Welcome back to Liberty Insider.
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Before the break with
guest Clifford Goldstein,
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one of my quieter guest.
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We were talking about
anything but quietness,
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the figurative agitation
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we get back from readers,
this can happen with listeners.
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And how do you react to that?
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And we've both have
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very interesting
experiences with that.
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Well, when I edited Liberty,
I get the wackiest letters,
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and I publish them.
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And then I would write
the snide comments after
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and I thought it
was the most interesting
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part of the magazine.
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And I got away
with it for a while
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till my boss got on me.
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And then at one
point, he made me stop.
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And then I wrote, "Well,
I got to stop this because
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too much flak from the boss."
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I put it in there, you know.
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Did you? Yeah, I put in there.
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And I did it for a
while, but I stopped,
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really, because events...
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It was the best
part of the magazine.
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Events have sped up so much.
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It's very
difficult to impossible
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with something like Liberty
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to put the latest
thing in because there's...
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Even if I drop the
editorial in as we go to press,
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which I do, it's
still basically a month
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until anyone reads them.
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And then you get caught.
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And with letters, it really was,
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someone would send a letter
in and that was the second issue
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from them when they see it.
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And then a few
of them objected to.
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What I myself would object,
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I would take their
letter do what you did,
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not necessarily,
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but I would put my answer
sort of setting them straight.
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Well, this is the bully
pulpit that they didn't like,
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where they
would sort of skew it.
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Well, you're the editor
and that's your prerogative.
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And one thing I do in
Liberty, which I will defend,
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as I've had to in
front of the board.
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Not every article is
exactly as I would want.
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But it's not right
for an editor to take
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someone's philosophical
and factual and, you know,
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the production of their
mind and twist it your way.
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You know, it would...
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Why even steal
somebody's published articles
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that I didn't
necessarily agree with?
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Yeah, I'm not
quite that far off.
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I thought it was a
valid point, you know.
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Like I remember, it was,
in fact I used to have...
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Nick Miller, I think
you've had on the show,
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he had an article
one time about prison...
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You know, some guy
is a mass murderer,
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you know, rapist, he does
a horrible, and he's in jail.
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And, you know, what he wants,
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you know, some
religious thing or something.
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And they go to court to sue
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to give some
violent serial killer
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or some secular predator.
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But those cases are
not usually really about
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that crazy, perverted guy.
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There's a principle that take...
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There's a
principle. Yeah, but I get.
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But even the principle,
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and I get, but
to put it this way,
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I disagreed with Nick on it.
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But, you know,
he's a good scholar,
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knows religious liberty.
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And I've read his article,
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and I didn't even comment on it.
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You know, as long as
it wasn't something wacko,
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you know, there could
be different views on it.
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I had no problem
running different views on it,
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even if I didn't agree with it.
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Well, you know, I don't believe
in forcing views on people,
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any more than you.
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But that's a different approach.
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When you have a publication,
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there has to be a
viewpoint that it's known for.
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And so I wasn't
inclined to do...
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I think you did
sometimes with good effect.
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You'd have two
sides of an argument,
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you put both of them on.
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What do you mean, do
that? I just run with other.
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I will put an article
in there may be some...
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aspects of that
I'm uncomfortable with
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and I would write a footnote.
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I remember D. James Kennedy
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pushing for the Jones
amendment wanting to break down
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the constitutional
inhibitions about churches
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acting as political parties.
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I put it in, I told him, I
said, "I'll run your article,
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I won't change it but
I will put a footnote."
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And I explained in
the editorial footnote,
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why we differ
from that position,
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why we respect
it, but it was wrong
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from a religious
liberty point view.
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I remember, I used to,
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the magazine I
salivated over for years,
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which is The New Republic.
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This is the old New
Republic... And you so be on it.
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Not the new one, it's
been an intellectual flop.
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Be careful they might sue us.
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For 15 years.
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I'm talking about
the old New Republic.
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But you were
ardent reader. Oh, yeah.
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And I remember, you
know, they were definitely
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more left wing
and I still remember
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they had an article in there.
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It was Bush running
against Clinton, okay?
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Clinton...
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And I remember
they had a beautiful arc
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in there by Richard Vigilante.
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He said the case for Bush,
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will you knew not one
person in the New Republic
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was going to vote for Bush,
and they read that article.
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And I thought,
you know, I really...
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That's intellectual honesty.
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And I wanted to
make that somewhat,
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I mean, you don't
want to do with that often.
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But at times,
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I would run
something as long as it wasn't
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whackos stuff that I
didn't necessarily...
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As I said, a perfect example
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was Nick on the prisoner rights,
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the prisoner rights,
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and I just wasn't as
somebody who's in jail,
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you lose certain rights, okay?
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And religious
liberty too, I mean, how far,
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you know, I mean,
'cause some of those guys
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really took it to extremes.
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Be careful, you know...
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Yeah, you might throw, yeah.
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Prison right,
you do lose rights.
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But think about when
there's a persecution underway,
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which could even
happen in the United States
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where for COVID,
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churches that are opening now
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there's even a
threat against one pastor,
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I know of that he's
defying the government.
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You can agree or disagree
with the government mandates,
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he's defying it on principle.
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It's possible he could
go to prison for probably
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not more than a
few weeks in this case.
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But the judge can pretty much
determine where you get sent.
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And in prison,
that person could be
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persecuted
depending on the prison.
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They could be brutalized,
many things have happened.
