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Speaker 1: Hitler ship. That's not how to introduce a podcast. Oh boy,

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Speaker 1: that went bad. Uh I just said Hitler. That was

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Speaker 1: just that's the worst introduction yet. Maybe you're talking about

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Speaker 1: Gary Hitler. You know who's that? Todd Hitler? I don't

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Speaker 1: know the guy are you telling me? Is Jerry Hitler,

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Speaker 1: like the clone of Gerald Ford and Adolf Hitler that

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Speaker 1: ran the country with an unfortunate name. Well, now I've

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Speaker 1: made up. I've invented a whole canon for the gerald

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Speaker 1: Ford Hitler hybrid in my head. Yeah, I mean that's

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Speaker 1: the that's what the cut scenes from the new Star

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Speaker 1: Wars film. Yeah, Adolf Hitler brought us World War two,

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Speaker 1: gerald Ford brought us the pardon of Richard Nixon, and

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Speaker 1: Jerry Hitler brought us the Dodge Dart. So who's the

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Speaker 1: real monster? L Listeners were not even first talking pardon

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Speaker 1: this episode? Is? You just got people so upset? I know,

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Speaker 1: I know, I know, this is okay, this is the

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Speaker 1: worst introduction yet. I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards,

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Speaker 1: the podcast where we talk about terrible people. My ghost

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Speaker 1: today is Cody Johnston. Cody, how are you doing? Ghost?

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Speaker 1: The ghost? The ghost in the room is Katie Stole,

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Speaker 1: who is not completing our triumvirate as per usual. I

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Speaker 1: feel it is very weird. It is odd, it's uncomfortable.

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Speaker 1: I keep looking, I keep looking there for Katie, and

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Speaker 1: she's not. I love you, Katie. She's taking a well

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Speaker 1: deserved day off while Cody and I slog through this story,

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Speaker 1: which has nothing to do with Hitler, nothing to do

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Speaker 1: with not even a little bit, a little bit. Oh God, alright, Cody,

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Speaker 1: what do you know about hobby Lobby? They did? Isis?

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Speaker 1: This is the story about how hobby Lobby literally invented isis? Yeah? No,

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Speaker 1: kind of a little bit, but not that much. Well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean you've got a lot of work to do

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Speaker 1: because I've been convinced over the years that they did

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Speaker 1: isis that hobby Lobby did an isis? You've got a

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Speaker 1: d program me from my way of thinking. Now, But

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Speaker 1: look at the glasses Anderson wore from hobby Lobby for

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Speaker 1: her RBG costume, Mommy Loween. She helped isis all. We've

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Speaker 1: all found ourselves needing a hobby lobby at one point

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Speaker 1: or another. Maybe you needed some decorative glass jars or

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Speaker 1: yarn and a felt needle at seven thirty at night.

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Speaker 1: And if you need those things, the only place to

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Speaker 1: go is a hobby lobby. That was gonna be my

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Speaker 1: example too. Yeah. Yeah, it's just like the store you

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Speaker 1: go for weird little crafty things that no one else

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Speaker 1: is going to carry, and the kind of knickknacks that

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Speaker 1: you put in your home when you don't really know

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Speaker 1: what else to put there, Like eyeglasses that fit a dog,

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Speaker 1: Like like eyeglasses that fit the dog for an RBG

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Speaker 1: costume for a dog. It's ironic that you keep bringing

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Speaker 1: up Ruth Bader Ginsburg because this is the story about

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Speaker 1: a group of people who want to make it impossible

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Speaker 1: for people like her to sit on the Supreme Court.

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Speaker 1: That's the tale of hobby Lobby. So but a little bit.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you have probably heard, as Cody

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Speaker 1: has been constantly referring to it. Yeah, that hobby lobby

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Speaker 1: got in some trouble from maybe funding isis uh And

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Speaker 1: yeah that's not technically true. Um, hobby Lobby did not

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Speaker 1: exactly fund like the Islamic State uh itself. Um, but

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Speaker 1: they did they did help to fund some other Islamic

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Speaker 1: extremist organizations that were precursors to isis, and more to

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Speaker 1: the point, you can make a strong case that they're

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Speaker 1: working to set up a Christian equivalent to isis right

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Speaker 1: here in the US of A. That's the story we're

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Speaker 1: going to talk about. Yeah, yeah, you wish they were

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Speaker 1: just funding ice. I do now, good old wholesome isis

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Speaker 1: arting near rock bottom. But don't worry, it gets a

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Speaker 1: little lower. It'll keep getting lower. But before we talk

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Speaker 1: about how everything that I just talked about winds up happening,

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Speaker 1: we have to go back in time a little bit

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Speaker 1: to talk about the beginning of hobby lobby. Cody, could

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Speaker 1: you give me some mood setting time machine noises? Perfect,

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Speaker 1: perfect like that. I'm just gonna put it out there.

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Speaker 1: It's a it's a new model. It's a new model,

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Speaker 1: all right. Some some of the scientists listening can graph

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Speaker 1: the differences between your time machine noises when Katie is

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Speaker 1: and is not present. Um, that one was much more

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Speaker 1: like a tyrannosaurus or perhaps a terry dactyl, terry dactyl

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Speaker 1: some like, some like really really old bird. Yeah yeah. So.

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Speaker 1: David Green was born on November one in Emporia, Kansas.

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Speaker 1: His father was a preacher, uh and not a particularly

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Speaker 1: big deal within that world. He wasn't like a big

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Speaker 1: time preacher. He moved around from like congregation of congregation

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Speaker 1: in tiny little towns in Kansas, uh and eventually escaping

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Speaker 1: the hellish waste of Kansas for the hellish waste of Oklahoma.

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Speaker 1: The family settled in a town called Altis, where David's

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Speaker 1: father preached to a flock of thirty five people who

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Speaker 1: were vastly outnumbered by the cows on their farms. So

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Speaker 1: he's got humble beginnings, you could say. Um. Now, David

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Speaker 1: grew up in Altus, which is about five hours away

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Speaker 1: from the tiny town in Oklahoma where I grew up.

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Speaker 1: It was as close to the middle of nowhere as

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Speaker 1: you can get. And they were very poor. Uh. David

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Speaker 1: would have worn nothing but second hand clothing and eaten

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Speaker 1: primarily food donated to his family by the congregation. Uh.

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Speaker 1: The Green family could go weeks at a time without

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Speaker 1: eating meat. So they are the kind of poor where

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Speaker 1: like you just don't even money's not even a factor

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Speaker 1: in your life. Um. But still his mom found ways

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Speaker 1: to give what little they had to other families in Altis,

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Speaker 1: and interviews today, David remembers his mother and father, sacrificing

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Speaker 1: their tiny comforts and even their necessities for the good

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Speaker 1: of the community. Religion was the very air he breathed

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Speaker 1: as a child, and all five of David's brothers and

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Speaker 1: sisters grew up to be either pastors or pastors wives.

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Speaker 1: But a life of preaching and poverty was not for David.

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Speaker 1: He struggled at school and had to repeat the seventh grade,

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Speaker 1: but he had no desire to focus on the Bible

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Speaker 1: for a living. Instead, he started working in the business

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Speaker 1: world as soon as he could. During his junior year

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Speaker 1: of high school, David got involved in a work study

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Speaker 1: program and landed a gig as a stock boy in

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Speaker 1: the town general store. He only made sixty cents an hour,

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Speaker 1: but he became aware of the basics of how capitalism

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Speaker 1: works watching his boss by products for ten cents and

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Speaker 1: sell them for twenty. So that's like his his his, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he falls in love with with this idea. It's like

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Speaker 1: m hmm, it's like trans substantiation but with pennies. Yeah

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Speaker 1: yeah um. I'm I look forward to finding out what

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Speaker 1: he does with this information. Yeah. Now new worldview yeah um.

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Speaker 1: And So while David's mom gave until it hurt, and

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Speaker 1: while his siblings committed themselves to serving their communities, David

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Speaker 1: found himself more enthralled with the idea of profiting from

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Speaker 1: his fellow man, and over the course of his early

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Speaker 1: in mid twenties, David served in the Air Force Reserve

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Speaker 1: and married a woman named Barbara, who he had met

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Speaker 1: while working at the general store. He turned his work

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Speaker 1: experience into a job as a manager at T. G

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Speaker 1: and Y, a five and dime shop that sold odds

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Speaker 1: and ends. By the time he was twenty nine, he

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Speaker 1: decided he'd learned enough working at these businesses to do

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Speaker 1: a better job starting his own, so he borrowed six

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Speaker 1: hundred dollars to buy up equipment and inventory, and teamed

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Speaker 1: up with another manager from his store to create his

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Speaker 1: first business, selling miniature picture frames to stores like T.

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Speaker 1: G and Why, where he'd worked so like too small

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Speaker 1: to really like put pictures in, Just like the kind

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Speaker 1: of nicknacks you stick up around the house for no reason. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: like slightly slightly bigger than wallet size. Yeah okay, okay, yeah,

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Speaker 1: tiny little picture frames that are basically just knickknacks for

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Speaker 1: like old women to turn into craft projects. Like that's

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Speaker 1: the business he decides to go into for some reason specific,

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Speaker 1: very specific, but you know there's a market you got

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Speaker 1: you yet your corner that he had a very weird,

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Speaker 1: specific dream and it turned out to work very well. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So his wife and sons assembled these tiny picture frames

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Speaker 1: on their kitchen table and received seven cents apiece from

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Speaker 1: Dad for their labor. The whole enterprise was profitable for

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Speaker 1: reasons that I cannot understand, and by nineteen seventy two,

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Speaker 1: Green had enough money to open his first actual store,

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Speaker 1: a three d square foot hobby lobby in Oklahoma City. Okay, okay,

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Speaker 1: So it was like the inventory it was wasn't just

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Speaker 1: picture frames at that point. It was like, all right,

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Speaker 1: it's just like when he opens his first hobby lobby. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he expands beyond shitty picture frames, yea, to other stuff too,

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Speaker 1: shitty other stuff. Yeah, there's a whole wide variety of

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Speaker 1: shitty things for sale. Right. We got nicks, We got knacks.

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Speaker 1: We have the Knicks, which is as useless a sports

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Speaker 1: team as a tiny picture frame. Get the knack. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I don't know what the knack is. A Robert just

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Speaker 1: had like a sports diss like time. Yes, yeah, we

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Speaker 1: will not go into any more detail about why the

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Speaker 1: Knicks are terrible, but terrible long time listeners will know,

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Speaker 1: all right, waiting for that episode to drop. Oh it

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Speaker 1: has now. There are different opinions on why hobby Lobby

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Speaker 1: became a huge success. The CFO John Cargo credits David

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Speaker 1: Green's brilliant and merchandizing uh. He says that Green basically

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Speaker 1: realized that cheap crap like styrophone roosters and fake books

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Speaker 1: and plastic plants could be produced for pennies overseas and

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Speaker 1: then sold for dollars to American customers. Uh. And there

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Speaker 1: turned out to be an endless appetite among realtors setting

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Speaker 1: up show homes hotels looking to decorate on the cheap,

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Speaker 1: and little old ladies with a love of knick knacks.

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Speaker 1: And so David's business exploded from selling cheap, poorly made

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Speaker 1: decorative crap in moss. So that's I mean, yeah, that's what.

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Speaker 1: There you go, that explains it. That's all. Oh wow,

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Speaker 1: what a good idea. I think at times about like

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Speaker 1: how when the world is like dying and I'm like

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Speaker 1: sitting upon one of the last bits of land that

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Speaker 1: like peaks above the boiling oceans choking the last remaining

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Speaker 1: life on the surface. How I will explain to children

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Speaker 1: why we let this happen? And I am excited to

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Speaker 1: talk with them about hobby Lobby. That's all right, here's

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Speaker 1: the first Well, the oceans had to die because we

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Speaker 1: needed styrofoam roosters to put up in corners of the

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Speaker 1: house that didn't have decorations. But yeah, um, and uh,

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Speaker 1: I'd like to uh, I'd like to see that scene

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Speaker 1: gathering around the fire that you actually don't need because,

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Speaker 1: like you said, the boiling oceans. Yeah, the oceans are boiling. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: treating treating wounds, treating wounds with styrofoamsters, arguing over who's

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Speaker 1: going to eat who first, Like who's the first to go?

