Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider
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before the break with
guest Clifford Goldstein.
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I nearly said...
Remember my name.
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You forgot my name already.
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I nearly said
palmist instead of psalmist,
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I got little off.
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Words slip out.
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You're getting
old, Lincoln. Yes.
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I'm not 65, but I've got
a couple of years on you.
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I've got more hair too.
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Gotta get that dig in. Go ahead.
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Come on. Go ahead.
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Cut on that.
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Anyhow, Clifford Goldstein,
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you may be known
to some of our viewers
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from other programs.
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You've been on this way back
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and edited Liberty
magazine for years.
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So let's really
get into the philosophy
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of this again.
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I know you and I
love talking about this.
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And religious liberty
is a real world issue,
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but behind it lies
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some philosophical/
theological equations.
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Well, I think right off the bat,
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one of the foundational
things in religious liberty
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is your belief in God.
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Okay?
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And to believe in God,
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there's a whole host of
philosophical assumptions.
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Now, but remember,
religion has suffered.
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That's fine, we
accept that as Christians.
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But if someone has used
their deductive logical powers
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and they've chosen
another God or another...
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Well, I bet.
Well, another God is...
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Then you led logically.
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And I heard
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a Roman Catholic
Cardinal say this.
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What?
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He spoke for his
own church and he says,
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"We Catholics once believed
that error has no rights."
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They came at this
from this philosopher,
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philosophical thing.
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That someone that's
not intelligent enough
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deductively to recognize God
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they're in utter darkness
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because they're corrupt
and faulty in their thinking.
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And they don't warrant respect.
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And remember
with Liberty magazine,
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you pursued this,
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well, you and I
know, and we have our faith
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and we believe it.
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We have to grant the right from,
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to someone to choose wrongly,
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to dedicate their life
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to a totally
futile philosophical
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or religious endeavor.
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Because they would
think the same with us.
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They would think
the same with us.
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And that's, I
think the beauty...
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It's not quite the
same thing as evangelizing
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on behalf of Christ
and the Christian faith.
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And I, again too,
I think you come back
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to the reality of the gospel,
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where God allowed
his from the beginning,
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He allowed Adam and
Eve the freedom to disobey.
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Now they face a penalty for it.
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And then yet the amazing
thing is they received it
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right after they sinned,
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you know, and
they're gonna face this
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immediate penalty,
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but He gave them
the promise that,
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you know, when they
call the proto-evangelium,
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which is the
first gospel promise
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that he's going
to solve the problem.
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So...
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We can never
understand it totally,
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but you know, these
little, these innocent beings,
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and of course
there's a lot unsaid
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even in Bible and so.
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It may have
been many, many years
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that they were
tutored by angels,
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heavenly intelligences,
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we don't know how
naive they were at that point
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when the
serpent whispers to Eve,
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you know, we
tend to think of them
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as sort of like, you know,
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grade school kids
or worse total naives.
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Well, yeah, I
don't, I don't know.
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I don't think...
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If they failed like the
first week after creation,
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that would be a
little more problematic.
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But on my understanding
they were warned not to eat
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of the tree
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and they went and it
was blatant disobedience
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in the face of a clear warning.
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Huh? What did Paul say?
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Well, he blamed
that on Eve first.
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He said she was
deceived that Adam was not.
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Yeah. And so
Adam, well, I think...
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But isn't that blatant?
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If there was blatant,
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that was with Adam not with Eve.
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Yeah.
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And you know,
that's why we often,
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scripture often talks
about you go to Romans 5.
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It doesn't say Adam
and Eve fell or Eve fell.
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It was Adam fell.
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Christ came to fix,
Adam fell, Christ fixed it.
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Adam fell, Christ fixed it.
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It's all the time Adam.
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Now you could argue
that's the biblical patriarchy
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or whatever you want.
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But in the end, you know...
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Well, for human
conduct it makes no difference.
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They're all male or female,
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we're all
descendants of the first couple.
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But what is...
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What would you say
is the philosophic?
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All right.
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I've been out of Liberty
now for 20 something years.
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Okay.
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I just kind of forgot a lot,
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but what would you say is
the foundational fundamental,
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philosophical pillar
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of religious liberty,
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if you could put
it in a quick way?
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Well, I alluded to it
and it's not often said,
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and many of our supporters,
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I don't think are
willing to go that far,
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but we have to be set to
defend the right of human beings
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to follow their conscience
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in whatever they choose
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in religious
matters or against religion.
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But why, why?
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We accept that
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and will defend their
right to do so, to our death.
