Safeguarding Liberty in the Face of Social Credit Scoring

Rick Green

Thanks for joining us on the WallBuilders Show today. This is the Intersection of Faith and Culture, where we take on the hot topics of the day, but we're always looking at whatever that topic is from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. You can learn more about us at wallbuilders.com. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach, joined here with David and Tim Barton. David is America's premier historian and our founder at WallBuilders. Tim's a national speaker and president of WallBuilders. Again, all three of us. You can find out more at wallbuilders.com. Get materials there, get plugged in, get your Constitution class, get the kids books all kinds of tools available for you there to be a better citizen and plug into your community.

Sometimes, when it comes to your elected leaders, our public servants, sometimes they need encouragement, sometimes they need to be. You know we need to go after them and defeat them in elections. We need to let people know if they're doing good or bad. But we like to highlight a lot of these legislators and let you know about folks that are making a positive difference in their state legislatures, and so we'll do as much of that as we possibly can. But one of the programs where we meet a lot of these good state reps and senators is called the Pro Family Legislators Conference, and Tim was talking about it yesterday. We highly encourage you to recommend it to your state legislators. All right, guys, a little later we've got Jason Zachary, a state representative from Tennessee, who's going to be joining us. He's got an anti-ESG bill and, of course, we're seeing more of this across the country. We want to see a whole lot more of this across the country. The left has been pushing this for quite some time and we're starting to go on offense. This is good to see.

David Barton

Yeah, it is. ESG is one of those very oppressive things that it turns out to be oppressive. At the time it was introduced, it sounded like that's really logical. We want to make sure that life is good on the planet and we do the right things. But as the details came out, it turned out to be a really tyrannical plan they had.

Tim Barton

To make the illustration. This is a little bit like when people are like we want to protect the environment, so what we're going to do is we are going to penalize farmers for cow farts. And you're like wait, what? Hang on, explain that to me again. You're saying protect the environment by taxing farmers for the methane release from their cows. That makes no sense at all.

This is the idea of when someone said, hey ESG. And you're like, oh yeah, that's great, let's be responsible citizens. And they start explaining it and you're like, oh, okay, we have very different definitions of responsible citizens. And to remind people, in case you don't remember or don't know, ESG stands for environmental, social and governance, and the idea behind it is really kind of tied to a social credit score kind of theory is that you need to be good in a couple categories. You need to be environmentally sound, and so you need to go green, you need to recycle, you need to have solar, you need to drive an electric vehicle, this kind of stuff. This is the environmental perspective. And then the social you need to embrace the new social movement. So you need to embrace this new gender theory and this gender ideology and whatever the new social things are, you need to embrace them. And then, in governance, you need to do what the government tells you. If they say, take the vaccine, you can take the vaccine. If they stay staying in your house and don't go to church, but you can go right, go gamble, you can go to casinos, you can go buy your alcohol, you can go do these other things that you need to do what the government says, and based on how well you do those things right, based on how many solar panels you have, based on how well you embrace the new ideologies, whatever they are, based on how well you obey the government, you are rewarded accordingly. Well, this is the social credit score. This is what communist dictators do to their people. What's happening in China right now. And so this idea of us being responsible citizens, well, that doesn't sound bad, but when you begin explaining what that means, that is an incredibly, incredibly dangerous thing. It is the opposite of the American idea of freedom and it is in fact a Marxist, communist idea that is being imposed on Americans. So it's a very damaging, destructive thing.

Glenn Beck wrote a book called the Great Reset, where he goes through and explains a lot of this, actually taking quotes from people promoting ESG, laying out who they were, what they said, footnoting it all, and it does show that there are people who are advocating for this expansion, this growth of communism, Marxism, this one world order, that the whole globe's gonna come together and you're gonna have these elites who are in charge of everything, and then there's all these other people subservient to them. It is a terrifying thought and there's a lot of momentum that was happening in America surrounding this. Now, fortunately, there are some conservative leaders, glenn Beck being one of them. Obviously, us here on the WallBuilders Show, we've been talking a lot about this as well. There's many people now who are on the conservative side and maybe even some just in the middle who are intellectually honest to recognize this is a really major problem. We don't wanna go the direction of social credit scores. This is not something we want in America. It's not the American ideal.

So there's a lot of pushback against it and some of this pushback has been happening at the state level.

We've been able, with our legislative network, to work with a lot of state legislators around the nation, really just educating and informing them of what happens.