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Speaker 1: It's gonna be good. But then, um, the tale of

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Speaker 1: hobby Lobby. So one major reason for the success of

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Speaker 1: hobby Lobby came down to luck in good timing. Right

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Speaker 1: around the time his first store opened, the hippies of

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Speaker 1: the United States became enthralled with beads. The bead buying

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Speaker 1: craze started right at the same time that Green began

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Speaker 1: expanding his business, and it fueled hobby lobbies spread to

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Speaker 1: a second, six thousand square foot location. Green was able

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Speaker 1: to quit his job at t G and why, and

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Speaker 1: he requalls that his wife was not happy with this.

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Speaker 1: She was real comfortable with me working at t G

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Speaker 1: and why they were doing two billion a year in sales.

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Speaker 1: We did a hundred thousand dollars. Of course they're gone

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Speaker 1: now and we're making three billion. It's not wrong. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he's not wrong. Are they still married? Oh yeah, okay,

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Speaker 1: so this isn't just like a resentful like she said this,

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Speaker 1: but actually where it's billions of dollars now, No, no, no,

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Speaker 1: it's more like, uh, my, my, my wife. You know.

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Speaker 1: This is why the man has the business sense in

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Speaker 1: the family, because my wife would have had us, yeah,

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Speaker 1: working for a doomed enterprise instead of selling styrofoam roosters

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Speaker 1: to all in sundry. Yea yeah. And now we're doing

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Speaker 1: great because of the good work we do. Because of

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Speaker 1: the good work that we do. Hobby Lobby today is

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Speaker 1: one of the largest businesses of its kind in the world,

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Speaker 1: operating five and twenty stores in thirty two states. David

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Speaker 1: Green and his family are the sole owners of the business,

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Speaker 1: and over the course of his career, Green's net worth

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Speaker 1: has soared to more than four and a half billion.

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Speaker 1: I think it's even more than that now. Because there

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Speaker 1: are no shareholders or co owners, David gets to run

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Speaker 1: Hobby Lobby exactly the way he wants, and since he

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Speaker 1: is an evangelical Christian, that's been woven into the character

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Speaker 1: of the business. Sometimes this manifests itself in wacky ways.

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Speaker 1: For example, products and Hobby Lobby do not have bar codes.

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Speaker 1: But um there's two explanations for this interview m the

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Speaker 1: The official explanation from David Green is that computerized point

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Speaker 1: of sale systems make his employees less knowledgeable about their

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Speaker 1: inventory because they rely on a computer to tell them

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Speaker 1: where things go and what things cost. And while it

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Speaker 1: costs more money for the business to have employees like

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Speaker 1: updating prices by hand, it leads to better staff because

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Speaker 1: they know where everything is and what it costs. They

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Speaker 1: have an understanding that's deeper of the inventory, which makes sense. Yeah, like,

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Speaker 1: that's not an illogical um um theory. I'm ready for

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Speaker 1: you to bump me out, But that's actually a good answer. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's a very good answer. However, some suggest this hardline

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Speaker 1: against barcodes has more to do with the fact that

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Speaker 1: large chunks of the evangelical Christian population belief that bar

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Speaker 1: codes are the mark of the beast. This rumor is

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Speaker 1: largely perpetuated by folks and blogs just like bar code conspiracies,

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Speaker 1: and I really have no idea what the truth is,

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Speaker 1: but hobby lobby employees regularly talk about the idea that

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Speaker 1: the bar codes, there are no bar codes in the

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Speaker 1: business because it's the mark of the devil. There's a

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Speaker 1: whole like like that you could find in the era

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Speaker 1: of VHS, like whole VHS tape explaining how like the

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Speaker 1: barcode is the mark of the beast and like all

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Speaker 1: of the different dashes really stand for six six six

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Speaker 1: and it's the devil's way of getting into capitalism. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So okay, So the conspiracy stuff, like the blogs that

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Speaker 1: are talking about this, aren't people being like making up

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Speaker 1: a wild accusation. It's based off of people who of

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Speaker 1: all huge numbers of people, yeah, who believe that barcodes

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Speaker 1: are evil. So it is a belief, yes, and it's

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Speaker 1: just the conspiracy is that that's why they don't do

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Speaker 1: it at hobby lobby specifically, But it is exactly that

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Speaker 1: is it is, Yeah, that belief is a thing that

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Speaker 1: at least a couple of million Americans believe that too many,

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Speaker 1: David said, David has a reasonable explanation for why hobby

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Speaker 1: Lobby doesn't use barcodes, but there's a lot of people

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Speaker 1: that are like, come on, oh no. His first answer

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Speaker 1: was so good. Yeah, it's a really good answer. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: It's one of those things where it's like, oh that

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Speaker 1: makes complete sense. See what, Yeah, they know the point

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Speaker 1: over there like, oh yeah, this used to be this

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Speaker 1: amount because I did it in my hand. Yeah. Oh no,

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Speaker 1: uh exactly. So um yeah. Now, David Green's choice to

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Speaker 1: not use bar codes, uh is fine regardless of what

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Speaker 1: he does it. You know, he has that right. He's

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Speaker 1: the so proprietor of the business. What's less fine in

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Speaker 1: my opinion of the ways in which he's chosen to

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Speaker 1: spend his fortune and interviews, David will frequently claim that

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Speaker 1: God is the real manager of his three billion dollar

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Speaker 1: per year empire. He told Forbes this, if you have anything,

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Speaker 1: or I have anything, it's because it's been given to

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Speaker 1: us by our creator. So I've learned to say, look,

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Speaker 1: this is yours God, It's all yours. I'm going to

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Speaker 1: give it to you. And when he talks about how

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Speaker 1: he uses his wealth and interviews, David tends to say

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Speaker 1: things like this, I want to know that I have

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Speaker 1: affected people for eternity. I believe, I am, I believe

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Speaker 1: what someone knows Christ as their personal savior. I've affected eternity.

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Speaker 1: I matter ten billion years from now. Yeah, this is

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Speaker 1: c we're going in. Yeah, so too much. I don't

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Speaker 1: care for that. You don't affect people for eternity by

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Speaker 1: selling them colored mirrors and book ins um just like

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Speaker 1: the phrasing like affect people. Yeah, Yeah, it's unsettling. It's

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Speaker 1: like weirdly clinical and like it doesn't specify what you mean.

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Speaker 1: It's not great. It's not great. Billions of years, that's

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Speaker 1: ten billionaires. That's some scientology lesson delusions right there. Yeah. So.

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Speaker 1: David Green is currently the largest individual donor to evangelical

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Speaker 1: causes in the United States. In nineteen he bought an

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Speaker 1: old v A hospital in Little Rock, Arkansas, and turned

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Speaker 1: it into a church. This proved to be the start

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Speaker 1: of more than three million dollars in donations to establish

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Speaker 1: churches on fifty different properties. Other Christian leaders have come

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Speaker 1: to see Green as something of a venture capital fund

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Speaker 1: for their religion. He receives proposals on a daily basis

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Speaker 1: for churches and religious schools that need his support and

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Speaker 1: to listen. Four he gave a ten million dollar building

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Speaker 1: to Jerry Fallwell's Liberty University. A few years later he

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Speaker 1: paid off in yeah, this is going in so much

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Speaker 1: worse of a direction. A few years later he paid

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Speaker 1: off the numerous debts for Oral Roberts University. He has

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Speaker 1: founded numerous Christian foundations, through which he has distributed one

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Speaker 1: point four billion copies of Christian literature in more than

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Speaker 1: a hundred countries. The One Hope Foundation focuses on providing

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Speaker 1: scripture to children aged four to fourteen. The Every Home

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Speaker 1: for Christ Foundation sends missionaries with Bible booklets door to

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Speaker 1: door in the Global South. When people suggest that maybe

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Speaker 1: delivering food or medicine might be more useful than bibles

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Speaker 1: in many of these countries, Green has a prepared response.

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Speaker 1: It's not like you give them that but don't give

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Speaker 1: them food. You give both. But Green insists, if I

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Speaker 1: die without food or without eternal salvation, I want to

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Speaker 1: die without food. I can't argue with that. I can't

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Speaker 1: argue with those are the two real options that they're

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Speaker 1: that are definitely on the table, the only two that's

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Speaker 1: a good point. Good stuff. Huh. I wish I could

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Speaker 1: do good stuff. Wish I could work at hobby Lobby. Now,

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Speaker 1: Oh you can, Cody, you can. I shouldn't have said that.

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Speaker 1: I have good news for all of us because this

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Speaker 1: podcast is now sponsored and owned entirely by the hobby

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Speaker 1: Lobby Corporation. Yeah. And speaking of hobby Lobby, Cody, have

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Speaker 1: you considered all the different things that styrofoam roosters could

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Speaker 1: do to improve your life? Most of them, but probably

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Speaker 1: not all of them. I think there are some I

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Speaker 1: probably haven't thought of that I would buy if I

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Speaker 1: if I were told about them. Yes, with styrofoam roosters,

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Speaker 1: you don't need, for example, single payer healthcare. Just jam

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Speaker 1: a rooster in it. Yes, that's the hobby lobby message.

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Speaker 1: Shove a fake cock and whatever ails you and your

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Speaker 1: problems will be solved cocks. Yeah. On December twelve, be

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Speaker 1: Lobby made an irrevocable donation of an entire campus in Northfield,

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Speaker 1: Massachusetts to the National Christian Foundation or in CF. Both

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Speaker 1: hobby Lobby the business and David Green, the billionaire have

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Speaker 1: made and continue to make numerous donations to the n

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Speaker 1: CF totally millions upon millions of dollars. The n CF is,

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Speaker 1: on its face a nonprofit that supports a variety of

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Speaker 1: Christian causes, but of course, because this is my podcast,

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Speaker 1: the n c F primarily exists as a vehicle to

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Speaker 1: viciously attack people Christian extremists hate all around the world.

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Speaker 1: And I'm going to quote now from Sludge, a website

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Speaker 1: that analyzes the way evil pieces of ship pump their

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Speaker 1: money out across the world. Quote. According to the three

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Speaker 1: most recent available tax filenks, which cover two thousand fifteen

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Speaker 1: to two thousand seventeen, it has donated fifty six point

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Speaker 1: one million dollars on behalf of its clients to twenty

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Speaker 1: three nonprofits identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center is

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Speaker 1: hate groups. I certainly don't know of any public disclosures

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Speaker 1: of funds to hate groups at levels anywhere near this,

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Speaker 1: Heidi Berrick, director of the Intelligence Project at the SPLC,

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Speaker 1: told Sludge. It's pretty astounding and certainly concerning. According you

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Speaker 1: do a two thousand seventeen Inside Philanthropy article in CF

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Speaker 1: is probably the single largest source of money fueling the

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Speaker 1: pro life and anti LGBT movements over the past fifteen years.

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Speaker 1: In two thousand and seventeen, in CFS donation to anti LGBT,

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Speaker 1: anti Muslim, and anti immigrant hate groups rose to over

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Speaker 1: nineteen million dollars. It's a lot of money. It's good,

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Speaker 1: good stuff, good stuff. Ten billion years Cody, Yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: The n c F pours money into the Alliance Defending Freedom,

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Speaker 1: a network of Christian lawyers who want transgender people to

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Speaker 1: be mandatorily sterilized and want homosexuality to be made a

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Speaker 1: literal crime. The Alliance defend That's how you defend freedom,

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Speaker 1: by putting people in prison. Nothing says freedom like enforced sterilization.

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Speaker 1: The Alliance to the Alliance Defending Freedom is currently opposing

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Speaker 1: the Equality Act, which would ban discrimination against LGBTQ Americans.

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Speaker 1: David Green doesn't ever really say hateful things, but this

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Speaker 1: is where he puts his money. In fact, since n

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Speaker 1: c F donations make up more than one third of

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Speaker 1: the a d f S budget, it's likely Green has

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Speaker 1: put quite a lot of money into this group. If

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Speaker 1: we want an idea of how the United States would

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Speaker 1: look if Green and his friends got their way, we

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Speaker 1: can hop over to Uganda, and Cody, that's what we're

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Speaker 1: gonna do right after these ads for products and services.

