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News

Democrat Bernie Sanders proposes test to ban Christians from political office

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Senator Bernie Sanders had an interesting exchange with White House deputy budget director nominee Russell Vought. Religious liberty defender David French writes about it in National Review.

First, French’s rough transcription of the dialog:

Sanders: Let me get to this issue that has bothered me and bothered many other people. And that is in the piece that I referred to that you wrote for the publication called Resurgent. You wrote, “Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology. They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ, His Son, and they stand condemned.” Do you believe that that statement is Islamophobic?

Vought: Absolutely not, Senator. I’m a Christian, and I believe in a Christian set of principles based on my faith. That post, as I stated in the questionnaire to this committee, was to defend my alma mater, Wheaton College, a Christian school that has a statement of faith that includes the centrality of Jesus Christ for salvation, and . . .

Sanders: I apologize. Forgive me, we just don’t have a lot of time. Do you believe people in the Muslim religion stand condemned? Is that your view?

Vought: Again, Senator, I’m a Christian, and I wrote that piece in accordance with the statement of faith at Wheaton College:

Sanders: I understand that. I don’t know how many Muslims there are in America. Maybe a couple million. Are you suggesting that all those people stand condemned? What about Jews? Do they stand condemned too?

Vought: Senator, I’m a Christian . . .

Sanders (shouting): I understand you are a Christian, but this country are made of people who are not just — I understand that Christianity is the majority religion, but there are other people of different religions in this country and around the world. In your judgment, do you think that people who are not Christians are going to be condemned?

Vought: Thank you for probing on that question. As a Christian, I believe that all individuals are made in the image of God and are worthy of dignity and respect regardless of their religious beliefs. I believe that as a Christian that’s how I should treat all individuals . . .

Sanders: You think your statement that you put into that publication, they do not know God because they rejected Jesus Christ, His Son, and they stand condemned, do you think that’s respectful of other religions?

Vought: Senator, I wrote a post based on being a Christian and attending a Christian school that has a statement of faith that speaks clearly in regard to the centrality of Jesus Christ in salvation.

Sanders: I would simply say, Mr. Chairman, that this nominee is really not someone who this country is supposed to be about.

French comments:

This is a disgraceful and unconstitutional line of questioning from the man who came close to being the Democratic nominee for president. He’s not only imposing a religious test for public office in direct violation of Article VI of the United States Constitution, he’s gone so far as to label this decent man — who’s seeking to serve his country in a vital role — as “not someone who this country is supposed to be about.” Vought expressed entirely orthodox Christian beliefs. There is nothing “extreme” about his statements, and they mirror the statements of faith of countless Christian churches and schools across the land. Are these believers also not fit for public office?

The Christian view is, of course, that some people choose to separate themselves from God’s presence in the afterlife because of their refusal to respond to God’s revelation of himself in the time they have while they are still alive. People could respond to general revelation and the moral law written on their hearts, or if they are able to, they could investigate deeper, studying scientific evidence or historical evidence. But each person is morally obligated to seek the truth about God as he really is. God reveals himself to those who seek him.

Surprisingly, many people with advanced degrees and great careers and great wealth want nothing to do with seeking the truth about God’s existence and Jesus Christ. I know. I work next to brilliant software engineers who have utterly stupid and ignorant opinions about God’s existence and the historical Jesus. And they go their whole lives chasing health, wealth and fame rather than buckle down with the books and look into these things. They would prefer not to look into these things and that’s why they remain separated from God eternally, after they die. God isn’t grading people on whether they go to a good college, marry, have a great career, make lots of money, have lots of kids, and send their kids to great colleges to become doctors (wonderful though all that is). God is concerned about whether you know who he is, whether you accept what Jesus Christ is has done for you in history, and whether you love God in your priority-setting and decision-making.

Disagreement with non-Christians does not make Christians mean to non-Christians. You can just look at Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan to see how Christians are supposed to treat people that we disagree with about religion. In this life, Christians are called on to love their neighbors – including their neighbors of other faiths or of no faiths – as themselves. In fact, historically speaking, one of the main reasons why Christianity expanded so quickly is that early Christians took the obligation to love their neighbors so seriously. Unlike Democrats, we didn’t outsource caring for the poor and the sick to the government. Instead of being “generous” by spending other people’s money, we were generous with our own money. This is foreign to most Democrats, who typically give nothing to charity, but make a big show of spending taxpayer money – money that they never earned themselves.

