Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider
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with my friend Tony Steinberg,
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where we're entering
into it where no man dare go
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no more 'cause we're embracing
discussion of abortion,
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but I wanted to get,
take it a little further,
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organ donations,
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maybe even population
control under the guise of...
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I was trying to
think how to describe it
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of injections that's been done,
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and euthanasia we
haven't approached that,
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but I think...
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Taken all together
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while there's some
scientific advances mixed in,
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the net result is a lowered view
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of the uniqueness
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and the
spiritual star like quality
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if you like a children of God.
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Yeah.
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Well, I believe I'm
created in the image of God
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and I'm very fallible.
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I make mistakes, I'm
not perfect in any way,
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but my belief system is that
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I am created in the image of God
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and I have
certain responsibilities.
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And one of the
things that confronted me
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is that this idea,
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I know in Washington State
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they call it Death with Dignity.
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It's a
physician assisted suicide
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and most
physicians are violating
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their Hippocratic Oath.
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Yeah.
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When they say
first do no harm...
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And they by
taking on a Hippocratic.
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Yeah.
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Then simply become a
hypocritical character.
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But then they
rationalize that by saying,
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well, I'm
alleviating the suffering.
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And my mom used to work
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in elderly homes, nursing homes.
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And my mom when
the debate was coming
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through Washington State
on the Death with Dignity Act,
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my mom was like, you
know, it's not pretty,
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death isn't meant to be pretty.
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And if someone wants
to kill themselves that's,
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you know, if they want
to do that, that's on them.
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You don't need
to make it sanitary
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and bring the doctor
and witnesses involved.
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I mean, I think in Michigan
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there is a well-known physician,
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Dr. Jack Kevorkian and...
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Yes, I forgot, he is a Michigan.
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And Dr. Kevorkian,
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I think actually
had to go to jail
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because there
were issues involved
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in some of his
administrations of death.
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And...
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Well, you know, he
was proving a point,
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he trying to prove a point,
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but I think anybody
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that was
watching his whole career
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could see that
this particular doctor
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had sort of an unhealthy
relationship with death.
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Yeah, but is that something
where we as society should go?
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Should we have more euthanasia?
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Well.
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Well, what should the
church say about that?
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It's your interview show
and I'm asking you questions.
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What should we do?
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Yeah.
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Well, it's something
that we're not gonna have
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a definitive answer here,
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but it needs to
be part of the mix
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because these
issues of life and death
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and the involvement of society
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and more ominously of
governing authorities.
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And remember, the
church in the Middle Ages
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was one of the
governing authorities
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and horrible
abuses were perpetrated
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upon the families of suicide...
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Yes.
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For example.
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So it's not an abstraction.
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I think it's still
is a black mark as well.
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And then, as far as the church
being opposed to progress,
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early doctors can only
find out about the human body
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by grave robbing...
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Yeah.
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Which had severe
penalties both from,
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from around the
church and several things,
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so it's a funny
thing, but like I say,
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at the end of the day,
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I have no question
that we're in an age
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that's very knowledgeable
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but as far as its
view of the human body,
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it's become very utilitarian
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and the mystery is disappearing.
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Yeah, the mystery,
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but there's still a
huge mystery in divine.
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And, you know, when you
and I talk about Christianity
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and many non-Christians
watching this program
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and it's worth mentioning
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that in practically
every belief system,
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I can see or had
any contact with,
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they all have a myth
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that we somehow
came from the gods
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or the stars or something.
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Yeah.
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It's inherent in
humanity to see us
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as above the animal creation
there's something special.
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But how do you cling to that
when, you know, you can watch,
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you know, the blood
and murder of any TV show,
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it just makes us like
little doves to be blown away,
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medical programs and you
see everything sliced away
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and we sort of just...
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It's no wonder
that people are falling
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for the Android,
the lure of androids
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and the visionary
"visionaries" among us.
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And they're talking about,
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you know, basically
plugging us into a computer
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and merging a human being
with the computer program.
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Like being in the matrix, so...
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I mean.
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That not only imitates
life, it influences life.
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And the matrix
was an interesting
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popular
convergence of what was slowly
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occurring to people.
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And, of course, the philosophers
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grabbled with it long time ago.
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What is reality?
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What's real? Yeah.
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You know, Plato,
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seem sort of quite now
his idea of what's real?