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Speaker 1: Can't wait? Yeah, yeah, you know what won't turn our

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Speaker 1: nation into uh hate filled religious theocracy. Deliverables putting will

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Speaker 1: not also turn our nation into a fundamentalist hell whole

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Speaker 1: energy drinks. It is well known that fundamentalists cannot drink

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Speaker 1: putting or eat energy drinks. Off we go, goodbye, We're back, Cody. Yes,

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Speaker 1: you you enjoying this fun tale of the man who

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Speaker 1: sold styrophone roosters for the world. I like it to

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Speaker 1: fund bigots. Yeah, he's I like his answers for stuff. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they're good. I'm glad that dude. Yeah, his answers are

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Speaker 1: up he's up front and he's forth right, and there's

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Speaker 1: nothing behind it. Uh nothing. It's he's speaking from his

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Speaker 1: heart about his what he wants to do and is

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Speaker 1: doing it. In two thousand and eight, the n c

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Speaker 1: F gave eight hundred and seventeen thousand dollars to Ed Silvoso,

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Speaker 1: an evangelical minister from California who works directly with Julius O. Yett,

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Speaker 1: the Ugandan bishop who led the charge against that nation's

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Speaker 1: two thousand and fourteen anti Homosexuality bill. Here's how Human

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Speaker 1: Rights Watch describes it. Quote the law permits sentences of

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Speaker 1: life in prison for some sexual acts between consenting adults.

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Speaker 1: It criminalizes the undefined promotion of homosexuality, a provision that

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Speaker 1: threatens human rights advocacy work and prompted a police rate

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Speaker 1: on a joint US government McCarey University HIV Research and

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Speaker 1: Intervention program. But also criminalizes a person who keeps a house, rooms,

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Speaker 1: set of rooms, or place of any kind for purposes

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Speaker 1: of homosexuality, a provision that has been used to justify

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Speaker 1: evicting lgbt I tenants. Numerous gay people have been rendered

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Speaker 1: homeless by the law since its inception. Human Rights Watch

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Speaker 1: talk to one of them, a lesbian woman named Hanifa,

405
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Speaker 1: who showed them her eviction papers. Quote. You have been

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Speaker 1: nice to me and paying me very well. But due

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Speaker 1: to the existing situation in the country, pleus your behavior

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Speaker 1: with your friends forgive me to suspect you of being indecent.

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Speaker 1: I cannot allow you to rent my house. I cannot

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Speaker 1: fight the government. Yeah, and it's hard to know exactly

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Speaker 1: how much of hobby lobby money went up in these efforts,

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Speaker 1: but the NCF sent millions of dollars to different groups

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Speaker 1: in Uganda pushing these laws, and like you know, obviously

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Speaker 1: part of the goal of having organizations like this is

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Speaker 1: so a guy named David Green can claim none of

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Speaker 1: his money directly went to it, and also millions of

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Speaker 1: his dollars go to this group which spends millions of

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Speaker 1: dollars doing this ship. Yeah smart, smart, I mean smart,

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Speaker 1: define define smart, I mean smart. Cody is providing me

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Speaker 1: with the place to buy both paint brushes and uh

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Speaker 1: those fake books that I can put up on my

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Speaker 1: counter to make it look like I read. Yeah yeah,

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Speaker 1: and and uh clay for which people can make I

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Speaker 1: don't know, crucifixes out of you make anything crucifying at

425
00:24:20,320 --> 00:24:24,119
Speaker 1: a class Yeah, larger crucifix, A larger crucifer on a

426
00:24:24,200 --> 00:24:32,480
Speaker 1: smaller one size of crucifix. Yeah yeah, there's uh won't

427
00:24:32,480 --> 00:24:34,879
Speaker 1: get into it. There are laws like that that are

428
00:24:34,960 --> 00:24:38,359
Speaker 1: being introduced in various states this year. So sure are Cody,

429
00:24:38,480 --> 00:24:40,560
Speaker 1: Yeah there sure are. Probably do an episode about that

430
00:24:40,600 --> 00:24:42,679
Speaker 1: on an our other show. But yeah yeah, And if

431
00:24:42,720 --> 00:24:45,080
Speaker 1: you trace back the money behind those laws, I bet

432
00:24:45,119 --> 00:24:46,879
Speaker 1: they go to the same place as these do. I

433
00:24:46,920 --> 00:24:50,160
Speaker 1: would believe that yeah. Yeah. The n CF is also

434
00:24:50,240 --> 00:24:52,320
Speaker 1: one of the groups that Chick fil A, for example,

435
00:24:52,400 --> 00:24:55,440
Speaker 1: gets likely ambastad for supporting, but like for whatever reason,

436
00:24:55,520 --> 00:24:58,359
Speaker 1: hobby Lobby has not acquired the same amount of hire

437
00:25:00,240 --> 00:25:03,560
Speaker 1: interesting until now. In the first few months after the

438
00:25:03,600 --> 00:25:06,880
Speaker 1: bill's passage, at least seventeen LGBT people were arrested under

439
00:25:06,920 --> 00:25:11,000
Speaker 1: suspicion of homosexuality. In Uganda, three transgender individuals were sexually

440
00:25:11,040 --> 00:25:14,680
Speaker 1: assaulted in police custody. Charity organizations that provided contraceptives and

441
00:25:14,720 --> 00:25:17,760
Speaker 1: AIDS medication were forcibly shut down under the new law.

442
00:25:17,840 --> 00:25:20,640
Speaker 1: Even doctors were allowed to deny basic treatment to gay people.

443
00:25:21,040 --> 00:25:23,439
Speaker 1: Human Rights Watch talk to one transgender man who went

444
00:25:23,480 --> 00:25:25,639
Speaker 1: to his doctor with a fever. He said, the doctor

445
00:25:25,720 --> 00:25:27,720
Speaker 1: asked him, but are you a man or a woman?

446
00:25:27,920 --> 00:25:29,959
Speaker 1: I said, that doesn't matter. But what I can tell

447
00:25:30,000 --> 00:25:32,520
Speaker 1: you is I'm a transman. He said, what's a transman?

448
00:25:32,640 --> 00:25:34,960
Speaker 1: You don't Oh, we don't offer services to gay people here.

449
00:25:35,000 --> 00:25:37,080
Speaker 1: You people are not even supposed to be in our community.

450
00:25:37,280 --> 00:25:39,200
Speaker 1: I can call the police and report you. You're not

451
00:25:39,320 --> 00:25:43,200
Speaker 1: even supposed to be in the country. This is kind

452
00:25:43,280 --> 00:25:46,480
Speaker 1: of the world that David Green wants to the United States.

453
00:25:47,000 --> 00:25:50,240
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, yeah. Through his donations to the n c F,

454
00:25:50,400 --> 00:25:53,000
Speaker 1: David Green has supported all this. He has also supported

455
00:25:53,000 --> 00:25:55,160
Speaker 1: a number of anti Muslim and anti immigrant hate groups.

456
00:25:55,240 --> 00:25:57,440
Speaker 1: The n c F gives money to Act for America,

457
00:25:57,760 --> 00:26:01,480
Speaker 1: the American Freedom Law Center, and David Horowitz Freedom Says.

458
00:26:01,480 --> 00:26:04,520
Speaker 1: I love freedom, You love freedom, and it always is

459
00:26:04,560 --> 00:26:08,320
Speaker 1: good things. Yeah. I like organizations with Freeman liberty in

460
00:26:08,359 --> 00:26:10,480
Speaker 1: their name because that means it's good. That means, that

461
00:26:10,560 --> 00:26:13,119
Speaker 1: means it's good. Yeah. It never means the freedom to

462
00:26:13,240 --> 00:26:16,080
Speaker 1: oppress broad swaths of the population. No, no, no, no, no, no,

463
00:26:16,160 --> 00:26:20,000
Speaker 1: no no no. How dare you? How dare you? How

464
00:26:20,119 --> 00:26:22,640
Speaker 1: dare you know? Freedom is good? Whatever you said bad,

465
00:26:22,720 --> 00:26:29,840
Speaker 1: but not my freedom or liberty? Uh? Yeah. So. David

466
00:26:29,960 --> 00:26:33,600
Speaker 1: Horwitz of the David Horwitz Freedom Center believes that quote

467
00:26:33,720 --> 00:26:37,280
Speaker 1: the whole Muslim world is pursuing a final solution to Jews,

468
00:26:37,440 --> 00:26:41,200
Speaker 1: and that American Muslims represent the real neo Nazi movement

469
00:26:41,240 --> 00:26:46,359
Speaker 1: in America. It's not those Nazis. They literally say that

470
00:26:46,480 --> 00:26:51,440
Speaker 1: they're neo Nazis. Yeah, it's amazing. Come oh no, they say,

471
00:26:51,480 --> 00:26:55,160
Speaker 1: how I think Horwitz isn't all of them kind of guy? Yeah, yeah,

472
00:26:57,920 --> 00:27:01,600
Speaker 1: I mean like the Nazis say, like, yeah, they used

473
00:27:01,680 --> 00:27:07,040
Speaker 1: the word yeah. The Alliance Defending Freedom is an anti

474
00:27:07,160 --> 00:27:10,080
Speaker 1: LGBT group currently lobbying to make US law as much

475
00:27:10,119 --> 00:27:13,119
Speaker 1: like Uganda's as possible. Uh. They provided a hobby lobby

476
00:27:13,200 --> 00:27:15,840
Speaker 1: and David Green with three lawyers in two thousand fourteen,

477
00:27:15,880 --> 00:27:18,280
Speaker 1: when the billionaire hobby lobby owner decided to strike a

478
00:27:18,320 --> 00:27:22,320
Speaker 1: blow against birth control and the Affordable Care Act. This

479
00:27:22,520 --> 00:27:24,440
Speaker 1: whole thing stemmed from the fact that the a c

480
00:27:24,640 --> 00:27:28,880
Speaker 1: A required company health insurance plans to provide access to contraceptives. Crucially,

481
00:27:28,960 --> 00:27:31,600
Speaker 1: the Green family insisted they did not object to paying

482
00:27:31,680 --> 00:27:35,200
Speaker 1: for all kinds of contraceptives, just the morning after pill,

483
00:27:35,240 --> 00:27:38,200
Speaker 1: which they believe violated heavenly law for reasons I think

484
00:27:38,200 --> 00:27:41,840
Speaker 1: are dumb. Pregnancy actually begins when a fertilized egg attaches

485
00:27:41,880 --> 00:27:43,720
Speaker 1: itself to the wall of the uterus, and the morning

486
00:27:43,760 --> 00:27:46,320
Speaker 1: after pills are meant to prevent this, but the Greens

487
00:27:46,400 --> 00:27:49,159
Speaker 1: argued that any action taken to prevent implantation once the

488
00:27:49,200 --> 00:27:51,560
Speaker 1: egg is fertilized is the same thing as an abortion.

