Participants:
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI200479A
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00:28 Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
00:30 This is your program bringing news, views, 00:33 analysis up-to-date information 00:34 and sometimes even readings of editorials, 00:37 little key to what's coming on Religious Liberty. 00:40 My name is Lincoln Steed, editor of Liberty Magazine. 00:44 And I'm sitting here alone without a guest. 00:48 Usually, there's a counterpoint guest on the other side, 00:52 but I'm here. 00:54 I don't know if it's the end 00:56 but well into the phenomenon 00:57 of the COVID-19 scare in the world 01:00 and in particular in the United States, 01:01 social distancing, stay at home orders, 01:05 restaurants closed 01:06 unless you're willing to eat in the... 01:09 up front on a table or as yesterday, 01:13 we went somewhere where they set us up 01:14 in sort of the grassy section next to the restaurant 01:19 that I don't even think they earned. 01:22 It's not normal life. 01:23 When this began, 01:25 I wrote my first editorial for the March issue. 01:28 Immediately after I traveled 01:33 in early March... 01:35 I'm sorry, this was for the January, February, 01:37 March, April, for the May issue, 01:40 immediately after traveling in March to Oregon, 01:44 and taking an airport through 01:48 Chicago, Los Angeles and Seattle. 01:51 I was traveling through the hotspots of contagion. 01:55 And I entitled the editorial contagion 01:57 and I want to share what hit me immediately, 02:00 and then if I have time, share something else 02:02 I wrote more recently on this phenomenon. 02:06 This is what I wrote. 02:07 "Back in early March, I was still traveling 02:11 far afield promoting religious liberty. 02:13 One of my last trips before social distancing 02:17 had me largely confined to home 02:19 and walks in my neighborhood 02:20 was to San Francisco, California. 02:23 Already there was a rising sense of social panic. 02:27 The airport was a little quieter than usual. 02:31 Many wore masks to hide their tight expressions. 02:35 Others like plovers nesting in the grass, 02:38 tried to hide in quieter corners 02:40 of the concourse waiting areas. 02:41 All paid good attention to the television monitors 02:45 and the escalating tiles of contagion. 02:49 At the motel in the screen in my room had the same cast, 02:54 to escape it in the sense of siege, 02:57 I took off on foot crossing the moat 02:59 of the hospitality district 03:02 and after under passing the freeway 03:05 arriving in the almost medieval back streets of the city. 03:11 All seemed normal enough, 03:12 although with the new awareness of threat, 03:14 I could see the hazard of jostling in the street 03:18 or waiting in line in crowded stores 03:20 for food likely topped with descending vapors. 03:24 So I decided to seek a quieter venue, 03:27 and a used bookstore seemed to fit that criteria. 03:30 It was quieter, confirming my view 03:33 that panic for most 03:35 does not necessarily lead to introspection. 03:38 I scanned the shelves, 03:40 looking for interest and bargains, 03:43 and quickly found both. 03:45 It was a fat paperback of 750 pages 03:48 and a price less than a dollar, 03:50 indicating a lack of reader interest. 03:52 The title jumped out at me however, 03:55 "The Coming Plague: 03:57 Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance." 04:01 I have been reading it ever since. 04:03 The 1984 tome, 04:05 the basis for a TBS documentary, 04:07 is incredibly close to a secular book of Revelation 04:12 in its specificity in predicting 04:15 what we are living through. 04:17 It documents the efforts of epidemiologists 04:19 and an array of scientists to combat 04:21 the veritable assembly line of possible pandemics unleashed 04:27 by changing world demographics 04:29 and the effects of climate change. 04:32 That was some weeks ago. 04:34 Now the United States 04:35 has more COVID-19 cases than China, 04:38 where the virus first appeared, 04:40 and New York is caught up 04:41 in a frightening exponential spiral 04:45 of infection and death. 04:46 For much of the population, normal life has ceased. 04:52 Empty grocery shelves reflect panic buying. 04:55 Empty streets are the Dow Jones proxy 04:58 for an economy in rewind. 05:01 Information on the crisis is everywhere, 05:04 but yet often contradictory and incomplete. 