Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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Before the break with the guest,
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Dennis Seaton,
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we were getting
into some heavy stuff,
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social responsibility
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and how you've been encouraging
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just regular citizens,
regular people of faith
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with a concern for the community
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and as well as
general civil liberties,
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to make contact
with government officials
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and network with
other organizations
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and make a difference, right?
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Yes.
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And I think that
as we move forward
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in the work that we're doing,
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that we need to
be more responsible
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in engaging our
elected officials
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and their staff members
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because it's only
with those partnerships,
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and we need to do it in a way
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that they understand
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that we're there
to work with them
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as opposed to
being opposed to them.
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You know, I made
a little joke about,
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it's a Revelation
perhaps that to some people
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that public
officials are civically minded
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and wanting to help them
rather than help themselves.
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But you discovered that's true.
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But I remember one story,
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Richard Nixon
was my hero of sorts.
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But he
embarrassed himself greatly
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by betraying the public trust.
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And I remember him
leaving Washington in tears
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and sobbing, you know,
my mother was the same.
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So it is moment of reflection
of betraying that public trust,
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you remembered what
his mother had told him,
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obviously, at
variants of what he did.
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What do you think
of the role of mothers?
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Well, if I think, that's
a very complicated thing,
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mothers and sons.
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I'm trying to
give you an angle...
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Yeah, I know you
gave me a good one,
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I'm gonna give it to you.
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We had a person,
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the person I've
been talking about,
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she came to one of
our afternoon meetings,
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and she heard
one of the speakers
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and then had to leave.
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And then she got really
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and feeling that she
needed to be involved
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with religious
liberty in some way.
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And so she called back
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to where that person worked,
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and got in touch with him,
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he got in touch with my boss,
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and my boss sent her to me.
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And so she, her first question
is, how can I get involved?
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What can I do?
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And so that was the first time
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that anybody really
asked that question.
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And I had no really good answer.
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So then I told
her about my mother.
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And my mother
never knew a stranger.
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Much to my chagrin
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because I'm a much more
cautious person than her,
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she would stop along the
road and she would help people,
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she would see people
that she'd never met before,
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and she would talk to them.
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She would go up to anybody,
she didn't care who they were,
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and she would talk to them.
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When other people would
shun them, she wouldn't.
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So I told her about that.
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And I said, that's
really what we want you to do
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with elected officials.
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And so she is going out now.
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And she is not being stranger.
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She's getting to know people.
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She's getting to
have them know her.
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She goes and talks
to them about saying,
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"This is what the Seventh-day
Adventist Church can do.
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How can we help you?"
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And so, now they're inviting her
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to their public meetings,
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when she goes, she stands out,
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she raises her hand,
and they asked her to talk
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and the first thing
out of her mouth is that,
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"Hi, my name is.
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And I just want to thank
you for your public service."
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And not only is
that making a difference
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with the elected officials,
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but it's also making a
difference to the people
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that are working
in the communities
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that are there that are
doing human trafficking,
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or they're involved
in homelessness issues,
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or in food insecurities.
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And so now
people are coming to her
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and wanting to build
partnerships and relationships.
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So when that begins to happen,
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then the one
person becomes many.
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And if you
don't know a stranger,
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or you just want
to help them out,
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or you wanna just
find out who they are,
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then what happens,
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God opens a variety
of different doors for us
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to be able to make a
difference in our community.
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And not everyone has
the same personality,
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but we can all learn.
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And I've seen this with,
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you know, I don't do the
same job as you directly,
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but I'm dealing with a lot
of the same type of people.
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And if you would
approach it right and honestly
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rather than sort
of as a salesperson
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trying to hit a mark,
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if you try to
connect with these people
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as human beings,
they generally respond.
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My father, he's long dead,
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used to lead out in intemperance
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for the
Seventh-day Adventist Church,
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which meant that he was
meeting a lot of world leaders
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and government
ministers and so on.
