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Secular leftists react to Christian baseball players refusal to celebrate homosexual behavior

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I’m sure everyone has by now heard about the 5 baseball players from the Tampa Bay Rays who declined to celebrate homosexual behavior. In this post, we’ll take a look at a couple of reactions to their decision from the secular left. And then after that, I’m going to talk about the time I was working for a large FT100 corporation, and my manager asked me to wear a rainbow ribbon.

First, the facts, as reported by PJ Media:

On Saturday, the Tampa Bay Rays held their annual “Pride Night” game. As part of the festivities, players wore a special rainbow patch on their uniforms to support LGBTQ (and whatever new letters they’ve added this week) pride. Well, most players did. A few players decided to take the brave step of not playing along, choosing not to wear the patch on their uniforms.

ESPN reports that “Among players who elected to remove the logos were pitchers Jason Adam, Jalen Beeks, Brooks Raley, Jeffrey Springs, and Ryan Thompson, according to the Tampa Bay Times. According to CBS News, “Adam was elected to speak for the group after the game, saying it was a ‘faith-based decision’ for many of them.”

[…]The “Pride Night” event included “members of the LGBTQ community” taking part in festivities, and the Rays organization gave out mini Pride flags.

These baseball players are not as capable at explaining the Christian position on homosexuality as Frank Turek or Michael Brown. Still, they declined to participate, and that’s good as far as it goes. But even their decision to decline to participate got them into hot water with the secular left radicals.

Life Site News reported:

The five Tampa Bay Rays pitchers who because of their Christian faith declined to wear rainbow-themed insignias on their hats and jerseys during the team’s “Pride Night” celebration last weekend are being attacked as “bigots” by liberal commentators.

“Oh for God’s sake,” tweeted USA Today Sports columnist Nancy Armour.

“These folks who bastardize religion to suit their bigotry would do well to actually READ the New Testament. I’d recommend starting with Matthew,” she sneered.

“That religious exemption BS is used in sports and otherwise also allows for people to be denied health care, jobs, apartments, children, prescriptions, all sorts of rights,” averred ESPN commentator Sarah Spain on the sports network’s popular “Around the Horn” talk show.

“We have to stop tiptoeing around it because we’re trying to protect people who are trying to be bigoted from asking for them to be exempt from it, when the very people that they are bigoted against are suffering the consequences,” she continued.

Justifying the trampling of moral convictions and religious liberty is very popular among the “compassion” crowd, who have made the decision that “don’t judge” is more important than what Jesus says about marriage being between a man and a woman.

Tampa Bay Rays Pride Night LGBT
Tampa Bay Rays Pride Night LGBT

(link to tweet above)

So, let me tell you about what happened to me when I was working for a big FT 100 company that was also a platinum partner of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest gay rights lobbying organization in America.

Our company building was decorated with gay rights materials, which were posted by gay activists with the approval of management. People without computer science degrees were regularly promoted to IT positions, simply because they were willing to toe the company line on “diversity and inclusion”. We even had to explain what we had done to celebrate diversity and promote inclusion in our performance reviews.

For pride month, little bowls of rainbow pins were distributed on every floor. Everyone except me was wearing them. So, my manager, a divorced single mother named Tracy, decided to bring a rainbow colored pin to my desk in front of all the other people on my team and ask me to put it on. I said, “put it on the desk, and I’ll wear it later”. Then I tossed it into the garbage as soon as she left.

I have no doubt that my views caused me a lot of trouble in that company. We had several gay rights activists, including one who attended a Unitarian church. They were constantly causing trouble for me, and trying to chat me up to find out my views. I’m sure if I had told them anything, they would have gone straight to HR. I had a lot of controversial conversations in that company. Just not with the gay activists, and not with Human Resources.

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Left-wing abortion activist arrested with a weapon outside SCOTUS Justice’s home

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If you pay attention to the news media, they like to make a big deal out of bad behaviors that serve their anti-conservative, anti-Christian, anti-American narrative. But bad behaviors that are committed by their political allies don’t get covered at all. In order to counter that bias, I wanted to show you a story about a radicalized Democrat from The Federalist.

Excerpt:

The shady left-wing organization Ruth Sent Us, which published the addresses of Republican-nominated Supreme Court justices’ homes following a leak of the SCOTUS Dobbs v. Jackson draft opinion, is downplaying a threat against Justice Brett Kavanaugh and his family.

The Washington Post reported on Wednesday morning that a California man “carrying at least one weapon” and “burglary tools” was arrested close to Kavanaugh’s residence in Maryland around 1:50 a.m. The man was allegedly angry about the court’s aim to get rid of Roe v. Wade and reportedly confessed to officers that “he wanted to kill the Supreme Court justice.”