05:07 One online doctor, strain on his face 05:09 as he incongruously touches his face repeatedly, 05:12 says the most successful outcome 05:14 will be a mere 100,000 dead, 05:16 and by way we passed that already, 05:18 the worst-case scenario: many, many times that. 05:22 No wonder some news commentators, 05:24 reaching into the purple verbiage 05:26 of the Hindenburg tragedy 05:27 of a century ago, 05:28 keep using the word "apocalyptic." 05:31 That term, of course, means 05:33 "resembling the end of the world, 05:34 momentous or catastrophic," 05:37 but at root it means an evocation 05:39 of the biblical Apocalypse, 05:41 or Book of Revelation, 05:42 which does prophecy in some detail the final events 05:45 for this world. 05:47 People are beginning to wonder at it all. 05:50 I was in my backyard a few days ago, 05:52 trimming a dead tree, and the neighbor's wife 05:54 called across the fence to comment on the contagion. 05:58 "It almost seems, she said, 06:00 like one of the plagues of Revelation 06:02 at the end of the world," 06:04 perhaps testing what my reaction might be. 06:07 "Certainly the type of thing 06:09 we might expect at the end of time," 06:10 I said carefully. 06:12 "But it does not directly answer to the specific plagues 06:15 described in that Bible book." 06:18 The ancient Etruscans 06:20 had an interesting view of their history. 06:23 They divided it into 90-year blocks, 06:25 roughly equaling four generations, 06:28 and about as long as any human being could live. 06:30 The Romans picked up on the idea, 06:32 but lengthened it to 100 years and then 110 years, 06:35 calling it a saeculum: 06:38 the period when living memory failed 06:40 and human reactions tended to reset. 06:43 I think it interesting 06:45 that it is approximately 100 years 06:47 since a flu pandemic killed 675,000 Americans 06:51 and tens of millions worldwide. 06:53 We have been here before. 06:56 Of course, coming on the heels 06:57 of the generational killing of World War I, 07:00 the flu epidemic of 1918 blurred 07:03 into the general horror of the times 07:05 and the soon-to-come Great Depression. 07:07 Lest we forget! 07:09 Benjamin Franklin, 07:11 he of the Poor Richard's Almanack 07:13 and many pithy statements, 07:15 wrote in words variously reported 07:18 and generally repeated 07:20 as "They who are willing 07:22 to give up liberty for security, 07:25 deserve neither liberty nor security." 07:30 It is a lesson that we started to forget 07:33 after September 11 and that should be kept in mind 07:36 as we adopt draconian and uniformly accepted measures 07:41 to protect ourselves from 07:42 "the pestilence in darkness and the destruction at noonday" 07:47 as Psalm 91:6 puts it. 07:50 We have long since escaped the pestilences 07:53 that wiped out native peoples 07:55 in the New World and the Antipodes. 07:57 And the depredations 07:59 of the plague now reside quiescently 08:02 in history book footnotes 08:04 and weapons lab vial storage. 08:07 But we would do well to ponder 08:09 what accompanied the Black Death 08:11 as it scythed down as much as a quarter 08:14 or even a third of Europe's population. 08:17 Economic activity all but ceased 08:20 and farms ceased to function, leading to starvation 08:24 on a level approaching the plague itself. 08:27 Cannibalism, a repressed memory 08:29 now only hinted at in fairy tales, 08:31 was an ugly fact of a desperate time, 08:34 which had been preceded by decades of crop failure 08:38 and weather change, 08:39 suggesting that God had forgotten them. 08:42 Lawlessness and war followed 08:44 in the train of social meltdown. 08:47 I could not help but note that in the midst 08:49 of the COVID-19 troubles in the US, 08:51 there was news of another North Korean missile launch. 08:55 So much of our post-World War II peace 08:58 comes from the world's interconnectedness 09:00 binding nations to a realization 09:03 that they will lose more by war 09:04 than they could ever gain. 09:06 The collapse of the world economic order 09:08 might well remove that inhibition. 09:11 The Christian misreading of Scripture in the Middle Ages 09:15 regarding the Jews had long 09:17 since become a justification for civil suppression 09:21 in medieval Europe. 09:22 Now, with the panic of the plague, 09:24 it spilled over into gross acts of violence: 09:27 In Strasbourg, France, for example, 09:29 on Valentine's Day 1349, 1,000 Jews were burned alive. 09:34 Flagellants and religious heretics abounded. 09:37 For many it seemed the end of the world. 