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Is it the cave or the
shadow or the real chair
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that sits somewhere
beyond what we think is reality?
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Yeah.
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And so there's a very
real moral issue at play
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with all of these elements,
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whether it's
abortion or euthanasia.
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There's Religious Freedom
Act because you're dealing
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with the will
and religious faiths.
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You didn't mention it before,
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but even how you treat the dead
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does different religious
groups have quite certain ideas
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on how the dead
should be treated.
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Not all religions would
be happy with, you know,
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with your organs given
to benefit another person.
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Yeah or even be
cremated for some people,
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of some religious faith
traditions, cremation is...
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You know, they
all go to Valhalla.
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Yeah.
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But it's, you know,
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there's no way we can
come to the end of this,
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but I think we're doing
a service to our viewers
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to raise the questions on this.
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It's not simple.
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I think as an overall
package, it's very sobering.
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Yeah. There's some bad things.
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I don't think God intended
us to be killing one another
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even in the womb.
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No.
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The only thing that I've
said in Liberty magazine,
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I throw it in as
cues now and then,
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it bemuses us is
probably the best word to me
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that in the United
States and I've in my lifetime,
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the abortion thing has
gone from almost a non issue
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or a backroom scandal
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that we don't want to know about
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to a Supreme Court decision
and a regular occurrence.
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And further than that, you know,
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murders of doctors by
Christian zealots and so on.
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And my gut feeling is that
it's even though it's legal,
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it's gone semi-underground
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and across the
some southern states
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are coming up
with heart beat laws
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and all the rest
that are really a way
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to both bypass the Supreme Court
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and provoke it
into a reconsideration.
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Well, and the
governor by of Virginia
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going on TV saying, well,
they will deliver the baby
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and then they'll be a discussion
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about what to do with the
baby that was just delivered.
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But what kind of
discussion is there
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when you have a baby there?
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Well, I think you
can't divorce this
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from your cosmic view,
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the value of life
and God and so on.
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And that comes
easy to Christians,
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but what about the Cossacks
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as well as other
groups in history.
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It was their standard practice
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to put a child
out in the cold water
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and if he died, newborn,
that was cleansed the race.
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I believe in the
early Roman times
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you could do the
practice of exposure
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for up to a month's time.
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Yeah.
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In one month old
and, but you know,
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that's part of
what Jesus came for.
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He set all that on His head.
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Right.
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And then He even
said some radical things
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about suffered little children
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to come to Me
and forbid them not.
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And then He said even
the most radical thing
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unless you become
as little children
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you shall not see the kingdom.
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He didn't say
unless you become a fetus.
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No, He didn't say
become a fetus but I'm...
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Although it says before you were
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in your
mother's womb I knew you.
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Yeah, before you
were in mother's womb
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I knew you, but
when, at Jesus' time,
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is it the
society, secular society
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that was practicing exposure?
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Yeah.
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There were groups
practicing children sacrifice.
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Though those
things aren't smile.
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My belief system is that
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those things aren't smiled upon.
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You know, I
think child sacrifice,
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most of the world
sees that that was
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an age of
barbarism and superstition.
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But others today are
some of what we talked about.
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We just see it as a Darwinian
natural selection process
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and we're strengthening the race
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by some of these things.
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Yeah, they strengthened the race
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by getting rid of
Jews in World War II.
00:09:03.74\00:09:05.14
Yes.
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No, I don't buy
that kind of stuff.
00:09:06.54\00:09:07.88
That's right, I'm
in total disagreement
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and then if the
issue of eugenics
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and the issue of
population control,
00:09:12.61\00:09:16.58
I'm about freedom
and freedom of liberty,
00:09:16.62\00:09:19.15
and freedom of choice.
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But when your
rights are interfering
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with a third
party or another person,
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that's when you need to
take another look at it.
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That's true.
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Now there's just so many
ways this discussion goes
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and I really hope
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that our listeners have
thought a little bit about it.
00:09:35.14\00:09:37.14
But the parting shot
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before I give you
another chance to talk,
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on the abortion thing,
00:09:40.91\00:09:42.24
what does bemuse me a bit,
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the Roman
Catholics to their credit
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were the first major
church group of this country
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that really made
a big deal about it.
