Rick Green
Welcome to The WallBuilders Show, where we take on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. This is the intersection of faith and culture, and what that means is this is the place where faith influences culture. I know you may be thinking intersection, man. That's a head-on collision between faith and culture and, frankly, today it is. It's a collision between a faith culture and a secular culture, and the question is at this intersection, who's going to win? Which value system is going to determine the future of America? That's the reason for people of faith to be involved. That's the reason to be salt and light. That's also the reason that so many on the left are labeling you all kinds of crazy things to try to get you to just avoid the intersection completely. They're trying to get you to keep faith from ever touching culture, from ever influencing culture, so they call you a dominionist or a Christian nationalist or some other crazy term that they make up and there's no real meaning for and we're beginning to find out it actually just means you believe your rights come from God, not government. Wow. Well, that includes every single one of the founding fathers of the United States, the vast majority of people that ever lived in the United States and probably still about 90% of the people that live in the United States. But it is a tactic to get you away from the intersection of faith and culture. Well, here at WallBuildrers we're the opposite. We want you at the intersection.
In every program we're going to talk about cultural issues from a faith perspective, in other words, biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. What's the Bible say about it? What can we learn from history about it? And then how do we do this in our particular nation under our Constitution? So that's what Wall Builders is all about. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach and a former Texas legislator, serving here with David Barton, who is America's premier historian and our founder at Wall Builders, and Tim Barton, national speaker and pastor and president of Wall Builders. And today we're going to get into some good news. All right, David and Tim, let's jump into some good news for everybody this Friday. I love Good News Friday, David. Get us started, brother. What's the first piece of good news today?
David Barton
Well, we're coming up on Easter weekend and that is a huge holiday for Christians. Certainly it's right up there with Christmas, although I put Christmas higher than Easter because without Christmas you're not going to have Easter. But however, Easter is what the Bible tells us. That's how we know that Jesus is the Son of God, because of the resurrection. So those are two really, really, really important holidays.
Tim Barton
And I think it's worth noting too for people that might be following Jewish calendars and they're like, wait a second, but Passover and Easter and, in fairness, right, we don't know exactly what day that Jesus went to the cross or rose from the grave, just like at Christmas, we don't know what day Jesus actually came but there are things we do to celebrate and honor, where Jesus even told the disciples right, this do in remembrance of me.
There's things we do as Christians to remind us of who God is, of what God has done, and so, even though for following a Jewish calendar yeah, this weekend is not correct when it would come to when the whole crucifixion and resurrection might have happened, however, it is something very significant to the Christian faith, this very idea that there is a God and he sent his son Jesus, the pure, spotless lamb of God, who had no sin, who became sin for us, laid down his life for us, suffered the death on the cross that all of us really deserved, and then, three days later, he was resurrected, rose from the grave, he conquered death, hell in the grave, and in him we have hope, et cetera.
Tim Barton
So I just want to clarify that I'm sure there's people out there listening who. We have a lot of good friends who are very much into saying hey, go back and study in this tradition and the calendar and we get that, we understand, and so I just want to make sure that we don't get a bunch of silly emails going forward from people that say how dare you say, this weekend we're celebrating the resurrection when we know it wasn't this weekend, right, well, I mean really it wasn't 2024, but we're celebrating the memory of what happened more than 2,000 years ago,
David Barton
And that's a good way of putting it, because the 4th of July is the same thing.
We celebrate an event, we commemorate an event, we take time to think about it. It goes high in our mind at that point in time and I love even Christmas time, the way that we've covered it in recent years, where the friends like Tim Wildman over at American Family Association or Matt Staver with Liberty Council they have things like the naughty and nice list who are people who actually are willing to acknowledge that Christmas is an important time. I mean, it is a federal holiday to celebrate the birthday of Jesus Christ, so we look at that. But I've got to say at Easter, in my experience, I just don't recall people commercially, commercial businesses celebrating Easter like they do Christmas. But there's something going on this year.
I've got an article here and I've just got to admit maybe this has been going on for years and I just haven't seen it.
But I'm seeing thousands and tens of thousands of businesses that are normally open on Sundays closed down on Easter this year in commemoration of Easter.
And so I'm going to call some of the names because I think it's just worth noting and, you know, it's a way of saying thank you, you guys, for recognizing such an important time.