Some people may ask, “what about those who have never heard of Jesus?” For the problem of those people who have never heard of Jesus before they die, we have the middle knowledge solution. Christians love people who disagree with them, and we hope and pray that they will take the time to investigate these matters for themselves so that they come to a true worldview. I pray for non-Christians – this is a normal part of the Christian life. Disagreeing with someone doesn’t mean that you treat them badly. For the problem of those who are not able to search out the answers from science and history, God will judge them on their response to God’s existence in nature – which everyone has access to. The design of the universe is one of the reasons given by people for an intuitive belief in a Creator and Designer, and we all have the moral law written on our hearts.

What about Sanders? Is he tolerant of other religions? Does he treat people of other religions well? My opinion based on what I know of Sanders is that Sanders is an atheist, and so he is in disagreement with the factual claims of every religion on the planet. They’re all wrong, according to Sanders. We’re already seeing a lot of attacks by secular leftists against Christians using government as a weapon. Sanders would take it up a notch, by actually preventing Christians from serving in political roles. To me, that seems like what Hitler did to the Jews in Nazi Germany – drumming them out of positions of influence solely because their religion differed from his own pagan religion.

Very interesting for me now, to think back to the Christians I knew who supported Bernie Sanders in the Democrat primary last election. Why did they do it? Sanders has virtually no positions in common with what the Bible teaches. Not just on social issues, obviously, but also on fiscal and foreign policy issues. He is the complete anti-Bible politician. I believe that the main reason that some Christians supported Bernie Sanders is because they wanted to feel good about themselves, and be perceived as “generous” by other people around them. They did not want to do this by spending their own money and time to help others. They wanted to feel good and look generous by having Bernie Sanders steal other people’s money and time to “help” others through enormous government spending and borrowing from future taxpayers. They wanted to take money away from individual taxpayers who earned the money by working, and let the secular leftists in government spend it on buying votes from their favored special interest groups. It was all about envy, theft and coveting. Things that no real Christian would ever choose when voting for President.

News

Why don’t young Americans understand the effects of socialist policies?

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Supermarket shelves empty thanks to socialist policies
Supermarket shelves empty thanks to socialist policies

Here is an interesting article by Kathryn Blackhurst, writing for LifeZette.com. The article reports on how the mainstream media has covered the situation in Venezuela, which has been under socialist rule for decades.

Kathryn explains:

Out of approximately 50,000 total evening news stories on ABC, CBS and NBC combined in the last four years, just 25 have covered the ongoing crisis in socialist Venezuela, according to a Media Research Center study published Tuesday.

After Venezuela’s former socialist president, Hugo Chávez, passed away in March 2013, the country has spiraled into economic disaster and civil chaos. So far in 2017, more than 50 Venezuelans have been killed during protests against current Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his socialist policies. Many Venezuelans are starving due to shortages of food and other essentials. The country’s inflation rate is set to surpass 700 percent and 25 percent of Venezuelans will be unemployed.

“Yet the Big Three evening newscasts have tried to pretend this crisis does not exist, offering virtually no coverage as the situation has deteriorated over the past four years,” MRC Research Analyst Mike Ciandella wrote.

“The networks have also been reluctant to attach the ‘socialist’ label to Venezuela’s government, and have utterly failed to criticize liberal politicians and celebrities who have praised the Chávez and Maduro regimes,” Ciandella added.

Indeed, out of the 50,000 total evening news stories on the three networks, just 25 covered Venezuela, and only seven mentioned “socialism.” In addition, NBC Nightly News only broadcast 13 stories spanning 16 minutes and 54 seconds, ABC’s World News only covered 8 minutes and 34 seconds over seven stories, and CBS Evening News only offered 3 minutes and 11 seconds over five stories.

“The network evening news programs seem allergic to reporting on the ongoing crisis in Venezuela,” Ciandella told LifeZette in an email. “Even worse, the few times they have managed to cover the widespread poverty, starvation and government oppression in that country, they somehow find ways to do that without mentioning the word ‘socialism.’”