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And he was very
successful at it.
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And I think he saw
himself as privileged to get,
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give them
something that they needed.
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So he wasn't abusing them.
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He was helping them, right?
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And he told me
once, good advice,
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he says, just remember they're
regular people like you and I.
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He says, if you talk to them,
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honestly, and
naturally, they'll respond,
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he says, but if
you come, you know,
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you say, well, you don't
talk to me that thing he says,
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especially top rule as
they sort of condition them
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to treat you as
just one of the plebes.
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So and this woman
that you mentioning,
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you know, I met her
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and I think that she's coming
just on a personal human level.
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Yes.
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And they recognize, you know,
that she's genuine, no problem.
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Anybody can do
that. I think anybody.
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Yes, and that's
what's happening.
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She's encouraging other people,
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there's at
least one other person
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that's had similar
experiences now as she's had.
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But the main issue, I think,
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when we're
talking about this is that
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if we as Christians,
or we as religious people.
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People of faith concerned.
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And no matter who you are,
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whatever higher power
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or whatever God
that you believe in,
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if we do believe that,
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then we have a
responsibility to share that.
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And we can't share that
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unless we're
willing to talk to people.
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It's true. No
matter who they are.
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Good point.
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And so I think that as we
begin to go down through that,
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and when you're talking
about legislative issues,
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or you're talking
about social issues.
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Social issues are much
more difficult for us to handle
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because there's a
variety of different things,
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of different ways
that people look at them.
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So some people,
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we tend to look at
them from our perspective,
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and then we forget
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that there are
other people out there
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that are of faith,
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that have a
different perspective.
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So whose faith should win?
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Well, that's the
worst situation to get into
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is one faith against another.
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We should be supporting
everyone on religious liberty.
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We're in favor of conscience.
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And be sensitive to the
sensibilities of other people.
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By the way, something
that I meant to say earlier,
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you're on the state
level, almost totally.
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And, you know, I'm
not a contact person,
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primarily, you
know, at Liberty Magazine,
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but I'm constantly
going down to Washington.
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And it's amazing to me
that in the post 9/11 world,
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where there's concrete
barriers all over the place,
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and you go into
local courthouses
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and maybe the
Social Security Officer,
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and very often you're
treated as sort of a threat,
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and even
sometimes sort of unwelcome.
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The amazing thing to me is,
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you go to the congressional
offices to the Senate
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or the Congress people
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go through a fairly rudimentary
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metal detection, and, you know,
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you put stuff
through the conveyor belt,
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but once you're in,
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you can go visit these
people in their offices,
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you won't always
talk to the senator
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or the congressmen,
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but you go into their suite,
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you can always talk to
some of the lead staffers
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who are very happy
to talk to you, right?
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Yeah.
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Especially if you're
from their constituent area,
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which is what you're
particularly dealing with.
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It's in their interest,
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that's their fulfillment
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to talk to
someone from their area.
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So there's no imposition there.
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And it could be as simple
as, Hi, I'm just in Washington,
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in this case,
where I'm from, you know,
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I'm from your state or whatever,
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one of your
constituency doing a great job.
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Thank you.
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You know, I'm a person of faith.
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And thank you for
protecting religious liberty
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and, you know, in the workplace,
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particularly or whatever.
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Good reminder
that's at that level,
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if a lot of people
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that are listening to
this program in the US,
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we're doing that would
make a palpable difference
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to the legislators
support for religious liberty,
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I'm certain of it.
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Absolutely.
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I agree with you 100%, that the,
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probably the most important.
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And since this is on television,
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I probably shouldn't say it,
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but you've encouraged me
to be open and honest, right?
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Yes.
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The most important
people in any office
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are not necessarily...
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I know what you're going to say.
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Is not necessarily
the elected official,
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it is the staff members.
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If you wanna have an effect,
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or if you wanna have the access
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to the elected official,
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you have to be able to break
past the initial gatekeeper
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or the person that's there.