But there's 1,300 TJ Maxx stores, there's 1,200 Marshall stores, there's 600 Sam's Clubs, there's 876 Costco's, Target's closing 1,900 stores, public supermarket's 1,400 stores, Macy's 515 locations and all the Lowe's stores and all the H-E-B stores and HomeGoods and HomeSense. I mean these are some major, major retail groups and I just appreciate the fact that they're willing to say, hey, this is an important day and we want to take this day and set it aside in recognition of what happens, what this day represents, and I love even the fact that what Lowe said hey, we want this day off so that our employees can spend time with Easter and spend time with their families and celebrate Easter, et cetera. So I'm just I think that's good news that commercially, we're seeing a trend that's turning toward a recognition and appreciation of traditional religious holidays. It's a move away from the secularism that seems to dominate so much and I just I love the fact they're doing this. So I think that's really good news.
Tim Barton
I want to add one of the lists too. I think Chick-fil-A is closed this Sunday as well. Bravo to Chick-fil-A. Good job, you guys.
Rick Green
How unusual, how unusual for them.
David Barton
Yeah, they don't do that often.
Tim Barton
I'm proud of them for taking that stand.
Rick Green
I was thinking, as you were saying, good that they're doing this acknowledgement. Remember all the shows we did, wow, probably 10 years ago, maybe 15 years ago and we would talk about, you know, stores that wouldn't even say Christmas or whatever, and we would always emphasize the importance of just in our vernacular, in our language, in our advertising, in our seasons, acknowledging God and acknowledging those holidays, and there was a trend going totally the wrong direction of it being removed. So this is actually not just a Good News Friday. I mean, it's literally the opposite of what we were seeing 10 years ago
David Barton
And you remember they were going after every holiday.
Thanksgiving was made into a day of mourning and Christmas was winter holidays and everything. Spring was the same. What did they call Easter? Back in the day? It was something sold to spring soldiers. Anyway, everything was if you got a religious holiday, we're not going to recognize that if it's a Christian, Judeo-Christian, biblical kind of holiday. And you're right, Rick, it's a whole different climate from where it was a few years ago and I think that in itself is good, that we're at a point in our culture where they see this as something beneficial, even on a commercial level, that it's important for them to recognize this and I hope people reward them for that. I hope we'll do business with these kinds of companies that are willing to recognize and honor and respect these kinds of days
Tim Barton
Well, I wonder too, guys, if it's maybe not that there's people that now see it as beneficial, but maybe there were people always in the company who just weren't saying anything and weren't making it an issue until culture started getting so crazy and going so woke that people begin to recognize we ought to go ahead and just stand up and if because it used to be right that if you were Lowe's you're like a home improvement store, so you don't get involved in politics and culture, or whatever the case might be but the more that some of these companies are, I think it might be that for the first time they're recognizing hey, we should acknowledge these things.
Or maybe there have been people in those companies that always believe this that are now being emboldened and are coming forward. So either way, it's great news. But I just wonder if maybe it is even good news in another front that we're seeing people be courageous where before they had been reserved, not that they found something new, but that they're finally speaking up.
Rick Green
Amen. Good stuff guys. That's good. Cultural trends, right. Sometimes we have a specific good news item, which is you know, some of these companies doing these things. That would be specific, but this one also fits our cultural trends. Good news is just a good sign of where things are headed. All right, Tim. Next piece of good news goes to you.
Tim Barton
All right, guys.
Well, the next one. The headline of the article says no, taking pro-life stances doesn't harm Republican candidates, and this is a great article. It points out that, contrary to some of what's believed to be like the conventional wisdom and in Republican circles, where you have these pundits and these specialists and these campaign advisors who are suggesting, hey, Republicans, you know, there's certain issues they should stay away from if they want to win again, and the pro-life issue is one that has been very much at the forefront. A lot of these advisors, a lot of these consultants are saying that culture is going the wrong direction and this is not a winning issue for you, so don't talk about it. This article highlights something kind of fascinating, showing the exact opposite in many regards, and it points out that, if you look at states and the article does go through and highlight that it was a Dobbs decision back in 2022, that overturned Roe v.s Wade it put abortion back as a state issue, which we've talked about many times. I think it's fundamentally wrong. I think it violates some basic provisions of the Constitution and the notion of the Declaration that government exists to protect life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, life being the beginning of the whole thing, and so government's job really is to protect life in general and maybe even, in this case, unborn specifically.