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Why would you do that?
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What is your philosophical,
you're willing to die
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to let somebody
believe something that's,
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you know, I mean...
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At root, that has to go back
to what you were talking about.
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You would only
have such a respect
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for a fellow
human being to be wrong.
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If you with an
acceptance of what God has done
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on our behalf.
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And can place that
value on us as human beings.
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Yes.
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I don't think a
Buddhist could as easily come
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to that statement.
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No.
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I mean, they might
be a better human being.
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I'm not
criticizing Buddhist per se,
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but the philosophical background
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wouldn't lead you to that.
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But as Seventh-day
Adventist Christians,
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and I'm quite
have to be convinced
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that the Bible is God's
way of communicating to man.
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And that in these later times,
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there's an imminent
expectation of Christ return.
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I'm happy enough with that.
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But I can't force
it on other people.
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But I can defend
religious liberty
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because without
the ability of people
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to make up their choice,
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then they're not
going to choose this,
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but they may
choose something else.
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I have to be neutral,
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just like the
separation of church
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and state we have to...
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But where do you draw the line?
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Keep the
coercion out of the game.
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I remember when
I edited Liberty...
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We used to help
the Scientologists.
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Okay.
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And that used to bug me
no end to try to help them.
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Okay.
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Because, we had the
head of the Scientology,
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you know what they did
when we were in Germany.
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We have the head of the science.
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Oh, the other group.
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I'll never forget this time,
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we had in the office
in the protocol lounge,
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the children of God.
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Do you remember them? No.
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The children of God
were founded on the beaches
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of Southern
California in the 1960s.
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Yeah, it was a Jesus
movement. One of them.
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I remember I was at a
religious liberty meeting
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with some of them
in Rio de Janeiro once.
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And I said, "One thing about
your children of God, folks.
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You're the only people I know
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who can make the
Moonies look mainstream."
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Okay. But
anyway, these people...
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Well, we can laugh about it,
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but I'm sure we defend
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their right to
believe that because they...
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Yeah, we have to
believe, see belief.
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But how far, look, how far
did our religious liberty go
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in this country
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with our Latter-day
Saint brothers and sisters
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with their polygamy.
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We drove them out. We
made it illegal parable.
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What about
religious freedom league?
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What about the right to
believe and to practice?
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There are...
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You're not talking
about Liberty magazine
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or Seventh-day Adventist,
we didn't persecute them.
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No, no, no. But I'm
saying the country did.
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Do you think they were,
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you think we should have
let the Mormons do polygamy?
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You're getting
into a bigger question.
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The US is not
without some mistakes
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in dealing with religious thing.
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Well, you think it was a mistake
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to let the Mormon, to not,
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to stop the
Mormons from polygamy.
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You think it was a
mistake, now maybe...
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I think it's within the
right of a civil society
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where the majority for good,
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for reasons of the
good of the majority
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have acted on something.
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But as a matter of conscience,
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I would defend
the right of Mormons
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to practice that,
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but accept the punishment.
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Whoa, Whoa, Whoa,
Whoa, come on, come on.
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You got the freedom.
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You know, you
remind me of a joke.
00:08:31.84\00:08:33.17
This Russian
immigrant came over from Russia
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and he says, "We have
freedom of speech in Russia,
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the difference is in America,
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you have freedom
after you speak."
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No, I'm not
excusing the restriction,
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but I'm saying,
00:08:44.65\00:08:45.99
and this is a fallacy
that's come over many people
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in our day and age
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because we're not
used to being restricted.
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Yeah. There's always a cost.
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Usually a social cost.
00:08:53.93\00:08:56.60
Someone might laugh at
you if you're a Mooney.
00:08:56.63\00:09:01.34
You know, that may happen,
00:09:01.37\00:09:03.04
but sometimes there's
an actual restriction.
00:09:03.07\00:09:05.97
You might not be able to run
00:09:06.01\00:09:07.74
a cake making business for gays.
00:09:07.78\00:09:10.58
I'm actually stating it
00:09:10.61\00:09:12.51
because I don't think
there's a contradiction there
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if you do it correctly.
00:09:13.92\00:09:15.25
Sure.
00:09:15.28\00:09:16.62
But, you know, there's
certain real world things
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to have a certain
religious attitude,
00:09:18.49\00:09:21.06
it's going to
cost you something.
00:09:21.09\00:09:23.39
You can't have
religion without a cost.
00:09:23.43\00:09:26.03
At the beginning in
Christianity it cost you.
