Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show.

It's the show that Mark Twain once called Smartern, a Blue Jay, what can talk possum,

and faster than a naked fat man riding a bolt of lightning.

So here's your plain spoken homespun host, Eric Mataxis.

Hey folks, welcome to Eric Mataxis show.

Guess what we're going to talk about today?

Did you guess religious liberty?

If you did, I don't have any prizes to give you, but if you did, you were right.

I have an old friend on the program today for the hour.

Kelly Shackleford is the founder and head of First Liberty Institute. Guess what the First Liberty is.

Kelly, welcome. Hey, thanks for having me, Eric. When did you found First Liberty?

Well, I really started this whole effort a little over 30 years ago, just fresh out of law school and court for a federal judge.

You're just a kid.

What do you talk about?

That's actually, seriously, that's amazing.

So firstliberty.org is obviously how people can find it.

But you guys do what a number of organizations that, I mean, I'm such a big fan of people who are, you know, putting their brains and their efforts to fighting for religious liberty.

But it's always strange to me that we have to fight for religious liberty in America

because for years it didn't seem like we had to.

We're in a new day.

We are.

The battles I had 30 years ago are very different from the types of battles that I have now.

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