With that being said, this article points out that there were 13 governors that have taken pro life decisions. Very clearly signing pro life laws, some actually doing abortion bans in their states. And if you look at these governors- there were actually 11- 11 GOP governors were up for re-election in 2022 after having signed an abortion ban, including three governors from states that voted twice for Obama and one for a state that voted for Biden. All 11 of them won re-election, and it goes on another paragraph to point out that in Ohio, for example, they voted for Obama twice and yet Governor Mike DeWine won re-election by an astounding 25% after having signed a heartbeat ban into law. In Iowa, they voted for Obama twice. Governor Kim Reynolds won by 18% after signing a six-week ban. Florida voted for Obama twice as well, but Governor Ron DeSantis won by 19% after signing a 15-week ban, and it's just highlighting that when you have people arguing that, no, as a Republican, you shouldn't be pro-life, don't talk about it. Stay away from that issue because you can't win. We're actually seeing there is some data available, and arguably the best data available that the governors who have been the most pro-life on these issues all of them won reelection, and some of their states are not all that conservative, and yet they won, in many cases, a resounding victory as being very strong pro-life candidates.
So, overall, this is good news and it is something that we've talked about before. When you see different pundits, when you see different advisors and political consultants encouraging Republicans to be squishy on what we would consider the religious to moral issues and how, we say that's terrible advice, that you should never compromise on values, don't compromise on morals. That's not a good position to take. Now we're seeing data that shows exactly what we do is that you need to stand up and be very clear that we understand there is a Creator. He gave rights to man. Government exists to protect those rights, and among those rights that were given to man is the right to life, which does include the unborn. And so just a cool piece of good news highlighting that you can be pro-life and win your election and, as Christians in general, we should be pro-life. It's a very clear position. So, overall, good news coming from this article.
Rick Green
All right, good stuff, guys. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back.
We've got more good news when we return. You're listening to The WallBuilders Show
Tim Barton
Hi friends, this is Tim Barton of WallBuilders. This is a time when most Americans don’t know much about American history or even heroes of the faith and I know oftentimes as parents, we are trying to find good content for our kids to read. And if you remember back to the Bible, to the book of Hebrews, it has the Faith Hall of Fame where they outlined the leaders of faith that had gone before them. Well, this is something that, as Americans, we really want to go back and outline some of these heroes, not just of American history, but heroes of Christianity and our faith as well. I want to let you know about some biographical sketches we have available on our website. One is called the Courageous Leaders Collection and this collection includes people like Abigail Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Francis Scott Key, George Washington Carver, Susanna Wesley, even the Wright Brothers. And there's a second collection called Heroes of History. In this collection you'll read about people like Benjamin Franklin or Christopher Columbus, Daniel Boone, George Washington, Harriet Tubman, friends. The list goes on and on. This is a great collection for your young person to have and read and it's a providential view of American and Christian history. This is available at wallbuilders.com, that's www.wallbuilders.com.
Rick Green
We're back on WallBuilders. It's Good News. Friday, Diving right back in David. Next piece of good news.
David Barton
This is kind of a throwback to maybe 20 years ago? I don't know that we've been able to talk about this kind of good news in a number of years. I think we have to go back really to the time that George W Bush was in office. But what I've got here is two articles where that Democrats have had enough of the partisanship, and they're significant Democrats. One is Joe Manchin, and as Joe Manchin is now leaving the Senate and the remaining months he's got left, he's just he's made it really clear I'm not going to vote for any Biden judge that does not have at least some Republican support. If it's a pure party line vote, I'm not voting with the Democrats. And so Manchin has said it's got to be bipartisan. Somebody has to, has to get this thing away from the polarization. And he said I don't care if it's Lisa Murkowski or Susan Collins, or I don't care if it's Lindsey Graham, but if you can't get a Republican supporting these Biden nominees, then I'm going to block it in the Senate. So that's good for him to reach out and try to keep the thing from being further polarized, and so I consider that a success and that's probably going to keep some really bad judges out. With the way the Senate is right now, the Democrats have control, but they need Manchin to keep that control and if he jumps on the other side, they don't get everything they want, and that can be good.