[…]Ruth Sent Us was one of the many groups that encouraged protesting and other tactics to bully conservative justices into abandoning their position on Dobbs. They even organized “Walk-by Wednesday” where they led crowds into the justices’ neighborhoods and by their homes in two states.

And that sort of violence is acceptable to the secular left. When you remove God from your worldview, anything is possible. Morality is only rationally grounded in a theistic worldview, where there is an objective moral lawgiver. Secular leftists are always using threats, vandalism, and violence to coerce compliance from people who don’t agree with them enough.

The Federalist noted:

“I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

Those were the words of the Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, one of the most powerful elected officials in the nation, in March of 2020. After spending years cynically delegitimizing the high court, Schumer had moved to openly threatening life-time appointed judges, by name, because he feared they would knock down the concocted constitutional right to an abortion.

Previously, a far-left hate group called the Southern Poverty Law Center posted the location of the Family Research Council (a conservative Washington D.C. think tank) on their web site. A secular left gay activist used their web site to plan and attempt a mass shooting at their building. He was later convicted of domestic terrorism.

Fox News explains:

Nine years after a terrorist attempted mass murderer using the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate map” to target the Christian non-profit Family Research Council (FRC) in Washington, D.C., the SPLC continues to list FRC on its “hate map.”

“Nothing speaks to the SPLC’s inhumanity as much as its behavior after the shooting at FRC. Rather than remove the map used by a terrorist to attempt to kill dozens of people, the SPLC doubled down and even expanded its list to include other non-violent conservative, Christian and parent organizations who opposed the SPLC’s political agenda,” Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Jerry Boykin, executive vice president at FRC, told Fox News.

Sunday, Aug. 15, 2021 marks the ninth anniversary of the attempted shooting, and FRC remains on the “hate map”.

[…]A former SPLC spokesman even said, “Our aim in life is to destroy these groups, completely destroy them.”

[…]On Aug. 15, 2012, a man named Floyd Lee Corkins came into FRC armed with a 9 mm pistol, two ammunition clips of 15 rounds, the rounds in his gun and a box of 50 additional rounds. He also carried 15 individually-wrapped Chick-fil-A chicken sandwiches.

“He was not puffing things up when he told the investigators that he intended ‘to kill as many people as [he] could,’” Boykin, a former member of the Delta Force who was involved in the “Black Hawk Down” incident, told Fox News.

You won’t hear about secular left domestic terrorism in the mainstream media. And don’t expect federal law enforcement in the Biden administration to do anything about it. They reserve their law enforcing for concerned parents, who they think are the real threats.

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How a small, poor country became the top economy in Latin America

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One way to learn about whether specific economic policies work or not is to look at different countries that have tried them. Believe it or not, patterns do emerge about what works and what doesn’t work, as you look across different times and places. I’ve been reading a book called “Money, Greed and God” with my friend Carla, which talks about what has worked to reduce poverty.

The author basically outlined two approaches. In the first approach, the government 1) confiscates the wealth of the most productive workers, 2) nationalizes (takes control of) the businesses of the most successful entrepreneurs, 3) restricts trading between citizens and with other countries, with minimum wage, price controls and tariffs. In the second approach, the government does the opposite: 1) lowers taxes on the most productive workers, and 2) lets entrepreneurs compete to provide goods and services to consumers, and 3) lowers restrictions on internal trading and trading with other countries, e.g. – eliminating minimum wage, tariffs and price controls.

Let’s take a look at two Latin American countries that went in opposite directions. Venezuela and Chile. Then we can finally find out which policies actually achieve results for the people.

Here is how Chile started out in 1973.

PROBLEM: Price controls and tariffs:

Prices for the majority of basic goods were fixed by the government in 1973. Even though Chile was and still is a small economy, the level of protection­ism was high. By the end of 1973, the nominal average tariff for imports was 105 percent, with a maximum of 750 percent. Non-tariff barriers also impeded the import of more than 3,000 out of 5,125 registered goods. Just as economic theory predicts, large queues in front of stores were usual in Santiago and other cities in Chile as a result of the scarcity caused by price controls.

PROBLEM: Government taking over private businesses:

The decline in GDP during 1973 reflected a shrinking productive sector in which the main assets were gradually falling under government control or ownership through expropriations and other government interventions in the economy.