09:41 Even today, religious freedom is generally supported 09:45 but often an elusive thing. 09:48 It is not easily judged by society at large. 09:52 And it's worth remembering that efforts to restrict it 09:55 nearly always have broad support 09:57 and pass as a compelling societal 10:01 or governmental need. 10:04 We at best pray that human nature does not react 10:07 against itself as it did back then. 10:09 And yes, the scientifically led efforts 10:12 to limit our present pandemic seem well thought out. 10:16 And yes, the government is seemingly 10:19 acting with admirable respect for human life. 10:22 But whether our extreme measures will work, 10:25 and whether they will bring 10:26 other troubles in their train remains to be seen. 10:29 The medieval contagion brought 10:32 by the Black Death extended far beyond the dying time, 10:36 it likely will be the same today." 10:40 I wrote that early on in this pandemic 10:43 to really sort of prod people 10:47 with a little bit of an awareness 10:48 how this dynamic worked in the past. 10:50 I don't know. 10:52 No one can know whether this is anywhere near 10:55 even the flu pandemic of 1918, 10:59 or at the worst case 11:01 whether that could ever possibly be like 11:03 the Black Death of the Middle Ages, 11:06 I don't know. 11:08 And if this is not, we don't know 11:09 if the next one will be like it, 11:11 but we should know, 11:12 we should be somewhat aware of history 11:15 and of human nature, 11:16 and how religious liberty 11:18 and indeed civil liberties affair 11:22 in these sort of panics. 11:24 And I do believe the same dynamic is at work. 11:27 I do believe it very likely that we're suffering, 11:31 going to suffer some sort of economic collapse 11:34 at least, like we had in 2008, may be like we had in 1929, 11:39 or maybe even worse, 11:41 because we live in a house of cards. 11:44 Our modern life, wonderful as it is compared 11:48 to the poverty and rudeness 11:54 of the medieval era 11:55 where even the king, you know, 11:57 didn't have glass in his windows and, 12:00 you know, might have seemed great to be 12:01 a potentate then. 12:03 But they didn't live like 12:04 the poorest of the poor in a western country. 12:07 So it may seem great, 12:08 but we're headed into a time 12:12 perhaps of a reckoning when, 12:15 you know, our chips and our silicon, 12:17 and our thin barriers between us 12:20 and barbarism can disappear quite easily. 12:23 Very few people realize that 12:25 we're on the knife's edge, 12:26 even though it's a wonderful life, 12:28 just like flying in a plane. 12:30 It's 500-600-mile an hour, beautiful, slim, 12:34 shiny tube that it's barely thicker than the soda pop can, 12:37 you're carrying as much explosive gasoline 12:40 as you are passengers. 12:42 It's minus 50 or 70 degrees outside, 12:45 your tube is under pressure, it could explode at any moment. 12:49 The engines could cease functioning. 12:51 We hardly give a thought to it 12:52 because this is a wonderful jet set privilege. 12:55 And yet, you know, moments dislocation 12:58 and it's all a flaming massive debris. 13:03 In some ways, modern life is like that, 13:06 in some ways, and in many ways, 13:09 Bible prophecy shines through the human progress, 13:14 whether it's the Tower of Babel, 13:16 or the Twin Towers of New York, 13:19 or, you know, some sort of treaty 13:21 that we established, 13:23 it's not necessarily peace in our time. 13:25 In our time is always the moment of truth. 13:28 And I believe, well, we shouldn't panic, 13:32 and we should do whatever we can 13:34 in a responsible way to help our fellows. 13:37 We should be thinking introspectively, 13:40 how do I relate to this? 13:42 How will I use my faith 13:44 to traverse these difficult times? 13:47 Is it going to carry me through or will I be swept away 13:50 by the illusion of the time? 13:53 The Bible is very plain, it says, you know, 13:54 those before the flood, they ate and drink, 13:56 gave in marriage until they came 13:57 and swept them away. 14:00 I mean, maybe Jonah 14:02 was the only one and his family, 14:04 but it's likely others thought a little on it, 14:07 and yet didn't take advantage. 14:09 We've been given the privilege 14:11 I think in this case of a warning. 14:13 How do we follow up remains to be seen? 14:16 Stay with me. 14:17 I want to share something else after a break 14:19 that I'd written after some months very close 14:23 to where we are now. 14:25 We'll be back shortly. |
Revised 2020-10-06