489
00:27:52,080 --> 00:27:54,200
Speaker 1: The Greens also argued that paying for i U D

490
00:27:54,400 --> 00:27:57,120
Speaker 1: s would violate their deeply held religious beliefs, and two

491
00:27:57,160 --> 00:27:59,879
Speaker 1: thousand twelve, when the series of lawsuits began, Green insist

492
00:28:00,000 --> 00:28:02,960
Speaker 1: it we simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply

493
00:28:03,080 --> 00:28:05,959
Speaker 1: with this mandate. In two thousand fourteen, the case made

494
00:28:06,000 --> 00:28:08,200
Speaker 1: its way to the Supreme Court, which was probably David

495
00:28:08,240 --> 00:28:10,920
Speaker 1: Green's goal from the beginning. Hobby Lobby won its suit,

496
00:28:10,960 --> 00:28:14,320
Speaker 1: which established that corporations with religious objections could opt out

497
00:28:14,400 --> 00:28:17,680
Speaker 1: of providing mandatory coverage to their employees. This marked the

498
00:28:17,720 --> 00:28:20,200
Speaker 1: first time in American history that the Supreme Court declared

499
00:28:20,200 --> 00:28:23,600
Speaker 1: businesses were capable of holding religious views. Most of the

500
00:28:23,640 --> 00:28:26,800
Speaker 1: coverage of this event portrayed a simple moral consistency on

501
00:28:26,880 --> 00:28:29,800
Speaker 1: behalf of David, As he told The Independent, you can't

502
00:28:29,840 --> 00:28:32,320
Speaker 1: have a belief system on Sunday and not live at

503
00:28:32,320 --> 00:28:36,120
Speaker 1: the other six days. However, when you actually dig into

504
00:28:36,119 --> 00:28:39,200
Speaker 1: how David runs his company, he seems notably less consistent about,

505
00:28:39,360 --> 00:28:42,040
Speaker 1: for example, the sanctity of young life when that young

506
00:28:42,160 --> 00:28:44,600
Speaker 1: life might actually cost him some money. And I'm going

507
00:28:44,640 --> 00:28:48,360
Speaker 1: to quote now from an article in Rewire News. Quote

508
00:28:48,920 --> 00:28:51,720
Speaker 1: when a very pregnant Felicia Allen applied for medical leaf

509
00:28:51,760 --> 00:28:53,880
Speaker 1: from her job at Hobby Lobby three years ago. One

510
00:28:53,960 --> 00:28:55,920
Speaker 1: might think that the company best known for denying its

511
00:28:55,920 --> 00:28:59,160
Speaker 1: employees insurance coverage of certain contraceptives on the false grounds

512
00:28:59,200 --> 00:29:01,800
Speaker 1: that they cause abortion, would show equal concern for helping

513
00:29:01,840 --> 00:29:04,760
Speaker 1: one of its employees when she learned that she was pregnant. Instead,

514
00:29:04,840 --> 00:29:07,920
Speaker 1: Allan says, the self professed evangelical Christian arts and craft

515
00:29:08,000 --> 00:29:10,080
Speaker 1: chain fired her and then tried to prevent her from

516
00:29:10,080 --> 00:29:12,960
Speaker 1: accessing unemployment benefits. They didn't even want me to come

517
00:29:12,960 --> 00:29:15,560
Speaker 1: back after having my baby to provide for it, she said.

518
00:29:16,040 --> 00:29:18,240
Speaker 1: Allan had been hired as a part time cashier in July.

519
00:29:19,240 --> 00:29:21,080
Speaker 1: Not long after she started the job, she found out

520
00:29:21,080 --> 00:29:23,080
Speaker 1: she was four months pregnant. She had not been working

521
00:29:23,160 --> 00:29:25,280
Speaker 1: long enough to qualify for parental leave under the Family

522
00:29:25,360 --> 00:29:28,479
Speaker 1: Medical Leave Act. Alan went to her supervisor. I asked her,

523
00:29:28,560 --> 00:29:30,440
Speaker 1: what I lose my job to me being four months

524
00:29:30,480 --> 00:29:32,760
Speaker 1: and only having five months before having my child. She

525
00:29:32,880 --> 00:29:35,280
Speaker 1: told me no. I felt like everything was okay. I

526
00:29:35,360 --> 00:29:36,960
Speaker 1: had talked to my boss. She let me know that

527
00:29:37,040 --> 00:29:39,080
Speaker 1: everything would be okay. I would still have my job.

528
00:29:39,560 --> 00:29:41,200
Speaker 1: But when she actually had to give birth and take

529
00:29:41,240 --> 00:29:43,280
Speaker 1: her leave of absence, her supervisor told her that she

530
00:29:43,320 --> 00:29:45,920
Speaker 1: would be fired for doing so. She tried to reapply

531
00:29:46,040 --> 00:29:48,320
Speaker 1: to her job after coming back, but was not rehired.

532
00:29:48,600 --> 00:29:51,360
Speaker 1: When she applied for unemployment benefits, she claimed Hobby Lobby

533
00:29:51,440 --> 00:29:54,280
Speaker 1: lawyers lied to the unemployment agency and said that she

534
00:29:54,400 --> 00:29:57,160
Speaker 1: had chosen not to take parental leave and quit. The

535
00:29:57,240 --> 00:29:59,760
Speaker 1: court eventually agreed with Alan's version of events, and she

536
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:02,720
Speaker 1: one her claim for benefits. She sued Hobby Lobby in

537
00:30:02,760 --> 00:30:05,600
Speaker 1: February two twelve, the same year that the company started

538
00:30:05,640 --> 00:30:07,840
Speaker 1: its battle with the a c A, but that case

539
00:30:07,920 --> 00:30:10,920
Speaker 1: was dropped immediately because it turned out she'd signed away

540
00:30:10,960 --> 00:30:13,760
Speaker 1: her right to sue the company without knowing. All hobby

541
00:30:13,840 --> 00:30:17,440
Speaker 1: Lobby employees are required to resolve legal disputes through arbitration,

542
00:30:17,760 --> 00:30:23,400
Speaker 1: which heavily favors the corporation. Yeah, we got They're awesome

543
00:30:24,400 --> 00:30:26,880
Speaker 1: and Cody, how would you feel if I told you

544
00:30:27,000 --> 00:30:31,200
Speaker 1: that hobby lobbies arbitration wasn't a normal arbitration agreement, wasn't

545
00:30:31,280 --> 00:30:37,200
Speaker 1: the Yeah, I would feel wholly unsurprised by that statement. Um,

546
00:30:37,480 --> 00:30:40,000
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't. I don't like to get political.

547
00:30:40,880 --> 00:30:44,000
Speaker 1: You don't, you don't. You're famous for that, Yes, but um,

548
00:30:44,440 --> 00:30:52,120
Speaker 1: what if we didn't tie healthcare to our employers I mean, Cody,

549
00:30:52,320 --> 00:30:55,800
Speaker 1: it's that's a nice dream. But you know, like, can

550
00:30:55,880 --> 00:30:58,480
Speaker 1: you point out I don't know, for example, a couple

551
00:30:58,520 --> 00:31:01,160
Speaker 1: of dozen nations on the planet with higher standards of

552
00:31:01,240 --> 00:31:03,400
Speaker 1: living in longer lifespans in the United States that do

553
00:31:03,560 --> 00:31:06,760
Speaker 1: something like that. I've actually never heard of a second country.

554
00:31:07,600 --> 00:31:12,960
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so our education systems working. Yeah yeah, So

555
00:31:13,120 --> 00:31:16,520
Speaker 1: I think whatever, whatever comparison you're gonna make or point

556
00:31:16,560 --> 00:31:17,960
Speaker 1: you're gonna make, it would have been lost on me.

557
00:31:18,000 --> 00:31:20,880
Speaker 1: I would have been like, what's what's Kannada? I don't

558
00:31:20,880 --> 00:31:25,360
Speaker 1: know even if that's a reference to a nation. So no, no,

559
00:31:25,680 --> 00:31:29,000
Speaker 1: it's actually a gas station. Uh somewhere up past Tacoma.

560
00:31:29,520 --> 00:31:33,680
Speaker 1: Um okay, so uh yeah, I'm gonna quote Rewire News

561
00:31:33,720 --> 00:31:39,080
Speaker 1: again discussing the peculiarities of hobby lobbies arbitration because like

562
00:31:39,160 --> 00:31:42,560
Speaker 1: even like even before you get here, it's like, yeah,

563
00:31:42,880 --> 00:31:47,480
Speaker 1: companies prefer arbitration because God, all right, go ahead, benefits

564
00:31:47,520 --> 00:31:51,960
Speaker 1: the massively Yeah alright. One thing that sets hobby lobby

565
00:31:52,000 --> 00:31:54,960
Speaker 1: is arbitration policy from most corporations is its allowance for

566
00:31:55,080 --> 00:31:59,920
Speaker 1: Christian influenced arbitration. But the Mutual Arbitration Agreement Alan Si

567
00:32:00,080 --> 00:32:02,400
Speaker 1: gives employees the option of choosing to find an arbitrator,

568
00:32:02,440 --> 00:32:06,440
Speaker 1: either through the nonprofit American Arbitration Association, the largest dispute

569
00:32:06,480 --> 00:32:09,440
Speaker 1: resolution service provider in the United States, or the Interestitute

570
00:32:09,480 --> 00:32:12,760
Speaker 1: for Christian Conciliation. The company Hobby Lobby uses for their

571
00:32:12,840 --> 00:32:16,640
Speaker 1: Christian arbitration is called Peacemaker Ministries, whose principles include the

572
00:32:16,680 --> 00:32:19,600
Speaker 1: idea that Christians are not allowed to sue other Christians.

573
00:32:19,960 --> 00:32:22,400
Speaker 1: This is incredibly convenient for the Christian owner of a

574
00:32:22,480 --> 00:32:26,960
Speaker 1: Christian company who fox over his Christian employees now hobby Lobby.

575
00:32:32,360 --> 00:32:35,200
Speaker 1: Hobby Lobby insists that its owners beliefs are not forced

576
00:32:35,280 --> 00:32:37,400
Speaker 1: on employees, outside from the fact that they won't pay

577
00:32:37,480 --> 00:32:39,480
Speaker 1: for your birth control because of their beliefs, which is

578
00:32:39,560 --> 00:32:41,840
Speaker 1: kind of forcing their beliefs on you. But Hobby Lobby

579
00:32:41,880 --> 00:32:44,520
Speaker 1: won't force you to be Christian, although they do actively

580
00:32:44,560 --> 00:32:48,080
Speaker 1: evangelize their employees. David Green has hired three chaplains to

581
00:32:48,160 --> 00:32:51,080
Speaker 1: minister to his employees. He claims that hundreds of employees

582
00:32:51,080 --> 00:32:54,400
Speaker 1: have been converted to Christianity this way, including fifteen managers

583
00:32:54,440 --> 00:32:57,040
Speaker 1: in a single year. As David told The Independent, we

584
00:32:57,160 --> 00:32:59,240
Speaker 1: prayed a prayer with them and we did have fifteen

585
00:32:59,280 --> 00:33:02,320
Speaker 1: managers come to know Christ in the business place. That

586
00:33:02,400 --> 00:33:06,560
Speaker 1: seems good about board because once they know Christ, they

587
00:33:06,600 --> 00:33:10,920
Speaker 1: can't see you. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder how many have

588
00:33:11,680 --> 00:33:15,120
Speaker 1: been like, yeah, sure, I'm Christian. Now knowing that, like

589
00:33:16,720 --> 00:33:19,480
Speaker 1: they'll be in the good graces a little more. Mm hmm.

590
00:33:20,800 --> 00:33:23,520
Speaker 1: I mean I had to join Jack's weird Buddhist set,

591
00:33:23,680 --> 00:33:26,800
Speaker 1: which I still have trouble believing that M M A

592
00:33:26,960 --> 00:33:29,880
Speaker 1: is a critical aspect of Buddhism. But Jack says so

593
00:33:30,520 --> 00:33:41,280
Speaker 1: yeah or um sorry. That Rewire article quotes Alex Colvin,

594
00:33:41,360 --> 00:33:44,720
Speaker 1: a professor at Cornell and an employment arbitration expert. Uh

595
00:33:44,840 --> 00:33:47,400
Speaker 1: He said this of Hobby Lobby's arbitration policies. I think

596
00:33:47,440 --> 00:33:49,720
Speaker 1: it's an interesting confluence here with Hobby Lobby being in

597
00:33:49,720 --> 00:33:51,520
Speaker 1: the news with that big case. But if that were

598
00:33:51,520 --> 00:33:53,720
Speaker 1: an employment case where an employee wanted to make a claim,

599
00:33:53,800 --> 00:33:55,640
Speaker 1: we would never see that case at the Supreme Court

600
00:33:55,680 --> 00:33:58,440
Speaker 1: because it would be stayed in arbitration. So ironically, Hobby

601
00:33:58,480 --> 00:34:00,160
Speaker 1: Lobby gets to go to the Supreme Court because they

602
00:34:00,160 --> 00:34:02,440
Speaker 1: want to challenge this, but their own employees don't get

603
00:34:02,480 --> 00:34:05,720
Speaker 1: to go to court. That is ironic, isn't it. I

604
00:34:05,760 --> 00:34:08,960
Speaker 1: would I was gonna use the word fair, but very fair,

605
00:34:09,560 --> 00:34:14,680
Speaker 1: very fair and cool. Morally consistent too, uh and speaking

606
00:34:14,760 --> 00:34:19,560
Speaker 1: of more consistency, well, the craft store chain apparently considers

607
00:34:19,600 --> 00:34:22,120
Speaker 1: the Morning after pill a clear and present danger to

608
00:34:22,200 --> 00:34:24,560
Speaker 1: their faith. They did not have the same issue with

609
00:34:24,640 --> 00:34:27,920
Speaker 1: supporting the Chinese government. The vast majority of Hobby Lobby's

610
00:34:27,920 --> 00:34:30,200
Speaker 1: products are made in China. They spend billions of year

611
00:34:30,239 --> 00:34:32,799
Speaker 1: dollars a year importing from that country, and up until

612
00:34:32,840 --> 00:34:35,239
Speaker 1: two thousand and sixteen, the Chinese government enforced their one

613
00:34:35,360 --> 00:34:38,799
Speaker 1: child policy by in part mandatory abortions for pregnant women.