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And because we're
always writing about
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whether you need a
certain diet or whatever.
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But think about it another way.
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There's a whole group
that the state doesn't like
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their religious viewpoint.
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So on technicality,
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they can get sent into prison
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where they lose all their rights
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and then all sorts of
mental and physical abuse
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can be visited on there.
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Well, that's bad.
That's a whole separate...
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Well, let's go to a real world
situation in the Soviet Union,
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in its waning days.
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Yeah, I remember that...
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Philosophically
didn't agree with religion,
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they went
persecuting it like Stalin did.
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But they were starting
to treat people of faith
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and conviction of
faith as mental jobs.
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And they would put him
in a mental institution
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where they were subjected to...
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all sorts of chemical treatments
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and subhuman treatment, wrong,
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but it all started because
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they were flipped on to the side
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where they lost their rights
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just because of
religious viewpoint.
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Well, that's a
separate... That's not work...
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Well, whatever,
whatever we obviously agree,
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that's bad, and so on.
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And that was one of the geniuses
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of the founding fathers in
separating church and state,
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and giving us
this religious liberty.
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But we need to be
wearying and I've picked this up
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in the years that
I've been editing Liberty,
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except there's a
Stalin or you know,
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some Pol Pot of someone
that's gonna just wipe you off
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because, you
know, you have a tune
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or look like you might
be religious or educated.
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By and large,
persecution in the modern world
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is on technicalities,
lose your building permit.
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It could be as simple.
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And I think this is the
way it'll come in the US
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if when it comes.
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They don't like say,
Seventh-day Adventists.
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So the police are
parked around the corner
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from the Adventist Church,
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when you get out of
church and just stop people
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one after the other,
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you know, your traffic light
doesn't look good or whatever.
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Do you have any money?
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You know, the
police can do this.
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Fine you've got
money, you gave offering.
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So you've got your wallet
with you, take all your money.
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What they're doing in
some places now, credit card,
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run it to the limit,
empty your credit card, bye.
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So basically, there
could be a systematic effort
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to fleece people as they leave.
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And you wouldn't think, "Oh,
that's religious persecution, "
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but it would arise from
nothing but religious...
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Well, that's a separate
from what we were talking about.
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But yeah, that is bad.
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That is bad.
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And, but that's how it happens.
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Not in the US yet,
particularly but in voting,
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which would jump
through, come through.
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That's how the
voters were intimidated.
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Police down the
street from a voting area
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in a certain precinct
and intimidate people.
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As we even saw this time,
people with guns hanging about,
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up front monitoring.
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There's a lot of
things that show an attitude
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toward a certain viewpoint,
either voting a certain party,
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or worshiping a certain way.
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And it may not
appear as persecution.
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You know, what you're
talking about reminds me
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there was an
article that came out
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in the Atlantic Monthly
at the end of last year.
00:08:55.73\00:08:59.97
And, you know, it was
freaky, because it was,
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how to avert a civil war.
00:09:03.20\00:09:06.71
So it almost wasn't,
00:09:06.74\00:09:08.61
we might have a
civil war or whatever,
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it was almost like
the civil war is coming,
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and what can we do to stop it.
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Now that's pretty freaky.
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And this was even
before the COVID thing came,
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and COVID...
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Whoa, how quickly life changed,
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how quickly everything changed,
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things we took for granted,
just shushed, were gone.
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And if they were worried
about that then before COVID,
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after COVID, and
there was a line in there,
00:09:41.74\00:09:46.72
where the author said
the American experiment
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is not
guaranteed to last forever.
00:09:50.32\00:09:55.09
And if you happen
to be into prophecy,
00:09:55.12\00:09:58.73
and understand a
little of America,
00:09:58.76\00:10:01.63
in prophecy, it was like, wow!
00:10:01.66\00:10:05.17
Here's the secular
magazine saying something
00:10:05.20\00:10:09.77
very, very scary,
00:10:09.80\00:10:12.81
more scary than they realize.
00:10:12.84\00:10:17.28
Jesus Christ said that
this gospel of the kingdom,
00:10:17.31\00:10:22.22
not of a Great
America or a United Europe,
00:10:22.25\00:10:26.59
this gospel of the
kingdom, the kingdom of God
00:10:26.62\00:10:29.82
shall be preached unto
all nations as a witness,
00:10:29.86\00:10:33.03
and then the end will come.
00:10:33.06\00:10:36.13
In many ways, our age reminds us
00:10:36.16\00:10:38.77
that the end is near.
00:10:38.80\00:10:40.44
But there is a
great work to be done.
00:10:40.47\00:10:43.10
And as we've
discussed on this program,
00:10:43.14\00:10:45.14
many countries may have a
nominal religious connection.
00:10:45.17\00:10:48.84
Many countries may nominally be
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part of what used to
be called Christendom.
00:10:51.55\00:10:55.15
But in this age of COVID,
this age of social dislocation,
00:10:55.18\00:10:59.82
this age of the intimations
of financial collapse
00:10:59.85\00:11:03.36
and disarray,
00:11:03.39\00:11:04.73
it's worth
remembering that this gospel
00:11:04.76\00:11:07.60
of the kingdom still needs
to be preached to every nation,
00:11:07.63\00:11:11.40
kindred and tongue.
00:11:11.43\00:11:12.77
And when that's done,
and not until that's done,
00:11:12.80\00:11:16.10
the end will surely come.
00:11:16.14\00:11:20.81
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:11:20.84\00:11:23.55