The other thing I'd point to is Robert Kennedy, who's traditionally been a Democrat, but he's not. He's not the woke kind of Democrat that they are today at least the way the House and Senate tend to be. He's come out against central bank and digital currency and you're not finding Democrats doing that and he talks about how that CBDC and that's something that WallBuilders, our legislative network. We've been helping legislators understand how bad this is, but he points out that this is what China used to really gain so much of the control. He points out that this is what China used to really gain so much of the control.
He said I'm against central bank digital currencies because that's part of the path to getting us where China is today. That's where they started, that's where all these other countries started with central bank digital currency and it's the end of freedom. We will be slaves if we allow this to happen. He said the government used facial recognition systems and other intrusive technologies to identify the participants, like in Canada all the truckers, they got their license plates and et cetera and he talks about how the central bank digital currency was used up there to cut off their accounts and their money and they couldn't get gas. They couldn't get anything. So here's a Democrat actually sounding the alarm on something the Biden administration is really pushing hard, and I know these are old school kind of Democrats, but it's just good news to see that there's some guys that are that are resisting the polarization and resisting the radicalness of what Democrats have become Well.
Tim Barton
Dad, I think it was RFK Jr when you said Robert Kennedy, that's RFK Jr.
David Barton
Thank you, exactly right. Rfk Jr Right. Robert Kennedy, for those who don't know, has been dead for several decades.
Tim Barton
Yeah, he's no longer with us. But RFK Jr also. It's worth highlighting because I just want to make sure if anybody's listening to us. I don't want them to be kind of sucked into this notion. Robert F Kennedy, RFK Jr is now looking at running potentially on a libertarian party as president. He's already looking, picking a vice president, and there are people he's very disappointed, disgusted with the Democrat party, a lot of what they've done, and there's even conservatives that maybe don't like Trump, maybe want a different kind of option, somebody more moderate. And they look at RFK Jr and he does make sense on some issues and it's caused a lot of people to think okay, maybe this guy's not crazy, right, it's not like Joe Biden where his cognitive decline is so evident and obvious and there's so much corruption in the Biden administration, arguably the Biden family and maybe it's not like Donald Trump that he's so polarizing. So we kind of lean toward RFK Jr. He's right in the middle that this is a more rational guy, right, a more reasonable guy.
But it's worth noting he is not number one libertarian, even if he runs on a libertarian ticket. He's been a Democrat his whole life and he is very, very liberal on a lot of issues. There are some issues now that people would look and go hey, he's really good on guns. I would just point out, if you go back to 2018, on virtually any issue he's wrong, on virtually every single issue. I mean, maybe his position against big pharma is good. For some people that tend to not like Pfizer and some of the vaccine push. He's had a lot of skepticism of a lot of what's happened in the pharmaceutical industry with the vaccines and many other things over maybe decades because of some of the corruption he's seen some of the people that are there making money in that process. But I just want to encourage people don't think this guy's conservative, don't think this guy is the same kind of constitutionalist that we would really want to be there.
And I don't know necessarily if he's a person of faith. Again, I don't really know that but I could also point out that if you go back to FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Roosevelt was a Christian and he's the one that brought in the New Deal. He did things devastating to America, but he believed there was a God and you know, maybe, arguably, he loved Jesus. He just had terrible policies, and so again, I would just caution and encourage people even though it's great to have someone coming from the Democrat camp and again coming from I think he's already left the Democrat camp, but coming from that direction, it's great to have them recognize some of the real dangers in America, some of the foreign threats or in this case, like a central bank, digital currency, major, major threats, potential threats to American freedom and future.
But don't be sucked in and think that this is a really good middle of the road candidate. He is very liberal on the majority of issues. He's just not as crazy as a lot of the people drinking the woke Kool-Aid over on the left, and because he's not drinking the woke Kool-Aid, he seems far more reasonable. It doesn't mean he's conservative, because he certainly is not.
Yeah, it just tells you how you know he seems far more reasonable. It doesn't mean he's conservative, because he certainly is not.
Rick Green
Yeah, it just tells you how you know he looks conservative compared to them, but certainly not conservative compared to what we know. Conservative really means, oh man, good stuff. All right, back to you, Tim. What's your next piece of good news?
