeah.
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I don't think
that's the case today,
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we've become very respectable,
which is not always a blessing.
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But, you know,
it's in the extreme,
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just like freedom of speech,
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and it's fine to
have a principle.
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But if that just means
you allow people to say things
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that you're comfortable
with that agree with you,
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there's no freedom of speech.
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It's precisely when you
defend the right of something
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that you find
purely objectionable,
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incendiary, or whatever,
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then you have freedom of speech.
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And for the US to have
continued religious liberty,
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it must defend what
apparently is the indefensible.
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Yeah.
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And I'll say the obvious,
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it's absolutely
obvious that an element
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of Islamic
thinking leads directly
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to terrorism and
terrorist activities.
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That's...
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By any means that all
Muslims are so inclined?
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Hardly.
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But even if you
could connect that,
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as I just did with Islam,
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why would you restrict
the practice of a faith?
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Right.
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In fact, I'll go even
further, and this is...
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I haven't read
this anywhere else,
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but I have to hold
this as a principle.
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If they were a
religion that was premised
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on sacrificing
babies and all the rest,
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I would allow it.
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Defend their right
to believe whatever.
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If they sacrifice the
child, they go to jail.
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You can't allow
things that are against
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normal civil interaction.
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As I say that, you've
got to be careful about,
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as Scalia said,
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"Laws of general applicability
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that might snare
certain religious practice."
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Obviously, that's sort of,
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you know...
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Daniel got caught into
that where the counselors
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gave the king an idea for a law
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that was
designed to snare Daniel.
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Correct.
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But you know, different times,
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different religious
groups have done things
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that may have
harmed either themselves
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or other people in the
name of their religion.
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You can't allow that
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because it's a
general civil interest.
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But you still cannot
restrict the right of someone
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to believe a religion,
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you know, it's deeply held.
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And the US legal
system is recognizing
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that when you ask for
religious accommodations,
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not because
your church advances,
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that is because
you're onscience-bound.
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No.
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And Jefferson and the others
greatly respected conscience.
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We have to honor a
deeply held conscience position
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of an individual.
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But that doesn't mean
that in the name of religion,
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you can declare Jihad
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or crusades not allowed
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or the president ran up
against to his detriment,
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you know, the
neo-Nazis and all the rest.
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It's fine to say
neo-Nazi, no one likes Hitler.
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People forget
that the neo-Nazism
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and some of these
groups are also referred
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to Christian theology.
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They've got a theological base
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corrupt as it might be.
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So I give the right to
people to believe things,
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but they can't do
anything in the name of it.
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So in the end,
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you have to have a
minority protection
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in religious liberty.
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You have to have the
idea of those you disagree
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with need to
have religious freedom
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in order for you to
have true religious freedom.
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There is a point in
Tennyson's poem, Ulysses,
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where he has
the aged hero return
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from the Trojan Wars,
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wishing that he could
take another adventure
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and he says to his
old sailor friends,
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he says, "It's not too
late to seek a newer world.
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Let's push off.
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And, you know, go
wherever the winds may take us,"
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for the Western
world, in many ways,
00:10:04.40\00:10:06.94
they had that sensibility.
00:10:06.97\00:10:08.30
The old world,
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especially under the Dark
Ages had been a pretty fearsome,
00:10:09.94\00:10:12.97
desolate place.
00:10:13.01\00:10:14.34
But now with the
Age of Exploration,
00:10:14.38\00:10:16.41
off we go to the new world.
00:10:16.44\00:10:18.55
Oh, that would have been
so simple as this newer world
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was to be the paradise
they hoped, but it wasn't.
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Unfortunately,
many of the same sins
00:10:26.12\00:10:28.99
were visited on the new world.
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And when we
study religious liberty
00:10:31.79\00:10:33.53
and it's
yearnings and development
00:10:33.56\00:10:36.43
under the reformation,
as it came to the new world,
00:10:36.46\00:10:41.27
many of the same
problems were brought across,
00:10:41.30\00:10:44.41
and we need to
recognize the continuum
00:10:44.44\00:10:46.91
of man's search for freedom
00:10:46.94\00:10:48.61
and also the continuing futility
00:10:48.64\00:10:51.21
because those same breakers
that so frustrated Ulysses
00:10:51.25\00:10:55.48
and his efforts to get home
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are still breaking
on the efforts of men
00:10:57.29\00:10:59.69
to make their own
homeland without God.
00:10:59.72\00:11:02.59
We need to have God
and His eternal principles
00:11:02.62\00:11:05.73
of freedom for a
true successful voice.
00:11:05.76\00:11:09.90
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln steed.
00:11:09.93\00:11:13.27