Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider,
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before the break with
Liberty editor Bettina Crouse,
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and that's hard for me
to say because I was Liberty
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editor for 22 years.
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But with Bettina,
we were talking about
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her philosophy on editing
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and dealing with
religious liberty,
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editing Liberty Magazine.
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And this is my
chance to suss out
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what she's
likely to do as editor.
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Bettina, let me put a
challenge to you though.
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I believe that
sooner rather than later,
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so by definition,
within your editorship,
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you're going to face
a major civil liberties
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crisis in the United States.
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Okay.
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One evidence and it's
coming from several angles,
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but I'd like
your thoughts on it.
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You know, at a recent Davos
meeting of all of the money
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people in the
world and many leaders,
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they spoke
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and really suggested
that they're about to enter
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the great reset,
great financial reset
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and the slogan of
this is that you will own
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nothing and you will be happy.
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Now, I've heard that before,
that's the communist slogan,
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but we clearly are
at the point of collapse
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of the economic system
that's characterized the West.
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It's collapsed before
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and it's destined for collapse
because it's based on nothing
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since Richard Nixon took us
off the gold standard in '71.
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It's a confidence game,
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where money is made by the banks
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and the
governments and the whole thing
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is just sort of blowing up
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and inflation is
one of the signs.
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But with COVID giving
away 5 trillion dollars
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of typed in money, not real,
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not connected to
production or anything,
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I believe
they've shown their hand.
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This is the end game,
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they're really
actually speeding it along now.
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It will not be the same
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when there are masses of people,
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basically wards of the state,
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little bit like in
the Great Depression,
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when people were in WPA camps.
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I'm sure you know
many Seventh-day Adventists
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were harassed and
even a few of them given
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fake executions for not working
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on Sabbath in a
work camp that was very
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akin to a detention camp.
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We will have the
same sort of thing,
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where property is taken
away or maybe fritted away
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with economic collapse
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and then people are
told by the government
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what to do,
given a regular salary,
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but work and controlled
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and basically
they're vassals of the state.
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That's clearly
what they're planning.
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Well, you know,
Lincoln, I'm not an economist,
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but if what you
say comes to pass,
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I think the key idea
is that in times of fear
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and turmoil,
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people are more prepared
to give up their rights.
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I mean, you see in
the aftermath of 9/11.
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Of course.
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I mean, we recently
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commemorated an
anniversary of that.
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The passage of the Patriot Act,
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you know, an act
that massively increased
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government reach
and surveillance powers,
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it sailed through congress
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in less than
seven weeks after 9/11,
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all in the name of
preventing terrorism.
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You know, we saw it at
the beginning of COVID,
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now, you know,
clearly public health measures
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were needed and necessary
and they are necessary.
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But it was
intriguing to see how people
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were prepared to give up rights,
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you know, rights of association,
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you know, right
to live their lives
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as they've always lived
them because of a culture
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or an environment of fear.
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And so, you know, what I
have learned from you, Lincoln,
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is that one of the
roles of Liberty Magazine
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is to help
people remain vigilant.
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Right.
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And to, I believe as
Jesus told the Pharisees,
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we should to some
degree study the seasons.
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Now, it's watching global
warming disrupt the seasons.
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But, you know, we're
used to analyzing some things,
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freedom should be the same.
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We should be aware of
these giant shifts in public
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attitude toward
something as important
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as religious freedom or
civil liberties generally.
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But, of course, it's the first
freedom, religious liberty.
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Yeah.
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There's a
sociologist, but I believe
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his name's Jared Davis,
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who writes about this concept
called Creeping Normalism.
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And it's this idea
that incrementally,
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things can change
for the worst in society,
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you know, whether it's roads,
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whether it's
infrastructure of other kinds,
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whether it's the economy.
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And then people
accept a new baseline
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of normality over
time, until one day,
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you know, after the
passage of a significant period,
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they wake up and
realize that normal
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is no longer what is used to be.
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Well, that's the old story,
I've told it many times of,
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you know, the frog and
the very slowly warming water.
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You adapt to anything.
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Which, of course,
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the scientific
principle has been debunked
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because if a frog is
left in water that is warming,
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it will to try to escape.
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Well, maybe.
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Frog remains.
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But, talk about warming water
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and I didn't plan on mentioning
this and so you're the vehicle
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to enable my comment.