That’s why your children can go through public schools and consume mainstream media news without ever understanding what effects follow from left-wing socialist economic policies. There just isn’t anyone intelligent and honest enough in the mainstream media to give the historical context that explains what policies were tried in the past, which resulted in the effects in the present.

Over 100,000 Venezuelans pouring into Colombia from the Venezuela in order to buy food
Over 100,000 Venezuelans pouring into Colombia from the Venezuela in order to buy food

Economist Stephen Moore has more about the situation in Venezuela, in this Investors Business Daily article.

He writes:

Venezuela is a human rights crisis of epic proportions ‎with mass hunger, mass poverty, despair, ghetto upon ghetto, and a mass exodus of private businesses and anyone with money. There are no rich and no evil corporations to loot anymore. The inflation rate is almost 500% as the currency is now about as valuable as Monopoly money.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Venezuela now employs 100,000 security forces — not to repel foreign threats or invaders, but to keep the government leaders like corrupt president Nicolas Maduro safe from their own citizens. Adjusted for population size, this would be the equivalent of one million Americans employed every day to stop riots in the streets. More than 40 protesters have been shot so far this year by the guardsmen.

The average pay has fallen to less than $50 — not per day, or per week, but per month. How’s that for a minimum wage?  ‎The people eat dogs if they can find them and the world was shocked by the story earlier this year of the raid on the municipal zoo to eat the animals. How bad off does a population have to be to start carving up elephant meat?

The burgeoning resistance throws molotov cocktails, rocks and even human feces at the security forces during the nonstop rioting. It’s like a scene out of an HBO movie. “I don’t fear death because this life is crap,” one protester told the WSJ.

[…]What is stunning about this story is that this is a nation that was once one of the wealthiest places in South America. Unlike places such as Subsaharan Africa where extreme poverty is the norm,  there is no excuse for Venezuala’s steep fall into the abyss because this is a resource-rich nation.

Under thug Hugo Chavez the former socialist dictator, Venezuela began its relentless conquest of private wealth and it’s process of nationalizing private enterprises. Chavez was lionized by the American left and the Hollywood elite — Sean Penn and Chavez were BFFs — for his “progressive” policies.

There’s literally no difference between the views of Chavez and Maduro and mainstream Democrat economic policy in the United States. They’re just further along the road to serfdom than we are, because their population is less economically literate than we are. For now.

I’d be willing to bet that many of these starving protestors in Venezuela voted over and over again for the socialists. That’s what happens when people vote with their feelings instead of knowledge of basic economics. But where would ignorant Venezuelans have picked up a knowledge of basic economics? Come to think of it… where would ignorant American millenials, who hold entire conversations in memes, pick up a knowledge of basic economics? They certainly wouldn’t get it from public schools teachers or the mainstream media “journalists”.

News

East Lansing bans farmer from selling produce because he opposes gay marriage

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Young people seem to like gay marriage more than they like individual liberties
Young people seem to like gay marriage more than they like individual liberties

Can basic human liberties like freedom of speech, freedom of association, and freedom of religion coexist with legalized gay marriage?

Consider this story from the Daily Signal.

Excerpt:

A farmers market and Facebook posts have opened a new front in courtroom battles over religious freedom.

It started when Steve Tennes, who owns a 120-acre farm in Charlotte, Michigan, expressed his traditional view about marriage on the farm’s Facebook page.

This drew a warning from an official more than 20 miles away in East Lansing, Michigan, that if Tennes tried to sell his fruit at the city’s farmers market, it could incite protests.

No one showed up to protest that August day last summer, though, and Tennes continued selling organic apples, peaches, cherries, and pumpkins at the seasonal market until October, as he had done the six previous years.

Nevertheless, East Lansing moved earlier this year to ban Tennes’ farm, the Country Mill, from participating in the farmers market when it resumes June 4. The city cited its human relations ordinance, an anti-discrimination law that includes sexual orientation.

So Tennes and his wife sued the city for religious discrimination.

[…]Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal aid organization, is representing the Tenneses.

You’ll recall that gay rights activists are constantly going after those who disagree with them about gay marriage. Sometimes with insults, sometimes with lawsuits, sometimes with intimidation (this case for an example), sometimes with job terminations (this case for an example), sometimes with expulsions (this case for an example), sometimes with vandalism (this case for an example) and sometimes with domestic terrorism (this case for an example).

