Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider,
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before the break
with Alan Reinach.
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You just brought up the
fact that many big firms
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particularly are
sort of inserting
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weaselly questions
in there to fair it out.
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Well, it's not
weaselly, they want...
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Well, but they're doing
it with a bad intention.
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With my son, I've been with him
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while he's filled this out.
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I know what they're
doing to try to flush out
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whether or not you
want accommodation.
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Let's be blunt, Lincoln.
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Wage working people
in America are not human,
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they are widgets in
the corporate machine.
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And they don't look
at your personality,
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they don't look at your gifts,
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they just want people
who will obey, obey, obey,
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follow the rules, you know...
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Yes, and I know,
I see the questions.
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Color between the lines...
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And they come out in
at any number of wages,
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will you do what we say
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and not question
authority and so on?
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They want you to be
available seven days a week,
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you know, jump how high?
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Target is terrible this way.
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Target refused to hire my son,
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who had a positive work history
from when he was in school.
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They were hiring summer job...
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Hiring
teenagers for summer jobs,
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they don't give them more
than maybe 12 hours a week.
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So why was it significant
that he wouldn't work
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one out of the
seven days a week?
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And that was the reason
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that the store
manager would not hire him.
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After the assistant manager
thought he was an upstanding,
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respectful,
well-spoken, you know,
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had a good
employment history, I mean,
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he was perfectly
hirable and they rejected him
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because of one day out
of the week, which is...
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And they said
that? They said that.
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They were totally ridiculous.
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Now we didn't want
to end up filing that.
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I told him, "You could make
your whole summers, you know,
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just sit with me
for 15-20 minutes,
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we'll file..."
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But I wasn't
going to do it for him,
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you know, how parents are.
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Kids have to show
some initiative, you know.
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Yeah.
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I'll throw it in
for discussions like
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because you and I
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have other
thoughts on this topic.
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But I wonder
sometimes if it hasn't worsened
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in the workplace
because of the weakening,
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most particularly under Reagan
of the trade union situation.
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Well, you know...
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Workers rights are not defended
generally as they once were.
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You know, this is kind of
a mixed bag for us, Lincoln.
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It's true that union rights
are weaker than they were.
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Collective bargaining
agreements often make it
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much more
difficult to accommodate
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a Sabbath
observance as schedule.
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If you don't have the seniority,
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it can be very
difficult to work around that.
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We have a case
right now against AT&T.
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Our client was
hired in a wireless store
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and because of seniority rules,
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it was very difficult
to accommodate him there
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and he wound up being
fired for attendance issues.
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What AT&T did not
do was say, "Oh, well,
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it's kind of hard to
accommodate you here,
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but we have all
these call centers
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with 10 zillion
people in them and, you know,
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you can try your hand
there and get swapped,
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you know, 'cause
there's more people to swap with
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if you have an
unfavorable schedule
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and it's going
to be a lot quicker
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before you earn enough seniority
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to get a favorable schedule."
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And he'd been at
a call center before
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and had been accommodated.
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But, you know, the
rule is well, you know,
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"We have a rule,
you can't change jobs,
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can't transfer
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until you've been
here for six months."
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And they managed to fire him
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before he'd been
there for six months.
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So, you know...
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Well, then tell
me, another question.
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And our Seventh-day Adventist
heritage is brought with it
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a deep suspicion of
the role of trade unions.
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And so, you know,
that's what I was referring to.
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There's good reasons for someone
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with an individual
conscience position
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to not deliver that
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to the
disposition of a trade union
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that in its own way
may restrict your rights.
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You know, I
have to say, Lincoln,
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I think that Adventist church
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has been one-sided here.
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When I read Ellen
White, I read her to have,
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you know, concerns
about trade union certainly,
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but also concerns about
the abuse of corporate power
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and
consolidation of corporations.
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And we need to keep that in mind
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because we tend to be
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one-sided in our
application of that advice.
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Exactly.
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And clearly there is
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considerable oppression of labor
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from the corporate side.
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And the Bible that I read
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give us one of the clear markers
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of the end times
that the workers'
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wages are held back by fraud.
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Right.
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In James 5. Right.
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But another thing
that I sometimes wonder
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hasn't skewed it against
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religious
accommodation of these sates
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and I don't know if how
many with right to work laws.
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So the workers' rights community
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has long been opposed to
these right to work laws,
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there's been a real
push for just cause.
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You know, the problem is
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we treat labor as a commodity,
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you know, we
don't treat people as...
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You know, we don't value people.
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You have large
corporations, for example,
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that depend upon the
quality of their workforce
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for their entire economic model,
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like the large delivery firms,
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and yet they treat their workers
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like their widgets and
they will throw them out,
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they're just
numbers and what have you.
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It's really...
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The way we treat
people, there's...
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No wonder the Bible
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rails against the
oppression of labor
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in the last days.
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It is a sign of the last days.
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Yeah.
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And there's not too many
discussions that I've heard
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on the merits of
capitalism versus communism,
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which is
discredited and largely gone.
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But we tend to think,
it's gone, it's discredited,
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capitalism is great.
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There's elements of capitalism
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that are distinctly unchristian,
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especially the way
it's carried forward,
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and I think this
is one part of it.