614
00:34:39,160 --> 00:34:42,120
Speaker 1: David Green decided this mattered less than maximizing the profit

615
00:34:42,160 --> 00:34:44,640
Speaker 1: margins on his knickknacks by having them made in China.

616
00:34:45,200 --> 00:34:48,839
Speaker 1: So it just like these beliefs are only ironclad up

617
00:34:48,880 --> 00:34:52,239
Speaker 1: until they're not as profitable, and they don't matter. Yeah,

618
00:34:52,400 --> 00:34:56,279
Speaker 1: I mean, that's again, it's wholly unsurprising. Yeah. Um, but

619
00:34:56,360 --> 00:35:00,239
Speaker 1: at least they can deny their employees care that seems, yes,

620
00:35:01,760 --> 00:35:05,040
Speaker 1: their employees that they make memorize all the prices because

621
00:35:05,160 --> 00:35:10,520
Speaker 1: the devil of course Cody. Of course, we can understand

622
00:35:10,680 --> 00:35:13,840
Speaker 1: in our society how you might have to deny employees

623
00:35:13,880 --> 00:35:16,719
Speaker 1: access to certain medicines because the way that they deal

624
00:35:16,800 --> 00:35:20,880
Speaker 1: with eggs and stuff is against your poorly understood religious beliefs,

625
00:35:21,680 --> 00:35:23,920
Speaker 1: while also being like, but we're still gonna, you know,

626
00:35:24,360 --> 00:35:26,120
Speaker 1: buy a bunch of stuff from China because that's just

627
00:35:26,200 --> 00:35:29,759
Speaker 1: the only way to get enough styrophone roosters. Yeah, but

628
00:35:29,960 --> 00:35:32,479
Speaker 1: I can we can guarantee Hobby Lobby wouldn't do something

629
00:35:32,600 --> 00:35:35,359
Speaker 1: like invest millions of dollars in the same drug firms

630
00:35:35,400 --> 00:35:37,239
Speaker 1: that produced the pills that they say are against their

631
00:35:37,239 --> 00:35:40,080
Speaker 1: religious beliefs. That would, of course be a massive violation

632
00:35:40,120 --> 00:35:44,880
Speaker 1: of what they believe. Right. Yeah, um, I agree, and

633
00:35:45,120 --> 00:35:52,200
Speaker 1: I choose to um leave this podcast before you make

634
00:35:52,239 --> 00:35:55,160
Speaker 1: your next point. Hobby lobbies four oh one K plan

635
00:35:55,280 --> 00:35:58,560
Speaker 1: for employees include some seventy three million dollars in mutual

636
00:35:58,640 --> 00:36:01,000
Speaker 1: funds that are heavily invested in very same drug firms

637
00:36:01,040 --> 00:36:05,120
Speaker 1: that produce emergency contraceptive pill, intra uterine devices, and drugs

638
00:36:05,160 --> 00:36:08,680
Speaker 1: commonly used in abortions. It's also worth noting that, prior

639
00:36:08,760 --> 00:36:11,080
Speaker 1: to the a C A, Hobby Lobby's health insurance plan

640
00:36:11,239 --> 00:36:14,479
Speaker 1: covered all these devices. It's almost as if what really

641
00:36:14,560 --> 00:36:17,759
Speaker 1: matters to David was establishing the legal precedent that corporations

642
00:36:17,800 --> 00:36:21,400
Speaker 1: could discriminate against employees based on religious beliefs. It is

643
00:36:21,440 --> 00:36:28,600
Speaker 1: almost exactly like that. It is almost exactly like that. Again,

644
00:36:28,920 --> 00:36:33,880
Speaker 1: wholly unsurprising, wholly cool and unsurprising, and boy howdy, have

645
00:36:34,040 --> 00:36:37,360
Speaker 1: their implications of the hobby Lobby decision been vast and terrifying.

646
00:36:37,680 --> 00:36:40,120
Speaker 1: In her descent to the two thousand fourteen ruling, Justice

647
00:36:40,160 --> 00:36:42,960
Speaker 1: Ruth Bader Ginsburg declared the Court, I fear has ventured

648
00:36:43,000 --> 00:36:46,320
Speaker 1: into a mine field. Two years later, in two thousand sixteen,

649
00:36:46,360 --> 00:36:49,200
Speaker 1: the Los Angeles Times evaluated the impact of the ruling

650
00:36:49,400 --> 00:36:53,399
Speaker 1: so far, Like this quote, the minefield Ginsburg warned about

651
00:36:53,440 --> 00:36:56,279
Speaker 1: has now detonated. On Thursday, US District Attorney Sean F.

652
00:36:56,440 --> 00:36:58,600
Speaker 1: Cox of Detroit ruled that a local funeral home was

653
00:36:58,640 --> 00:37:00,920
Speaker 1: well within its rights to fire at Rand's gender employee

654
00:37:00,960 --> 00:37:03,600
Speaker 1: because its owner had a religious belief that gender transition

655
00:37:03,640 --> 00:37:06,759
Speaker 1: of violated biblical teachings. Cox's ruling puts the lie to

656
00:37:06,840 --> 00:37:09,720
Speaker 1: Justice Samuel Alito's denial in his majority opinion and Hobby

657
00:37:09,719 --> 00:37:11,400
Speaker 1: Lobby that the ruling would provide a shield for a

658
00:37:11,440 --> 00:37:14,640
Speaker 1: wide range of discriminatory practices by allowing them to masquerade

659
00:37:14,640 --> 00:37:17,600
Speaker 1: as religious scruples. Our decision today provides no set shield,

660
00:37:17,640 --> 00:37:20,040
Speaker 1: Aldo wrote. Ginsburg, who was on the short end of

661
00:37:20,080 --> 00:37:22,319
Speaker 1: the five four decision, knew better. She said, there could

662
00:37:22,320 --> 00:37:24,640
Speaker 1: be little doubt that religious claims would proliferate because the

663
00:37:24,680 --> 00:37:27,920
Speaker 1: Court's expansion of religious freedom to corporations invites for profit

664
00:37:28,040 --> 00:37:30,839
Speaker 1: entities to seek religious based exemptions from regulations they deem

665
00:37:30,880 --> 00:37:33,480
Speaker 1: offensive to their faith. She asked, where is the stopping

666
00:37:33,520 --> 00:37:36,840
Speaker 1: point Suppose an employer sincerely held religious belief is offended

667
00:37:36,880 --> 00:37:39,960
Speaker 1: by high health coverage of vaccines, or paying the minimum wage,

668
00:37:40,200 --> 00:37:43,399
Speaker 1: or according women equal pay for substantially similar work. Within

669
00:37:43,520 --> 00:37:45,800
Speaker 1: days of the ruling, there were already forty nine cases

670
00:37:46,040 --> 00:37:49,040
Speaker 1: from for profit organizations claiming religious objections to the a

671
00:37:49,200 --> 00:37:51,520
Speaker 1: c A, and the ruling is increasingly used to cloak

672
00:37:51,560 --> 00:37:54,400
Speaker 1: a legal discrimination in the robes of religion. Wheaton College

673
00:37:54,400 --> 00:37:56,400
Speaker 1: even argued that the ruling meant they could refuse to

674
00:37:56,440 --> 00:37:58,879
Speaker 1: fill out medical paperwork stating that they would not pay

675
00:37:58,960 --> 00:38:01,640
Speaker 1: for contraceptive coverage because doing so was one step in

676
00:38:01,680 --> 00:38:04,239
Speaker 1: a process that would lead to other entities paying for

677
00:38:04,320 --> 00:38:06,520
Speaker 1: that coverage, So they were well within their rights to

678
00:38:06,600 --> 00:38:09,279
Speaker 1: funk with employees private lives. Even if their money wasn't

679
00:38:09,360 --> 00:38:17,440
Speaker 1: on the line. That's awesome, how cool stuff. Oh my god. Oh.

680
00:38:18,680 --> 00:38:20,799
Speaker 1: It's still too early to say precisely what the long

681
00:38:20,920 --> 00:38:23,680
Speaker 1: term impact of the hobby Lobby ruling will be, but

682
00:38:23,800 --> 00:38:26,040
Speaker 1: it is clear that it has fundamentally changed the game

683
00:38:26,120 --> 00:38:29,400
Speaker 1: as regards religious freedom of speech. There is now established

684
00:38:29,480 --> 00:38:32,960
Speaker 1: legal precedent to protect wealthy individual religious extremists from abusing

685
00:38:33,000 --> 00:38:35,920
Speaker 1: people they disagree with in almost any conceivable manner. You

686
00:38:36,040 --> 00:38:38,520
Speaker 1: might note that this is basically a slower, less bloody,

687
00:38:38,560 --> 00:38:40,600
Speaker 1: but ultimately just as violent, a way of achieving the

688
00:38:40,680 --> 00:38:43,920
Speaker 1: same basic goal, That isis set a state completely dominated

689
00:38:43,960 --> 00:38:49,120
Speaker 1: by extreme religious law, with no freedom or ability to dissent. Guys,

690
00:38:50,480 --> 00:38:53,920
Speaker 1: I just wanted to talk about isis Roberts Well, Cody,

691
00:38:55,200 --> 00:39:00,160
Speaker 1: I have for you, because now we're going to get

692
00:39:00,200 --> 00:39:02,080
Speaker 1: to the part of the story where hobby Lobby helps

693
00:39:02,120 --> 00:39:05,759
Speaker 1: to fund the precursors to isis. I guess that's lighter?

694
00:39:05,920 --> 00:39:09,879
Speaker 1: Is that? Is that lighter? Really? Sad? You, guys? It's

695
00:39:09,920 --> 00:39:13,040
Speaker 1: bumming me out. It's a good story. Everybody loves a

696
00:39:13,040 --> 00:39:16,760
Speaker 1: happy story. Yeah, everybody does love a happy story. Happy

697
00:39:16,840 --> 00:39:23,600
Speaker 1: happy Cody. You know what won't lead to the establishment

698
00:39:23,719 --> 00:39:26,520
Speaker 1: of a theocracy in the United States that strips people

699
00:39:26,680 --> 00:39:29,840
Speaker 1: of very basic, fundamental human rights in order to maximize

700
00:39:29,920 --> 00:39:35,000
Speaker 1: corporate profits. Is it products and services? That's exactly right.

701
00:39:36,600 --> 00:39:40,120
Speaker 1: I knew it. Yeah, I knew how to save the republic.

702
00:39:40,960 --> 00:39:43,760
Speaker 1: It's products and services. That's the problem. There just weren't

703
00:39:43,880 --> 00:39:47,840
Speaker 1: enough products and services in two thousand fourteen. Products, they

704
00:39:47,840 --> 00:39:51,279
Speaker 1: don't have services exactly. And this is why podcasts will

705
00:39:51,320 --> 00:39:55,360
Speaker 1: save the Republic. Is the sheer, the sheer deluge of

706
00:39:55,719 --> 00:39:59,719
Speaker 1: products and services that we can bring in to rescue

707
00:39:59,760 --> 00:40:05,640
Speaker 1: our fellow Americans from this encroaching nightmare. The heroes, this

708
00:40:05,960 --> 00:40:09,160
Speaker 1: is the beaches at Normandy, and we are fighting bigotry

709
00:40:09,600 --> 00:40:26,399
Speaker 1: with products, promo code, save the World, ad break. We're back.