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And now that's been
picked up by others,
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and particularly
mainline Protestants,
00:09:53.46\00:09:56.26
but I know there's a difference
00:09:56.29\00:09:58.33
in why Roman
Catholics was so fired up
00:09:58.36\00:10:01.13
because they had a
view of original sin,
00:10:01.16\00:10:04.80
an infant baptism
unless you are baptized,
00:10:04.83\00:10:07.17
you know you're in trouble.
00:10:07.20\00:10:09.57
We don't have that same view.
00:10:09.60\00:10:11.01
So what if you
don't share that theology,
00:10:11.04\00:10:13.88
does that mean
that you would see
00:10:13.91\00:10:16.04
the evil of
abortion the same way?
00:10:16.08\00:10:18.25
It's debatable.
00:10:18.28\00:10:19.61
Yeah.
00:10:19.65\00:10:20.98
What I'm happier with is
00:10:21.02\00:10:22.38
when you cut to
the chase and say,
00:10:22.42\00:10:24.02
any gratuitous killing of life
is opposed to God's principle,
00:10:24.05\00:10:28.66
and then you don't
need to say as, you know,
00:10:28.69\00:10:30.03
is it the heartbeat or is it
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when there's movement
quickening or whatever?
00:10:31.43\00:10:34.06
Don't you think?
00:10:34.10\00:10:35.43
So what's your takeaway.
00:10:35.46\00:10:36.97
You know,
00:10:37.00\00:10:38.33
you be my sounding
board for a few minutes.
00:10:38.37\00:10:40.94
Yeah, that is my takeaway.
00:10:40.97\00:10:42.97
You know, in my view,
00:10:43.00\00:10:46.61
God doesn't want people
to be killing each other,
00:10:46.64\00:10:49.91
and the value of human life
is very, very important to God.
00:10:49.94\00:10:56.89
Before He knew us when
we were in our mother's womb
00:10:56.92\00:11:00.22
even been before we were born.
00:11:00.26\00:11:02.62
The very first
recognition of Jesus as Messiah
00:11:02.66\00:11:09.20
was from a, what we
might scientists call today
00:11:09.23\00:11:12.07
a fetus in Elizabeth's womb.
00:11:12.10\00:11:14.90
The child was
rolling in the Bible record.
00:11:14.94\00:11:17.34
So from my perspective,
00:11:17.37\00:11:18.71
it's very clear that
life needs to be valued,
00:11:18.74\00:11:21.34
and where there's a problem,
00:11:21.38\00:11:23.21
where you're going
to harm somebody else
00:11:23.24\00:11:26.82
that's when the
law should kick in
00:11:26.85\00:11:29.08
and provide some
balancing rights there.
00:11:29.12\00:11:34.52
There's a powerful scene
at the end of the gospels
00:11:34.56\00:11:37.23
that a few filmmakers
have tried to bring to life.
00:11:37.26\00:11:41.40
But the words are powerful,
00:11:41.43\00:11:42.76
where Jesus
around the Passover table
00:11:42.80\00:11:45.40
with His disciples
breaks the bread and He says,
00:11:45.43\00:11:48.84
"This is My body given for you."
00:11:48.87\00:11:53.84
Now I don't buy into
some theological views
00:11:53.88\00:11:56.64
that would sort of transfer
the actual existence to God
00:11:56.68\00:12:01.45
to any remembrance of that.
00:12:01.48\00:12:03.52
But I do believe that
that's an illustration
00:12:03.55\00:12:06.99
of the very sacredness
of the human existence.
00:12:07.02\00:12:10.13
He, God could put
Himself in a human form
00:12:10.16\00:12:13.80
in ways we don't understand.
00:12:13.83\00:12:15.63
We know God's Word tells us
00:12:15.66\00:12:18.37
that we are
fearfully and wonderfully made
00:12:18.40\00:12:20.64
and that our bodies
are the temple of God.
00:12:20.67\00:12:23.27
At the very least, that means
00:12:23.30\00:12:25.07
that we should look on matters
of life and death and of origin
00:12:25.11\00:12:28.84
like in the abortion
situation and euthanasia,
00:12:28.88\00:12:32.78
we should look at
this with extreme caution
00:12:32.81\00:12:36.75
and indeed, reverence for life.
00:12:36.79\00:12:40.59
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:12:40.62\00:12:43.76