We at WallBuilders, we really focus on American history. We focus on a constitutional, a biblical perspective. But we're also pretty good at research and we know a lot of people in the nation who are other think tank leaders, who are conservative leaders, who are very involved in things in the nation and so we've been able just to make some connections, say, hey, you guys might wanna talk to so-and-so and you might wanna read this book. And we've been able to help connect a lot of dots, working with a lot of legislators, helping educate them, and they've been able to see what was happening and really push back against these unconstitutional measures. And so there has been good news on this ESG front about some of the action-specific states have taken and really even some of the things that have happened, with major institutions in the nation stepping back from ESG because the American people are being educated enough to recognize this is not the direction we wanna go.

Rick Green

Well, we're going to hear from Jason Zachary in Tennessee when we come back. Stay with us State representatives. Jason Zachary joining us. You're listening to the WallBuilders Show.

Tim Barton

Hey guys, it's Tim Barton and I want to let you know about an opportunity coming up for pastors and ministry leaders. We are doing our annual pastors briefing in Washington DC and we do this every year. We do one in the spring, we do one in the fall. This spring it's April 16th and 17th. This fall it is September 10th and 11th. This is one of the most significant things we do to encourage and challenge pastors in this culture we live in. It's in Washington DC and Tuesday night we do an after-hours tour of the US Capitol where we introduce pastors and ministry leaders to the history of the nation. The following day we have congressmen come and they give a briefing on what they're doing and how God is challenging and motivating and using them. And, frankly, most pastors, most ministry leaders, they don't know the rich spiritual hairs of the nation or what God is still doing moving in the hearts and lives of leaders in this nation. I would encourage you if you're a pastor and ministry leader, you need to come to this. It's one of the best things we do at Wall Builders. To find out more, go to wallbuilders.com and look for the pastors briefing.

Tim Barton

This is Tim Barton from WallBuilders, with another moment from American history. Too often today, history education excludes great black heroes from the American founding, such as Lemuel Haynes. Haynes abandoned as a baby pioneered churches across upper New England. He became the first black American to pastor a white congregation, to receive an honorary master's degree and to be ordained by a mainstream Christian denomination, the Congregationalists. He was a soldier during the American Revolution and in his churches on George Washington's birthday he regularly preached sermons honoring George Washington. Even late in his life, he expressed his willingness to go back to battle if necessary to protect America, which he called a sacred ark. American history is filled with numerous examples of black heroes who are largely ignored by mainstream education today. For more information about Pastor Lemuel Haynes and other colonial patriots, go to wallbuilders.com.

Rick Green

Welcome back. Thanks for staying with us here on WallBuilders Representative Jason Zachary with us from the great state of Tennessee. Jason, thanks for coming on, man, thanks for having me on, Rick 

Jason Zachary

thanks for having me on, Rick 

Rick Green

Well, thanks for doing such great legislation, battling this whole ESG divide Americans thing that's been sweeping across the country and I guess you guys would be the second state if you passed this to do this. Florida did it and hopefully it'll sweep across the country. But back up and tell us why this was such a big deal for you and where it stands.

Jason Zachary

Yeah. So man gosh, years ago I was listening to Glenn Beck, faithful listener to him, and it's the first time I heard the issue of ESG Environmental Social Governance Scoring First time I'd ever heard him mention. And so after reading Glenn's book, the Great Reset, obviously that created significant concern and so I'm getting talking to our state treasurer about it. And so last year we took the first step. I think it's Rick, I think roughly 15 states have passed some semblance of an ESG bill. But you're exactly right, Florida so far has got the home run and we're following in those footsteps.

But last year I passed a piece of legislation working with our treasurer. He was very concerned about environmental social governance standards non financial factors being used from a state perspective, and so he was extremely supportive and so we passed the bill last year that prohibited that from a state perspective you have to use actual financial factors. The treasurer has to fulfill his fiduciary responsibilities. So that was step one, and I had reached out to the DeSantis team. I talked to them a little bit about the legislation that had passed. But actually the team at WallBuilders, Audria, Betty, they have been man wrecked, they have been phenomenal and I encourage you -any state legislator that's listening to this. Make sure that you're utilizing the resources that you guys provide because they, when I, as soon as I gained the engaged Audria, she starts pulling all these resources together, starts connecting me with subject matter experts to the point that last week she was kind of the catalyst and having a life for defending freedom and others here to be able to testify on my behalf. But the team of WallBuilders was so helpful and equipping and preparing and helping with legislation and so now we're at the point where I'm actually at about an hour or so I'll be, I'll be presenting this bill and subcommittee and hopefully it will pass and we'll take the first step here in Tennessee.