710
00:40:28,280 --> 00:40:30,839
Speaker 1: So Cody, we just talked about how David Green's goal

711
00:40:30,920 --> 00:40:34,720
Speaker 1: is basically the establishment of a religious uh state along

712
00:40:34,760 --> 00:40:37,600
Speaker 1: the same lines as Isis, but slower and more profitable.

713
00:40:39,000 --> 00:40:43,800
Speaker 1: Speaking of Islamic terrorists, David Green helped to put piles

714
00:40:43,840 --> 00:40:46,320
Speaker 1: of money in the pockets of Islamic terrorists so he

715
00:40:46,400 --> 00:40:49,759
Speaker 1: could have a fancy museum. Right around the same time,

716
00:40:49,840 --> 00:40:52,160
Speaker 1: Hobby Lobby one its case in the Supreme Court. Stories

717
00:40:52,200 --> 00:40:54,319
Speaker 1: on the company started spreading the word that David Green

718
00:40:54,440 --> 00:40:58,120
Speaker 1: was creating a Bible museum in Washington, d C. Politico

719
00:40:58,239 --> 00:41:00,600
Speaker 1: reported that the museum would likely cost family more than

720
00:41:00,680 --> 00:41:04,239
Speaker 1: eight hundred million dollars and involve a repository of tens

721
00:41:04,280 --> 00:41:07,560
Speaker 1: of thousands of Biblical antiquities the family had recently acquired.

722
00:41:08,239 --> 00:41:10,640
Speaker 1: The mission of the Bible Museum was at first to

723
00:41:10,760 --> 00:41:14,520
Speaker 1: inspire confidence in the absolute authority and reliability of the Bible.

724
00:41:14,960 --> 00:41:18,640
Speaker 1: Green later modified this slightly to invite people to engage

725
00:41:18,800 --> 00:41:24,640
Speaker 1: with the Bible. Yeah, yeah, he really does. In two

726
00:41:24,680 --> 00:41:27,520
Speaker 1: thousand ten, Hobby Lobby president and David's son Steve Green,

727
00:41:27,680 --> 00:41:31,000
Speaker 1: visited the United Arab Emirates with an antiquities consultant. There

728
00:41:31,040 --> 00:41:34,520
Speaker 1: they inspected five thousand, five forty eight artifacts. These objects,

729
00:41:34,520 --> 00:41:37,800
Speaker 1: according to a later legal complaint, were displayed informally, spread

730
00:41:37,840 --> 00:41:40,040
Speaker 1: on the floor, arranged in layers on a coffee table,

731
00:41:40,080 --> 00:41:43,080
Speaker 1: and packed loosely in cardboard boxes in many instances, with

732
00:41:43,160 --> 00:41:45,879
Speaker 1: little or no protective material between them. That's how you're

733
00:41:45,880 --> 00:41:51,520
Speaker 1: supposed to do to the garage and like show here's

734
00:41:51,560 --> 00:42:02,360
Speaker 1: the antiquities we sell heroin to you. Now. These antiquities

735
00:42:02,400 --> 00:42:04,960
Speaker 1: mostly consisted of Cunea formed tablets, and balls of clay

736
00:42:05,040 --> 00:42:08,480
Speaker 1: imprinted with ancient seals. The whole situation seemed very shady,

737
00:42:08,600 --> 00:42:10,800
Speaker 1: and it was, but the dealers provided what's called a

738
00:42:10,960 --> 00:42:14,520
Speaker 1: statement of provenance. See Antiquities. Steft as a major problem,

739
00:42:14,560 --> 00:42:17,080
Speaker 1: particularly in the Middle East. Since the early nineteen nineties,

740
00:42:17,080 --> 00:42:19,319
Speaker 1: between two hundred and five hundred thousand objects have been

741
00:42:19,360 --> 00:42:22,840
Speaker 1: looted from archaeological sites in Iraq alone, cylinder seals and

742
00:42:22,880 --> 00:42:25,200
Speaker 1: Cunea formed tablets, the same kind of objects that this

743
00:42:25,360 --> 00:42:27,160
Speaker 1: were displayed by Steve Green and the U a E

744
00:42:27,719 --> 00:42:30,840
Speaker 1: are the most frequently looted items. Since nineteen ninety, cultural

745
00:42:30,880 --> 00:42:34,640
Speaker 1: objects from Iraq carry special import restrictions that include criminal penalties.

746
00:42:35,520 --> 00:42:37,759
Speaker 1: That's not just because the US government wants to stop

747
00:42:37,840 --> 00:42:40,239
Speaker 1: these items from being looted. In fact, it has much

748
00:42:40,280 --> 00:42:41,960
Speaker 1: more to do with the worry that these items are

749
00:42:42,000 --> 00:42:45,200
Speaker 1: being looted by terrorist organizations and used to fund violent

750
00:42:45,239 --> 00:42:48,319
Speaker 1: attacks across the world. During the height of the Islamic State,

751
00:42:48,480 --> 00:42:51,120
Speaker 1: legal antiquities looted within its lands were estimated to have

752
00:42:51,160 --> 00:42:54,560
Speaker 1: been evalued between four billion and seven billion dollars, which

753
00:42:54,600 --> 00:42:58,640
Speaker 1: is obviously an incredibly wide possible range. Isis is Department

754
00:42:58,680 --> 00:43:02,080
Speaker 1: of Natural Resources and to Quity's division charged a tax

755
00:43:02,160 --> 00:43:05,000
Speaker 1: on salable antiquities, and most experts seemed to think the

756
00:43:05,040 --> 00:43:07,240
Speaker 1: group probably didn't make more than a few million dollars

757
00:43:07,320 --> 00:43:09,879
Speaker 1: from its looting program, but that is plenty of money

758
00:43:09,920 --> 00:43:13,440
Speaker 1: to carry out horrific attacks. The November two fifteen Paris attacks,

759
00:43:13,480 --> 00:43:15,879
Speaker 1: for example, killed a hundred and thirty people and cost

760
00:43:16,040 --> 00:43:19,719
Speaker 1: roughly ten thousand dollars. It is worth noting, of course,

761
00:43:19,800 --> 00:43:21,920
Speaker 1: that in two thousand and ten and eleven, Isis was

762
00:43:22,080 --> 00:43:24,920
Speaker 1: not really a thing, but its precursors did exist, and

763
00:43:25,000 --> 00:43:27,880
Speaker 1: so did other extremist groups like al Qaeda, who profited

764
00:43:27,920 --> 00:43:30,840
Speaker 1: from the sale of antiquities in Iraq. The simple reality

765
00:43:30,880 --> 00:43:33,080
Speaker 1: of the situation is that people who buy antiquities in

766
00:43:33,160 --> 00:43:35,719
Speaker 1: Iraq have at that and at that point, had no

767
00:43:35,880 --> 00:43:38,480
Speaker 1: way of knowing that who they would support with their purchases.

768
00:43:38,840 --> 00:43:41,719
Speaker 1: Most experts simply advise people not to make these kind

769
00:43:41,760 --> 00:43:44,080
Speaker 1: of purchases, since it's impossible to do so and not

770
00:43:44,280 --> 00:43:47,320
Speaker 1: fun terrorists and the illegal theft and destruction of cultural artifacts.

771
00:43:47,760 --> 00:43:49,560
Speaker 1: But the Green family didn't care about any of that.

772
00:43:49,880 --> 00:43:52,440
Speaker 1: They wanted fancy old Bible ship for their Bible museum.

773
00:43:53,480 --> 00:43:56,240
Speaker 1: As I mentioned earlier, Steve Green traveled to that UAE

774
00:43:56,400 --> 00:43:59,440
Speaker 1: meeting with an antiquities expert. She advised him not to

775
00:43:59,560 --> 00:44:02,680
Speaker 1: purchase any of the clearly shady artifacts on offer. Her

776
00:44:02,719 --> 00:44:05,640
Speaker 1: exact quote was, I would regard the acquisitions of any

777
00:44:05,800 --> 00:44:09,600
Speaker 1: artifact likely from IRACT as carrying considerable risk. And I

778
00:44:09,680 --> 00:44:12,239
Speaker 1: found an interview with this expert conducted later on a

779
00:44:12,280 --> 00:44:15,440
Speaker 1: blog dedicated to antiquities research and study. Here's how she

780
00:44:15,520 --> 00:44:18,200
Speaker 1: described the reaction to her warning. I can't say they

781
00:44:18,280 --> 00:44:20,360
Speaker 1: reacted one way or the other. They didn't seem surprised

782
00:44:20,440 --> 00:44:23,040
Speaker 1: or upset, which in hindsight is kind of surprising. The

783
00:44:23,080 --> 00:44:24,560
Speaker 1: impression I had at the time is that they were

784
00:44:24,600 --> 00:44:27,640
Speaker 1: only considering buying antiquities. I had no idea until I

785
00:44:27,719 --> 00:44:30,080
Speaker 1: read the complaint release later last week that this was

786
00:44:30,120 --> 00:44:33,040
Speaker 1: already in process. They had already earlier in July before

787
00:44:33,040 --> 00:44:35,080
Speaker 1: I talked to them, looked at cune of form tablets.

788
00:44:35,280 --> 00:44:36,880
Speaker 1: You would think if I'm talking about you have to

789
00:44:36,960 --> 00:44:39,120
Speaker 1: do this and that, and they're already in negotiations, they

790
00:44:39,160 --> 00:44:41,239
Speaker 1: would have had some reaction to what I said. I'm

791
00:44:41,239 --> 00:44:43,640
Speaker 1: pretty mystified as to why they bothered to have me

792
00:44:43,760 --> 00:44:46,319
Speaker 1: do this for them. Why do you think they had

793
00:44:46,360 --> 00:44:50,080
Speaker 1: her do this for them, No reason, just like they're interested.

794
00:44:50,200 --> 00:44:54,520
Speaker 1: They like history, and they like history. The way it

795
00:44:54,600 --> 00:44:58,000
Speaker 1: became clear later, hobby Lobby wired one point six million

796
00:44:58,040 --> 00:45:01,160
Speaker 1: dollars to seven different bank accounts oociated with five separate

797
00:45:01,200 --> 00:45:03,640
Speaker 1: people to buy the items. They had the artifacts shipped

798
00:45:03,640 --> 00:45:06,200
Speaker 1: to the United States and numerous packages with fake labels

799
00:45:06,239 --> 00:45:09,560
Speaker 1: identifying them as tile samples. The packages were also shipped

800
00:45:09,600 --> 00:45:12,360
Speaker 1: to multiple locations. In doing so, hobby Lobby and the

801
00:45:12,440 --> 00:45:15,960
Speaker 1: Green family followed well established procedures for smuggling illegally obtained

802
00:45:16,000 --> 00:45:19,279
Speaker 1: cultural antiquities. In that interview with the antiquities expert, I

803
00:45:19,400 --> 00:45:21,560
Speaker 1: quoted from earlier the interview where asks her if she

804
00:45:21,640 --> 00:45:24,239
Speaker 1: thinks the Greens might have just consulted her to learn

805
00:45:24,320 --> 00:45:27,160
Speaker 1: how the legal process for importing artifacts works so they

806
00:45:27,200 --> 00:45:29,600
Speaker 1: could more easily devise a scheme to break the law.