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It shouldn't be
in pursuit of money,
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shouldn't be used to
drag and to drag down
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or oppress the
rights of an individual.
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Well...
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The Bible says that,
"Workman is worthy of his hire."
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To me, there is a fatal
flaw in the way capitalism
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is currently established
here in the United States.
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And that is that the
rights of capital are supreme
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as against the rights of labor.
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You know, the
workers are the ones
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who are actually
producing the profits
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that the people
who have the capital
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get to sit back
and not work for it,
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invest and enjoy
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the fruits of
somebody else's labor.
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Now it sounds very communist
or socialist to say that,
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but that's just a
dynamic structural fact,
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it's nothing to
do with ideology.
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But I think morally the
Bible does speak to this,
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we need to be careful not to be,
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in the case of employer,
not to be abusive toward the...
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The trust
relationship should exist.
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Well, look.
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I think there are other
models that a free society
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and a free economy can
have that better balance
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the interest of
capital and the workforce
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that reward labor
for their productivity.
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You know, what we've
had in the last generation
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is the hollowing
out of the middle class.
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The rich get richer
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and the working
class gets poorer,
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it used to be
that, you know, one...
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You know, the head of household,
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the man could
support the family.
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It can't happen anymore.
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They're accredited on
two incomes typically.
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And two incomes
are still struggling
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to support the
family in many cases.
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And, you know, I don't know that
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that's any master plan,
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but I think from
a point of morality,
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we need to resist the
tendency that that's created to,
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if not mistreat,
then to disregard
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the rights of the worker.
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And back to our starting point,
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litigation to support moral
and religious stands by people
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I think it's suffering
because of this, isn't it?
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Well, look.
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I'd like to make one point
here before we close this out
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because there are a lot
of Christian organizations
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that are very belligerent.
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"You know, you better
do what we say is right
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or we're going to
beat you up in court."
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Our approach, I have always
called biblical peacemaking.
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We have conflicts,
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we encourage
companies to do the right thing,
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we express our confidence
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that they will
do the right thing,
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if they get a
letter from our lawyer,
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they know what's going
to happen if they don't.
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We don't need to
rub their noses in it.
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But, you know,
what we like to do
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then is try to
get their attention,
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get their cooperation,
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resolve conflict
as early as possible.
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But God has given us
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a legal system
to resolve conflict.
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Absolutely.
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And, you know, I'd kind of like
to close with this illustration
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of what turn the
other cheek means
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because I think
many people think
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it means being a doormat.
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Well, far from it.
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You know, our natural tendency
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when we get to
conflict is fight or flight.
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Either we're going
to punch somebody back
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or we're going to run away.
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Well, if we
turn the other cheek,
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we're not doing either
one, we're not running away,
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we're not hitting them back,
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we're really
confronting their wrongdoing
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and giving an
opportunity to rethink it.
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And I think that's what we do
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when we bring these
religious freedom claims.
00:10:01.40\00:10:04.10
It's a matter of confronting
what a company has done wrong.
00:10:04.13\00:10:09.90
The only way they're
going to make it right...
00:10:09.94\00:10:11.81
They're not going
to admit anything,
00:10:11.84\00:10:13.98
maybe they'll put up
some money to settle a case,
00:10:14.01\00:10:17.11
but in rare occasions,
00:10:17.15\00:10:18.95
we actually get to
accomplish more than that,
00:10:18.98\00:10:21.78
and they'll do
training and we'll get somewhere
00:10:21.82\00:10:27.06
in terms of
eradicating discrimination.
00:10:27.09\00:10:31.59
It's amazing how
often the Bible uses
00:10:31.63\00:10:33.46
what amounts to legal imagery,
00:10:33.50\00:10:35.73
as the accuser of the brethren
standing off to the side
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when someone's brought
before the great judge.
00:10:39.27\00:10:41.77
Of course, he's a judge but also
00:10:41.80\00:10:45.07
we have an advocate Jesus.
00:10:45.11\00:10:47.48
And I think that
gives some justification,
00:10:47.51\00:10:51.51
some background to
what happens every day
00:10:51.55\00:10:54.25
somewhere in the world
00:10:54.28\00:10:55.62
and particularly
in the United States,
00:10:55.65\00:10:56.99
where people depend
upon lawyers and advocates
00:10:57.02\00:11:01.19
against the secular legal system
00:11:01.22\00:11:03.53
to uphold their
profession of faith.
00:11:03.56\00:11:05.86
It is important, it's
something that we do gladly
00:11:05.89\00:11:09.60
and we take full advantage
00:11:09.63\00:11:10.97
of whatever legal
help there can be.
00:11:11.00\00:11:13.23
And of course, when
all of that is exhausted,
00:11:13.27\00:11:16.27
we serve the Lord
and our legal authority
00:11:16.30\00:11:19.01
is before Him.
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We should never
lose sight of that.
00:11:20.41\00:11:21.91
But like Paul using
his citizenship as a tool
00:11:21.94\00:11:26.11
if not a weapon to proclaim
throughout the Roman Empire,
00:11:26.15\00:11:29.25
so too we can use the
Lord to our advantage.
00:11:29.28\00:11:32.95
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:11:32.99\00:11:35.96