Tim Barton
Well, guys, this one. The article says Planet Fitness value plummets 400 million after transgender turmoil. And for anybody not aware, very recently there was a scenario where there was a lady at Planet Fitness and what appeared to her to be a man walks in and the reason it appeared to her to be a man is because this was a biological male who was dressing as a female, or pretending to be a female, however we define the scenario. He goes into the bathroom and this lady is very uncomfortable. She's going, what is what's happening right now? I don't understand. She goes and reports him. When she reports him, she is the one that gets in trouble and Planet Fitness comes back and says hey, if you're going to be hateful and bigoted, we're going to have to revoke your membership. She actually loses her membership over reporting a biological male going into the female restroom or locker room.
David Barton
Wasn't part of it, Tim, that he was also shaving his face in the restroom? I mean that was part of the giveaway was he was actually in the women's, in the women's locker room, and he was shaving his beard at the time, shaving his face. As I recall, that was part of the story
Rick Green
A totally different take on bearded lady. But yes, yes, that's exactly what was happening.
Tim Barton
Yeah, Well, and this article just highlights the value drop. In fact, one of the very interesting online accounts it's called Libs of TikTok and the girl who runs this really interesting story. Her testimony is quite fascinating and what she does, primarily, is she follows a lot of really crazy liberal accounts and she has a lot of followers that do this now as well, and she just reposts the crazy things they say, and so it's an easy kind of one-stop shop. You can just follow her accounts and you will see what people are actually posting on their own accounts. She's not making this up, she's sharing what they posted publicly and people come against her and saying you're shaming and you're hateful and racist and bigoted, and she's like I'm just sharing what they posted. I just want people to know who these people are. They're publicly saying who they are and these are elementary school teachers, these are our principals, right? These are city council, school board, whoever it is, right. These are all kinds of people.
Anyway, she on her account identified. She said Planet Fitness saw 400 million wiped off its value since we broke the story of them and since we broke, meaning Libs of TikTok, they're the ones that first kind of drew a lot of attention to this. They said that banning the woman who exposed it meaning or referencing back to Planet Fitness, she said turns out people don't want to support companies who cave to gender pseudoscience and allow men and women's private spaces. Boycott Planet Fitness, do not let up, keep it going. And this is one of many things we've seen along the lines of like the Bud Light. Where Bud Light for those that might not remember they for whatever reason, they had some kind of marketing leader who determined they needed to get away from a lot of who they used to be. They needed to reach a new audience, and so what's the best thing to do? Let's hire a transgender personality, so a biological male who is dressing as a female, pretending to be a female, and we're going to make them the front focal point of beer and, of course, it just devastated their profit. They lost so much and we've seen this now with several companies.
And it's not that we wish anybody's business to be destroyed or go under, but we appreciate in a free market we've talked about this so much in context of a free market we appreciate that in a free market we have the opportunity not to give our business to woke companies that are doing really ridiculous things, and especially if you're talking about places where there could be girls right, the teenage girls, young girls who could be going in after they've worked out with their family and their mom, they've taken classes, whatever it is, and they're going into the locker room, they're going in to get cleaned up and there's biological males who are allowed in there?
That's not the place we want to be. This idea that so many of these companies are going to create safe spaces that is not a safe space, and so it is really good news that the American people have decided that, if that's how this company wants to do it, that's not where they're going to be, and so many memberships are being canceled and so many people are leaving. So it is good news that the American people are not supportive of this woke ideology and this gender nonsense. They're more interested in protecting women and protecting young girls. That's really good news.
Rick Green
Well, folks, we'll have more good news for you next Friday, and not to say that Monday through Thursday. We never share good news. Sometimes an entire program is pretty much good news, but we love these Fridays where we just dedicate it to some of these rapid fire stories. David and Tim have a stack of good news. We never get through the whole stack, so there's always more to share. I look forward to doing that next week as well.
If you'd like more of our programming or more of our resources for you and your family and your church, go to Patriot Academy. Well, you can go to PatriotAcademy.com too, because everything there is WallBuilders as well. But you can go the Biblical Citizenship in Modern America course, which is a great way to start, and it's also a great way to get with your friends and family and have some iron sharpening iron where you sharpen each other's countenance by watching those videos together and then talking about it and then living it out right there in your community. So that's available to you at wallbuilders.com or at patriotacademy.com. Thanks so much for listening. Today You've been listening to Waldo.