Bernie Sanders on visiting Liberty University

[Music] senator why are you going to liberty university well for a couple of reasons number one i think it is a very good idea for people in politics and in government to reach out and talk to people whose views may be very different i mean it's easy enough to go out and talk to people who agree with you it's a lot harder to talk to people who have some fundamental disagreements with you and certainly at liberty university most of the faculty and staff will have very different views than i have on a number of important issues i am a pro-choice united states senator people at liberty and the university are not i'm a strong supporter of gay rights my impression is people at liberty union university are not um i am one of the leaders in the senate and trying to address the planetary crisis of climate change i'm not quite sure how high that is on the agenda of liberty university etc etc on the other hand i think it is important to begin a dialogue on what morality means uh which obviously is something of concern to a biblical university and it will be interesting to see if there is any common ground i happen to believe that issues like the united states having the highest rate of childhood poverty uh of any major country on earth at the same time as we have more income in wealth inequality is in fact not just an economic issue it's a moral issue so you got 40 percent of african-american kids who are living in poverty at the same time as we are seeing a proliferation of millionaires and billionaires how do we address that problem is it just an economic issue or is it a moral issue which demands that we address it because we are human beings philosophically from a religious or moral perspective are we supposed to turn our backs on people who are homeless by people who are suffering on people who can't afford to feed their kids while we give tax breaks to billionaires uh are we supposed to live in a society and pope francis makes this point i think very clearly it's not only inequality it's not only turning our backs on the unemployed on the old on the children it is the idolatry of the worship of money and that's pretty profound issue is what life supposed to be about is to say i'm gonna spend all of my time trying to make as much money as i can and what life is really about is that i end up with billions and billions of dollars and not pay attention to the needs of those who are hungry or sick and those are some of the kind of questions and issues that i'll be raising with the folks at liberty university

Channel: USA TODAY

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Length: 3min 12sec (192 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 13 2015