I have adjusted to this by just assuming that anyone who votes Democrat is a potential fascist, who cannot be trusted to have a civil conversation. That’s what my alias is for – so I can discuss these issues without losing my job, like Mozille CEO Brendan Eich did, when he opposed gay marriage. It’s just safer to assume that secular leftists are incapable of rational debate. So many of them clearly are not, and no one on the secular left condemns them for it.

We’ve seen a lot of Christian business owners being sued in SOGI states, and this is really an attempt to compel agreement on gay marriage through starvation. Not just the business owners, but their families, too. Of course, gay activist Floyd Lee Corkins took that a step further when he attacked the Family Research Council building with a gun – intent on mass murder. Given their indifference to basic human rights, I wonder how many gay activists really think that what he did was wrong.

Here’s another case of fascism from earlier this week, this time reported by The Federalist.

Excerpt:

On May 6, 2017, the director of Illinois’ child welfare agency (DCFS), George Sheldon, “signed enhanced department procedures” setting “mandatory minimum standards for LGBTQ children under its authority (See Appendix K in this May 11, 2017 document. Quoted passages in this article are from Appendix K unless otherwise specified).

[…]Designed with American Civil Liberties Union assistance, the policies are problematic not only for the vulnerable children in state care but also for the kin, foster families, caseworkers, volunteers, and others trying to assist them. Consider the effects on staff and volunteers, who must pass an ideological test—to see if they are sufficiently “LGBTQ-affirming”— to mentor, serve, or care for the state’s most vulnerable children.

According to the gender guardians at DCFS, all children have a “right to self-determination of gender and sexual orientation,” and individual choices about “sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression” should be viewed as “developmental milestones, not problematic behavior.”  The role of adults is simply to “facilitate exploration of any LGBTQ matters through an affirming approach…by being open, non-judgmental, and empathic.”

Thus, when children or adolescents “explore/express a sexual orientation other than heterosexual and/or a gender identity that is different from the child/youth’s sex assigned at birth,” DCFS “staff, providers, and foster parents” must “support and respect” the child’s exploration “without any effort to direct or guide them to any specific outcome for their exploration.”

In other words, all DCFS staff and volunteers must communicate a uniform message to the children and adolescents in their care: it’s perfectly normal to identify as transgender or gender non-conforming, and just as conducive to a child’s wellbeing to be transgender as to identify with one’s actual sex.

It’s always useful to look to other countries where gay rights is further along to find out what will happen next. In previous posts, I talked about how Ontario – a province in Canada – decided to allow a convicted child pornographer design their education curriculum. Parents would not be granted an opt out of the indoctrination for any reason.

Well, Life Site News reports on the next step:

Ontario’s Kathleen Wynne Liberals have passed what critics describe as “totalitarian” Bill 89 by a vote of 63 to 23 on the last day before Queen’s Park adjourns for the summer.

[…]Bill 89, or the Supporting Children, Youth and Families Act, 2017, repeals and replaces the former Child and Family Services Act that governs child protection services, and adoption and foster care services.

It adds “gender identity” and “gender expression” as factors to be considered “in the best interests of the child.”

At the same time, it deletes the religious faith in which the parents are raising the child as a factor to be considered, and mandates child protection services consider only the child’s own “creed” or “religion” when assessing the best interests of the child.

“With the passage of Bill 89, we’ve entered an era of totalitarian power by the state, such as never witnessed before in Canada’s history,” says Jack Fonseca, senior political strategist for Campaign Life Coalition.

[…]Children’s Aid agencies now have “a type of police power to bust down your door, and seize your biological children if you are known to oppose LGBT ideology and the fraudulent theory of ‘gender identity’, if for instance, some claim is made that your child may be same-sex attracted or confused about their ‘gender,’” according to Fonseca.

“We already see similar tyranny happening in other jurisdictions, such as Norway, where the main child protection service there, Barnevernet, has been involved in numerous high profile seizures of children from traditionally-principled families,” he added.

This is what happens when you let the secular left have a majority government in your country. Would you get married and have children in a country where your children could be taken from you? I would not.