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And so that the idea of
saying thank you to that person,
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if you want to stand out,
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if you want to be remembered,
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then you tell them thank you
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because everybody
else is telling them
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how bad they are.
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But they're not
just a gatekeeper.
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They're the people
that do the research,
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read the bills, and
brief the legislator,
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and I often laugh
of it when I'm bemused.
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When I watch C-SPAN often
at different hearings in that,
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you'll see the top legislators
sitting there that behind them,
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like two or three lined up,
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look like high school students,
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they're their aides,
they'll whisper in their ear.
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To give them the
right answer. Right.
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I'm not
demeaning the legislature,
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but they're very
influential some of these aids,
00:10:03.67\00:10:07.90
as they meant to
be in the structure,
00:10:07.94\00:10:09.67
they coordinate
and inform and so on.
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When you look at
the very first person,
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you see that, and I'm
glad that you brought up
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the other staffers
or all of the staffers,
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but that very first
person is the person
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that grant you access.
00:10:24.32\00:10:26.35
And if that
person is your friend,
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then access to all of
the rest of the staff members
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gonna be really important.
00:10:32.59\00:10:33.93
So in your work,
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what's the
takeaway that you see,
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in not just what you do,
00:10:40.14\00:10:41.57
how you can
encourage other people
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to make those contacts?
00:10:43.34\00:10:47.34
There's no way to
be able to encourage,
00:10:47.38\00:10:49.71
we could just call
you to make a friend
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and find that it's easy
when we're out and visiting
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and you start talking to
your neighbor over the fence.
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That's just
actually what it's like
00:10:59.39\00:11:00.72
when you go into
elected official's office.
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You're creating
that relationship
00:11:03.49\00:11:04.83
so that you can
build a relationship
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so you can work together.
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Reading in the
Bible is certainly
00:11:10.40\00:11:11.90
some good examples of
activists who made a difference.
00:11:11.93\00:11:14.90
And one of the most
improbable was Saul of Tarsus.
00:11:14.94\00:11:18.67
Remember, the basic beginning
of his career was very passive,
00:11:18.71\00:11:23.18
holding the courts for those
that were doing a bad deed,
00:11:23.21\00:11:27.82
throwing stones at Stephen.
00:11:27.85\00:11:30.89
But once he got the message,
00:11:30.92\00:11:33.36
nothing could
hold that man back.
00:11:33.39\00:11:36.22
Witnessing before
kings and princes.
00:11:36.26\00:11:39.83
At one point
00:11:39.86\00:11:41.20
when he was
witnessing and saying, you know,
00:11:41.23\00:11:42.56
I was not disobedient
to that heavenly vision.
00:11:42.60\00:11:45.27
The King Agrippa I
think it was, you're mad.
00:11:45.30\00:11:48.84
You know, you're mad.
00:11:48.87\00:11:50.21
He's doesn't
mind being called mad
00:11:50.24\00:11:51.57
because he
wanted to communicate.
00:11:51.61\00:11:53.91
And I think if more of
us had a burning desire
00:11:53.94\00:11:58.51
to tell what's important
to us, and in this regard,
00:11:58.55\00:12:01.58
religious liberty,
00:12:01.62\00:12:03.32
the sensibilities
that make us Christians,
00:12:03.35\00:12:06.42
there would be no inhibition
about talking to someone,
00:12:06.45\00:12:08.79
whether it's a
legislator, or our neighbor,
00:12:08.82\00:12:11.46
or anybody in the community
00:12:11.49\00:12:13.33
because we're not
forcing ourselves on them.
00:12:13.36\00:12:15.83
We're sharing the good news,
00:12:15.86\00:12:18.53
things that will
make a positive difference
00:12:18.57\00:12:21.30
in this world.
00:12:21.34\00:12:23.57
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:12:23.61\00:12:26.07