Rick Green

Yeah, what is the with your colleagues? What's your sense right now? I mean, I know you got to have the hearings in Florida bait and all that kind of stuff, but you can kind of tell even this early on how people are responding and whether or not you think you have the momentum for it? I mean, is there kind of a consensus that man, this stuff has really derailed the economy and certainly even state investments, and we got to get this. You know, get rid of this and this Marxism. 

Jason Zachary

Sure. Yeah, so we recognize the former legislator. You know I mean the forces that work against great pieces of legislation that we bring, that we bring forward even a conservative state like Tennessee, those coming against pieces of legislation like this, like the bankers association and others. It can make a difference, but fortunately the committee is made up of strong conservatives. This is something that I feel like we will get. I'm not going to say unanimous support, but there is broad support. The one thing that we have that Florida does not have will be the first state to pass it. It's the notification requirement.What that means is is that Bank of America, Chase City, any of these big banks which is important for people to remember. That's the primary problem. It's typically not our charter banks, it's the big banks. They're too big to fail banks. These big banks come in, they debank somebody. Like happened to a ministry and a church here in Memphis in Tennessee. They don't tell them why and this particular example that I'm referencing, the information didn't even come out until four months after and it was provided by Bank of America to the Daily Mail. The media company out of the UK wasn't even provided to the entity in which this happened to.

So our legislation requires that. Put the 30-day timeframe on that and they have to notify, unless prohibited by federal law, they have to notify the person why they were debanked, and so to be able to have that in writing is a big deal. But I mean the premise of the bill is to basically say you cannot deny or discriminate against any Tennessean and based on their religious beliefs, political views or what we're classifying as a social credit score, and then we kind of go into the tenets of ESG within that social credit score, and so it's much needed. It puts it under the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act and it's important for people to know and other states looking at this, that in Dodd-Frank, in section 1041, it allows states to be more strict than federal law as long as it's under their consumer protection laws, and so that's kind of the bow we're putting on top of this. I talked to our AG. They said putting all this under the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act will allow them to, will equip them with the tools they need to be invest, to investigate anytime somebody brings a complaint. So it's a comprehensive bill. The bankers really don't like it and so it's, I feel, good about where we'll be after subcommittee today.

Rick Green

Man, I love the fact that you're playing offense and you know so much of this that the left has been working on for so long that they've got their claws into all these different areas and the ability to cancel anybody that opposes them and this whole Marxist ideology of literally anything outside of their ideology they want to destroy, and we just, you know, we kind of fumbled around for a long time figuring out how to fight back. So I just applaud you big time for going on offense and fighting smart in this area. I just love it. And before I let you go, though, I also love the fact that you are trying to protect kids in Tennessee as well and prevent this trafficking of children into other states like California that are literally inviting children in to carve them up and do all of this nonsense. And the fact that Gavin Newsom is speaking out against you tells me great things about you, brother.

Jason Zachary

Yeah, it was unexpected, yep. So for your listeners, I'm carrying the what we'll call the abortion trafficking bill. And, Rick, I mean it's common sense, it's a parental rights bill. It simply says that an adult who is not the parent or guardian of a child cannot facilitate an abortion for that minor. We're talking about minors here. I mean literally.

In Tennessee, if a child breaks their arm, the doctor cannot treat them without the parent's consent and you can't give a child an aspirin in the school without the parents consent. Going back to the whole COVID madness, you couldn't even provide a vaccine to a child without the parents consent. But yet it's somehow okay for an adult, without the parent's permission, to take a child and facilitate an abortion for them or give them the pill which roughly 51% of abortions right now are with that pill and to give them that pill. That that's somehow okay, just because it's abortion and it's egregious and like in committee, I was asked a couple of weeks ago well, is abortion healthcare? And I said absolutely not. Abortion is not healthcare. The abortion is the murdering of a baby and a mother's womb. And so it kind of opened up that conversation. Again, Tennessee, we have the strongest pro-life bill in the country. I mean it goes beyond the heartbeat bill that we eliminate all elective abortions with no exceptions except for the life of the mother, and so we're a strong pro-life state.

And, man, like you said a minute ago, rick, it's so important that we as conservative states play offense. I know my first couple of terms in the legislature I was under governor has them, and he used to talk about how we had an unreliable partner in the federal government. Well, man, over the last four or five years under my time serving under governor, he talks about we now have this adversarial relationship with the federal government where we have to firewall ourselves from these destructive policies. And so it is important for red states to play offense. And that's what we're doing here in Tennessee. We just keep pushing forward. And again, the lawsuit that the attorney general in Missouri last week he took some action against abortion trafficking which kind of brought that to the forefront. But it's an important bill. It will save lives, it will protect children and it's critical that we do these steps because, taking the perspective of a believer man, the enemy is looking to steal, kill and destroy and come after our kids and everything that we got to do to protect our children. We must do it.