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Only a few days ago
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I spoke at a little camp
meeting in Washington State,
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but I flew into
Portland, Oregon.
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And have you started
traveling yet since the...
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No. No, I haven't.
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It's an adventure
and amongst other things,
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rental cars are
fantastically expensive.
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I've been quoted $1000
plus for three or four days.
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Very hard to get a
car less than $100.
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But anyhow, I rented a
car there and I did get
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a relatively reasonable price.
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And not like the old days
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where you lined up at a counter,
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now, it's sort of like an Apple
Store, where you line up near
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the cars and then different
agents with the pad come.
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And this African, he
appeared an African fellow came
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and helped me,
really was very pleasant.
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And I joked with
him, I said, "I'm not sure
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if I'm going to order an iPad
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or a chicken sandwich here."
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Two companies that
are doing it that way.
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So we were talking
freely, then I asked him
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when we got to the
car where he is from.
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He said he's from Rwanda.
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And with very little prompting
from me beyond just asking
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where he is from, he
told me that he's been telling
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his fellow
workers that he's getting
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a bad feeling because he says
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what's happening
in the US reminds him
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of what happened in
Rwanda before the genocide.
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In terms of the
polarization of attitude,
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is that what he meant?
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Yes.
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Well, not just polarization,
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the murderous type anger.
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You can go on
many, usually right wing,
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well, in this case it
had to be right wing websites
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and I hear it
over and over again,
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"The only good
Democrat is a dead Democrat."
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That is just not civil language.
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Right.
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And years ago in an editorial
I wrote that the difference
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between the right wing hate
radio or the hate radio rather
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that preceded the
genocide in Rwanda
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and right wing hate radio
is one of green, not of kind.
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Well, and I think this is
one of the important tasks
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of Liberty Magazine.
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And that is to, you
know, restraint the rhetoric,
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to help people know
how to engage in civil,
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courteous dialogue
about different issues.
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Yeah.
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And that is I think, one
of the more challenging tasks
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ahead of Liberty
Magazine going forward.
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And you're
watching the time like I am.
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It's drifting away
quickly for this program
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and you've almost
given your charter there.
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But what do you see the biggest
challenge that's ahead of you,
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apart from
assembling the first few issues?
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And I feel for you
because I went through it too.
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You sit at a desk and,
you know, where do you start?
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Yes.
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No, but I think it is as
we've been talking about it.
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It's learning how
to thread the needle,
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learning how to approach
inherently contentious issues,
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things that people feel
deeply and emotionally about,
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without appearing to be putting
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your thumbs on
the political scale.
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To be able to discuss things
in a way that doesn't trigger
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these destructive emotions.
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Very well put, and I
tried that for a long time.
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On this program it can be a
little bit more provocative.
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But yes, Liberty
should not be in the business
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of offending people unless
the truth itself offends them.
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But you're
promoting an egalitarian view
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of religious liberty,
that in some ways is even
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different than our profession
as Seventh-day Adventist.
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That's got its own emphasis,
but we are in the broad scope
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encouraging people to
see this as a God given
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right that they should exercise
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and we're all the way
with them on that, right?
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Thanks very much,
Bettina, we'll talk again.
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God bless.
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There are many
difficult things that each
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of us will see in our lifetime.
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One of the most
difficult for me,
00:10:03.60\00:10:05.57
just a few days ago in
my home town of Hagerstown,
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Maryland, I
drove past the Review
00:10:08.47\00:10:11.11
and Herald Publishing House
where I first began working
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and saw the
bulldozers destroying it.
00:10:14.18\00:10:16.64
Hard to take.
00:10:16.68\00:10:18.48
Only a few months ago now,
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I attended my
retirement resignation
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and then a new editor of
Liberty Magazine was chosen.
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Not hard, particularly seeing
a competent editor picking up
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where I left off
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and I know Bettina
Crouse will do very well,
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very well indeed.
00:10:37.50\00:10:40.07
Charlton Heston was
famously quoted as saying,
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"Only out of my
cold dead fingers."
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I'm not dead and
hopefully not cold.
00:10:45.31\00:10:47.81
And in fact my heart is warmed
to know that what AT Jones
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and other pioneers
started and established
00:10:51.68\00:10:54.28
is being carried on powerfully
for religious liberty.
00:10:54.32\00:10:58.15
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
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