PROBLEM: Deficit spending and government printing money:

The fiscal situation was chaotic. The deficit reached 55 percent of expenditures and 20 percent of GDP and was the main cause of inflation because the Central Bank was issuing money to finance the government deficit.

SOLUTION: lower or eliminate restrictions on trade:

The most important economic reform in Chile was to open trade, primarily through a flat, low tar­iff on imports. Much of the credit for Chilean eco­nomic reforms in the following 30 years should be given to the decision to open our economy to the rest of the world. The strength of Chilean firms, productive sectors, and institutions grew up thanks to that fundamental change.

SOLUTION: let competing entrepreneurs in the private sector provide goods and services to consumers:

A second fundamental reform was to allow the private sector to recover, adding dynamism to the economy. In fact, important sectors such as elec­tricity generation and distribution and telecommu­nications were still managed by state companies. After we implemented a massive privatization plan that included more than 50,000 new direct share­holders and several million indirect (through pen­sion funds) shareholders, these companies were managed by private entrepreneurs that carried out important expansion plans.

SOLUTION: let people take responsibility for their own lives instead of depending on government:

The 1981 reform of the Chilean pension fund system deserves special mention. Under the leader­ship of Minister José Piñera, an individual capitali­zation account program was designed with specific contributions, administered by private institutions selected by the workers. The Chilean Administra­doras de Fondos de Pension (Pension Fund Administrators or AFP) has been replicated in more than 20 countries, and more than 100 million workers in different parts of the world use these accounts to save for retirement.

SOLUTION: allow parents to choose the school that fits their needs from competing education providers, and push school administration down from the federal government to the municipal level, where it would be more responsive to voter’s needs:

In 1981, Chile introduced a universal educational voucher system for students in both its elementary and secondary schools. At the same time, the central government transferred the administration of public schools to municipal governments…  The financial value of the voucher did not depend on family income.

RESULTS: And I was able to find a nice short, description of how all that worked out for them on the far-left Wikipedia, of all places:

The economy of Chile is a high-income economy as ranked by the World Bank, and is considered one of South America’s most stable and prosperous nations, leading Latin American nations in competitiveness, income per capita, globalization, economic freedom, and low perception of corruption.

In 2006, Chile became the country with the highest nominal GDP per capita in Latin America. In May 2010 Chile became the first South American country to join the OECD. Tax revenues, all together 20.2% of GDP in 2013, were the second lowest among the 34 OECD countries, and the lowest in 2010. In 2017, only 0.7% of the population lived on less than US$1.90 a day.

According to the Heritage Foundation, Chile is ranked as the 18th freest economy in the world. The World Bank ranked Chile as the 50th highest GDP per capita for 2018, just below Hungary and above Poland.

Now, you can contrast those results with Venezuela. I have been blogging about Venezuela for years on this blog, and documenting how they raised taxes, banned guns, nationalized private sector companies, raised tariffs, and increased regulations. They are now ranked JUST ABOVE NORTH KOREA for economic freedom – #179 out of 180 countries measured. Basically, they did the opposite of everything that Chile did – transferring power away from parents, workers, business owners, churches and municipal governments to the powerful centralized federal government.

Wikipedia explains how Hugo Chavez took over in 1999 and enacted a communist revolution.

More:

Since the Bolivarian Revolution half-dismantled its PDVSA oil giant corporation in 2002 by firing most of its 20,000-strong dissident professional human capital and imposed stringent currency controls in 2003 in an attempt to prevent capital flight, there has been a steady decline in oil production and exports. Further yet, price controls, expropriation of numerous farmlands and various industries, among other government authoritarian policies… have resulted in severe shortages in Venezuela and steep price rises of all common goods, including food, water, household products, spare parts, tools and medical supplies; forcing many manufacturers to either cut production or close down, with many ultimately abandoning the country as has been the case with several technological firms and most automobile makers.

They confiscated private property, took over private sector businesses, implemented tariffs and price controls, redistributed wealth via massive welfare programs, and pushed all decision-making out of families and municipal governments up to the federal government. By depriving the producers of their earnings, the country caused massive shortages of goods and services, to the point where people are fleeing the country, consuming zoo animals, and selling their bodies as prostitutes in order to get food and water.

Application

In the next election, we are not picking a tribe because of how they make us feel about ourselves. We are not choosing in order to see ourselves as “nice” and “not nice”. We need to look at specific policies being proposed, and see what works and what doesn’t work. The examples of Chile (rags-to-riches) and Venezuela (riches-to-rags) are helpful for voters who want to get RESULTS instead of FEELINGS.

I’ll leave you with a list of links from previous posts so you can see how communism worked out for Venezuela.

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