Rick Green

Yeah, amen, brother. Abortion trafficking I mean that's exactly the right way to describe it, and I was thinking it also addressed the whole gender modification thing where they're bringing inviting minors in to do that. Is that a separate effort? Do you think that is you know? I mean, obviously the abortion trafficking would be to any other state for the purpose of an abortion or anywhere for the purpose of an abortion. But what about the gender modification issue?

Jason Zachary

Yeah, in terms of the gender, what we refer to as gender mutilation of children, anything related to children or providing them the hormones, broth blockers or puberty blockers we took that step last January, passed unanimously with public and support in both chambers.

So, like we've addressed that, we've addressed the issue with kids and sports. Back the bathroom bill actually you guys helped me with some language that I'm the one who carried the bathroom bill and those. We have really made it a priority to protect children in the state. I mean our speaker talks about that speaker section. That is like things we talk about in our caucus meeting because so many of us have young kids and it really has become one of the priorities among the Republican caucuses. Whatever we got to do to protect kids because literally the left and ultimately again, as we talked about it a second ago, the enemy wants our kids and we got to do everything we can to stand against that.

Rick Green

Man. Jason, I shouldn't have given you so much time, because the more you go on, the more I feel like Tennessee is kicking Texas's tail right now on conservative legislation. So congrats to you guys. Of course, I have to also admit, if it wasn't for all the Tennesseans that came and fought for Texas independence, we wouldn't exist in the first place.

Rick Green

So hats off to you, man.

Well, thank you Y'all. Keep up the great work. I really appreciate your time and I look forward to seeing you again soon.

Jason Zachary

Thank you, rick, appreciate all you guys do. Thank you so much.

Rick Green

Stay with us folks. We'll be right back with David and Tim Barton.

Tim Barton

Hey guys, it's Tim Barton and I want to tell you about our new book, the American Story Building the Republic. We start with George Washington as president and we've already become a nation. So really now it's how do we function as a nation? And if we look back in American history, the stability, the prosperity, success we enjoyed as Americans is because of the foundation that our early presidents laid, because of the examples they set. How do we live in America under the Constitution? What is the role of federal government and really what part did each one of these early presidents play? We go through the first seven presidents and a lot of people probably know the names Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison. Very few people know about Monroe or John Quincy Adams or Andrew Jackson. Now, we might know some of their names, we really don't know their stories. We want you to relearn, rediscover American history and see how it applies to today. Go to wallbuilders.com and get your copy of the American Story Building the Republic.

Rick Green

We're back here on WallBuilders. Thanks to Jason Zachary for joining us and, man, so many good bills coming out of Tennessee guys. I let him brag too much on Tennessee. You know I always feel jealous as a Texan whenever other states are passing more good stuff than we do. But that's really good stuff coming out of Tennessee.

Tim Barton

Well, rick, you know one of the actual good pieces of information coming from Texas after this primary just this last week it looks like there are some new state House members which actually might help Texas become a little more conservative.

Rick Green

That's right, that's right.

Tim Barton

Maybe catch up to some of our friends like Tennessee and Oklahoma and Arkansas so often have these interviews with some of our great friends from these other states who are helping do incredible things in their states. We felt a little left out and behind. But maybe, maybe, after this last primary election cycle we now have some different people and some different positions who might embrace a little more traditional constitutional, conservative, biblical positions to help Texas become a little more conservative. So just kind of caveat I think in the coming years we might be able to brag about Texas a little bit more. Dad, I know you wanted to step in so I just want to fill that plug in real quick. Maybe Texas will be catching up to Tennessee pretty quick.

Rick Green

We might see some good trends going forward.

David Barton

Yes, Elections do matter and people showing up and voting in elections do matter, and that may result in the largest throw out of incumbents that we've ever had in Texas history this past election. They just got tired of this nonsense governance. So you're right, this could be a big change in Texas. Help us get in a good direction. And, Tim, before the interview, you were talking about the fact that you know as people get introduced to ESG and they hear what it is, they go. Wait a minute. That's not what I thought that meant. And one of the examples that helped in Tennessee with this bill that Zachary was doing was Ambassador Sam Brownback went into Tennessee and spent time with all the legislators talking about this bill because Sam Brownback had been governor of Kansas. He was US senator from Kansas, state representative from Kansas.