807
00:45:30,040 --> 00:45:32,960
Speaker 1: Here's her response. I suppose one can't rule that out,

808
00:45:33,000 --> 00:45:35,160
Speaker 1: which would be very upsetting to me. I can't rule

809
00:45:35,200 --> 00:45:37,279
Speaker 1: that out. My goal was to discourage them from doing

810
00:45:37,320 --> 00:45:39,080
Speaker 1: the wrong thing by telling them all the wrong things

811
00:45:39,160 --> 00:45:41,200
Speaker 1: they could do. I thought they would not want to

812
00:45:41,320 --> 00:45:43,359
Speaker 1: do those things. I can't rule out. It was all

813
00:45:43,360 --> 00:45:45,400
Speaker 1: the opposite that they used my advice to evade the

814
00:45:45,480 --> 00:45:48,560
Speaker 1: law as opposed to follow the law. You can't rule

815
00:45:48,600 --> 00:45:52,400
Speaker 1: it out. Christians, It's this is great. We're religious, we

816
00:45:52,560 --> 00:45:56,600
Speaker 1: believe in morality. Yeah, they have very consistent morality. Yeah,

817
00:45:56,880 --> 00:45:58,960
Speaker 1: which is that all that matters is what they think

818
00:45:59,040 --> 00:46:02,920
Speaker 1: of the Bible and preserving historical antiquities or avoiding funding

819
00:46:03,040 --> 00:46:05,239
Speaker 1: terrorism in foreign countries because that has nothing to do

820
00:46:05,360 --> 00:46:08,520
Speaker 1: with Christianity in America, which is all that matters to them,

821
00:46:09,520 --> 00:46:11,920
Speaker 1: Which is like it's discussed like one like there were

822
00:46:11,960 --> 00:46:14,240
Speaker 1: a lot of like groups like the Free Burma Rangers,

823
00:46:14,400 --> 00:46:17,840
Speaker 1: which are like a heavily Christian organization dedicated to providing

824
00:46:17,880 --> 00:46:20,640
Speaker 1: like emergency medical care and war zones and stuff. And

825
00:46:20,719 --> 00:46:23,560
Speaker 1: so these are like very religious people who would like

826
00:46:23,719 --> 00:46:26,640
Speaker 1: go get shot at in order to provide emergency first

827
00:46:26,680 --> 00:46:29,080
Speaker 1: aid to people fighting and dying in Mosle. At the

828
00:46:29,160 --> 00:46:32,359
Speaker 1: same time as these billionaires who call themselves Christians are

829
00:46:32,480 --> 00:46:36,480
Speaker 1: like funding violence around the world in order to have

830
00:46:36,560 --> 00:46:40,320
Speaker 1: a fancy museum. It's it's sickening. Yeah. Um, I like

831
00:46:40,480 --> 00:46:42,640
Speaker 1: that first part we talked about. It seems like a

832
00:46:42,680 --> 00:46:47,080
Speaker 1: real Christian thing to do. Yeah. Yeah, it's providing emergency

833
00:46:47,160 --> 00:46:50,440
Speaker 1: medical care to vulnerable people. That does seem more Christian

834
00:46:50,520 --> 00:46:54,040
Speaker 1: than funding al Qaeda by stealing artifacts. It seems like

835
00:46:54,640 --> 00:46:56,560
Speaker 1: it's not I'm not you know, I'm not, but you

836
00:46:56,640 --> 00:47:02,839
Speaker 1: know we're forgetting Mark when stole the Statue of Liberty, Uh,

837
00:47:03,200 --> 00:47:06,960
Speaker 1: in order to hide it in his underground layer, thought

838
00:47:07,000 --> 00:47:09,040
Speaker 1: that you actually had a Bible verse in the in

839
00:47:09,120 --> 00:47:13,360
Speaker 1: your head. That's right next to his his giant coin

840
00:47:14,120 --> 00:47:18,040
Speaker 1: and his giant coin and his Mona Lisa. He has

841
00:47:18,080 --> 00:47:22,040
Speaker 1: the original of course. Yeah, it's got that that one

842
00:47:22,080 --> 00:47:25,480
Speaker 1: painting that got cleaned wrong and now it all smeared. Yeah,

843
00:47:26,840 --> 00:47:29,880
Speaker 1: that's his. That's that's his piece, like the center of

844
00:47:29,960 --> 00:47:32,399
Speaker 1: his that's his whole his whole life has been leading

845
00:47:32,480 --> 00:47:35,000
Speaker 1: up to getting that. Yeah. The Gnostic verses are just

846
00:47:35,120 --> 00:47:40,239
Speaker 1: about Jesus stealing art. That's why the Church had to

847
00:47:40,280 --> 00:47:45,280
Speaker 1: suppress them. Yeah. I'm well well versed in history and religion,

848
00:47:45,680 --> 00:47:48,759
Speaker 1: so I know exactly what you're talking about now. Fortunately,

849
00:47:48,840 --> 00:47:51,239
Speaker 1: the Greens were worse at smuggling artifacts than they are

850
00:47:51,280 --> 00:47:55,920
Speaker 1: at imposing religious law on the United States Customs caught

851
00:47:56,000 --> 00:47:58,880
Speaker 1: them in in January of two thousand eleven. Border Patrol

852
00:47:58,920 --> 00:48:02,200
Speaker 1: began seizing object roughly three thousand, four hundred and fifty

853
00:48:02,239 --> 00:48:05,520
Speaker 1: in total that Hobby Lobby had illegally imported. The resulting

854
00:48:05,640 --> 00:48:09,440
Speaker 1: civil asset forfeit. Your case bore a hilarious name, the

855
00:48:09,600 --> 00:48:13,240
Speaker 1: United States of America versus approximately four hundred and fifty

856
00:48:13,280 --> 00:48:17,040
Speaker 1: ancient Cunea formed tablets and approximately three thousand ancient clay Buli.

857
00:48:17,400 --> 00:48:22,080
Speaker 1: That's amazing that was written down. Yeah, that's the name

858
00:48:22,160 --> 00:48:29,640
Speaker 1: of the case. Oh yeah, it's good stuff. Now, Hobby

859
00:48:29,719 --> 00:48:32,160
Speaker 1: Lobby was caught red handed, and they didn't even really

860
00:48:32,239 --> 00:48:34,400
Speaker 1: try all that hard to defend themselves. The case was

861
00:48:34,480 --> 00:48:38,320
Speaker 1: that obvious. The company claims to have accepted responsibility for

862
00:48:38,400 --> 00:48:41,480
Speaker 1: its past conduct and promised to revise its internal procedures,

863
00:48:41,719 --> 00:48:44,000
Speaker 1: which is meaningless because their employees were warned by an

864
00:48:44,040 --> 00:48:46,239
Speaker 1: expert not to do what they did before the acquisition

865
00:48:46,280 --> 00:48:49,440
Speaker 1: process began. But David green light and claimed that this

866
00:48:49,520 --> 00:48:51,200
Speaker 1: was all the result of Hobby Lobby being new to

867
00:48:51,239 --> 00:48:54,480
Speaker 1: the antiquities business and making rookie mistakes. On the hobby

868
00:48:54,480 --> 00:48:57,319
Speaker 1: Lobby website, he wrote this, we should have exercised more

869
00:48:57,440 --> 00:49:00,920
Speaker 1: oversight and carefully questioned how the acquisitions were handled. Hobby

870
00:49:00,960 --> 00:49:03,759
Speaker 1: Lobby has cooperated with the government throughout its investigation and

871
00:49:03,800 --> 00:49:06,600
Speaker 1: with the announcement of today's settlement program. It is pleased

872
00:49:06,640 --> 00:49:10,360
Speaker 1: that the matter has been resolved, the settlement involving Hobby

873
00:49:10,400 --> 00:49:13,080
Speaker 1: Lobby returning all the ill gotten artifacts and paying a fine.

874
00:49:13,360 --> 00:49:15,320
Speaker 1: But they are left in possession of more than forty

875
00:49:15,400 --> 00:49:18,040
Speaker 1: thousand ancient relics, some of which will be displayed in

876
00:49:18,040 --> 00:49:20,640
Speaker 1: their Bible Museum, and only a small fraction of which

877
00:49:20,680 --> 00:49:23,240
Speaker 1: will ever be made available for serious scholars to study.

878
00:49:23,680 --> 00:49:25,400
Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time reading the blogs of

879
00:49:25,440 --> 00:49:28,480
Speaker 1: different archaeologists and antiquities researchers, and they all seemed pretty

880
00:49:28,560 --> 00:49:32,200
Speaker 1: uniformly to agree that the Green Collection basically kept important

881
00:49:32,280 --> 00:49:35,080
Speaker 1: historical objects hidden from everyone but a small coterie of

882
00:49:35,200 --> 00:49:38,439
Speaker 1: experts that the Green family personally likes. There were also

883
00:49:38,520 --> 00:49:40,719
Speaker 1: in agreement about the fact that the Bible Museum and

884
00:49:40,800 --> 00:49:43,720
Speaker 1: the Green Collection is almost certainly filled with other stolen

885
00:49:43,760 --> 00:49:46,000
Speaker 1: and looted items. And I'm gonna quote now from one

886
00:49:46,000 --> 00:49:48,880
Speaker 1: of the more prominent blogs in that ecosystem, anonymous Swiss

887
00:49:48,920 --> 00:49:54,080
Speaker 1: collector quote, you can't collect antiquities without risking buying looted ones.

888
00:49:54,239 --> 00:49:56,759
Speaker 1: Every purchase is a risk. Best just not to do it.

889
00:49:57,280 --> 00:49:59,880
Speaker 1: You can't collect antiquities on the scale of the greens

890
00:50:00,160 --> 00:50:02,880
Speaker 1: massive scale without certainly buying a lot of loot. This

891
00:50:03,040 --> 00:50:05,960
Speaker 1: is common knowledge held by everyone in the trade. The

892
00:50:06,040 --> 00:50:09,920
Speaker 1: antiquity business runs on layers of plausible deniability, not asking

893
00:50:10,000 --> 00:50:12,800
Speaker 1: too many questions, leaving things implied but not said, opague

894
00:50:12,840 --> 00:50:16,480
Speaker 1: business practices, lack of regulation, claims of not understanding the

895
00:50:16,560 --> 00:50:18,520
Speaker 1: law are not an excuse for breaking it. Don't be

896
00:50:18,600 --> 00:50:21,040
Speaker 1: fooled by this. In this case, the Greens had advisors

897
00:50:21,080 --> 00:50:23,239
Speaker 1: and independent experts who told them flat out that these

898
00:50:23,280 --> 00:50:26,600
Speaker 1: purchases were wrong. They did it anyway, Why do it then, Well,

899
00:50:26,640 --> 00:50:28,560
Speaker 1: we have a lot of research on the topic. Basically,

900
00:50:28,640 --> 00:50:31,120
Speaker 1: the Greens were probably able to neutralize their actions by

901
00:50:31,160 --> 00:50:33,400
Speaker 1: convincing themselves that they were above the law because they

902
00:50:33,440 --> 00:50:37,239
Speaker 1: were buying the antiquities from magical evangelical purposes, saving them

903
00:50:37,239 --> 00:50:39,960
Speaker 1: from the darkness obscurity in a non Christian country. I

904
00:50:40,040 --> 00:50:43,279
Speaker 1: mean that is speculation. Their neutralization technique can night be

905
00:50:43,360 --> 00:50:45,800
Speaker 1: a bit different, but it'll be something along those lines.

906
00:50:46,080 --> 00:50:48,920
Speaker 1: It always is. Yes, I do think there are alluded

907
00:50:48,920 --> 00:50:51,319
Speaker 1: antiquities in the Museum of the Bible. I think there

908
00:50:51,360 --> 00:50:53,960
Speaker 1: are lots and lots of looted antiquities in there. I

909
00:50:54,080 --> 00:50:55,640
Speaker 1: can't prove it to an extent that would let some

910
00:50:55,719 --> 00:50:58,880
Speaker 1: country make a return claim. But please understand, there is

911
00:50:59,040 --> 00:51:02,239
Speaker 1: no legitimate source of these kind of artifacts, not on

912
00:51:02,320 --> 00:51:05,280
Speaker 1: that scale. Looting as the source and lack of providence

913
00:51:05,360 --> 00:51:12,880
Speaker 1: is the proof. But counterpoint the magic stuff, the magic stuff.

