Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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Before the break,
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we were in a very
portentous discussion
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about the partisan,
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nationalism and
then triumphalism
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that just floats
swirling around us
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at the moment in the US
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as we come up to a
presidential election.
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And, of course,
there's different views
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on who should be voted
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whether the
president should stay or so.
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But when there's
this backdrop of this
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rather radical nationalism
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mixed with a more
than a dose of religion,
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Christianity, it's
a heady mix, isn't it?
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Very heady, you know, who's...
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Oh, when you start
dividing up partisanly,
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which church members are right,
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and which church
members are wrong?
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This is where when you come
from a servant leader position
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like we did,
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and you're interacting,
this becomes a question.
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You know, do you believe.
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Well, even in the
afternoon meetings
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that we all run and, you know,
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I have at least half the year
I've got an afternoon meeting
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and the standard retained
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as we go through and critique
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whoever the national leadership
is for their treatment
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of religious freedom
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and their public statements
or so, have to do that.
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How else could we
have a discussion?
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But I'm finding more
and more that people bridle,
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if you say anything
critical or analytical
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about their current hero.
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There's always
been an element of that,
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but it's on
steroids at the moment.
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It is much worse
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than I've ever
encountered before.
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When I do an afternoon meeting
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just because you're
doing current events.
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When you talk
about current events,
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you're looking at
what is happening now.
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You're not looking at
what happened the last term
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of the last president
or the last, you know,
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term for the last
Supreme Court session
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or congressional session.
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And so, people do
tend to get very connected
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and tied to
their political party,
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and they don't want to
hear anything bad about it.
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But the truth is this.
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When it comes to
the First Amendment,
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and the separation
of church and the state
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and free exercise,
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we clearly are
schizophrenic in this country
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regarding the party system,
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because if you're a Republican,
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you tend to really
protect the free exercise part.
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Yes, it is true.
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And if you're a Democrat,
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you want to protect that
establishment clause part
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to keep church
and state separate.
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So in any given scenario,
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you and I as
religious liberty leaders
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in the church,
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we're going to
say something negative
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about the political party.
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And it's a good time
to throw in my theory,
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I believe most of the
time I've been on liberty,
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the battle has been
over establishment state aid
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and state
supported religious activity
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and we've got it
with a vengeance now,
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with the religious faction
supporting the president,
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they are favored.
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And I believe we're
at the tipping point
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where Free
Exercise is going to be...
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Free Exercise is
really becoming an issue.
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Yeah.
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And in many ways,
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that's the more egregious
break of the First Amendment.
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And I think that's upon us.
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And that's really why we
get this combative issues
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between Christians who
want the right to practice
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their religion freely
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and are seen to be Republican.
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And the LGBTQ community
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that want to
fight against religious,
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you know, Free Exercise,
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because they're being
discriminated against,
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and they're seen as being
the ungodly Democrat Party.
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And again, we have
to look beyond this.
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We have to look beyond
the political party system.
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And we have to
come together and say,
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"There has to be a
way in a civilized society
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that religion is protected,
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yet not used to put down
another segment of society."
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I know, it said
nicely, but in reality,
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a large faction
want to use religion
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to put down their opposition.
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But as far as examples,
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it's pretty easy to
look to Nazi Germany
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and some people
just go ballistic.
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You know, the idea that
you're directly comparing
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any personage or
aspect of our government
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to Nazism is horrific.
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And on the face of
it, of course it is.
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But the reason Nazi
Germany is so important
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in the modern era, it
was a democratic state,
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a modern,
industrialized democratic state
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that went in that
abhorrent direction.
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The only other
example in the modern world
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that I think we
can look at is Italy.
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Well, not the
only other example.
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The only other two is Italy.
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And there was more of,
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as the knock
against Italy was it
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was more of posturing
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Mussolini was a
stutter and all the rest.
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And you go to Rome today
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and there's the
great monuments he built.
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The edifices of
fascism is still with us.
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But as it soon revealed
against senior brother Hitler,
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and Mussolini was
sort of a wannabe.
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But the only
other example is Spain.
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And that came
out of the Civil War
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and then the role
of the Catholic Church
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there was rather
medieval, and so on.
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So I don't think
there's easy parallels
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between both of those.
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So Germany is the natural one.
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Germany will
always be the natural one.
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And there's been no enabling act
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in the US
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so that we have had the
Reichstag equivalent, 9/11.
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But we haven't
had an enabling act.
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But as far as our church
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and I'm not picking on Adventism
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'cause it's my favorite church.
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My too.
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My favorite Christian Church.
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But in Germany
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as the National
Socialist came to power,
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Adolf Hitler
made very good noises
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about support of Christianity.
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In fact, he even said
that National Socialism
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was based on Christianity
which was nonsensical.
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It was fake news,
but it worked for him.
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And even in our church,
as most Christian churches,
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the Catholic Church
made a formal agreement
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with the state.
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They liked its opposition
to communism/socialism,
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even though they
were National Socialists,
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didn't like communism.
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So the church was with him.
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And I know a story
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about our
church that's very sad.
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But it's
illustrative, so I'm telling it.
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Not only in the churches
where men did many of them
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have the swastika
behind the lectern,
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which is the rough equivalent
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today of the American flag
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alongside the so
called Christian flag,
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not a place to clamp
the standard of the state.
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You can be fully
state supporting,
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but in that holy
place, it's dedicated to God.
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So I think it's inappropriate.
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But there was a
story that I've come across
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that during the build up
to power before World War II,
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one of our
church leaders, a woman
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who was in our church in Germany
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was in charge of the
Sabbath school department,
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came on tour of
the United States.