Sam Brownback was appointed the religious liberty ambassador for President Trump and he went all over the world trying to help bring peace between religious factions and fighting and help him understand that the religion's not supposed to kill. It's really good. And so he did this all over the world and he's the official America's official religious liberty ambassador under Trump. So what happens is after he gets out of, after Trump leaves office, he's no longer ambassador. He continues to work with all these other religions, helping them to get along with others and not be violent, etc.

David Barton

And what happened as a result was that's not the right ESG position for the ESG elites because they don't like religion. So what they did was they dropped his bank, they shut down his bank accounts, all the stuff that Sam Brownback was doing, all the terrific work he was doing. They just closed his accounts and said we don't agree with what you're doing, so you can't bank with us anymore. That's ESG If you don't agree with what the elites want and like and they don't like religion, especially when it works well, they like it if it works for them, they shut them down.

And so Sam went in and talked individually these state legislators and talked to the committees and talked all over. He spent a day just going through and talking to these guys and saying guys, I'm an example of what ESG does and so this is what Zachary's doing. That's what that bill does is keep the banks from punishing you because of the beliefs you hold. And it was as Zach said. I mean, the banks really oppose this thing. They really came after him hard and it's amazing that we see that much hostility from the banking institution that they want to control your beliefs and values and thinking and punish you for thinking wrong, and that's why it's good to have courageous guys like Zachary out there fighting for this, and good news is that hopefully this thing is going to pass out of committee and become part of law in Tennessee.

Tim Barton

And, as he mentioned too, this is where one of the great benefits of this they've even taken steps beyond what Florida did. One of the positive things that happens is, once these legislations start happening in states, various states are able to take this and make it specific for their state and even find ways we can make things stronger and make it better in areas. And you know, I noticed when he was saying it I don't know if everybody else listening noticed, but he talked about Audria and Betty, and some of our team here at WallBuilders and our Wall Builders has helped him on several of these things he's doing, and he's one of many people that we have worked with in the States In fact, the first ESG bill done in Florida, we worked with Representative Rommel down in Florida as well and, again, mostly helping connect them to people that were working on some of these things, helping get them information, helping do research and direct their staff in different areas. So really, from an educational standpoint, we've been very involved and I think a lot of people don't realize when, when people donate to WallBuilders, there's so much we do beyond just telling stories of American history. Now, I think that's one of the more important things we do, but we work with pastors, we work with teachers, we work with state legislators, we work with congressmen and senators on things regarding and relating to how do we protect the Constitution, how do we protect God given an alienable right, because that is our goal, that's our mission, our initiative, and when people donate to WallBuilders, there is so much that we are doing that.

He mentioned our pro family legislative network. That's the network we have. We work with over 1,000 state legislators in all 50 states. There's about 74, 7,500 state legislators in total. We work with over 1,000 of them. That is a huge percentage, a huge number of state legislators. So, just so everybody knows, when you are praying for WallBuilders, when you are financially supporting WallBuilders, when you are helping promote things from WallBuilders, it's a lot more than just our radio show and podcast. It's a lot more than our American history stories of reminding people of the American history. There's so much we are doing actively now in the nation and if you wanna help, you can continue to support WallBuilders, support our Pro Family Legislative network and everything else we're doing as well. You can go to WallBuilders.com if you wanna donate there and we would definitely appreciate the prayers along the way that God would give us wisdom. Continue to give these relationships, Cause there's a lot of these incredible stories happening from these state legislators that are doing great things in their states.

Rick Green

It's literally an investment in freedom that pays off in freedom. I mean, look at these bills that these legislators are passing and then they're coming to our legislators conference and sharing those ideas and then other states end up doing the same thing, or they hear from a speaker that inspires them to file that bill. I mean, we get to. You know, we hear the stories all the time and we try to bring as much of that to the show as we can. But it's such a great point, Tim. 

Rick Green

People just may not be aware of all the different things going on behind the scenes with WallBuilders. Go check out the website today, wallbuilders.com. Just spend some time on there looking at all the programs. Send your pastors to the pastor's briefing in DC that's coming up. Get your legislator, if you know them at all. Encourage them to come to our legislators conference in November. Lots of ways to get them plugged in, Lots of ways for you to make a difference and, of course, making a contribution. There is a big part of that. Appreciate you checking it out. Go to wallbuilders.com today and pay it forward. It's a great way to invest in the freedom of your children and your children's children. Thanks for listening today You've been listening to the WallBuilders Show.