914
00:51:13,040 --> 00:51:15,560
Speaker 1: It is a good counterpoint, you know. And he does

915
00:51:15,680 --> 00:51:19,080
Speaker 1: not disprove magic in this blog post, Dargo, exactly, Love,

916
00:51:19,160 --> 00:51:22,279
Speaker 1: He's good, So that should he should have talked to me,

917
00:51:22,560 --> 00:51:25,359
Speaker 1: because clearly he hasn't considered all sides to this. Yeah,

918
00:51:25,440 --> 00:51:28,080
Speaker 1: he did not. He did not. You consider all things

919
00:51:28,760 --> 00:51:31,520
Speaker 1: much like a radio show that I've forgotten the name

920
00:51:31,560 --> 00:51:34,279
Speaker 1: of all of the everyone, every little bit of the

921
00:51:34,360 --> 00:51:38,840
Speaker 1: information is being thought of. Yeah, yeah, this, Love's important

922
00:51:38,920 --> 00:51:41,520
Speaker 1: to see both sides of an issue, both the side

923
00:51:41,560 --> 00:51:43,839
Speaker 1: that says, literally, the only way to have gotten these

924
00:51:43,880 --> 00:51:46,680
Speaker 1: objects is massive theft in the funding of international terrorist

925
00:51:46,800 --> 00:51:53,120
Speaker 1: organizations and the side that says, but Jesus, But the

926
00:51:53,280 --> 00:51:57,200
Speaker 1: two sides, yeah, that magic and you sort of trail

927
00:51:57,200 --> 00:52:00,759
Speaker 1: off solos to trail off, And that's really how you

928
00:52:00,840 --> 00:52:02,879
Speaker 1: know you've won the argument when you sort of trail off.

929
00:52:03,800 --> 00:52:06,720
Speaker 1: I love trailing. Yeah, it's like hiking. You know, trails

930
00:52:06,719 --> 00:52:10,080
Speaker 1: are good exactly. You pick one, doesn't matter, and you

931
00:52:10,160 --> 00:52:12,040
Speaker 1: just keep going and going, and then you slow down

932
00:52:12,160 --> 00:52:19,160
Speaker 1: and then you sort of slim trail off and then yes,

933
00:52:19,560 --> 00:52:21,799
Speaker 1: and then you win. How do you feel about hobby

934
00:52:21,840 --> 00:52:26,759
Speaker 1: lobby after all this throughout? My favorite place aroused? If

935
00:52:26,760 --> 00:52:28,840
Speaker 1: I were to get I mean, I'm always aroused, so

936
00:52:29,080 --> 00:52:30,920
Speaker 1: thank you. Not really, you know, that's why we have

937
00:52:31,000 --> 00:52:33,200
Speaker 1: you on the show exactly, That's why I'm That's why

938
00:52:34,239 --> 00:52:40,040
Speaker 1: that's why I come on the show. Um bound um

939
00:52:40,560 --> 00:52:43,640
Speaker 1: I uh. If I were to get a knickknack, if

940
00:52:43,680 --> 00:52:45,880
Speaker 1: I were to like be in the business of knickknacks,

941
00:52:45,960 --> 00:52:49,279
Speaker 1: I probably would go to a different place. I think

942
00:52:49,320 --> 00:52:51,600
Speaker 1: if I were in the business of knickknacks, I would

943
00:52:51,640 --> 00:52:53,479
Speaker 1: just patty whack and then give a dog a bone.

944
00:52:53,800 --> 00:52:57,800
Speaker 1: But I mean, you know, different strokes, you know, different

945
00:52:57,840 --> 00:53:01,440
Speaker 1: strokes for different old men who come rolling m yep,

946
00:53:01,520 --> 00:53:06,440
Speaker 1: who are constantly aroused on podcasts. Yes, interestingly, I I

947
00:53:06,680 --> 00:53:09,000
Speaker 1: some fan out there needs to graph the amount of

948
00:53:09,080 --> 00:53:11,719
Speaker 1: times we make come jokes when it's just you and

949
00:53:11,840 --> 00:53:15,440
Speaker 1: I and and when we have our third person here. Um,

950
00:53:15,640 --> 00:53:18,680
Speaker 1: I think we make less call her by her name.

951
00:53:18,760 --> 00:53:21,040
Speaker 1: I might, I might make more actually, because I know

952
00:53:21,160 --> 00:53:23,279
Speaker 1: that she hates the word come, So I say he

953
00:53:23,320 --> 00:53:25,799
Speaker 1: does hate the word come. Yeah, and now we are

954
00:53:25,920 --> 00:53:28,480
Speaker 1: upping our come quotient. At the end of the episode

955
00:53:28,560 --> 00:53:32,000
Speaker 1: exactly and earlier when we were talking about Canada, I

956
00:53:32,040 --> 00:53:36,880
Speaker 1: almost I almost referenced the come and go Mmm, that

957
00:53:37,040 --> 00:53:40,920
Speaker 1: chain of casting. Yes, but I I held back. Um,

958
00:53:41,040 --> 00:53:43,400
Speaker 1: but here we are saying it now. I love it

959
00:53:43,480 --> 00:53:46,680
Speaker 1: when regions have a thing that is clearly like everyone

960
00:53:46,760 --> 00:53:49,280
Speaker 1: outside of that region knows that the name is hilarious,

961
00:53:49,400 --> 00:53:52,839
Speaker 1: like come and Go, or like the game cornholing, which

962
00:53:53,000 --> 00:53:55,520
Speaker 1: is played in certain parts of this country that just

963
00:53:55,640 --> 00:53:57,759
Speaker 1: are like, no, it's just this game that we all play.

964
00:53:58,200 --> 00:54:00,279
Speaker 1: What is what is funny? And everyone else is like

965
00:54:00,880 --> 00:54:07,760
Speaker 1: butt sex something else? Yeah, we all we all miss Katie.

966
00:54:07,880 --> 00:54:11,040
Speaker 1: This would not be happening with Katie we're here. We

967
00:54:11,080 --> 00:54:13,200
Speaker 1: would probably wouldn't have started with Hitler, probably wouldn't have

968
00:54:13,239 --> 00:54:15,520
Speaker 1: ended it oncome. No, and we would have just we

969
00:54:15,520 --> 00:54:18,280
Speaker 1: would have figured out a solution to the hobby lobby problem.

970
00:54:18,440 --> 00:54:21,719
Speaker 1: Katie would have like ridden into their offices on a

971
00:54:21,840 --> 00:54:26,200
Speaker 1: sea of blood with a sword made out of cultural

972
00:54:26,239 --> 00:54:31,120
Speaker 1: antiquities and beheaded David Green in order to bring peace

973
00:54:31,200 --> 00:54:34,879
Speaker 1: and tranquility to the kingdom. Once again. She's not here,

974
00:54:35,080 --> 00:54:37,360
Speaker 1: and so we just have come jokes, just voices in

975
00:54:37,400 --> 00:54:39,960
Speaker 1: the air instead a feed on the grounds. That's the difference.

976
00:54:40,160 --> 00:54:43,520
Speaker 1: That's the case we all miss. K When is the

977
00:54:43,600 --> 00:54:47,239
Speaker 1: museum open? That's a good question, Cody, let us ask

978
00:54:47,520 --> 00:54:53,880
Speaker 1: the almighty l Goog. You didn't like that, all right?

979
00:54:55,600 --> 00:54:59,560
Speaker 1: Not an el Goog fan. It opens ten am Saturday.

980
00:54:59,560 --> 00:55:06,520
Speaker 1: It's it's a and now yeah, is tomorrow it's still around. Okay,

981
00:55:06,760 --> 00:55:12,920
Speaker 1: it's open. It's open right now. Four hundred thirty square feet.

982
00:55:13,840 --> 00:55:18,280
Speaker 1: That's it's got a great view. It's got a beautiful

983
00:55:18,320 --> 00:55:20,920
Speaker 1: view of Capitol Hill, which they seek to dominate. It's

984
00:55:20,920 --> 00:55:23,480
Speaker 1: a big that's a big step up from that three

985
00:55:23,719 --> 00:55:29,640
Speaker 1: D original tiny picture frame. Do you think they sell

986
00:55:29,719 --> 00:55:32,359
Speaker 1: tiny picture frames in the Museum of the Bible. They better,

987
00:55:32,520 --> 00:55:34,560
Speaker 1: They better have tiny picture frames in that gift shop,

988
00:55:35,160 --> 00:55:37,839
Speaker 1: a bunch of star film, cox and stuff. I mean.

989
00:55:38,040 --> 00:55:41,040
Speaker 1: One of the things that is at least amusing to

990
00:55:41,120 --> 00:55:43,080
Speaker 1: me is that on the Museum of the Bible's page,

991
00:55:43,120 --> 00:55:45,880
Speaker 1: their logo is clearly supposed to be like it's a

992
00:55:46,000 --> 00:55:48,279
Speaker 1: b on its back. So it also kind of looks

993
00:55:48,320 --> 00:55:51,200
Speaker 1: like the tin Commandments or an open book, but more

994
00:55:51,239 --> 00:55:54,680
Speaker 1: than anything, it looks like a butt. Hell. Yeah, yeah,

995
00:55:55,520 --> 00:55:59,359
Speaker 1: so that's good. That's good. I think we're gonna win. Yeah, yeah, yes, yes,

996
00:55:59,440 --> 00:56:04,840
Speaker 1: we have all the hour now, Yeah, I do. Before

997
00:56:04,880 --> 00:56:08,160
Speaker 1: I realized their logo kind of resembles a button. Yeah,

998
00:56:08,440 --> 00:56:12,359
Speaker 1: and now I realized that victory is inevitable. Yeah, days

999
00:56:12,440 --> 00:56:17,239
Speaker 1: from now. This is going on too long, sir. You

1000
00:56:17,320 --> 00:56:22,160
Speaker 1: know what's not going on too long? Cody's Pluggables. That's true,

1001
00:56:22,440 --> 00:56:25,439
Speaker 1: they go very short. Hi. Check out Worst your pod,

1002
00:56:25,560 --> 00:56:28,399
Speaker 1: which is a show that we all do. Um. Also

1003
00:56:28,520 --> 00:56:32,000
Speaker 1: some more news. It's on Twitter, and it's on the Patreon,

1004
00:56:32,120 --> 00:56:36,239
Speaker 1: it's on YouTube. My Twitter is dr mr Cody, uh

1005
00:56:36,400 --> 00:56:41,080
Speaker 1: d r m I sty Wan and uh check out

1006
00:56:41,440 --> 00:56:44,680
Speaker 1: Katie Stole on Twitter as well. He's not here, but

1007
00:56:44,840 --> 00:56:47,279
Speaker 1: is in spirit. Here is in spirit much like the

1008
00:56:47,400 --> 00:56:50,160
Speaker 1: Holy Spirit. And just like the Holy Spirit, she's telling

1009
00:56:50,280 --> 00:56:54,160
Speaker 1: us to steal antiquities from Iraq. Exactly exactly, and we

1010
00:56:54,360 --> 00:56:59,240
Speaker 1: will even more news than any of our podcast. Pluggable

1011
00:56:59,320 --> 00:57:07,640
Speaker 1: over Robert, I'm Robert Evans that's true. The episode is done.

1012
00:57:09,480 --> 00:57:12,440
Speaker 1: Don't follow him on Twitter, just kidding, don't do it.

1013
00:57:13,200 --> 00:57:15,279
Speaker 1: I can find us. Robert's great. I feel like you're

1014
00:57:15,280 --> 00:57:17,480
Speaker 1: great on Twitter, just just to give you a compliment.

1015
00:57:18,120 --> 00:57:20,640
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, thank you, Sophie. I am great

1016
00:57:20,680 --> 00:57:24,880
Speaker 1: on Twitter, and UH, you can find me on UH.

1017
00:57:26,120 --> 00:57:28,360
Speaker 1: You can find the website of this podcast, behind the

1018
00:57:28,400 --> 00:57:31,560
Speaker 1: Bastards dot com. And we also have another podcast, Whorst

1019
00:57:31,600 --> 00:57:34,760
Speaker 1: here Ever, about the election, and you can find your

1020
00:57:34,800 --> 00:57:37,840
Speaker 1: neighborhood hobby lobby if you need to buy a styrofoam

1021
00:57:37,920 --> 00:57:41,960
Speaker 1: rooster and further choke the oceans with the detritus of civilization.

1022
00:57:44,120 --> 00:57:46,480
Speaker 1: All Right, we're done. We're done.