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And as she traveled around,
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the word started
getting back to the leadership.
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This woman's
pushing Nazism and Hitler.
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So finally they took
her aside and they found
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that she was a personal
friend of Joseph Goebbels.
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And that, you know,
wouldn't challenge with it?
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Absolutely, Nazism is
the answer for everything
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and so she was
shipped back to Germany.
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So it tells me how totally
the insiders had been turned
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in support of
Nazism rather than...
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She should have
been going around talking
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about running
Bible study courses
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and, you know, on the
Sabbath School program
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at the beginning
of the church service
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each Sabbath.
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She was rather promoting this
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abhorrent
disastrous political agenda.
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But at that point, she
couldn't have known that.
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Because it wasn't
out in terms of Nazism.
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No.
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It was a moral
regeneration of the nation.
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And people...
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Which all the
Christian churches supported...
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They loved it. They loved it.
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I mean, they should have been
a little bit more perceptive
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because the bully boy
tactics of the brown shirts
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from day one were to, sort
of, like a protection racket
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in with the shopkeepers
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and that they
would strong arm it.
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Keep in mind that
they're coming off of a war
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they had lost.
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And a great depression.
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And a great depression
and they're trying to repay.
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Where people have
lost nearly everything.
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No, they were
1,000 exculpatory reasons
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why they got into that.
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I think by that point though,
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a perceptive Christian
should have been forewarned.
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But they've been carried
along so much that, like I say,
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this church
leader was good buddies
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with the propagandist of Nazism
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was promoting it
here in North America.
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So it's insidious, Nazism.
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But really in reality,
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any contrary system
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and especially
the dangerous ones,
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letting them into
the Christian community
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is, you know, it's
worse than white-anting.
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It's like, you know,
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drilling for
putting dynamite sticks
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within the Christian community.
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And, of course,
that way was carried
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through on this
issue of nationalism,
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not Nazism, but nationalism.
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Yes, absolutely.
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This comes back to
where our concern is today,
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that there is a rise
in nationalism in the US,
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and that it's dangerous.
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And this is the
type that we know.
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Well, I'll
complete and give you a,
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not a last word but
the word after made them.
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But I've thought
about this an American,
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nationalism
dependent upon religious bloc
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or ethnic bloc,
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what is to create nationalism
in the United States?
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There's only a few things,
00:10:08.94\00:10:10.27
a single shared
ideal of individual liberty
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and freedom for all.
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It was a
touchstone for a long time.
00:10:15.64\00:10:17.78
But I think
that's drifting away.
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It's being
replaced by a, sort of,
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a triumphalist view of us.
00:10:22.75\00:10:26.35
You know, and then in
brackets, (sort of voice),
00:10:26.39\00:10:29.06
sort of, white "Americans."
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It's us against the
world to protect what we have,
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which is a
welfare, exceptionalism,
00:10:37.17\00:10:40.34
our standard
living above everyone else
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that will fight you to keep it.
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Yes, definitely.
00:10:44.91\00:10:46.24
And that's a false
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sort of a
nationalism in my view.
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It's always
dangerous to do that.
00:10:49.58\00:10:51.71
And, you know, again,
we have to remember that
00:10:51.75\00:10:54.75
to be Christian and Christ like
00:10:54.78\00:10:58.55
is not necessary
to align ourselves
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with one political
party or the other.
00:11:02.02\00:11:04.63
It's just to do what's right,
00:11:04.66\00:11:07.60
and to try to make society
00:11:07.63\00:11:11.13
a better place
for everyone to be.
00:11:11.17\00:11:13.64
It's been a few
years since my father died,
00:11:17.04\00:11:19.31
but I will never forget
that night in the hospital.
00:11:19.34\00:11:22.81
He was only a few
hours away from his death
00:11:22.84\00:11:24.88
and they gave him a
last minute surgery.
00:11:24.91\00:11:26.61
And as they wheeled him
down through the public place
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into the prep room for surgery,
00:11:29.72\00:11:32.15
he was singing a song
that I'd heard before.
00:11:32.19\00:11:35.09
I think most recently,
it was a sacred harp choir.
00:11:35.12\00:11:41.26
That is quite a sound
if you've ever heard it.
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And he was singing the song,
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"There is a happy
land far, far away
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where saints and angels dwell."
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When we talk about nationalism,
00:11:50.17\00:11:52.81
and indeed
Christian nationalism,
00:11:52.84\00:11:55.28
I think it's worth remembering
that for the Christian,
00:11:55.31\00:11:58.95
that has to be
the point of reference
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that happy land far, far away,
00:12:00.95\00:12:03.52
that Promised Land.
00:12:03.55\00:12:05.39
But for Christians
living in a society,
00:12:05.42\00:12:08.02
particularly in a
modern, democratic society,
00:12:08.06\00:12:11.66
the temptation is
overwhelming to be swept along
00:12:11.69\00:12:15.33
in a tide of enthusiasm
00:12:15.36\00:12:17.40
for what that
state is and can provide.
00:12:17.43\00:12:19.73
That's fine.
00:12:19.77\00:12:21.10
We have certain voting
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and citizenship responsibilities
00:12:22.50\00:12:24.21
and the loyalty to
provide for the here and now.
00:12:24.24\00:12:27.04
But always beyond that
there has to be the song
00:12:27.08\00:12:31.05
of that happy
land far, far away.
00:12:31.08\00:12:36.08
For liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:12:36.12\00:12:39.12