00:09:26.06\00:09:29.16
It has to cost you,
your old way of thinking.
00:09:29.20\00:09:31.63
But I thought we were all for...
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You're gonna die to
defend somebody's freedom.
00:09:33.03\00:09:34.47
We are not libertarians.
00:09:34.50\00:09:35.84
You're gonna die to
defend somebody's right
00:09:35.87\00:09:38.44
to believe what they want.
00:09:38.47\00:09:39.91
And you know, so would you die
00:09:39.94\00:09:41.78
to defend the Mormons
00:09:41.81\00:09:43.38
right for polygamy
or the children of God?
00:09:43.41\00:09:46.58
They used the thing
called fishy flirting.
00:09:46.61\00:09:49.45
They would use
sex to lure people
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into their religion.
00:09:52.29\00:09:54.26
It's not illegal.
00:09:54.29\00:09:55.62
Do you wanna defend it?
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Well, technically
if it's not legal.
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I have to defend
their conscience.
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Yeah.
00:10:00.40\00:10:01.73
Well, so and so, and
they came to us for help.
00:10:01.76\00:10:03.77
And I can't
remember what it was.
00:10:03.80\00:10:06.43
We try to dilly-dally Mormon...
These are difficult questions.
00:10:06.47\00:10:10.17
But remember,
00:10:10.21\00:10:11.54
if we don't watch this question,
00:10:11.57\00:10:13.27
we will get into a
paternalistic attitude
00:10:13.31\00:10:15.74
that the Roman
Church best exemplify,
00:10:15.78\00:10:18.21
where it knows
00:10:18.25\00:10:19.58
what's best for
your eternal soul.
00:10:19.61\00:10:20.95
And as the Cardinal
says, "Error has no right."
00:10:20.98\00:10:23.72
You're wrong.
00:10:23.75\00:10:25.09
So we know
better we will force you
00:10:25.12\00:10:26.86
to behave a certain way.
00:10:26.89\00:10:29.39
Well, it's always,
00:10:29.42\00:10:31.79
in the end it's a
matter aligned wrong.
00:10:31.83\00:10:34.63
We believe in religious freedom.
00:10:34.66\00:10:37.57
But at what
point, if your religion,
00:10:37.60\00:10:39.93
you know, you don't
want, well, I was gonna say,
00:10:39.97\00:10:42.04
vaccinate your kids but
that gets a little sticky,
00:10:42.07\00:10:44.14
but we have always
put restrictions on how,
00:10:44.17\00:10:49.04
on you can
believe whatever you want,
00:10:49.08\00:10:51.61
but there are
certain religious practices
00:10:51.65\00:10:54.22
that just because it comes
under the name of religion,
00:10:54.25\00:10:57.72
you ain't gonna get
government protection
00:10:57.75\00:11:00.76
and you should get
government protection.
00:11:00.79\00:11:04.13
I remember
quite a few years ago,
00:11:08.03\00:11:10.00
seeing a clip
with the filmmaker,
00:11:10.03\00:11:12.87
an actor, Woody Allen
was in a sensitivity session
00:11:12.90\00:11:16.20
and they were
studying their navels.
00:11:16.24\00:11:18.47
And one of his
companions went on and on
00:11:18.51\00:11:20.98
about all that he saw,
00:11:21.01\00:11:22.34
when he looked
within and Woody Allen says,
00:11:22.38\00:11:24.55
"You must have a
wide screen navel."
00:11:24.58\00:11:27.78
You can pull a lot of stuff
00:11:27.82\00:11:30.95
if not truth out of a navel.
00:11:30.99\00:11:33.96
Philosophy can end that
way if you're not careful.
00:11:33.99\00:11:38.99
I think it's very
significant that Paul,
00:11:39.03\00:11:40.90
when he went to
the seat of philosophy,
00:11:40.93\00:11:43.30
to Athens and
debated pretty articulately
00:11:43.33\00:11:47.10
with those philosophers.
00:11:47.14\00:11:49.30
Came away from it saying,
00:11:49.34\00:11:50.67
I determined to know nothing
among you saved Jesus Christ
00:11:50.71\00:11:55.08
and Him crucified.
00:11:55.11\00:11:57.58
There should be a
philosophical, rational,
00:11:57.61\00:12:00.68
well thought out
based to our faith.
00:12:00.72\00:12:03.82
But at the end of the
day, it's knowing a person,
00:12:03.85\00:12:07.56
not a viewpoint
that will save us.
00:12:07.59\00:12:11.96
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:12:11.99\00:12:14.70